EPISODE 430: RICK STEVES MY SISTER'S FAMILY'S VACATION IN LOS ANGELES

POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW

My sister and her family visited this week, which was very exciting. As a kid my aunts would always talk about these amazing trips they took after college to various parts of Europe; I can’t recall a single detail from their stories, but hearing them had a huge impact on me, so much so that while I was in college I saved money to be able to take a trip like that myself.

Maybe some people see how big the world can be just from living in it, but for me other people’s experiences have always been the window that helped me discover how much more there is to see and experience.

In the Jesuits you end up living in a lot of different and interesting places; in my case many of them have been places I not only had never visited but had never conceived of beforehand (like New York) or in some cases even considered attractive (like Los Angeles). To be able to share a little bit of those worlds with my sister’s kids – to be able to be part of them discovering those worlds existed, even (and maybe also that other parts of them exist too) was just enormously awesome.

(About that last parenthetical: I have this theory that if we were going to be accurate each of us should be drawn sort of like a Dr. Seuss character, with not just arms and legs but lots of other long winding elements coming out of us and going this way and that, each with a different visual style – Stripes! Polka dots! Red with Orange-Colored Yodas! And the world consists of a set of backgrounds that highlight some of those elements while hiding others.

It’s like when you go to college and suddenly you discover you’re the funny one, or you move to a new city and suddenly become a go getter. Where was that person before?, you wonder. Fact is, it was always there, it’s just it was hidden by the context in which you live. If Usain Bolt had been raised by cheetahs, would he even realize he was fast?

One of the great parts of visiting another city, another country is suddenly that background design has changed. You can catch a glimpse of parts of yourself you might not know you had.)

I have no idea if any of that happened to my nephew and nieces when they visited, or whether the visit planted any good-for-you time bombs that might erupt somewhere down the line. But certainly I was psyched at the possibility.

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Things I Learned on my Sister's Family's Vacation:

If you want to have a good time on the Millennium Falcon ride at Disneyland, go for being a pilot. (Also, the Chewbacca meet and greet in Tomorrowland is an unexpectedly deep life-affirming experience.)

A good night’s sleep does not make you up to the task of matching the daily energy of two teenagers and a tween, ever or always.

The cheap sunglasses you find in Hollywood are actually pretty great.

A leg rash is basically an abstract art tattoo that eventually goes away, I hope.

REALLY not kidding about that Chewbacca meet-and-greet.

Stephen Sondheim’s Into The Woods might have been written in 1986, but it is the absolute perfect musical for the craziness of the world today. (Act One: Everyone is in it for themselves, but most of them are nice, so it’s okay! And everyone gets what they want. Act Two: The Consequences of In It For Ourselves Shows Up and Stomps All Over Everything. And the only way to survive is by standing up for each other.)

Los Angeles is not all that, Uncle Jim, but UCLA is pretty cool. (Heck yeah it is.)

Similarly, the In & Out hamburger does not seem that impressive upon first bite, but by burger’s end you will find yourself strategizing how much time needs to pass before it’s okay to return.

The thrill of rollercoasters is pretty much entirely predicated on the fear that you might smash your head on the girders and/or fly off the tracks. And that is a very strange thing to want in your life.

From the brilliant Nathan Pyle

How do parents do more than a week with children at a time? My sister’s kids were amazing and yet I am still so tired. Also is aging just another way of saying ‘dying very slowly’?

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In other news: after my sister’s family left today for some reason I found myself descending down a very deep rabbit hole of thinking about female pop stars of the last 30 years. You know, like an exhausted middle aged person temporarily incapable of free will does.

Also and/or after this:

When I was in high school and college Madonna was very much A Thing, followed by The Thing. And at first I didn’t really “get it”; for many years my musical understanding pretty much started with Billy Joel and ended with Broadway. (We all have to start somewhere; also Glass Housesis one of the Top Ten Albums of all time, dispute this at your peril.)

But at some point – probably from reading some 90s equivalent of a think piece (i.e. a blog) – I started to see how much Madonna was able to transform her image from album to album without ever losing That Thing that made her Madonna. Her career is crazy that way; she goes from not exactly a Cyndi Lauper clone but definitely branded somewhere in that universe with 1983’s Lucky Star (it comes out the same year as “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”, in fact) to 30s Hollywood icon just a year later in Material Girl to a more mature, boss version of the same in 1990’s Vogue, and on and on.

Lady Gaga has clearly modeled her career on Madonna’s, but I’m not sure she’s achieved the range of transformation of a Madonna quite yet. Yes, The Star is Born, she and Bradley at the Oscars, I know, I saw. But beyond that there’s really just Gaga, no? Not a set of personas but outfits that each bring out the same Weird is Wonderful message. It’s a lot more thought out and intentional than Elton John’s eyeglasses, say, but nowhere near the category of Madonna.

The thing that got me thinking about all this, actually, was Taylor Swift. One of the newsletters I read mentioned Blank Space in passing today and suddenly I was watching the video, then Shake It Off, then Swift's very recent You Need to Calm Down. And it just hit me how many different personas Swift, too, can shuttle through -- crazy New York debutant, sweet home Midwestern teenager, L.A. gay ally. And yet, weirdly, when I watch her videos I’m not sure I ever have a sense of Swift expressing something she actually feels. It’s more like she’s a big sister who puts on different costumes as a way of giving me some life advice. She’s infinitely likable, but who actually is she?

Meanwhile I was surprised to discover in rewatching Madonna’s videos, once you get past that first album, where she’s clearly been manufactured by handlers to hit a certain demo (“Lucky Star” is so not Madonna), you have this sense of being in the presence of a real person.. In fact, I would say that even as she performs different characters, Madonna always insists that you see her, that you deal with her as she is, whereas Swift really only wants you to see yourself.

So in “Shake it Off”, you’ve got Swift surrounding herself with ballerinas, break dancers, cheerleaders, etc. And her repeated move is to position herself as the playful screw up who means well but can never get the steps right. In other words, the best version of how we would look if dancing with these people.

Then the whole end section of the video suddenly brings in just a bunch of non-performer-looking kids (who are almost entirely white), lets them dance any way they want--

-- and then returns to the fantastic dancers and asks them to put aside their incredible talent and just fool around like the “normal kids” are doing.

It’s basically suburban white kid fantasia, empowering while also being dismissive of the value of things like practice or hard work, and Swift, though she has previously shown herself to be a pretty great dancer herself, positions herself instead as goofball clumsy one of us.)

My own suggestion as the inheritor of Madonna’s crown (should we need one?) might be Miley Cyrus. Certainly she has already given us a whole bunch of different looks, from Mickey Mouse Club to Middle America Party Girl to Badass Tongue Punk Goddess.

But it’s her covers, actually, that keep turning my head. Ever since she sang Paul Simon’s Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover on the SNL 40thanniversary episode, I’ve just been stunned by her capacity to take someone else’s song and perform it in a way that seems so totally personal.

Check out the first two minutes of this, her singing Leonard Cohen’s “I’m Your Man” from the short-lived Maya Rudolph and Martin Short variety show. The emotions, the longing, the sorrow of having messed things up are so damn palpable.

Or here she is delivering an ode to the recently deceased Tom Petty, Wildflowers, with such a simplicity and kindness.

Even on covers which aren’t mind-blowing start to finish, like her I Am A Man of Constant Sorrow at the George Clooney Tribute, she comes out with these unbelievable moments where it’s like she’s suddenly uncovered whole new continents of emotion and meaning.

Taylor Swift sings her own songs and yet somehow they’re all magic tricks, look over here while I vanish from sight. Meanwhile Miley Cyrus sings other people’s songs and ends up baring her soul.

And Madonna just keeps on going.

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In between Comic-Con and my sister’s visit I somehow slipped in little bits of a bunch of pop culture which I have loved.

VERONICA MARS SEASON 4: People may love her for Frozen or The Good Place, but for me Kristen Bell will always be the world weary avenging angel female detective Veronica Mars. She brings so many different colors to the character, from wit and rage to a profound vulnerability, and the writing consistently allows her to play amidst all those layers. The new season, now on Hulu, has a couple pretty controversial moments, but I loved it all and would like more please now thank you.

SHRILL: I’m halfway through this six episode Hulu comedy about a young woman trying to believe she is worthy of love just as she is, starring Aidy Bryant from SNL, and I have to say I can’t believe how much I love it. A show that captures that sense of trying to be what you think others want because you believe who you are is terrible, and trying to teach yourself how to live another way. Seriously I don’t care what comes out in the next six months, this is definitely one of the best shows of the year.

THE ACT: I don’t even know how to describe this Hulu true crime drama (did I mention I’m on the Get One Month of Hulu Free plan?). Anything I would say will be a spoiler. Patricia Arquette plays a middle-aged mom kind of obsessed with her sick teenage daughter. Things happen. Even if you just watch the pilot, it will affect you. A show about the relationship between parents and children.

On my to-do list: Steven Universe; Insecure and Orange is the New Black catch up; True Detective Season 3; Ramy.

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Not a lot of online reading got done this week. I will say, after I saw this trailer for The Goldfinch I started the book. It immediately wrecked me. Read this book.

That trailer also led me to the gorgeous song “Otherside” used within it; the video for that song is itself pretty amazing.

The other thing I couldn’t get enough of the last few weeks is the Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast. (Thank you for the recommendation Culture Curator Ken Anselment!) Each episode Conan talks to A Famous Person, and a lot of the conversations end up moving through some really heartfelt places.

For a taste check out his episodes with Stephen Colbert (ep 13), Lin-Manuel Miranda (ep 31), Michelle Obama (ep 18), Will Ferrell (ep 1) or Kristen Bell (ep 2).

Wednesday is the feast of St. Ignatius, the founder of the Jesuits, who came to know what he wanted out of life by paying attention to his daydreams. This strikes me as an incredibly awesome and relatable quality for a saint to have, and a much better way to think about daydreams than the typical Now Stop That.

I wish you a week filled with moments to let the mind wander...

(I'm away next weekend on an 8 day silent retreat, so no newsletter next week. See you in a couple weeks.)