EPISODE 502: SKIPPING OVER THE OCEAN LIKE A STONE
Reading Breaks in Dream Houses; Armor and Artists
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
Hello and welcome back to Pop Culture Spirit Wow, now with Fish Oil! Or other things that make it sound like it’s good for you! It is, it’s good for you! Just check out these strapping lads:
(I dare you to find me a picture of Yoda more disturbing than that one. It’s like Teen Groot and Abe Vigoda had a baby. )
I had company all week, which was fun and not at all exhausting, not even a little bit, hence the fact when they left on Thursday night I did almost nothing for three days but eat pizza and read books about super dangerous spiders and Harvey Weinstein, which when you think about it are pretty much the same thing, and also Star Wars: Alphabet Squadron, because post-Rise my Star Wars love has metastasized from film novelizations and character backstories to books about all-new characters who are supposedly a part of Star Wars canon but will be definitely banished to the extended universe as fast and hard as Leia dumps Artoo and Threepio in the desert.
THIS IS WHAT YOU DID TO ME, J.J. ABRAMS.
Is it weird that the one thing I really want from the impeachment hearings is for Kelly Marie Tran to be given the floor to talk about what really happened on Rise?
So yeah, a bit of shutdown here this week. One highlight: I finished In the Dream House, Carmen Maria Machado’s memoir of her struggle to get out of an abusive relationship. It was on pretty much every Best of 2019 list, and I found it both powerful and fascinating. Rather the standard beginning, middle and end each chapter presents Machado’s experience in terms of a different idea: “Dream House as Star-Crossed Lovers”, “Dream House as Accident”, “Dream House as Heat Death of the Universe.”
The chapters are so short – at most two or three pages, often just one, sometimes just a paragraph – you could blow through the book in a couple days. But the individual chapters are so rich in ideas and feeling I found myself stopping often, just to sit with them.
Here’s the analog version of what my pages now look like:
It’s such a great book. If you haven’t already do yourself a favor and buy it.
Week One of Doing the Things that Terrify Me: In addition to working on the outline for ANOTHER HUNDRED PEOPLE and maybe just maybe figuring out the heart of the conflict between the two main characters, this week saw me go to Jos. A. Bank to buy a sportscoat.
Does anyone else have an irrational fear of clothing stores? Particularly clothing stores where well-dressed people are going to ask you if they can help you? For me, it’s seriously that specific; I’ll take on a J.C. Penney’s or a Macy’s like an all-star, but put me somewhere a little more fancy or boutique-ish where someone is going to lock in and start asking me questions and I become an insecure babbling mess fighting every second against the urge to literally run out the door.
What is that? A sense of inadequacy? Hey look, everybody, it’s the hayseed in the bad sweater! I actually do wonder if I wouldn’t feel better if people said that when I walked in. Finally, I can stop pretending.
But I think it’s also an insane fear of being ripped off. Call it my Scottish ancestry (the Gift of the Haggis), but my first instinct in a lot of business situations is that the people on the other side of the counter are going to burn me. As though a store so precious about itself it insists on shortening “Joseph” to “Jos” was run by evil geniuses.
I haven’t bought a suit in 25 years (for reals y’all) or a sportscoat in almost as long. Until a few years ago I still had the blue blazer with shiny gold buttons that I wore to semi-formals in college. (WHY DID WE EVER BELIEVE IN THE GOLD BUTTONS?)
So yeah, it’s time. And the salesperson was pretty much the opposite of everything I’m afraid of; not even a whit of couture hauteur. She immediately showed me a bunch of sportscoats I never would never have found myself and all of which I loved. And now I have a new coat. Maybe I can wear it the next time I need a little courage.
+3 ARMOR OF BRAVERY: CHECK.
The Oscars are coming up — if Adam Driver wins it’s going to be for the scene above. But way more than the ceremony itself what I love about this season is the interviews we get with those involved. This conversation with Jamie Foxx and Michael B. Jordan about their death-row movie Just Mercy had some of the most interesting commentary about God I’ve heard in a while. Here’s Foxx on Walter McMillan, the innocent man trapped on Death Row that he portrays:
I would put myself in this space, too. Who did he pray to? Did he pray to the same God who these people [who set him up] prayed to?
It’s an interesting thing. Not only am I stripped of humanity…I got to pray to somebody. I need your help, and these people are the ones who taught me who you are. Isn’t that weird?
Meanwhile writer John August has done an interview with Little Women writer/director Greta Gerwig that’s like a master class in thinking about adaptation and Little Women and also just the work of being an artist.
Like Jo, author Louisa Mae Alcott had lost a sister by the time she wrote Women. Reflecting on this, Gerwig had this to say:
I think that what artists do is you write it down because you can’t save anyone’s life. Like I think that’s part of what the impulse is. ‘I can’t save your life, but I can write it down. And I can’t get that moment back, but I can write it down.’
THREE TWEETS
Keyboard Cat, The Prequel:
I Can’t Say I Know What This Means but Somehow I Totally Resonate With It:
A Whole New Take on the Problem with Our Concept of God:
READ
Los Angeles Lakers’ legend Kobe Bryant died yesterday morning, along with 8 others, in a fluke helicopter crash near Malibu.
One of those who died with him was his 13-year-old daughter Gigi, who loved basketball herself and was headed to a game that day. This is a beautiful tribute to her.
Aidy Bryant, star of SNL and the great Hulu show Shrill, talks about dealing with trolls.
I also understand that [the] people who are writing this, it’s almost not about me — it’s about releasing some rage they have within themselves.
And lastly, Math + Comedians = This.
WATCH
I didn’t know anything about the artist John Baldessari, who recently died, until I watched this playful short documentary about him narrated – at his request – by the musician Tom Waits. It’s fantastic.
LISTEN
I’m haunted by Harry Nilsson’s “Everybody’s Talkin’” right now. It has the happy, bright energy of a road trip, but it’s also somehow sad and filled with longing.
Sometimes life is like that, sweet but also searching. And when it is I guess there’s nothing to be done but to trust in its truth.
You bring the microphone, I’ve got my Casio. We’ll sing it out together.
See you next week.