EPISODE 514: DAYENU
On Easter Sunday my mom posted a random picture of her dog with the words "Happy Easter" and somehow it was weirder than everything else going on right now.
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
Hello you glorious gifts to the universe. As one of my favorite Australians used to ask me, “How are you traveling?”
I was realizing a funny thing today. Some of my most fundamental habits have changed. I haven’t listened to a single podcast in six weeks, other than the Russell T. Davies and Daniel Radcliffe episodes of Desert Island Discs. I’ve also barely cracked a newsletter, and usually I’ve got at least 15 or 20 I’m checking out weekly.
None of this has been a conscious decision. It’s just, Things are different and so am I. Poof. Plus, I don’t know, I feel like it’s never been more obviously important to regulate what we feed our imaginations. Because that baby will eat anything, but the results can be ROUGH. I flipped through like 3 news articles from an Australian newspaper recently and it wrecked me for days.
Now is the time to feed yourself the good stuff, that’s what I say. Your all-time favorite TV shows; that Judy Blume book you loved as a kid (Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing fans unite!), the songs of Rufus Wainwright. Yes, yes and oh hell yes.
Oh, and that great bottle of wine you’ve been saving – this is what you were saving it for. Surprise!
I heard a writer I love talking about what she’s watching right now, and it was things like The Dick Van Dyke Show. Normally I might say, really? Was Andy Griffith busy? But you know what: that show was so much fun. And who doesn’t need a little bit of that right now?
That’s your homework for this week, you good souls. Twenty-thirty minutes every day this week of the good stuff.
I just started The Outsider on HBO. I am loving it. It’s based on a Stephen King murder mystery, and what makes it so smart is that while there is a supernatural element (of course), the show is presented as a straight detective story. It could be True Detective Season 4 or The Night Of Season Two (which felt like it should have been a season of True Detective anyway).
Also, as part of my version of Feed Yourself the Good Stuff, I’m rewatching The Wire and the Matt Smith era of Doctor Who. And as I watch I’ve found myself outlining episodes and coming up with kind of “How To” Manuals for some of these shows. Like, if you wanted to write a good script for The Wire, what are the 5 things it should do?
I’ve been doing one for Better Call Saul, too (which finishes a dynamite season this coming Monday). Here’s one of my Five: Actions without Explanation – Many episodes of Saul and its predecessor Breaking Bad have some moment where our main characters are shown doing something weird that goes unexplained. Saul wanders around a Salvation Army hunting for something. Gus Fring forces an employee to stay after work to reclean everything in his restaurant.
We’re not told why they’re doing this, it’s just What They’re Doing. Usually the episode moves on, and only at the very end, do we get to see what that was all about.
It’s a useful writing move in that the initial mystery of what they’re up to gets us interested. But it’s very hard to pull off over and over again because we become so savvy to it. Oh look, the magician is doing that same trick again. Yawn. It also risks being a little too cutesy. How many times are we going to have to play hide and seek guys?
And yet they keep doing that same trick right in front of us and we still fall for it. In fact we love falling for it. Amazing.
So yeah, that’s my life right now, that and more rewrites of the outline for EVERYBODY SAYS DON’T. I might post some of the outlines online. I’ll let you know.
Simpler seems better right now. So instead of me going on, here’s some fun things I found this week.
WATCH
This has a) Made me seriously consider cutting my own hair; b) Had me searching for Amazon for big scissors; or c) All of the Above.
READ
This is an insanely crazy thing that is happening right now and it makes me think I need to watch make up tutorial videos.
DO
Need some ideas to switch things up with the kids? How about we we go to Disneyland from our homes?
(I did this one, the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party.
It was kind of wonderful. So nice to see people all together like that.)
LISTEN
I try to have one great song for you each week. Today I give you two great versions of one song from Godspell. It’s called “Beautiful City”.
Here’s Hunter Parrish from the most recent Broadway revival recording it:
And here’s another version, sung by Broadway legend and great human Liz Callaway as she drives through New York City. It’s really something.
AND FINALLY, ONE MORE WATCH
Someone just told me about this today. When you need breaks this week, give this ten minutes. It’s funny and filled with kindness.
The title of this week’s newsletter comes from the song at the start of the video. It’s Hebrew for “It Would Have Been Sufficient.”
On Passover, Jewish people celebrate the many things God has done for them. And they sing “Dayenu” to say, Any one of those gifts would have been enough.
It’s a song of appreciation, and also hope. The present is what it is. But we can trust in the future because God has been so good to us in the past.
Dayenu, my friends. Dayenu.
See you next week.
Tell me how this makes sense.