EPISODE 547: YOU GET OUT, YOU GET OFF THIS NATION
This newsletter is not allowed in the state of Utah for outstanding and unspecified traffic offenses.
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
The 2020 Advent Calendar absolutely needed to have 365 days of beer.
Hi!
You know what’s weird about Covid Christmas? I’m actually finding it focusing my attention. Like, I have this list I’m keeping of things I want to watch or “do” (aka also probably watch). Like, a couple years ago I spent Christmas in Australia, and whle I was there I stumbled onto the Royal Variety Show. I guess the closest equivalent we’d have is a Live from the Kennedy Center kind of thing, where the President and First Lady show up and entertainment happens.
But the Royal Variety Show is also different. It’s not as slick, for one thing. Some of the performances are top notch musicians and comedians just knocking it out of the park. But overall tone is a little more “ordinary people putting on a show”. (Actually I wonder if that’s because it’s a performance for the Royal Family. Yes, everyone bows to them immediately after they perform. But it’s not like they’re celebrities or world leaders. They’re more like older relatives you only see once a year, and so you do this show for them.)
I loved watching it, precisely for existing on that more human scale. And I’m looking forward to watching it again.
Actually, one of the performances is from Celeste, who sort of swept up the nation’s heart with this song she performed for the John Lewis department store’s yearly Christmas ad.
Note to self: Have a Hankie on hand.
The last time I was in the UK, in the Before Time, I also visited Cambridge for the first time and happened to stumble into an evening service sung by one of the boys’ choirs. It just knocked me out. Well, both Cambridge and Oxford have choirs that broadcast performances at this time of year. This year, I’m going to watch them.
There’s other things, too. I never watch the New York City New Year’s Eve celebration, maybe because I’ve lived through and it is an endless nightmare of frozen limbs and drunk teenagers. But maybe this year I’ll do that. Or I’ll watch the fireworks over Sydney.
A lot of what I’m imagining is a form of Travel While at Home/Nostalgia for Places I love. (Ooh, what do they do in Paris, I wonder? Or Rome?)
People have suggested some great TV shows, too. Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas. All the old stop-motion Christmas stories. The Star Wars Christmas specials.
I’ll tell you, the other thing I’ve done that has made a huge difference – I put up a string of Christmas lights. It’s just a little string around the book shelf I sit by. It’s not flashy literally or otherwise, but it makes me feel better. I plan to cling to its soft colors for as many months more as we’re stuck here.
So the first batch of vaccines is going out this week. I have a friend whose daughter is due to get one, in fact (she works in a hospital). I’m sort of in awe of the whole thing.
Last week I had a couple conversations with friends in Australia. They haven’t had a case in the whole country in more than 40 days. My friends were talking about where in the country they’re going to take their summer vacations. I’ll be honest, it was a little more than I could handle.
I wonder if some of that won’t be part of the challenge of 2021, though. Some of us will feel very safe and maybe will stop wearing masks because we don’t need to any more, while the rest of us are still very much living in 2020.
We’ll really need to think of each other then. And I’d guess it’ll be really hard to remember…
Speaking of vaccines, here’s a crazy story about the origin of the Mary Poppins’ song “A Spoonful of Sugar”
Also, a bunch of people recommended this video of Christian televangelist Kenneth Copeland “executing judgment on Covid 19”. It goes in a very unexpected direction. I must say, I really really loved it.
And while we’re at it, Noted Great Human Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters has been releasing covers of songs written by Jewish artists for each day of Hanukkah.
Here’s his cover of Drake’s “Hotline Bling”.
MILK IS GREAT! DRINK MILK! YOU NEED THIS!
I continue to consume pop culture like it is slices of pizza. (I am to pizza what dogs are to food. If you don’t take it away I will just keep eating it.)
The Queen’s Gambit, aka Wait Is This a True Story about 1950s Chess, didn’t grab me at first – hey look, a story about a genius who geniuses and also has trouble because she is a genius. But by the end, it really had me. The last episode has so many grace notes. Definitely worth a watch.
The Prom, aka Hollywood Stars and James Corden Do Kind of Offensive Imitations of Theater Stars Imitating Concern for a Queer Kid from Indiana Whose Prom Gets Cancelled Because She Wants to Go with Her Girlfriend, definitely did not grab me at first, although the Jo Ellen Perlman, who plays the girl, is strong throughout.
The whole thing feels kind of like Bad Glee. Lots of dancing that seems like it would require enormous amounts of cocaine, some okay songs, and a message that seems good, but then in execution is kind of problematic.
*Hey Hollywood, please stop writing the Midwest as monolithically cruel/dumb? Also, in a movie that’s all about empowering queer kids to trust their own voices, maybe you shouldn’t have a straight man playing the queer lead?*
But I will say, there is one incredible number, by Andrew Rannells (who is gay but is not playing a gay character…smh). The LA Times has a story on it that includes the performance. Man, is it good. (Also, Tracey Ullman shows up near the end and basically steals the whole show and takes it home in her very Midwestern purse.)
Rannells and Jimmy Fallon also just recapped the year using Broadway hits. It’s kind of great. It really captures the year.
I also watched Jingle Jangle, aka It’s Sort of a Black Willy Wonka, the Musical, but Sadder and There’s a Robot I Couldn’t Really Understand? Some people really like it. I was not one of those people, but I am definitely glad for more musicals and Christmas stories with diverse casts and stories.
And I keep thinking about The Crown. So much good stuff there, and so much good stuff written about it. Like this piece about the real life New Yorkers who met Princess Diana. Or this interview where Olivia Colman talks about how she’s never sure if she’ll never get another role.
Finally, I watched this video of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez doing her make up, because great newsletter person Laura Olin said it was actually “a tiny masterclass in loving yourself,” and it really is.
One quote from it:
Our culture is so predicated on diminishing women, and kind of preying on our self-esteem. So it’s quite a radical act, it’s almost like a mini protest to love yourself. In a society that’s always trying to tell you you’re not the right weight you’re not the right color, you’re not the right whatever it is. When you stand up and you say ‘You know what, you don’t make that decision, I make that decision,’ it’s very powerful.
Speaking of great quotes, this is from the obituary for a guy named Tom Meyer that Olin also recommended.
He loved babies, the very first cookie from a freshly baked batch (it had to be hot enough to burn his mouth), and teaching small children to chant “I’m a taxpayer and I demand my rights.” Tom spent decades trying to re-create “the perfect turkey” prepared by Nancy Willaman in 1997, which he kept in a framed photo, which ultimately resulted in protests from his family and what was known as “the carcass rule.” He loved old movies and musicals, and could guess which Ohio watershed you lived in based on how you pronounced “Ohio.” He taught his children to never cross a picket line, and that the central defining fact of the 20th century was the victory of the proletariat over the fascists. Tom took great pride in his political memorabilia auctions held for various Democrats, especially Mary Jo Kilroy, Dick Celeste, and Mike Coleman, at the Short North Tavern. He loved fireworks and running from the police. He was not allowed in the state of Utah for outstanding and unspecified traffic offenses.
Love that so much.
One other story you might enjoy this week: a mother in Mexico living in a nightmare town where children are constantly being kidnapped for ransom and then murdered hunts down the people who kidnapped and murdered her daughter. Unbelievable story.
Well, it’s super late here and I still have to work to do. O-pah!
I hope you all have a good week. Be good to yourself. Be safe. Please please please don’t go places where you will have to interact with other people unless you have absolutely have to. I know it stinks, we’ve been doing this way too long, but basically this is December 2020, you guys:
Don’t let his beauty deceive you! That kitty got teeth.
Look after yourself, beautiful people. See you next week.