EPISODE 610: WATCH THE FOOTBALL
Mockingbirds don’t really scream Texas, unless I scream Texas at them first.
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
Last week I went out to dinner for the first time in over a year. (Remember when that was a metaphor? I haven’t been out of the house in forever! Little did you know that homeless guy you stiffed because you were like, But I’d have to pull out my wallet… was a Level 31 magic user with a keen sense of irony.)
It was also the first time I had eaten a meal with someone else in a year, which sounds insane said aloud, but in practice feels more like just a thing that has happened.
My friend Erika and I went to this Mexican place we always used to go to. It’s a hole in the wall, really, but it’s been around forever, it’s family owned and the food is great.
It turns out because of the pandemic it’s been completely transformed, too, into a mostly-outdoor dining area. (California, you are wonderful.) And it was kind of inspiring, actually, to see how much they’d done and how nice (and safe) it all seems.
The best part of the experience, though, was my friend Erika, who was constantly saying all the questions and dilemmas we were both dealing with internally. When you haven’t seen a friend in over a year, do you have to give a hug? Are you expecting me to take off my mask as soon as we see each other, or can it wait until we sit down? Do I have to come and sit in this waiting area beside you if there’s an open seat?
My own natural default is to assume any questions I have are somehow off-base and acquiesce to whatever the other person wants. In some ways I think I’ve probably stayed as isolated this last year as I have specifically because I have such a hard time negotiating other people’s expectations.
So to have someone who was saying all my own questions all loud and claiming her own choices was enormously liberating. It was like someone secretly brought a magician to my birthday party and they did the coolest tricks.
This is what I hear anytime I see a sports ad.
One of the great thing to come of out being locked in our houses for a year while we tried to survive an international pandemic—is a strange and very problematic introduction to anything, I know, but there are some unexpectedly good things that seem to have happened as we’ve tried to adapt.
For instance: articles and podcasts focused on childhood/comfort food pop culture stories (see: much of Vulture, when they’re not for some reason obsessing about Pete Davidson).
One that I’ve just discovered is the Cerebro podcast, which each week picks a character from X-Men comics and spends literally hours talking about them.
If you are not That Kind of X-Men fan:
But also, you might say, Multiple Hours? Hard Pass. Personally the X-Men were my gateway drug, and I love them still. But even for me that seemed like a lot.
But listening, here’s the thing that I should have known, but missed: there was a lot more going on in those stories than I recognized as a kid. A. LOT. MORE. And learning about it all now is like remembering that savings account you opened up as a kid and discovering it has three hundred thousand new stories in it. And then at first you’re like, Wait, why are there stories in my bank account, give us our money Lebowski, and the bank is like, Dude, we spent it on 2008 and also this big party we had last week, but hey, did you ever really think about Stryfe’s costume, or the fact that Storm always seems to come alive when she’s around strong women, and you’re like Whoa, tell me more.
It’s a bit overwhelming, actually, having stories that already mean so much to me get broken open like this. Because the stories that stay with us, the ones that helped us figure our lives out, they live in us still, right? And as they expand, there’s the sense that I have to figure out how to expand or let myself be broken open too.
(Suddenly it seems like I’m describing myself as filled with sea monkeys, and Cerebro is water.)
Point is: if you’ve ever liked the X-Men you might check this podcast out. I’ve put an episode below.
Or, if you really want to blow your mind, go back to something you loved as a child – Nancy Drew; the Little Rascals; Mork & Mindy; Close Encounters. I bet you’ll discover there’s a lot more there than you remember.
Last week I posted a video from book artist Elsa Charretier in which she takes a single panel of someone else’s work and shows how it’s trying to lead the reader’s eye.
This week she took a scene from the movie Reservoir Dogs and then broke down how she would tell the same story on a comic page. On top of being really interesting as a way of thinking about story, she does some very cool things with the actual presentation of the video. Check it out; it kind of blew my mind.
Things I learned from this great video about the state birds:
Many states have chosen the same bird as their state bird, which seems contrary to the whole point of picking a state bird.
Some have chosen birds that are not native to—or even present in--their state. Because America, I guess.
A homemade video about state birds can be very, very funny.
Also, I can’t tell whether this is really cool and I am missing it, because to me it seems like it’s just Hey, look, another crater.
The Falcon and the Snowma, er…Falcon and the Buck, no, that’s not right, Sam and the Winte..—kidding/not kidding, I cannot keep the name of this show in my head—has just passed its halfway mark. The show has not had the insane buzz of WandaVision, but honestly I prefer it. It’s a solid story, and speaks to a lot of important questions about race and class.
In fact I think it’s the first truly post-pandemic show, even though it was written before the pandemic began. The series’ questions about police and inherent white supremacy in our government, and its broader storyline of the world trying to suddenly take care of 3.5 billion people who showed up out of nowhere after five years of social collapse, feels entirely of the moment.
I do wish the show had a couple extra episodes. There’s only two left and it feels like most of the work of that is going to be the new Captain America losing his mind which, Who cares? Tell me more about race and class and how broken everything is.
Last week it was stop signs. This week in Things You Can Watch if You Want: Cats.
I don’t know if there are any Brits/Line of Duty-heads out there, but I am feeling this so hard.


I still don’t understand what happened last season, and as far as I’m concerned the Guv is definitely Haich.
Hang On Tight for This
And in case you wondered, vampire sell houses too.
This article about the forks in the road we don’t choose is familiar, and yet also felt really fresh to me. It’s another strange thing about the pandemic, somehow it’s made me more aware of how you only go round the one time, so maybe don’t be too precious about the choices you make. If something isn’t working, you don’t have to keep doing it. To quote one my favorite scenes, “There are other worlds than these.”
(Of course this is a quote from a kid who is about to fall to his death. But even so, it’s a great quote. And he does come back eventually.)
Have a great week everybody!