EPISODE 710: WAIT, WE DREAM ABOUT WHAT?

Also, Squirrels?

Apr 04, 2022

POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW

I don’t know where this graphic came from or how they gathered their data, but I have to say, I don’t think I’ve ever dreamt about a single one of these things.

Some of the dreams are so wild, too. Squirrels, southwest Africa? TELL ME MORE. Also, Cape Verde’s most common dreams are about blood? What?

And is everyone here dreaming about their teeth falling out and no one told me? Because that is wild.

So last week’s newsletter got opened by just a handful of people. It’s probably for the best, as I was mostly reacting in the moment to the stuff going on at the Oscars, which seemed to consume every conversation I was in this week, like a social cancer metastasizing in real time. Put simply, Ugh.

If you, like me, were involved in feeding that beast this week, here’s a thing you might try that I’m planning to do: go watch Questlove’s Summer of Soul. It won best documentary, it’s on Hulu and it’s supposed to be a tremendous film. It was that award that was given out just after everything went down, so it really got lost in the shuffle.

In the Catholic Church we don’t really talk about this, but I personally believe that if you put garbage out into the universe, it hurts others. It’s emotional or social pollution. So then the question is, what can I do to rebalance things? What’s the social equivalent of planting new trees?

My big pop culture find/experience this week was Servant of the People, now on Netflix and also YouTube. The series is a three-season Ukrainian sitcom starring now-president Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a high school history teacher who ends up unexpectedly elected the president of Ukraine.

Generally the media has commented on the whole life-imitating-art of it all, as well as “OMG Ukraine has a president who was a comedian!” Which makes me feel like this:

What I find interesting about the show is its overall spirit of courage and hopefulness. It’s very much a David and Goliath piece, where Goliath is both a group of faceless Russian oligarchs who want to control the government and a broader unconscious instinct toward bribery and nepotism within the country. Like, pretty much as soon as the teacher is elected everyone starts doing all these favors for him and his family, even though his whole rant was about corruption. And this guy has to just keep calling this stuff out, even when it involves his family.

If you like West Wing or Veep, I think you might like it. I wrote a little piece about it for America.

Then there’s this show, which appears to be absolute insanity.

Shoes and burgers should not be cakes, you guys. Still I love the energy of the preview; it’s like Bake Off, but where the final challenge is also a magic show.

THREE TWEETS ABOUT A TWEET ABOUT LENT