EPISODE 739 IN REALITY
Only the apatosaurus is known to have celebrated Christmas.
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
How was your Thanksgiving? I spent mine with friends in Jersey who love to watch home renovation shows. And because I basically spent the weekend eating, drinking and watching these shows, my brain is at this point nothing but tryptophan and a garble of home renovation words like baseboard, balloon framing and caulk.
If you’re in need of a home reno show to fill your holidays, here’s a couple worth considering.
Hey! Help! I Ruined Wrecked My Reno House—There is not enough love in the world for Jasmine Roth, the tough and creative home renovator who comes in to these DIY renovation sites and says to the homeowners in question, “What in God’s name have you done?”
In one episode the couple had been throwing sledgehammers into walls that had live plugs in them and tried to move a gas stove where the gas was still on. In another the owners had completely destroyed the inside of their house but had no plan for how the house should be laid out.
I have questions about how this show happens. Like, every show involves the home owners in question having shot videos of their own work on the renovation. Is that a thing? Do people record themselves doing their own renovations?
Also, by the time they’ve gotten to the point of begging a complete stranger to help them, how many others have already tried to warn them to stop and hire someone? It can’t be zero, right? One guy had basically bankrupted his family. Surely people around them were like, stop now.
But once Jasmine gets to work I don’t care, she’s got a great team and she gets the job done.
Hometown/Fixer to Fabulous—As far as I can tell these are basically the show set in two different locations. A funny and skilled husband and wife team work with their extended family and others to do charming renovations in small southern towns. The fact that they have basically the same concept is weirdly not a problem, the couples are both so damn delightful I want them to move in on either side and come to the birthday party in the backyard for the kids. And I say all that having no backyard, kids or home, so you know, I think we can safely say they’re both doing something right.
First Home Fix/Bargain Block—These are also basically the same show set in different locations. In each, one of the spouses is the practical construction person and the other is an artist who likes vision boards and paints massive designs on walls.
In Bargain Block the two guys spent their first season living in each house as they renovated it to save on money, which was sort of a wild idea. (It’s also one of the only home reno shows to star a gay couple.) Then they bought one of the homes in the season finale for their own, and I was like, oh wow, this has a story.
In First Home Fix, the thing I love is that they try to get the families involved in the renovation. And they make a special point of noting how much money is saved on each task the couples do themselves. Like every time they pull out a drawer they save like $5.
I was like, wait, you can make $5/drawer pulling out drawers. Because I am available.
Celebrity IOU—So this show stars two twins who I guess have some other show, because apparently spinoffs are a home renovation show staple? In this one, the two twins bring on a celebrity and ask them if there’s someone they would want to do something nice for, and then they pick a person and show up at their house and throw them out for six weeks while the twins and the celebrity do stuff without consulting them even slightly.
*This is an absolutely true and also unbelievable description of how the show describes itself.*
The first episode I watched had someone from the world of musical theater helping someone, and I have to say, I didn’t see a lot of dust getting in their fingernails.
But then we watched the Leslie Jordan episode, and it was honestly so lovely that I got a little vklempt. If you don’t know Leslie Jordan, I bet you actually do. Here’s a great reel of his stuff from Emmy Award Winning-days on Will & Grace.
He spent most of his TV career playing quippy queen-y guys, but it turns out in real life he was actually this incredibly sweet man. And one who died too soon—just a month ago, in a car accident at age 67.
Flip Keep Love It or Hold Leave List it—In this show a slightly older British version of Julianna Margulies and a skinny guy who looks like Jon escaped from Garfield and now does home renovations compete to get a family to stay or leave in their house by showing them other shows while also renovating their current house. I have to say, it seems insane to me to be doing serious renovations on a house you’re planning to maybe move out of. But I also can’t help but love guessing what the families are going to do, and watching Slightly Older British Julianna Margulies rip the couples a new one each time they come back to the ongoing renovations on their house and complain or refuse to give her more money.
My Lottery Dream Home—In this totally real show people who have just won a lottery shop for homes that believe it or not is actually usually still out of their price range, but they just won a lottery and so who cares. The host is a tall man who loves a loud shirt and facial hair in forms that change so radically from season to season that he does not seem like the same person.
The thing I love about this show, like Flip It or Dip it (Whatever), is that they check out all of these different homes. Somehow despite the fact that I have never owned a home I enjoy having Immediate and Strong Opinions about them.
THIS IS YOUR WEEKLY REMINDER THAT WE’RE HERE IS BACK
We’re Here, the show in which 3 drag queens travel to small towns around America and help empower queer people while also demystifying drag, started its third season on HBOMax Friday. And it really started with a bang; many in the Texas community to which they were going were upset about them being there, and for the first time the stars really seemed to feel threatened. It makes for a pretty unsettling episode, the moreso after the Club Q shootings.
The episode also features a non-binary teenager who you will swear must be in their 30s, they are so incredibly articulate and responsible in their desire to help queer people, and a trans female woman who is so good at drag you will have a hard time believing she hasn’t done it before.
The show remains a wonderful example of finding acceptance and courage in community. Highly recommend.
THIS WEEK’S NEW VIBE IS: 1899
New show on Netflix from the makers of Dark, that German scifi show about a kid in a small town with a nuclear reactor who stumbles into a cave and comes out 30 years earlier. Here, a Titanic-like ship on its way to New York gets a signal from a sister boat that’s been missing for months, and goes to investigate.
After the pilot I’m not sure what the heck is going on, but it’s giving me some definite 19th century Bermuda Triangle vibes.
THREE TWEETS
This is not only a fun tweet, but click for a great thread of comments:
…and that’s why I didn’t get you what you wanted for Christmas.
This is clearly spooky, but it does make me wonder what an adult Charlie Brown is like.
I BET IT’S GOOD THOUGH
I swear I chose this article about Hollywood and guns completely randomly, but it sure does have special relevance today.
Also, inspired by the Thanksgiving etiquette article from last week I wrote one of my one based on my own experiences as a Jesuit.
On Thursday, World AIDS Day, I’ll be giving a talk at St. Cecilia Parish in Boston, Mass. And they’re going to livestream the talk. You can find the details below.
The talk is called “A Place for Us.” The Rainbow Ministries group at St. Cecilia invited me to come and talk a bit about my own experiences as a gay priest. It’s the first time anyone has asked me to do a talk like this since I wrote about being gay a couple years ago, and I am both excited and nervous about it. On a day when remember everyone who has died of AIDS and all those living with it, it feels weird to be talking about myself. But I’m really grateful to them for giving me the chance to think through my own experiences some more, including those which have happened since I wrote that article.
Have a great week!