EPISODE 742: YOUR JOY IS NOT HOMEWORK
Can I ask you a question though?
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
ENOUGH WITH TELLING ME WHAT TO DO YOU MONSTERS
Talented filmmaker, friend of the newsletter and all around good human being Rob Kotecki posted this on his Facebook feed this weekend.
It really hit home for me. As it turns out, I have a person who lives inside my head constantly tells me all of the things that I need to watch/read/do right now.
In a lot of ways I’ve thought of it as a hazard of my interests. I love the pop culture, I want to know the pop culture, but there is just way too much of the pop culture. Just in the last 2 days I’ve been reminded of a half dozen things I need to watch Right Now, and I have a list as long as my arm as it is.
Why is “Ten Things You Need to Do Right Now” a thing that yields clicks? Is it our ingrained FOMO kicking in? Like if I went to Buzzfeed (lol), and saw this headline I’d go oh damn, what am I missing?
Or—the more me version—am I trying to remember this movie that someone told me I needed to see that just came out, and so I’m googling “Movies I need to see” and this pops up? It certainly must have something to do with Google because everything does, *cue sigh*.
I also wonder, why does it happen more in the holiday season? Maybe it’s the fact that we all believe ourselves to have more free time when actually no one does except the teenagers and they’re going to spend it mostly hanging out with friends with no concern about whether they see Cate Blanchett play a composer anyway?
Some say there is too much of the pop culture, blah blah blah. But how can too much art be a bad thing? That should be something we celebrate. We will never have a time in our lives when there aren’t incredible journeys waiting for us at our fingertips, stories that will surprise us and delight us and maybe show us things that we couldn’t have even conceived of.
I think the task instead is to do what Rob did, to throw off the voices that transform our gifts into burdens, like some horrible Dr. Seuss villain, and make us think we have reason for grieving when in fact we are standing in a field of daisies on a brilliant sunny day.
I’m grateful for people like Rob who can call that shit out and wake us from this dumb nightmare.
HERE’S TO THE CHRISTMAS PARTY PEOPLE
This weekend I attended a couple Christmas parties, and I was really struck by what I experience there. Party planning is such a crap shoot. You have to put together so much food and drink, but you don’t know if people will turn out—even after RSVPs, you just don’t know. And if they don’t come or they cancel it can be really punishing personally. (Seriously, if you bail on someone’s Christmas party you should have to send a fancy gift or money or something.)
Meanwhile what you’re offering to people is a chance to have a really nice time for nothing. The hosts basically create a space in which happiness can just burst into life without much effort on the part of those who attend. It’s actually kind of amazing.
SOME FUN CHRISTMAS VIEWS
Looking for some suggestions as to what to watch this Christmas? Well, courtesy of my friend Duncan, who offered some truly amazing programming at his party today, here’s a couple things I discovered that I cannot recommend enough.
The geniuses at Hulu have created a film in which a dozen puppies are released into your standard Christmas-y room—tree, presents, food. And over the course of 30 minutes those puppies slowly and playfully destroy everything.
I absolutely cannot overstate you how delightful this is. 30 minutes may sound like kind of a long time to watch dogs rip into presents, but in fact it’s so much fun. Perfect to put on either while you are prepping for Christmas or at that point in the festivities where things have taken a bit of a lull.
If you’re more of a cat person, there’s also A Very Kitty Cocktail Party, which offers much the same but with baby cats.
You know this tradition of having your television playing a roaring fire during the holidays? Well Lagavulin Scotch came up with a genius variation a couple years ago in which one of the world’s most wonderful actors, Nick Offerman, sits next to a roaring fire sipping Scotch, for 45 minutes.
It’s a little weird at first to have this actor just sitting there, staring at us. But it doesn’t take long until just the smallest of facial gestures from him becomes a profound experience. His smile will tell you that he is proud of you, and that your parents did, too. His raised eyebrow, that you are a naughty little minx and he loves it. His cocked head, notes of amusement which with but the tiniest shift becomes an coquettish invitation to consider whether you might like to stay longer. When he turns to his glass you will know the fear that he is being polite now, you have bored Nick Offerman silly. But eventually the sun rises again and you realize that you are in fact special and loved.
And then, every once in a while, after so many microscopic teases, he raises his glass to his lips and drinks. Without even intending it I yelled “Touchdown!”
Doctor Who Christmas Specials
For many of the last 20 years, the British scifi show Doctor Who (which currently airs on HBO Max) has released a special episode on Christmas. And most of the time, you don’t need to know anything about the show to enjoy the specials. Probably the greatest of them is a retelling of the Scrooge story called “A Christmas Carol,” in which the Doctor meets a horrible Scrooge character who is willing to let a spaceship filled with passengers die lest it interfere with his profits. Horrified, the Doctor travels back in time to the man’s childhood to try and understand how he became this way and change it. It’s incredibly beautiful. It stars Michael Gambon, Matt Smith, Karen Gillan, flying space sharks and a song that is just gorgeous.
Another great episode is “Runaway Bride,” which stars David Tennant and the British comedian Catherine Tate as strangers thrown together for strange reasons at the same time that Tate’s character is supposed to be getting married. This episode was so beloved that two years later Tate ended up joining the show full time. If you don’t know her work, it’s worth watching just to meet her. She is tremendous.
Here’s one of her most famous characters (co-starring David Tennant):
THIS IS YOUR WEEKLY REMINDER THAT AIN’T NO MO IS TREMENDOUS
On Friday I went to see Ain’t No Mo, a play which I understood to be about American black people either being sent or moving to Africa in modern day times, but which turned out to be a set of sketches about what it means to be Black in America today, each of which starts in a very funny place (well, almost all of them) and only gets funnier, and then turns on an absolute knife edge into some of the most incisive social commentary I’ve seen in forever.
After only a couple months on Broadway the show is closing, basically because its advertising campaign has been highlighting only this high concept of Black people leaving the United States and not talking about just how incredibly of the moment and powerful it is. (If I were running this campaign I’d be comparing it to Ta-Nehisi Coates, Octavia Butler, Billy Porter and In Living Color. It’s all of that and more.)
It got a short extension and they’re clearly hoping for a longer one. If you’re in New York, seriously, go see this show.
TWO TWEETS AND A MEME BECAUSE TWITTER IS ON FIRE
File Under: JUST LET US HAVE OUR NICE THINGS
Accurate:
One week from today is Christmas. (I know, it freaks me out, too.) I’ll be spending it with my folks in Chicago. Hope wherever and however you’re spending it, it brings you some peace and joy.
I’ll be off for for Christmas and New Year’s, but back the week after that to begin Season 8 of Pop Culture Spirit Wow. (How is it possible I’ve been doing this for 8 years?) It’s always a high point of my week putting this newsletter together. Thanks always for your support and for joining me on the ride. Wishing you all the best as we all enter into a new year.
Merry Merry!