#8: We're all gonna die but at least we have culture
Death By Consumption
6/24/24 - 6/30/24
Pride is over. Did you have fun being gay? Well, STOP IT RIGHT NOW. No more fun! That was for June; July is all about maximizing profits for the shareholders and denying the President is sundowning on live TV while the Supreme Court says a president could come into your home and kill you right now and it's fine, actually. Things are going great! These are the kinds of Mondays Garfield warned us about.
The Grab (2022) — on Apple TV
Okay... between watching this documentary and reading CHAOS last week I might be having a bit of a conspiracy summer. (Death By Consumption next week: Here's a really interesting film on the temperature at which jet fuel burns!)
This documentary was... well, to be honest I don't know what to do with it. It's about the ongoing and accelerating grab for control of the world's food and water supply, which is happening both in secret and in front of our eyes. The overall message is (spoiler alert): we're fucked! I mean, it's an incredibly gripping story that unfolds over the past couple decades, and the way it builds is absolutely horrifying, but they suddenly try to veer into a happy ending that feels incredibly jarring compared to the previous 90 minutes. Like, you can't tell us the solution is to get back to family farming when... you just spent 45 minutes showing us how family farmers in Africa had their land blatantly stolen by gun-wielding mercenaries on behalf of US corporations. Family farms are part of the answer, yes, but what happens when a fucking Blackwater special ops team shoots me in the head to get my crops????
Anyway, sorry to tell you but we're all probably in big trouble. If any of you are a billionaire with a bunker, in exchange for this newsletter being free I will accept an invite (+ emergency airlift) to your mercenary-protected land when shit goes down. Thanks in advance!
Problemista (2023) — on the service formerly known as HBOMax
Tilda Swinton delivers perhaps the performance of her lifetime in this film. She commits wholeheartedly to this character, playing basically Miranda Priestly from The Devil Wears Prada but with cocaine brain rot. The whole movie is beyond psychotic, and I mean that as the highest compliment. Julio Torres is truly a genius? Every tiny detail is so carefully crafted in this, and if there's a chance to wring an extra joke out of any moment — like having a character stumble for no reason a millisecond before a scene ends, or Tilda's character having her phone flashlight on the entire film without it ever once being referenced — he'll pounce on it, so I spent the entire movie in a consistent state of LOL. I think I smiled for 1 hour and 45 minutes straight?
I could see some people (straight people) absolutely hating the sense of humor in this, but I found the writing deserving of every award there is, and maybe we even need to make up some new ones for this. The "I stand with Bank of America!" moment... spectacular. And the final line of the film I won't spoil (because, like every joke in the movie, it would make ZERO sense out of context) but it is so unbelievably perfect that for like an hour after the movie ended, I kept remembering the line and bursting into laughter. It's all so stupid!!! A perfect, singular film. One of those movies I wish I could wipe my brain and watch for the first time again.
"House of the Dragon" season 2, episodes 1+2 — on dumbass MAX
Remember this show? Neither did I! I wish I had recorded Justin and I trying to remind each other what happened in season 1. It went something like this: "So the blonde and the brunette were best friends/lovers but hate each other now." "And the blonde one is queen?" "The brunette was queen." "Wait, then what is the blonde one?" "Which blonde one?" "The main one." And so on and so on until we were, somehow and without any reason, mad at each other???
Anyway, the second season is an enormous improvement on the first, which I found frantic as HELL. This season, they've slowed the pace, having suddenly remembered that, actually, a lot of people like TV shows because of the characters' emotions and motivations, not merely to see plot points checked off a list. Imagine that! So, even though I have literally no idea who anyone is (why is everyone named, like, Reagan?) I'm at least enjoying the episodes as they come out and then the moment it's off my screen I don't think about the show for even a SECOND until it's back on. Which is fine! Blissful, even. Sometimes a TV show is just a TV show. This is how we all used to live!
Love Junkie, by Robert Plunkett (1992) — paperback
Originally published over 30 years ago and recently reissued, this is a funny, extremely rude, ultimately rather devastating book that is also very, very gay. Even though it focuses on a straight married housewife who becomes deeply obsessed with a straight male porn star who occasionally goes gay for pay, the book's sensibility is undeniably queer throughout, and completely merciless. No one is spared — gays, women, racial minorities. It's sure to offend many, many people. Even a hardened asshole like me found myself genuinely shocked at parts (at one point the narrator, a deeply unwell and tragic woman, so we're supposed to be laughing at her not with her, declares a group of twinks to be "as undistinguishable as the waiters at a Chinese restaurant." I warned you!!) Let's pray the TikTok puriteens never find this book. Even though it's one of the more offensive books I've read recently, the awfulness is the point. These people are terrible! We all are! Just relax and laugh at them!
I kept imagining Julianne Moore starring in the film and getting mad it hasn't happened. The film rights have famously been optioned by both Madonna AND Amy Sedaris (imagine!!!!), so I'm hopeful we'll see it on screen someday, and the critical discussion that follows the film will probably finally kick off our next civil war.
If you're curious about Robert Plunkett, the writer who's only now having his moment, decades after he published anything, this New Yorker profile of him is fun. I want to hang out with him!
Caity Weaver on "Frontier House" — in the NYTimes
One of my favorite magazine writers recommending one of my all-time favorite reality shows? I have no idea why this happened at this moment in time — can you even stream "Frontier House" anywhere? Don't ask me, I own the DVDs!!! — but I assume some editor assigned this piece to delight me specifically. Caity is right: Frontier House was the perfect show, rivaled only by its sequel, Colonial House. I will talk about these shows until my dying breath. Join me.
Archive Diego Camp Shirt — from Marine Layer
Look, I’m the kind of guy who has, like, 8 shirts that I rotate mindlessly. I buy maybe two new shirts a year, IF THAT. I know my coworkers are sick of seeing me around the office!!!!! But something compelled me to spend $118 (is that a lot? that feels like a lot) on a new summer shirt, and you know what? I’m glad I did! This shirt is light and comfy and makes me feel like a dad on vacation. Every time I’ve worn it I’ve gotten several compliments, but honestly that might just be because I was wearing something new for once. (You know it’s bad when a coworker says, “Oh wow, new shirt?!” Actually, I’m mortified right now, thank you.) IRL friends: get ready to be EXHAUSTED by this shirt all summer.
(Update: in linking to the shirt on their website, I noticed this little note in the item description: “Made responsibly in China.” Oh nooooo, was this made with Uyghur slave labor? FUCK. I tried to find any information but couldn’t find any third-party info on what sort of manufacturing processes they use overseas — tbh I’m rather surprised by this, as Marine Layer has always had a whole “made in the USA” California-based sustainability thing, but I guess capitalism always wins. Ethics are expensive! All I could find on Marine Layer’s website was a vague disclaimer that their overseas factories are “ethical,” next to a maybe-stock photo of a white woman hugging an Asian person??? Yikes, that seems like a bad sign!)
One final note: it's fun when people reply to these emails! Keep doing that if you want. No pressure if you want to keep this relationship parasocial, though, I love that shit too. Also, forward these to anyone who might enjoy them, so I can grow this baby and eventually monetize it and force you to pay for it so I can quit my job where I basically write emails all day, to also write emails all day but for myself instead of a company this time!