Europe trip, Mexican Pizza, Airplane Movies, & the new Andrew Garfield show

What I'm Watching, Reading, & Listening to This Week

Gil Birmingham and Andrew Garfield in Under the Banner of Heaven, which is just as chilling as it sounds!

Thank you to EVERYONE who filled out the survey over the past month!! Y’all are the best! I got some amazing ideas and feedback that I will be using moving forward. More to come!

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Okay, so I go to Europe for like 10 days, and I come back and Zac Efron is playing dads now??? [But not where it’s Matthew Perry in Zac Efron’s body, having insane chemistry with Leslie Mann, because THAT we LOVE.] What was everyone doing while I was away!??! Put him back in comedies, please!!

Anyhoo, let’s talk about🥂Europe🥂 instead of my disappointment with Zac Efron’s career.

It was gorgeous! It was amazing! It was upsetting how much better it smelled than NYC! Even the rats were smaller and more hygienic-looking!

I did not visit a single museum [sorry! I’ve been before! They’re too crowded! Let me live!] but instead, I worked during the day in our très mignon Airbnb, and ate and drank my way through Paris by night! I’m working on a post listing all the places I visited ate, so keep an eye out if you’re going to Amsterdam, Paris, Bordeaux, or London any time soon and want to eat great food and visit zero cultural artifacts!

Also since I’ve been back…My dental saga continues!

The root canal is doing great but today I went to the periodontist [which Ben calls the “dinosaur doctor”—you figure it out] and now have stitches in three teeth because, apparently, everything is f***ed.

Allegedly, since I was too vain to “remember” to “wear” my nightguard “every” “night,” I traumatized my No. 31 molar and will be paying out the gums for it. Ah, the joys of being criminally irresponsible with your God-given teeth.

I request more dental sob stories from you, Readers. They’re giving me life. 😅

Okay, on to this week’s topics!!

In the News — Mexican Pizza: The Musical!

Not to be outdone by KFC’s “fine dining” menu [yes, that’s real], Taco Bell is bringing back its cult-favorite, Mexican Pizza! In the words of my friend Krupa: “It might not matter to you, but trust me, it’s a big deal for us brown folks.” Okay, fine, Krupa!!

And not to worry, Dolly Parton is making sure the whites get in on it, too. On May 24th, Dolly Parton and Doja Cat are starring in a TikTok musical featuring the story of the “harrowing” fight to get Mexican Pizza back on the menu. [Yes, those words somehow all belong in the same sentence.] I’m thinking something like Footloose but instead of dancing it’s Mexican Pizza and instead of grumpy towns it’s fast-food executives??

Anyways, obviously TUNE IN for the CAN'T-MISS EVENT.

Saturday Night Live Highlights — Benedict Cumberbatch

You can’t tell from the photo but Cumberbund is singing in falsetto. Additionally, Ben has been singing the song all week.

Overall, not a strong episode, but watching pinned-up Mr. British Cumbybatchy go BALLS TO THE WALL on the dumbest skits—even singing(!) songs(!!) in FALSETTO(!!!)—was a good time.

Get him to the Five Timer’s Club posthaste!

• Highlights: (1) Mother’s Day Gifts, because Aidy’s understated reactions are hilarious, (2) New Toilet, sorry for liking toilet humor like a 12-year-old, (3) The Understudy for fans of Chloe Fineman’s impressions.

Movies - They’re better on airplanes

After starving for movies for the past month, I finally got caught up on some thanks to Delta’s Go-Go In-Flight Entertainment™️!

I watched three new releases during my overseas flights before taking my Tylenol PM and knocking out cold. [Highly recommend! Works like a charm! You’ll wake up just in time for that soggy egg sandwich and paper cup of thin, watery coffee!]

• The Lost City: Ben and I watched this “together” because we are so united in matrimony—i.e. we pressed Play as simultaneously as we could so that during the entire film I laughed about three seconds before Ben heard the jokes. [This is what the Bible means when it says to die for your wife!] It was the ideal airplane movie — a delightful time, low stakes, beautiful people, being funny! The Brad Pitt cameo is giving hot sexy comedy, but also serves as a reminder that Channing “Charisma” Tatum is the Leading Man™️ of our generation.

• Nightmare Alley: Wow, the absolute CURSED VIBES from this movie, y’all. It was awful and took me almost an entire week to recover spiritually! Beautifully made, but leaves an evil spirit behind. [Which I guess is the point of film noir so I guess I’m officially Not a Film Noir Gal.] Not even a run along the Seine in perfect weather could fully exorcise the demons.

• The Worst Person in the World: I didn’t necessarily love it but knew I was watching a “good film,” if you know what I mean, and it has stuck with me. It deserves its many awards — the main actress was so good, the story was viscerally real, so of the moment/our generation. Buuuuut it was really long and a total downer. lol

We also watched Dr. Strange in theaters, thanks to Adam’s and Monica’s quick thinking and a few passing hours between landing in Chicago and attending a wedding Sangeet. No spoilers, but I was really enjoying it and how witchy/weird it was, and then with about 30 minutes left they really jumped the shark with some zombie stuff. Not the right movie, folks! Fun time, though.

TV - Under the Banner of Heaven on Hulu

You will be happy to hear that I watched almost zero TV while on my travels, opting instead for 🍷 Real 🥖 Life 🥐 Experiences.🥂

[I did start the new season of Selling Sunset one very jet-lagged night in Paris, but I bailed after the Toxic Masculinity Twins got in a fight in Mykonos about How to Communicate in Relationships in which their main strategy was yelling insults over each other. Top shelf stuff.]

Now that I’m back, I’ve been on the hunt for my next Severance which is still the best show I’ve watched this year, but haven’t been able to get through:

• Moon Knight, despite Oscar Isaac’s face/hair/voice/body, it is sooooo boring??? Should I try harder??

• A Very British Scandal, gorgeous, lush, perfectly acted, devastating, but also it’s kind of a drag watching sh*tty people be sh*tty to each other?? And never have I been LESS turned on by a show primarily about a woman who loves sex??

But now, I’ve finally found something that’s got its hooks in me:

Under the Banner of Heaven.

You ready for some heavy sh*it!?!?!

One-sentence summary: Andrew Garfield, America’s Darling Holy Child, is a Mormon police detective on the case of a gruesome murder in Mormon country, eventually uncovering a terrifying fundamentalist Mormon cult and the illegal, abusive practices they get up to.

Did I mention IT’S A TRUE STORY?? Can someone say, YIKES!!?!?! It explores the “Most American Religion” [Mormonism], faith, doubt, and all the big questions.

Andrew Garfield shines, as always, giving us the depths of a person of faith dealing with the deepest human darkness, particularly when that darkness is—oops!—coming directly from the religion you built your life on.

Oh, and Daisy Edgar-Jones is also in it, and I’m a big fan of hers since watching Fresh [my brief review at the link].

Reading - Under the Banner of Heaven, the book!

Did I mention it’s ALSO a book?? Shoutout to Emma [who is basically the patroness of this blog by now] who recommended the book to me a few months ago in anticipation of the show.

It’s nonfiction, obviously, written by the guy who wrote Into the Wild. I listened to it on Audible and the whole time I was either actively gasping in shock or rolling my eyes all the way back in my head at the absolute bullshit the culty people were up to.

That’s it for this week, friends! Thanks for being here, and please drop some thoughts and opinions in the comments below! Got TV recs? Movies? Fresh opinions? Love Zac Efron as a dad? I love hearing from y’all so much! See you next week.