Stranger Things, the Queen's Platinum Jubilee, and Which TV Intros You Never Skip

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

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Folks, I am on some antibiotics [AGAIN] and my mind is, as Elaine Benes says, NOT. GOOD. Because of the brain fog—and also procrastination—I did nothing this weekend! Instead of writing this post, I…

• Finished Under the Banner of Heaven on Hulu. (Get thee to this show immediately! It was so dark, good, gripping!)

• Binged-watched Julia on HBO. (Looking for feel-good TV? THIS IS YOUR ANSWER.)

• Watched Fire Island on Hulu 1.8 times!! (A peerless modern adaption of Pride & Prejudice!! In which Mr. Darcy’s famous “she’s tolerable, I suppose” line becomes: “He’s fine, I guess. Not hot enough to be that annoying, though.” Happy Pride!!!) [I’m going to warn you right now that it’s raunchy/explicit as HELL. Don’t watch if you don’t like that.]

I read somewhere that with all this TV watching, we could save 195 years of our collective time if we just clicked the “Skip Intro” button. (!!) To which I say, what if we WANT to spend those extra 195 years popping popcorn!? taking bathroom breaks!? pouring wine!! checking TikTok??? WHAT THEN!?!

Anyways, it made me kind of curious to know: Do you use the Skip Intro button?? I never even skipped the Game of Thrones intro and it’s like half an hour long! What TV intros, if any, do you NEVER skip?

Now on to our topics, a day late!!

In the News

• LeBron is a billionaire! Honestly, I thought he already was, which is yet again a reminder that I cannot CONCEIVE of the amount of dollars “a billion” is! Cheers to the King! Please CC Benjamin Wagner on all your congratulations!

• Drake posted a photo of himself with ALL THREE Haim sisters and called them “The Beatles.” Which, What!? In the words of writer Hunter Harris, “Drake can smell a successful single woman’s hoe phase!” But do we like this for a musical collab??

champagnepapi

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• DeuxMoi, exposed!!! Ever heard of DeuxMoi? It’s basically Gossip Girl but on Instagram and for real-life celebrity sightings. Essentially an endless stream of garbage and completely unverified claims, like: “Saw Leo at Nobu! Eating! Talking! Chewing! He’s an asshole!” It became famous for outing the CrossFit-For-Jesus-Energy Hillsong Pastor’s affair, which to be fair was true. Anyways, their identity got leaked, and—zero surprises!—it’s just some rich white socialite gals named Melissa and Meggie! So basically These Two. [Fun fact: Meggie was also the name of my family’s very haughty Peekapoo.]

• Dua Lipa has discovered “Going to Dinner Alone.” Reminding us yet again that Celebrities: They’re Just Like Us™️. But like, if you’ve never eaten dinner alone, do you even GO HERE!? [“Here” being Earth, which is often LONELY.] Her next exploit? Seeing a movie by herself!! What will Dua Lipa NOT try!??

Royal Watch - The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee!

Whatever your feelings about the Monarchy, you can find it expressed in one of these faces!

As someone [me] who is extremely snobbish about not watching The Kardashians because of all the ways I find them harmful to society, I am outing myself as a liar and a hypocrite for my religious fervor over the British Royal Family, who have inarguably done FAR more harm to the globe than any Brazilian Butt Lift ever could.

[Kourtney may be signaling to young girls that it’s fine to change your entire personality for a guy, but at least she isn’t profiting off the wealth of formerly enslaved colonies (as far as we KNOW)???]

WITH THAT SAID—I have been in religious(!) raptures(!) over the events of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee! It’s the celebration of her 70th year on the throne and yes I DID buy a flag with her face on it for a party where we made scones and learned from Laura about the Royal family’s incestuous past!

[Can one of my third cousins please identify themselves so I can make a moral judgment of the Queen?]

But mostly: Kate. Middleton’s. Outfits. And. Her. Children.

Rohita Kadambi @RohitaKadambi

They are them

Watching - Stranger Things Season 4

[There will be NO spoilers here for season 4, but there ARE spoilers for seasons 1-3. So far, seven episodes of S4 are out on Netflix. The two final episodes will drop on July 1st!]

To all of you fellow scaredy cats out there, BE ADVISED: Season 4 of Stranger Things is scary as hell!! Exorcist-level shit! From the script “How do you expect to stop the devil if you don’t believe he’s real?” Maybe it sounds like a sleazy televangelist line, but it worked 👏🏼 for 👏🏼 me 👏🏼 !!!

Ben and I binged it so hard I even forgot to worry about whether The O.C.’s Ryan and Marissa will ever stop being toxic, manipulative, depressive codependents!

I mean, this season definitely has problems that are driving me crazy. For example, I do not like:

• How there are 3 main storylines and 2 of them feel like they were written by a fourth-grader?? The storyline in Hawkins is perfect. The storylines in California and Russia—not so much! Clearly, the writers were like: “We pay Winona Ryder, Millie Bobby Brown, and David Harbour hundreds of thousands of dollars per ep, we can’t get rid of them, so let’s just come up with some batshit crazy stuff for them to do!”

• Speaking of batshit crazy, have we ever heard of editing, folks? NOT ALL IDEAS ARE GOOD IDEAS. You can tell when a show has become too successful, and it’s when every episode is over an hour because everything is in slow-mo.

• Hopper’s revolting bare feet, leading us to ask big-picture questions like, “Why?” and “How come?” and “Unnecessary!??” [But kudos to David Harbour for acting the hell out of this nonsensical plotline.] If I wanted to watch gritty torture, I’d watch Zero Dark Thirty and I hate that movie!!

THAT SAID — I love it. It’s about the power of shame and guilt and the need for friendship. It’s scary, nostalgic, emotional, incredibly plotted, and deeply insightful. Also my friend Melanie [shout out!] sent me a five-minute audio message breaking down how perfectly they used that Kate Bush song and all I can say is, she’s right! [The song, “Running Up That Hill,” quickly climbed to No. 1 on iTunes after Season 4 came out.]

P.S. Give us the Steve/Dustin buddy-cop comedy we deserve!!!!

Listening - Two podcast episodes that helped me this week.

So, I didn’t keep up very well with the Amber Heard/Johnny Depp trial because it made me sad. But I did listen to a couple of helpful roundups AFTER the verdict, because, well, the memes that were unleashed on the Internet bothered me? [Which really has nothing to do with the specifics of the case, and everything to do with people being horrible.]

Anyhoo, I found these two news-based podcasts helpful! Take or leave!

• The Newsworthy: Super balanced rundown of the trial and coverage, only 14 minutes long!

• On the Media: This one was obnoxiously left-leaning [and I say this as a left-leaning person lol], but gave a perspective I hadn’t seen covered at all. If you, like me, have mostly seen memes making fun of Amber Heard and wondered what the deal is, this helps explain. (It’ll make you upset about the verdict.)

That’s all for this week! I didn’t read a thing! 🙃 Thanks for being here, brain fog et al! Drop a comment and let me know your thoughts and opinions — it truly gives me so much joy. See you next week!