Taylor Swift & Paul Rudd Ignite the Internet

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

HAPPY TAYLOR SWIFT DAY TO ALL WHO CELEBRATE!!!! Today’s “Listening” section is dedicated solely to our Heartbreak Revenge Queen, so skip ahead if you want the deets.

---

Happy Sexiest Man Alive to everyone’s favorite fun Jewish uncle, Paul Rudd—a headline that will release a billion “Look at us” memes into the stratosphere!

We could comment about the sliding scale that was clearly applied to get from 2020’s Michael B. Jordan to 2021’s Paul S. Rudd, but we won’t because this blog is not a bully! I’ll just say that the female equivalent of Paul Rudd is never gonna get Sexiest Woman Alive and that’s a societal problem I’m sick and tired of living with!

To me, Paul Rudd winning Sexiest Man Alive is a reflection of where we all are emotionally circa 2021. 2020 was going to be THE year. We were all going to be Michael B. in his prime. And then—to understate it by a lot—it wasn’t and we weren’t. And now we’re all a little more contemplative, a little more jaded, a little more in need of a soft place to land. Enter: Paul Babyface Rudd. This video in which he describes his wife as “stupefied” upon hearing that he won is giving sheer happiness.

So I guess I’m saying 2021’s award needed to be someone who could make us happy and in that sense, they nailed it. It’s a dumb award, anyway.

Question for you: If you could give an award to the Most Comforting Celebrity you can think of—Who would it be? Mine would be Chessy from Parent Trap.

Drop a comment to let me know and now it’s on to this week’s topics!

In the News

• The rodents have NYC in an absolute CHOKEHOLD. This linked article was both deeply unsettling and selfishly comforting because, as my loyal readers know, we, too, are battling rodents in our apartment building and it was just nice to know that the Great City of New York is also in its flop era against RodentKind.

• Are they or aren’t they??? Pete Davidson and Kim Kardashian were spotted holding hands! On a roller coaster! In Olden Times that would be cause for a village scandal and a hasty wedding!!!! Anyhoo, congrats to them, and I hope it’s real! [Honestly, the biggest news for me was that Kim goes on roller coasters? Like a … Normal???]

• Wicked the movie finally announced its cast! After months of every Broadway and Broadway-adjacent actor literally throwing herself body and soul at the casting department, the upcoming film version of Wicked finally announced their picks for Elphaba and G-uh-linda: Cynthia Erivo (!!!) and Ariana Grande (???). I feel two equal and opposite reactions: Everyone can leave Ariana the f**k alone, but also this.

• Dancing With the Stars occasionally breaks into my carefully protected consciousness, and this time it was Iman Shumpert of the NBA with this absolute fire dance!!??!?!?!? When he picks her up like a toddler???????? When he swings her like she’s that ball thingy in the hammer throw??? Readers, should I be watching this show???? Comment below! I have to believe my girl Teyana Taylor is coaching him at home.

• How I Met Your Mother is getting a sequel series starring Early Aughts Queen Hilary Duff Herself. I have literally zero more details and refuse to learn more because if you think Friends was problematic you should try rewatching Homophobic-Bro-Culture-Gets-a-Wife-Series, How I Met Your Mother. I loved this show when it was on, but either I am no fun anymore or it did not age well.

Saturday Night Live Highlights

Since I was off for a couple of weeks, we’ve got TWO episodes to cover here with hosts Jason Sudeikis, fresh off his Emmy wins, and Kieran Culkin, fresh off winning my personal Succession power rankings weekly.

Despite Weekend Update continuing to hurt my feelings by being ~absolute~garbage~, I’ll be damned if these weren’t two of the best episodes we’ve seen in a while!

Sudeikis Episode:

• Highlights: (1) “Ghosts of Bidens Past” Cold Open, (2) “Mellen,” (3) “Men’s Underwear Commercial” which DESTROYED me but please be advised nothing makes me laugh harder than stories about people shitting their pants so you’ve been warned, (4) his monologue was kinda sweet particularly if you like his Ted Lasso vibes.

• Lowlights: (1) “Science Room” wasn’t great but it did remind me of the original one with Adam Driver doing a chef’s-kiss-perfect volcano of rage, (2) Weekend Update CONTINUING ITS FLOP ERA.

Culkin Episode:

• Highlights: (1) “Canceling Cable” aka every phone call with Spectrum ever, (2) “Men’s Room” for all of us who have public restroom anxiety, which, according to Gallup [not really], is approximately 100% of the humans alive right now, (3) “Car Heist” which some people said wasn’t funny, but they obviously have never been on the embarrassing end of a stick shift debacle(!!!), and (4) Newcomer James Austin Johnson doing the best Donald Trump we’ve seen. This was his comedy thing before he got on SNL, where he’s given a random list of words and strings them together in a comedy bit, and damn he’s good at it! [Also, getting a Pete Davidson casting is exactly what Aaron Rodgers deserves after showing his whole ass in public all week. I said what I said.]

• Lowlights: SURPRISE, MY LOWLIGHT WAS FLOP ERA WEEKEND UPDATE. Maybe the RodentPocalypse is their fault!

Watching - Dopesick on Hulu

Now, listen. I know it’s Succession time and our favorite family of shitheads is at it again — sabotaging their dearest loved ones, covering up sex scandals, doing corporate corruption, and generally committing the crime of giving me constant secondhand embarrassment. I’m so happy!!!!

But Succession only comes out one episode per week, so we found another show to watch as well and it’s delivering on all levels: Dopesick.

Dopesick is a partly fictionalized account, based on a book of the same name, tracking how Purdue Pharma pushed OxyContin onto the American public and sparked the opioid crisis. [Don’t you love all the fun, good-time shows I’m recommending???] Michael Keaton plays a caring doctor in West Virginia who prescribed what he thought was a miracle drug but that ended up being a literal killer.

The cast also includes:

• Rosario Dawson as a gritty and implausibly sexy DEA agent.

• Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Husband as a gentle detective who prays for his colleagues and speaks no louder than a whisper at all times.

• Will Poulter who is entering his Hemsworth Season [aka he suddenly got hot].

• Eliiiiiiiiiiza from Hamilton.

• Kaitlyn Dever, known by me as the lesbian best friend from Booksmart, who in this show proves to be an absolute elite actor.

Seven out of eight episodes are out now and so far it’s been superbly well-told and well-acted, if at times heavy-handed. For example, there’s a scene that shows an opioid-addicted teenager frantically breaking into a pharmacy, contrasted against an opulent awards banquet where Purdue Pharma champions pain as “the Fifth Vital Sign,” paving the way for them to fraudulently push their drug onto thousands more people. A little on the nose? Yes. Effective? Absolutely.

I’ve talked to some people who have experienced addiction and their take is that someone who has lived through addiction helped write this. It will help you understand in a visceral way what addiction is like — how uncontrollable a disease it is, how hard it is to live through, and how real responsibility exists at every level.

Listening - Taylor F***ing SWIFT!!!!!!

Taylor Swift dropped her album “Red (Taylor’s Version)” at midnight last night and the universe exploded magical stars and galaxies onto our hearts, minds, and souls. [If you need a primer on why she’s re-recording all her music, I have one.]

She also wore a dress on Late Night that read as a cheeky reference to Princess Diana’s iconic “Revenge Dress,” and we absolutely love to see it. Some people are saying it’s a reference to her revenge songs about her exes but I, as a resident Taylor Expert, believe it references the financial revenge she is getting on her former label and Music Dark Lord Scooter Braun. [Again, I have an explainer.]

Twitter is AFLAME today with reactions—specifically to her 10-minute version of fan-favorite All Too Well, the best heartbreak song ever written other than “He Stopped Loving Her Today” which is too sad for human ears anyway so it doesn’t count. Don’t argue with me about this.

Let me set the stage. It’s 2012. We’re collectively between 21-24 years old and heartbroken. Then Taylor slides into our DMs with her new album, Red, and in particular, her song “All Too Well,” allegedly about Jake Gyllenhall, describes with devastating specificity every heartbreak we’ve ever experienced. When she said “You call me up again just to break me like a promise, so casually cruel in the name of being honest”—if you didn’t feel that, have you ever even felt pain?? When she said “I’d like to be my old self again, but I’m still trying to find it”—that did more for me than a full therapy session!!!!

But I digress. Apparently, this absolute FIRE song that I have spent HOURS of my life sobbing over had a much longer and sadder 10-minute version ALL ALONG.

When she added, “You kept me like a secret but I kept you like an oath”—Are you fycking kidding me, Taylor!???! PUT IT IN MY VEINS.

Jake Gyllenhaal is shaking in his boots right now.

Reading - Please Don’t Sit On My Bed in Your Outside Clothes by Phoebe Robinson

You wanna laugh? Read this book!

Phoebe Robinson is an insanely talented comedian, actor, writer, and producer, and I’ve loved her ever since discovering her early show, 2 Dope Queens, back in 2016 when it was just a little [extremely popular] podcast.

This book of hysterical essays is giving me life. She is so good at writing laugh-out-loud stories that suddenly zing you right in the heart.

Here’s an assortment of the essay titles just to give you a sense of the thing:

• 4C Girl Living in Anything but a 4C World: The Disrespect

• Yes, I Have Free Time Because I Don’t Have Kids

• Self-Care Is Not a Candle and Therapy Is Not a Notebook: How We Are Doing the Most and the Absolute Least at the Same Damn Time

• Please Don’t Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes

The insights come gently packaged in joyful humor and it’s great. I’ve laughed so many times while reading this and I love her.

That’s all! I hope you found a soft place to land this week and every week. Now let’s go get demolished by some more Taylor Swift! Drop me a comment and let me know your thoughts and opinions!