The Fantasy Show That's Making Me Happy
Plus: trying new things in 2023, more thoughts on Prince Harry, and science stuff
So far in 2023, Ben has binged a ton of Anthony Bourdain [Cajun Country is my fave for obvious reasons!!] and learned how to poach an egg. Meanwhile, I have done next to nothing! But I HAVE decided to figure out how to wear pants in the Year of Our Lord Y2K Fashion.
[“Y2K Fashion” is what the kids are calling it, but it’s the self-same bell bottoms you had to retire after the early aughts! In the ‘05-’07 onslaught of the Skinny Jean, it took me nearly a decade to figure out how to style a VISIBLE SOCK — and now we’re just wearing pants that drag the sidewalk again?! Why do I love fashion so much when she is so petty, so capricious, so cruel!]
Anyhoo, we’ve also been on a mission to catch up on our terribly laggard movie-watching quota. This week we watched:
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
The Banshees of Inisherin
The Menu
White Noise
I still have on my list to watch:
Women Talking [by all accounts, sad!]
The Whale [by some accounts, great! by other accounts, positively immoral!]
Triangle of Sadness [by all accounts, bloody funny!]
She Said [by all accounts, heavy!]
Tár [by all accounts, give Cate Blanchett her Oscar!]
Aftersun [by all accounts, heartfelt, tremendous!]
Decision to Leave [by all accounts, you’re garbage if you haven’t seen this!]
Bones and All [by all accounts, empathy for cannibals!]
Next week I’ll be giving short, hard-hitting [lol], completely feelings-based reviews of whatever I manage to get through! Stay tuned! Have you watched any? Any I should definitely start with? Definitely avoid?
Anyways, in lieu of any “New Year’s Resolutions” for 2023 [related to or unrelated to the pants I wear], I found what I want to instill in my heart, mind, and soul for 2023:
(i.e. — The caption of this post from British comedian and all-around incandescent human Miranda Hart.)
I’d love to hear if you have any to share: What are you aiming not to do, not to achieve, but to embrace this year? What soft things are you instilling in the quiet? I am here for all of that. No resolutions, just a gentle place to land.
In the News
^ A new Congress *finally* happened! We did it, Joe! Now, on to the next news!
Rolling Stone released a list of the Top 200 Singers of all time, and Her Royal Highness Ms. Celine Dion is NOT on it!! 😱
Neither is EGOT-winner Jennifer Hudson(!), Cher(!), or Judy Garland(!).
Would you like to guess what rank they gave Kelly Clarkson? One hundred and ninety-four. (194!) Brandy: 192!? Alicia Keys: 188!?
Taylor Swift was 102 [ONE OH TWO!!!], which puts her above all of them?!!? Listen, I am a Swiftie just like the next 34-year-old WASPy female, but THIS!???
Anyhoo, enjoy this video of a small handful of Celine Dion fans showing up at Rolling Stone offices to do the Lord’s work.
I learned what buccal fat is, and I would politely request that we just stop the madness.
It’s pronounced “buckle,” and it’s in your cheeks, and people are getting it removed to make their cheeks look — I apologize that I can find no other way to say it — absolutely snatched. The drawback is that when you turn 40, I can only assume you begin to take on the facial features of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.”
As a baby-faced adult myself [who has often sucked in her cheeks while looking in the mirror to see just how close to Keira Knightley she can get], I can see the appeal, but I do like telling myself that these baby cheeks are gonna come in real handy at 50. “Take that, Lea Michele!” an impossibly fresh-faced 50-year-old me will say.
If you, like me, have been waiting with bated breath to see Nick Cage as Dracula, the wait is over!
It’s as campy and grotesque as I could ever have hoped in my wildest dreams!!! [For my latest on Nick Cage, see my post “Hemsworth Villain Era.”]
Leo DiCaprio getting all his business told by some girl’s dad!
This is, to me, bellissima. If you, a 48-year-old man, are gonna be seen around with a bunch of 23-year-olds, don’t come crying to us when it starts to get messy. [But sorry to this woman that her dad is embarrassing her.]
Chris Evans is now just another a Quadragenarian dating a woman born in the late 90s.
There’s nothing WRONG with it, I just get the ICK sometimes! His girlfriend plays the Warrior Nun, which I have never seen, but more power to HER, I guess!
A Rihanna documentary has reportedly been in the works for upwards of 10 years, and the people just want to know — WHEN!??
That’s all.
My Thoughts on the Prince Harry Drama: 🗣 Stop🗣 Sharing 🗣 Clickbait 🗣 and 🗣 Wait 🗣 for 🗣 the 🗣 Whole 🗣 Book 🗣
Here’s the thing. Prince Harry’s memoir got leaked. All hell broke loose. The world’s journalists forgot their solemn duty to telling the truth in context, and had an absolute bonkers feeding frenzy that turned into a game of telephone where nobody went back to the original text and everybody started flipping tables.
I say this because when people actually share screenshots from the actual book, none of it sounds much like what the headlines are saying, which is stuff like:
Harry thinks William’s receding hairline is scary [which I picture exactly like the time Kim saw Kourtney’s tiny bald spot and told her to go to the hospital post-haste!]
It was William and Kate’s idea to do the Nazi costume [the clip I saw does seem to say they thought it was funny at the time]
He lost his virginity behind a pub [haven’t we all lost our virginity behind a pub at one time or another? i mean, i haven’t, but???]
He has done his fair share of drugs [which anybody who visited a grocery store checkout line in the early 2000s already knew]
How many people he killed while in Afghanistan [which is maybe the worst one of all to take out of context]
He doesn’t like Camilla [which begs the question, Does anyone? Sorry!]
He had a frostbitten p**** at Will and Kate’s wedding [which, lol???]
He and William got into a physical fight about Meghan and broke the dog bowl [justice for the dog]
William and Kate loved the show Suits [never meet your heroes!]
All that to say, I’m biding my time and listening to that shit on audiobook when it comes out THIS TUESDAY! But also, lest I think myself superior to anyone else:
TV I missed in 2022 - His Dark Materials
Listen, I get it. Not everyone is a fantasy girl, and that’s okay!
[False! It’s actually not okay! Like do you hate creativity and magic and storytelling at it’s most imaginative?? Do you hate yourSELF!?! But that’s a question for another day!]
Anyhoo, I was raised on C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien and Susan Cooper and I live for this shit. I would argue, too, that if you enjoyed Wednesday or Game of Thrones or Harry Potter, there are elements in His Dark Materials that you may enjoy!
Plus it’s got James McAvoy [hot], Andrew Scott [hot priest from Fleabag], the voice of Phoebe Waller-Bridge [Fleabag herself!], Lin-Manuel Miranda [oddly enough??], and Ruth Wilson as the most bone-chillingly sexy woman I have ever encountered!
I tried reading the first book — The Golden Compass — when it first came out, and I didn’t make it through, but I can’t remember why. But the show has GRIPPED me. It has gripped me to the extent that I’m propping my phone up on my conditioner bottle in the shower so I can keep binging without a break!
I started the final season this morning! Onward ho!
Reading - Space Science Stuff
I’ve been slowly reading through this long piece from a web developer (?) and speaker named Maciej Cegłowski about why we should not be sending humans to Mars right now: Why Not Mars?
Normally, I’m not super into “let’s do LESS cool science” opinions. But this article, while arguing against something, opened my brain to some of the most spectacular discoveries and possibilities in our universe. I’m kind of dying over it.
Especially the part about how we basically know that the universe and space are likely teeming with life. Why do we know that? Because we’ve developed new technologies that have discovered life on Earth in places we formerly thought inhabitable. Places like deep down in the Earth’s crust where the environment is more similar to our neighboring planets than to life on the surface as we know it. Essentially, if life can exist — not even that: if most of life on Earth can exist — down there … there’s basically no reason left to assume that any other planetary environment is hostile to life.
Here’s a small exerpt:
The fact that we failed to notice 99.999% of life on Earth until a few years ago is unsettling and has implications for Mars. The existence of a deep biosphere in particular narrows the habitability gap between our planets to the point where it probably doesn’t exist—there is likely at least one corner of Mars that an Earth organism could call home. It also adds support to the theory that life may have started as an interplanetary infection, a literal Venereal disease that spread across the early solar system by meteorite. If that is the case, and if our distant relatives are still alive in some deep Martian cave, then just about the worst way to go looking for them would be to land in a septic spacecraft.
🤯
That post of Miranda’s was the best thing I’ve seen on social media since 2016. 🥹
We watched an episode of that fantasy show and I couldn’t get into it — but that’s usually my relationship with the first episode of a fantasy show, right? I bet Sergey really enjoyed it. I should ask. I don’t remember why we didn’t come back to it. Maybe we should try again!
Is it just me or is anyone else kinda bummed that when we say “life” on other planets we’re really just talking about, like, bacteria. 😒 I would like at least some strange trees!!!
Hannah where are you I need your take on Harry's book now that it's been out for days!!