Fourth Friday: May

I don’t need a Range when I got an airboat.

As I predicted, May sure was a doozy!

For one thing, this Doechii screencap resonates even more than it did the day I lost my job!

I’m still working on my Tom Cruise essay, which will be out early next week; and I’ll be writing about The Studio and Carrie Bradshaw in the next couple of weeks as well.

The new Final Destination movie (more on that below) reminded me of the essay I wrote a while ago about why the log truck scene from Final Destination 2 became so cemented in the cultural memory, so check that out if you haven’t already!

Other than that, here’s what I wrote, read, watched, and heard that got me through another turbulent month.

Wrote

• A meditative exercise: organizing my ancient DVD collection

• Charting my emotional journey through unemployment

• Clara
  and I talked the new pope, The Master and Margarita, and girl the tariffs

• My defense of Sinners’ Grace, a true warrior who deserved the pickled garlic

• A deep dive into Smoke and Stack’s costuming, also in Sinners

• An analysis of the three emojis that sum up Trump’s first hundred days

Read

• All I can say about

  Brendon Holder
  ’s essay about André Leon Talley, this month’s Met Gala, and Sinners is that this was the analysis I was waiting for. Sumptuous writing. Read immediately and subscribe after you’ve done that.

• I try not to “spoil” media for people, largely because I want everyone to have the experience that the creator wants them to have. I still feel mortified that I spoiled Gwen Stacey’s arc in the Andrew Garfield Amazing Spiderman movies for my friend Marcus fully 12 years ago. But this essay made some really compelling points about why knowing where the story is going doesn’t necessarily lessen your experience with it. (Still—I’m so sorry, Marcus!)

  

  Let’s all agree that this is the end of Gwen Stacy’s arc and keep it moving!

• I really can’t stand Ezra Klein. Any time he says something worthwhile, he makes up for it by saying four worthless things. I find his new book, Abundance, to be one of those worthless things, and

  Joe Wrote
  ’s excellent review gets into why. (Hint: neoliberal tinkering will do nothing to stop students from getting rounded up by police for writing op-eds, or to stop Republicans from committing the most shameless act of class warfare in history, or to hold the President of the United States accountable for saying egregiously racist things to the President of South Africa! Worthless!!)