The Friday Dispatch: February 7, 2025
We missed an important anniversary!!!!!!!
Good morning! Or, whatever time it is when you read this. I forgot to tell you guys! January 24th was the 6-year anniversary of the time I was on the bus, listening to Björk, and then the bus almost hit a lady (she’s fine) (the lady) (and Björk).
I was living in Queens at the time, and the bus stop across the street from my apartment was the origin/terminal point for the Q18 route. Most mornings, this meant that I got on the bus, snagged a seat, and waited 5 or 10 minutes for “takeoff.” On a beautiful January day in 2019, I was sitting on the bus, window seat, driver’s side, headphones in, listening to Björk. To be more specific, I was listening to this song, It’s Oh So Quiet.
A woman was running across the street trying to catch the bus on time. Oh no, lady! Hurry up, lady! We’re about to move! She hustled, she ran, she ran right in front of the bus, as it was starting to move. It’s Oh So Quiet was at this 0:58 mark—the part where it gets, well, oh, so quiet, and then a BIG brass section comes in, and Björk gets a little yelly—when the lady realized the bus was moving, and the bus driver stopped abruptly, honking at her. The lady recoiled from the near-hit just as Björk sang "Sheeeeeee-boooom!" in my ear. Then, the lady got on the bus and yelled at the driver, who didn’t even hit her!!! Wow. Even though it was probably really, really scary for her…it was a classic moment in cinema. In the cinema of my mind, at least. Please, go listen to that Björk song and imagine a lady getting gently bonked by a bus.
Put this in a microchip and install it in my brain
We have not talked about Betty Gilpin enough in this newsletter! I previously wrote a little bit about her role in Mrs. Davis, and how it, like all Betty Gilpin Productions, feels tailor-made for me. Her book, All the Women in My Brain (And Other Concerns) is not only a great memoir on its own merit, but also a phenomenal, emotional, truly thrilling reading experience. My copy has lots of highlights throughout, the earliest of which, on page seven, is “Ok, wow, she’s giving birth to a knife.” So that’s the tonal expectation you should have for a Betty Gilpin production!
And, hot damn, speaking of PRODUCTIONS, I finally went to see Oh, Mary!, almost exactly one year after my friend Cole told me about it. Written by and originally starring Cole Escola (no relation to my Cole) (that I know of), the show follows Mary Todd Lincoln, drinking her way through the final weeks of her husband’s employment. She was a cabaret star, until her stupid husband made her quit the stage! Now, he’s trying to find ways to keep her busy while he finishes up that Civil War everyone is yapping about.
This show is Betty Gilpin’s Broadway debut (I won’t spoil it for you, but her bio in the playbill for this show DID make me cry!). I’ve seen her act on-screen before, and seeing her in a theatre production confirmed that she is my favorite living actress (sorry Sutton Foster, sorry Goldie Hawn!). She can volley from dead-serious to over-the-top goofy in 0.03 seconds. She has incredibly precise facial, physical and vocal control. And she can deliver a joke.
That’s something I am glad to see returning to the mainstream! Jokes. For way too long, we were recovering, as a society, from that yucky postmodern and post-postmodern glut of unfunny-but-sophisticated,-dammit irony. I still think we haven’t shed this fully. The hipster “you’ve never heard of it” cultural caché was dethroned by a weird “gotcha” moral last-man-grandstanding. The mental worm of reality TV has inculcated artists into thinking, “When I get to record my confessional interview about this, everyone will see I was right!!!” which is of course a sort of navel-gazing self-moralizing compulsive habit that hinders actual subversion or innovation in our art. It’s why I don’t like a lot of recent comedy shows/movies, or the interview show Ziwe had on Showtime. Too much of modern comedy boils down to the “So you agree??? You think you’re really pretty????” scene from Mean Girls.
The nice thing about Oh, Mary! is that, while it is catty and bitey and snarky and often deeply referential, anything knowing or nuanced or conspiratorial is just there as a scaffold to the unsubtle. I saw someone online describe it as “if Mary Todd Lincoln were a Real Housewife,” and I agree, in as much that they are at their best when following their unhinged, high-budget musical dreams. The jokes in Oh, Mary! are just that, hard-stop jokes, they are setups and punchlines delivered immediately before the stage lights blackout. The whole show is choreographed, nothing about it is natural, and that is exactly why I love it. Why Betty Gilpin is so perfect for the role, too! She is the type of outlandish campy performer who takes these effortful jokes and puts her all into them, leaving you slumped over with laugh-tears by the end. I am glad to see effort returning to mainstream art. Detail. Muscle. Down with minimalism! Down with subtlety! The whole “theatre kids are annoying” thing never made sense to me, anyway, because after all, movie stars are just theatre kids with SAG insurance and veneers. You’re lusting after theatre kids whether you like it or not!
This show resists the notion that vaudeville follies, cabaret spectaculars and madcap medleys don’t have a place in modern life. They do! And that place is the biggest stage available! Every outlandish and stupid and challenging and vainglorious idea you have is probably worth doing!
This is all a good reminder: click here and allow Catherine Lacey to bully you into applying for that thing you want.
Not related to any of this
A while ago I mentioned that I had saved my magnum opus, a fancam video of Big Pussy from The Sopranos, set to Death By a Thousand Cuts by Taylor Swift, from the clutches of Twitter’s media library. At the time, I said, “Someday I will upload it to YouTube and become a viral sensation.” I finally remembered to do that! Here it is.
WIDNBTW
Okay, so one thing I didn’t buy this week is a second heavy-duty five-tier shelf from Target. I accidentally…stole it a little??? But it was NOT ON PURPOSE!
Here’s what happened.
In an effort to make my clothing storage less, uh, overwhelming, I ordered a big, sturdy garage shelf from Target dot com. Here is the link, it’s a great shelf! But when it arrived (early! yay!) and I opened the box, dozens of tiny plastic shards fell out. There was broken plastic everywhere, pouring out of the box like a waterfall of garbage in a comical edutainment short about pollution. Dottie really liked it and wanted to play with it, which was…not great. I consulted the image on the box, and from the image, it seemed mostly likely that the broken plastic pieces were connectors, used to keep the wire parts of the shelf together. “Well, this won’t do!” I thought/said. “If the connectors are all shattered, these shelves could never hope to hold my teeming tubs of sweaters and slacks!”
So, I messaged Target, and I said “Hi this shelf arrived with a bunch of broken plastic pieces,” and Target said “Okay, go ahead and throw that shelf away, we will send you a new one instead of trying to get this 50-pound, 5-foot box back to Target Headquarters.” Well, when the second shelf arrived, I opened it and even more shattered plastic fragments came out! There were big chunks of black plastic all along the top of the box, which crumbled to polyvinyl dust in my hands!
Well. Okay. So. I didn’t know this. Did you know this? I didn’t know this: apparently, it is de rigueur in some retail-packaging circles to use cheapo plastic bumpers as, essentially, shock absorbers. To save space/reduce bulk, you pack your sturdy wire shelves in cheap plastic corner and edge protectors, and if anything bumps your box during shipping, the plastic cracks and breaks, so the wire does not. Then, when you open the box, an infernal torrent of sharp plastic chunks rains down upon you. I am not confident that this is a very sustainable shipping practice. It has also made my living room messier, and with far more sharp chunks of plastic than I usually prefer.
However. That may be worth it, because these shelves kick ass. They are sturdy, there are no tools required for building, they come with a wall mount, they hold a Hattie’s worth of clothes, which is many, many, clothes. And now…I have two. Two perfectly good shelves. Which I feel guilty about. But it was an honest mistake!!!! I am sorry, Target Dog! Don’t come to my house and chew on me!
Here is the rest of the list of What I Did Not Buy This Week:
A Maybelline Super Stay Ink Crayon in Treat Yourself (I fear it is discontinued)
A “habit tracker chart” stamp kit, which I ALMOST bought, and then I remembered I can just…draw lines
This pretty rainbow Louis Vuitton purse, advertised to me online, which is gently used and STILL ten THOUSAND dollars! Advertisements should be required to include a tag that says “Hattie, don’t click on this, it is over $28” when applicable
La Colombe strawberry mocha cause they were all sold out :( no :(
Yet another USED couture item, this an adorable “corset” T-shirt by Christian Dior, which is $1300!!!!! I know I need to STOP clicking but the ad just looked like a normal cute shirt! I’m SORRY!
Pig from when they had wheels
A scary journaling RPG that you play by yourself (I might do this soon, it is $3 and I love to make myself afraid!)
This print of a “pussywillow” kitty plant by Rose Mary Berlin, an artist who has probably illustrated some of your favorite children’s books
With that: Happy Friday! Farewell! I am going to eat barbecue tonight and root for Kansas City and politely ignore the existence of Philadelphia, a city I love but am not currently in alignment with. Eat cheese dip and stay warm this weekend. Thank you.