Obsessions This Week: July 16-22, 2023
The romance issue is where I talk at length about my romance issues.
🚨 Joe Manganiello is single again.
Manganiello’s divorce was treated as a five-alarm fire this week in multiple group chats and on Twitter. We love him because he is a big nerd and because of that one scene in Magic Mike XXL where he does an exotic dance for a sad girl at a gas station.
🎥 Past Lives predictably hurt my feelings.
Writer-director Celine Song uses the negative spaces in conversation like no other filmmaker, and proves again that playwrights make great screenwriters. (Spoiler: you could file Past Lives under my running list of “movies whose central conflict would be resolved by a threesome.”)
If I seem weirdly glib about a drama that The Guardian called the best film of the year so far, please know it is only because I was completely psychologically shattered by it. I am a notorious sucker for stories about childhood friends with painful resolutions, to the point where my therapist once told me to start avoiding them.
Greta Lee, long a staple of mainstream comedies, absolutely crushed it, while Teo Yoo served us millennial Tony Leung with his sad, sad eyes. Art house and repertory movie theaters will someday play a double feature of this film and In the Mood for Love, no question, and I will be there if I can rally to get my heart broken again.
📺 Pansexual weirdos rejoice: What We Do in the Shadows is back!
My friends Crystal and Janie got me into this mockumentary sitcom back in the early days of the pandemic. I’d resisted only because I loved the Jemaine Clement/Taika Waititi movie so much that I feared no TV adaptation could compare, but I was wrong and I am woman enough to admit it.
There is simply not enough media out there about vampires going to Pride. This show confirms my pet theory that the best comedy is treating serious things with levity, or treating silly things extremely seriously.
The entire creative team behind the FX/Hulu comedy is on fire this season, especially showrunner Stefani Robinson and writer-actress Natasia Demetriou (who in real life is the sister of an actor you might also recognize). And if you follow me on Instagram, you’ve already seen me fangirl over lead actor Harvey Guillén, who first caught my eye in a thankless bit part on Syfy’s The Magicians. I think he’s ridiculously talented and he gives great interviews. This season, his character Guillermo is going through some big (spoiler) changes, and my body is ready.
🔥There is nothing hotter than Michael Sheen and his respect for fandom.
Last week, in the middle of a delightful Dungeons and Dragons session, my friend Shannon made a reference to my abiding crush on the actor Michael Sheen. (She knows about it because we’d once watched the Underworld sequel that’s kind of an allegory for Welsh independence but officially about werewolves.)
Now, I know what you’re thinking: wow, that’s niche. AND YOU WOULD BE WRONG. My favorite thing about openly crushing on this particular short, middle-aged Welshman is that I’m in famously good company: he’s dated extreme hotties like Sarah Silverman, Kate Beckinsale, and Lizzy Caplan. I’d be loathe to coin the phrase white girl wet dream, but whoops I already did.
The thing that truly obsesses people (and not just me) about Sheen is his respect for fandom, which is an unfortunately rare quality in a celebrity. He never takes the bait to mock us and he is rightfully beloved for that (yes, the bar is that low). Sheen just gets it.
Anyway, good luck getting me to stop rhapsodizing about Michael Sheen in this or any future issue. Did I mention he openly admitted to reading fanfiction to prepare for a role? I would die for him. I feel so, so normal about that.
🍪 I’m obsessed with a very specific cookie.
Bastion Bakery is a new addition to Grand Central Market, the food hall near my sublet in Los Angeles. Those bakers have been selling me way too many of these salty, walnut- and chocolate-filled cookies that have frankly made me believe in God again. They melt in your hands!
🪧 HOT STRIKE SUMMER!
Please continue to support the people who make the things I write about in whatever ways you can.
As I am not a raging hypocrite, I was also thrilled to see UPS employees, LA-area hotel workers, and Starbucks laborers also rising up for fair pay and decent working conditions. Let’s do the thing already!
📧 Goodbye to all that.
I’m hoping you and I are still on the same page about this newsletter (we’re loving it, right?), but in the meantime, here are some others that I read on the regular:
La Huelga from Chicago Jobs With Justice gives me that much-needed dose of hyper-local Chicago and Illinois politics when I’m missing home.
Culture Study by Anne Helen Petersen is simply the best, the one that introduced me to the very concept of a Substack.
Nice News is kind of anodyne and annoying, but sometimes exactly what I need.
Debatable!
The text from Jay may be the funniest thing I've seen all month.
Did you seen the Michael Sheen video where he performs Dylan Thomas' "Do not go gently into that good night?" I cried.