Obsessions This Week: June 1–7, 2025
Happy Pride to the LGBTQ (Let's Guillotine Billionaires Together Quickly) community!
🎬 Congratulations, gay people
The trailers for both the next (inexplicably, only the third?!) season of The Gilded Age and for the second part of Wicked came out this week, just in time for Pride Month.
Speaking of Julian Fellowes, he’s also doing yet another (“final”) Downton Abbey movie. Okay!
This last one is a bit more niche, but I’m lowkey glad someone who does a lot of comedy work around playing gay for pay is actually taking on a proper, 3D role as a gay guy in a comedy (Nick Kroll). I’m actually a huge fan of his (KROLL SHOW WAS AHEAD OF ITS TIME!) and will be watching this.
🔥 Instead of Andor, how about Alfonso Cuarón?
This random reel of Gael Garcia Bernal’s and Diego Luna’s hilariously disparate reactions to seeing the case of the movie that started their careers in the Criterion Closet single-handedly got me to rewatch Y Tu Mamá También again after 20 years. It deeply impacted my everything back when I watched it at the tender age of 14, and as my roommate can attest, I still love it. It’s on Netflix right now, if you need a refresher.
✈️ Should I go to Wales to see Michael Sheen in a play about the NHS?
And why does this feel like a test designed for me, personally, to fail? This is not a democratic decision, per se, but I will be soliciting feedback.
🎧 Marc Maron is ending his podcast
In the history of podcasting, Marc Maron’s WTF Pod will be remembered as the most influential early comedy interview podcast. My friend Curtis got me listening in 2010 or so, and it was a constant companion when I started standup at the end of college, a tether when I lived abroad as a postgrad, and then a perennial source of inspiration to me in the Chicago comedy scene and my many foiled forays into the LA entertainment industry.
Like many people, I often imagined being a guest myself while listening over the years, and though I haven’t done much standup since the COVID pandemic, it remained a kind of nascent fantasy of my other life—the one I assume we all have, the one in which your limitations don’t exist and your dreams get fully realized. Chatting with Marc Maron became a rite of passage for comedians and gadflies, politicians (like Barack Obama) and cultural stewards (like Terry Gross). One of the coolest moments of my life as a listener was when I wrote him a critical email about his (not great, vaguely sexist) interview with the screenwriter Diablo Cody in 2013, and he responded personally with a humble promise to do better. It made my day. It probably made that year, in some real sense.
Like thousands of others, I am going to miss hearing about Maron’s cats, lovers, envy, and the (at times unflattering) vulnerability and honesty with which he made WTF so unique in the early days of podcasting. May he live long and prosper. I hope I get to thank him in person some day.
New York Mag coming for LA’s neck, as they say
“Hollywood Has Left LA,” ran the headline this past week. It doesn’t feel good, but they’re right—in some senses. In others (writers, production houses, development), the industry is still centralized there. I have no prognosticating or insight to offer, but this piece in Vulture certainly matched the mood I sensed out there this year.
🎶 What I’m listening to
🌈 Elephant Heart - “Love is the Weapon”
Happy Pride! Stonewall was a police riot!
🩸 slimdan & Devon again - “Nosebleeds”
No idea who these singers/songwriters are. Great song, though.
Edith Whiskers - “Lights Are On (Instrumental)”
I don’t love this song with voices and lyrics, but the instrumental was popping off on various social media reels, and I found it so soothing, it put me to sleep.
📺 Just for fun
Happy Pride! Please never fix your messed-up teeth, Mx. Escola.
🎞️ Ngl, I wanna see this Jayne Mansfield documentary
Mariska Hargitay the multihyphenate is a bit of a tough sell for me, because I’m deeply disgusted by the copaganda that is Law & Order, and Hargitay’s somewhat self-important (and arguably misguided) relationship to police and sex crimes does not square with my perspective on either.
However, I’ve always been fascinated by the fact her mother was a midcentury sex symbol who died tragically young, and that Hargitay herself has tried so hard to make obviously different career choices as an actress. Apparently, there’s even more to that story, like a paternity revelation and some recognition of internalized sexism. I’ll probably stream this on HBO Max when it comes out.
Joy, like anything needs to grabbed at all times. Go to Cardiff, have a lovely fling in a new city seeing a play. If not, its a cool story! should Hope go to Cardiff fund, I'll start it!
Nice to come back to your channel, and Happy Pride! Lots of inspiring stuff, as always. I was not able to vote on your poll. But I think a great place to start when considering a trip is what will the environment be like? (Are veggie options available at the B&B? Will the rain be thick enough that I need to bring my Wellies? Is the play going to be PERFORMED IN WELSH? If so, get cracking on those books.) But probably, it will be in English.