Obsessions This Week: May 25–31, 2025

Donuts, Alison Pill, and restaurant work.

I’m hosting a gathering for my birthday today in Chicago; text me if you want details.

🛜 The Internet abides

• FRANK
  covered the unfolding Patti LuPone drama that my friends Janie and Sarah have been explaining to me

  Is Patti LuPone Racist?

• My friend Tory posted Lorde’s new enby exploration of self, “Man of the Year,” over on Instagram

• Amy Poehler’s Good Hang podcast - I know celebrity podcasts have pushed everyone else out of the market and that that’s devastating financially and culturally, but we love to see Poehler doing it better than her ex-husband. Paul Rudd’s episode is tops; a sheer delight from start to finish:

• It’s Walt Whitman’s birthday today

  

---

📚 Media shared with me during my trip to LA this year

• The 2023 finale of the show The Curse - Nathan Fielder is an interesting performance artist in the tradition of Maria Abramovic, but if he were not a middle-aged white dude, would we be labeling him a comedian? Or do only white men get to self-define? I’m still salty about Norm MacDonald’s 2018 comments on Hannah Gadsby, to be honest.

• The M. Night Shyamalayan movie, Trap, which was so bad that it merits an academic journal article on why and how it managed to be so brain-meltingly bad. A lot of the fault is in building a movie around fluffing his daughter’s nascent career, yes, and someone should have stopped it for both of their sakes. Alison Pill in particular deserved better.