The "Good Listener" Edition

Aug 14, 2022

Folks,

August has got the best of me. The sometimes slow and languid month has transitioned to fast and loose— but mercifully not yet out of control.

Family and folks are moving to new apartments and new cities, we are battling bacterial bugs (relax, though, noone has Covid, for the moment!) and battling other bugs (as in people who really bug us!). Pleasurably, the best visitors and visits keep a-comin’ and we are goin’ a-visitin’ again to my new favorite place, Southmoochampton!

I have been Meh on Content intake lately. Much lauded but only mildly appreciated by me, I’ve taken a romp through some HBOMax fare while we’re all waiting for White Lotus, Succession, and Barry to return. Game of Thronezzzzzzzz… spin-off/prequel whatever it is I’m not so much on the edge of my seat for, in case you were wondering.

I tried The Rehearsal, a reality TV take on controlling human social outcomes, on HBOMax. If you liked Nathan For You, Nathan Fielder’s first show, you will like this. If you’ve never heard of Nathan Fielder it means you are not a young male who likes slow, ironic humor and making people uncomfortable but also likes to learn nothing.

‘Everyone’ is talking about Season 2 of ‘Industry’, which one review called ‘a bitter mix of Grey’s Anatomy and Succession.’ I love a bitter mix of anything! So I tried Season 1. It was indeed a mix of something, but more like if there was a dress-up-as-grownups game put out by the Wall Street Journal Kids division mixed with the most toxic and uninteresting characters from your fantasy B-school league, populated by models or evil robots. Similar to my unpopular and minority view of ‘Euphoria,’ I couldn’t find one single character to care enough about to keep watching, despite the stunning amount of great looking people and their frequent nudity and graphic sex.

Citizen Ashe, a tight, well-made and superbly researched documentary, also on HBOMax, which I discovered after bailing out of Episode 2 of The Rehearsal, and episode 3 of Industry, is my kinda thing. Arthur Ashe is an important person who did extraordinary things. We should learn as much as we can; we should see as much of the world through other people’s eyes as we can; we should continue to wonder how, with no power, no money, no fitness training, and tiny wooden racquets, anyone could play so strongly and elegantly and, um, change the world.

Also, comparing reality to recreated worlds, the Ashe docu is another example of ‘70s mien which reminds us that no production designer, costume designer, or hair & make-up artist will ever get the essence of the era correct.

How will we look back on this era of aesthetic? How will we process its inordinately heavily managed eyebrows? When has a beauty standard incorporated the simultaneity of implants that engorge combined with shapewear that binds worse than any fetishistic Chinese emperor’s tradition? All combined with a ‘body positivity’ movement whose spokespeople seem positive about so very little?

Also, will anyone’s face (except mine) ever be under-dermed enough to appear within 10 years of their biological age again? Will we shift the idea of “age” down, like women’s clothing sizes, so we look amazing at “80” cuz we’re actually 40?

Well, the LZ Sunday Paper has not been plucked, waxed, padded, or enhanced in a social media filter, or by AI. There is no filler, courtesy of your great derm uptown. It is, truly, just what it is. Well, I guess it is stuffed— cuz it’s chock full of important news by, for, and about women, delivered straight to your inbox. Politics, Pop Culture and everything in between. Every Sunday.

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See you next week,