Weekend Reads

Hear me, O Muse of Pop Culture

Darlings. I got two of the worst kinds of news in the space of 24 hours this week (nothing to do with health, b”h). I’ve transcended from shock and anger to appreciating the absurdity. Someday, this week will be the spark of a stand up special.

And even though everything’s shit, or maybe because of it, I’ve found new obsessions in these here dark times:

• Rehearsals, aka Chazarot

  Streaming on Hulu

  

  I am astounded by this show. If it were only a meta narrative – my favorite! – about a playwright who breaks up with a director right before the acceptance of their project, which is based on their relationship – dayenu! (And I think in real life too!! I have two episodes left, so I don’t want to spoiler anything with reality.) If it only had an incredible deadpan Soviet theater manager – dayenu! If it had only gone the cliché way of having each of the protagonists hook up with the actors playing their fictional counterparts – dayenu!

  But it’s also so so funny and painful and all too real. You can’t make someone love you. You can’t make yourself love someone else. You can’t even make a director like you enough to cast you in a dream role you were literally born to play. There are so many layers to this show and I just really hope it sticks the landing.

  By the way, the Hebrew name – Chazarot – is a play on words. Yes, it means rehearsals, but its root is also to go over something, to repeat it. Get it?

• People We Meet On Vacation

  Streaming on Netflix

  

  I’m pretty sure we read this for Chana’s book club eons ago, and I WAS TOTALLY RIGHT – romance novels make really good movies!! Did the plot make sense? Not in the least. Was the chemistry between the leads outstanding? Of course, that’s the whole point. I loved watching this movie so much that I went and took Great Big Beautiful World, also by Emily Henry, out of the library, hoping to recapture some of the atmosphere. Who knows, maybe I’ll rewatch the movie this weekend after RuPaul. It’s been that kind of week.

• Cosmoknights

  

  This is my second time reading this very queer graphic novel duo, so I guess it’s a comfort read now? It’s fun! And pretty! I want the third book to come out already!

• Here For All The Reasons is available for preorder! This is a fun anthology by Bachelor Nation, with essays about why we’re still watching this show so many seasons later. And wouldn’t you know it: I wrote one of them!

  

Good Shabbos y’all!