Jessica works most Sundays now, so I often spend that day getting organized for the week ahead, catching up on random household tasks, lounging about with Miss Thing and wondering what I could or should be writing if I was a bit better organized or motivated or less depressed and exhausted. We’re all doing our best, we keep saying. I believe that, but I’m also, as always, deeply dissatisfied by how little I accomplish while taking it easy and doing my best just to get by. Someone asked me this week who had my dream career and I said, without having to think twice, “Someone who’s already retired.”
I have been making some cool shit, I will admit, which is at least half of my resolution for any given year. Most of it is on work time, and has been an incredibly proud and intense process during a difficult year for podcasting.
New and noteworthy, as they say, among that work at LAist Studios: our partnership with The Academy Museum is so smart and thoughtful, helmed by TMC host and Museum boss Jacqueline Stewart. This season is about casting, and there are details in this episode about Rebecca that despite a decades-long obsession with the book and film I’d never known. (Also: the Museum IRL has the BEST new view constructed in LA in maybe decades — go up to the top floor and check out alllll you can see from the rooftop plaza.)
Assuming you have seen Barbie, or ever thought about Barbie, you should hear our 3-episode show about The Barbie Tapes, featuring amazing archival audio of (among others) Barbie creator Ruth Handler talking about how the toy was born (hint: it involves a German novelty sex shop), what happened to Ken’s bulge, and the brief window of time when women really were in charge at Mattel.
If you aren’t an LAist member or 89.3 listener here in Southern California, you may not have heard me joining an age-old public media tradition: the pledge drive. But you can get some cool merch and know that your hard-earned dollars (or cars! we also still take cars!) are going to smart independent media. Join or up your donation here.
I have for years now tried to maintain at least one active personal creative project in the midst of work madness. Last March (as in 2022), my former colleague Alex Suskind asked me if I wanted to write a little list about Elton John for Vulture. Just a quick thing: the complete and allegedly definitive ranking of every one of Elton’s songs ever recorded. With, you know, some short descriptions to go with each. Because I was a month into not working and on no particularly urgent timeline of when I’d be even looking for another job, and also because I’d already spent a year listening to the entire discography of Elton John while driving my terrible then-commute around Los Angeles, I said sure, why not.
Six months later when I finished the draft and sent it to Alex, I forgot to rename the Google Doc file: why did i do this. Obviously, I did it because it’s a dream assignment (wrapped in a nightmare) and a gift of an honor to even be asked. The publication got delayed a few months, we saw Elton at Dodger Stadium, it got delayed a little more, Elton kept touring, and then finally in the days before his final (for now) full-length show at Glastonbury, the piece went live.
I could probably write 378 more paragraphs about the process of writing this list. How long it took to be even reasonably sure I had a correct data set. How the Google Sheet got so big it started refusing to load. How people commented on many many many of the songs somewhere between No. 378 and No. 1 and I had to look at what I wrote and just assume because I am a person of integrity who would never ever steal words that I in fact must have written them because I certainly didn’t remember doing so or even having heard that song. The Elton Fog was real. The fact that I had to count and recount so many times I started to question the absolute relativity of numerals was real. The fact that I put “Candle In the Wind” in the absolute dead center of the list because it is the embodiment of The Middle Place and also served well as a test to see if people really read the whole thing or just the worst and then best was real.
Anyway this is maybe the coolest paid assignment I’ve ever had in my life and it also in no way diminished how much I still have to say about Elton John. If you read it, I hope you’ll let me know. I accept any and all quibbles, controversial challenges, and questions. The editors and fact-checkers at Vulture were outstanding. The finance department paid after the second delay so in another unprecedented experience I had both spent and paid taxes on my reasonably sized paycheck long before it was published. This is not normal. Don’t plan a freelance career around this.
One recent Sunday earlier in the summer I downloaded a series of questionable software programs and made various assertions of my address in order to watch that last Glasto show live. Elton paid tribute to George Michael on what would have been George’s 60th birthday. It is a song they’d famously sung together before — at Live Aid in 1985, and the “ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Elton John!” version from one of George’s concerts that many of us remember from heavy rotation on MTV.
Spoiler alert, the song (in no small part because of George), ranks No. 5 on my list:
One of the greatest ballads of not just John’s catalogue but of all time. John happily recounts in his memoirs the epic tantrum he threw while originally recording this song — “Send it to Engelbert Humperdinck!,” he shouted — in part because the high Rocky Mountain altitude of their studio made it so hard to track the vocals. But producer Gus Dudgeon thankfully ignored him, then later layered harmonies (from the Beach Boys, no less) and teased out its resilient brilliance, ultimately scoring a Grammy nom. There are many excellent versions across his decades of live albums, but it’s the heartbreakingly timeless duet with George Michael that really elevates it. It’s not quite playing fair for that version to even appear on Duets, where every other track struggles in its wake. Already among the best Elton songs ever, the live take goes and adds one of the 20th century’s greatest and most emotive vocalists into the mix with an iconic, almost offhand introduction (a pre-knighthood “Mr. Elton John!”), seemingly bringing John out of his own belting shell with soaring harmonies. These two men clashed off and on over decades of friendship and collaboration interrupted by icy public feuds, largely rooted in fights about Michael’s unrepentant drug use. Rather than being able to help nudge him toward sobriety, as he did with Rufus Wainwright and Eminem, John was instead the sole survivor of what could have been decades more musical collaborations.
Anyway READ IT ALL HERE. Go listen to Elton.
The Enthusiast: Summer Sundays Edition
Summer movies:
Like everyone else, I saw Barbie this weekend. I can’t believe it ended like that (!!!!!!!). I love that it was bright and beautiful and self-affirming and also terrifying and smart and blunt. I am re-obsessed with America Ferrera and Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie and low-key haunted by Ryan Gosling showing how quickly a Ken can be radicalized. I had no idea this $30 dress I bought on a whim without trying it on at H&M earlier this spring would, when paired with the hot pink belt from a dress I long ago gave away, be the perfect outfit for this day. The best post-film movie was being in a bathroom stall at the Alamo Drafthouse and hearing a chorus of (presumably) strangers all chirp HI BARBIE to each other.
Highly recommend the gorgeous film Past Lives, starring an exquisite and effortless-seeming Greta Lee in a Korean-Canadian-American what-if dreamy romantic drama. It’s still in indie theaters (including for Angelenos a weeklong stint at Vidiots, newly re-opened just up the street from us in Eagle Rock).
The Wham! documentary on Netflix was both a sharply made music doc with top-notch material — thank you Mrs. Ridgeley for your archival work and all those scrapbooks!!! — and a heartbreaking trip through the early days of George’s early grappling with his talent and fame, as voiced at least in half by George himself courtesy older interviews. Thank you also to Andrew for telling candidly the painful and confusing story about how George came out to him early on and received what was well-intentioned but also unsurprisingly unhelpful advice from his best friend to stay closeted. This isn’t new information — it’s also in Andrew’s memoir — but it’s so well treated here as a bit of a lesson on how to find both grace and better understanding of yourself and the ones you love. I’m still nowhere near done writing about this man.
Summer songs:
“Vampire” by Olivia Rodrigo. “Rush” by Troye Sivan. All of Janelle Monae’s The Age of Pleasure. Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Shy Boy” but also still all of The Loneliest Time, especially the title track duet with Rufus Wainwright.
Summer reads:
I’m already behind my GoodReads goal for 2023, and finding it challenging again to disappear into anything but the frothiest of books. If you’re excited for Prime Video’s adaptation of the enjoyable Red, White & Royal Blue, may I (again?) recommend this self-published royal romance I found by accident, know absolutely nothing about the origin of, and found to be absolutely delightful. It’s called Spare (sorry Harry). It’s $3. (Also go watch Young Royals on Netflix.)
There have been a few other standouts, nearly all courtesy Alexander Chee’s Boxwalla monthly subscription, which if nothing else has given me an impressive-looking TBR pile next to the bed.
If I Survive You, by Jonathan Escoffery, is a Moonlight-esque series of interconnected stories about a Jamaican family living in South Florida.
Which Side Are You On, by Ryan Lee Wong, is about about being a young activist who maybe doesn’t know how much your parents already know about all the things you’re so angry about.
Everybody Knows, by Jordan Harper. is the most brutal and brilliant LA noir I’ve read in so long I don’t even know what to compare it to.
Summer shows:
Heartstopper on Netflix. I’ve seen season 2. It’s even better than the first. If you haven’t yet watched this soft, sweet show about two British high school boys finding love — and all their equally swoon-worthy friends — you can get caught up now. There are 8 not even half-hour episodes in season 1 to get you started; season 2 comes out August 3.
I do enjoy how much Bravo’s Below Deck is resolutely disgusted by the rich assholes who charter their boats, and cackled so hard at this season of Sailing Yacht’s outstanding editing when cross-examining its own crew about their throuple-ish love triangle.
Quarterback on Netflix. I don’t watch or keep up with the NFL beyond the biggest headlines, but the sound of football still strikes that soothing childhood chord. And you all already know that I love a great sports narrative more than I’ve ever loved a sport. I didn’t expect to care about Patrick Mahomes (or, god, Kirk Cousins??) but the power of a great doc is getting us so invested in their realness that we forget not to root for their humanity no matter the team or league. (Not recommended: the slapdash paint-by-numbers Quest for the Stanley Cup series, now on ESPN, that is a pale shadow of its Road to the Winter Cup predecessor made by the obviously superior HBO sports/docs teams.)
As always, I miss LiveJournal. I’m not on Threads, am only looking at one tiny sliver of Twitter or Tumblr for fandom, and increasingly feel queasy every time I drive by Instagram. It’s bizarre to watch a foundational part of my life — more than 15 years spent building professional and personal social networks and media — become something so foreign-feeling and toxic-adjacent, at best, that I don’t really want to go there.
Here’s what I’m re-learning instead: Having no more than a few people at a time over to enjoy the view from our absurdly elevated treehouse-type patio. Traveling near and far as often as possible to see new places and old friends. (Do you want to enjoy the treehouse while hanging with Miss Thing? Especially maybe when we’re out of town? We can probably make these dreams align.) Going to see something unspoiled when it comes out in the world. Staying at home for Friday night edibles and action movies (yes to Extraction 2, a movie that never tries to be something other than it is, no to almost all the others).
I’m going next weekend to Idaho for the memorial service of my late step-grandmother, Maggie Howe, who died on July 4 at age 96. She was a devout Mormon, a great-grandmother 19 times over, and a kind and generous woman who welcomed my mother and brother and me (and later my wife) into her large family with open arms. She was also a passionate fan of perhaps unexpected pop culture greats, including Adam Lambert and, her daily companion for many years, the inimitable Rachel Maddow. I’m going to wear this tiny pin in tribute: