Rec. #853: Give Money to Dr. Brittney Cooper

... by buying her most recent book, Eloquent Rage.

To see more new/recent/upcoming books to buy, go to List #93: PAY Ten Women and Keep It Going.

Rec. #852: Best Reminder That Not All of Humanity Is Terrible

I don't know why, but it surprised me that Come From Away, the 2017 Tony-winning Best New Musical, is really incredibly excellent.

It also surprised me that this show --- focusing on the logistics of planefuls of people stranded in a small Canadian town on and after Sept. 11 --- was a true adrenaline rush of emotions. It moves fast and doesn't stop until the very end.

(Rec. #832)

Rec. #851: Best Reason to Stay Indoors

In Be Prepared, a somehow-still-funny graphic memoir, both nature and tweens are brutal.

(Rec. #826)

Rec. #850: Best New Endless Rewatch Potential

Seriously, you really can just watch Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, Rachel Dratch, Paula Pell, Ana Gasteyer, and Emily Spivey's minibreak over and over and over and over again.

Wine Country is streaming on Netflix for the foreseeable.

Plus! I feel like everyone really undersold how amazing it is that Cherry Jones, treasure of the American stage, has a pivotal appearance as a tarot card reader.

Also, Poehler's killer 30 seconds of silence near the end.

I mean.

Rec. #849: Give Money to RAICES

The Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES) provides free and low-cost legal services to underserved immigrant children, families, and refugees.

Learn more: Rec. #577 and Rec. #702

 

Rec. #848: Best Season-5-and-Going-Strong

Superstore just keeps getting better. As it headed into its fifth season this fall, the show was already knee-deep in issues of ICE detention and nascent unionization efforts.

The absurdity-tinged show-universe mythology, the characters, and the humor are all fully, richly developed. Just like the show's social conscious.

If that's not enough to sell you, how about this? It's a lot like Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

(Rec. #508)

(List #65)

Rec. #847: Best Listener

 For me, David Tennant Does a Podcast With ... is one of the very best new podcasts of 2019. Tennant is genuinely very good at interviewing people, which is a surprise, because a) he is a dude, and b) he is an actor.

Guests in the first season were: Olivia Colman, Whoopi Goldberg, Jodie Whittaker, Sir Ian McKellen, Jon Hamm, Gordon Brown, Jennifer Garner, Catherine Tate, Krysten Ritter, James Corden, Samantha Bee, Tina Fey, and Michael Sheen.

(For those of you counting, that's a 60/40 female/male guest split, which is a pretty close match for my usual content interest ratio.)

(Rec. #785)

Bonus! Guest appearance from Alfred, Lord Waggison -- Olivia Colman's dog.

Rec. #846: Best Worst Day

Star/co-creator/national treasure Natasha Lyonne describes Russian Doll as "an existential adventure show" that's essentially saying, "hey, we're all broken on the inside. Let's do it together!"

As the kids would say, #mood.

(Rec. #775)

(See also Rec. #812)

What to Expect in December

As is usual for me, I'll be spending December highlighting some of the best things I read, saw, watched, and listened to over the past year.

Every few days, I'll pause to recommend organizations or books or other things you might consider throwing your money at during the upcoming holiday season.

Rec. #845: List #93 -- PAY Ten Women* and Keep It Going, part 5

*buy/preorder their new/upcoming books

Because thanking women is nice, but paying them is better!

[part 1] [part 2] [part 3] [part 4]

Who: Jia Tolentino, staff writer for The New Yorker.

New book: Trick Mirror

Learn more: On Twitter @jiatolentino. Her website is https://jia.blog/.

Who: Rebecca Traister, writer-at-large for New York magazine and The Cut.

New and seminal books: Good and Mad, All the Single Ladies

Learn more: On Twitter @rtraister. Her website is http://www.rebeccatraister.com/.








Connection to previous Wreckage: Tolentino and Traister were both part of List #66: Public Voices to Pay Attention To.

Rec. #844: List #93 -- PAY Ten Women* and Keep It Going, part 4

*buy/preorder their new/upcoming books


Because thanking women is nice, but paying them is better!


[part 1] [part 2] [part 3]

Who: Ijeoma Oluo, one of the most influential people in Seattle.

Recent and upcoming books: So You Want to Talk About Race, Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America

Learn more: On Twitter @IjeomaOluo. Her website is http://www.ijeomaoluo.com/.

Who: Alexandra Petri, columnist for The Washington Post.

Upcoming book: Nothing Is Wrong and Here Is Why

Learn more: On Twitter @petridishes. See her work for The Washington Post at https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/alexandra-petri/.






Connections to previous Wreckage: Oluo and Petri were both part of List #66: Public Voices to Pay Attention To.


[part 5]

Rec. #843: List #93 -- PAY Ten Women* and Keep It Going, part 3

*buy/preorder their new/upcoming books


Because thanking women is nice, but paying them is better!

[part 1] [part 2]

Who: Tressie McMillan Cottom, professor of sociology.

Recent books: Lower Ed, Thick: And Other Essays (National Book Award Finalist)

Learn more: On Twitter @tressiemcphd. Her website is https://tressiemc.com/.

Who: Emily Nussbaum, television critic for The New Yorker.

Recent book: I Like to Watch

Learn more: On Twitter @emilynussbaum. Her website is https://www.emilynussbaum.com/.




Connection to previous Wreckage: McMillan Cottom and Nussbaum were both part of List #66: Public Voices to Pay Attention To.


[part 4] [part 5]

Rec. #842: List #93 -- PAY Ten Women* and Keep It Going, part 2

*buy/preorder their new/upcoming books


Because thanking women is nice, but paying them is better!
 
[part 1]

Who: Sarah Kendzior, journalist and expert on authoritarian states.

Recent and upcoming books: The View from Flyover Country, Hiding in Plain Sight

Learn more: On Twitter @sarahkendzior. Her website is https://sarahkendzior.com/.

Who: Talia Lavin, journalist and former fact-checker for The New Yorker.

Upcoming book: Culture Warlords

Learn more: On Twitter @chick_in_kiev. Her Patreon is https://www.patreon.com/talialavin.




Connections to previous Wreckage: Kendzior and Lavin were both part of List #66: Public Voices to Pay Attention To.


[part 3] [part 4] [part 5]

Rec. #841: List #93 -- PAY Ten Women* and Keep It Going, part 1

*buy/preorder their new/upcoming books


Because thanking women is nice, but paying them is better!

Who: Eve Ewing, Chicago Renaissance woman.

Newest books: Ironheart, 1919, Ghosts in the Schoolyard

Learn more: On Twitter @eveewing. Her website is https://eveewing.com/.

Who: Kate Harding, expert on body image and sexual violence.

New, seminal, and upcoming books: Nasty Women, Asking for It, Victim Complex: On Snowflakes, Witch Hunts, and the Cult of Personal Responsibility

Learn more: On Twitter @KateHarding. Her website is https://www.kateharding.info/.




Connections to previous Wreckage: Ewing and Harding were both part of List #66: Public Voices to Pay Attention To.


[part 2] [part 3] [part 4] [part 5]

Rec. #840: Go Far

What: I adore the late lamented podcast Mystery Show, so this song holds a lot of additional emotional oomph for me. It's got the vaguely melancholy lilt of a slow music box carousel, but in the loveliest way possible.

Representative lyrics:

There'll come a day you see that it's true

Everything coming up roses for you

Hope that you did what you wanted to do

Connections to previous Wreckage: I called out my own affinity for songs that are "broody without preciousness" in Rec. #806 (listing several others there as well), and "Go Far" goes well with that musical aesthetic.

I highlighted my beloved Mystery Show in Rec. #403 and List #92.

Rec. #839: London Irish

What: This tv show is all about four Belfast expats living in London who generally make a series of bad decisions, including --

Bronagh wakes up after a wedding party wearing the bride's dress.
Conor pops out to get some fish and chips and returns seven days later with a Mexican woman who thinks he's Johnny Depp.
Packy is determined to attend a wake because he's got his eye on the grieving girlfriend.

Niamh kisses that corpse on a dare.

"Hijinks" doesn't quite cover it.

Comparable to: London Irish was written and created by Lisa McGee before she made Derry Girls. It's pretty much a more adult version of that.

How to get it: I had to dig for episodes on YouTube originally, but it's now streaming on Amazon Prime. 

Connections to previous Wreckage: London Irish was part of List #49: A Few of the Best First Seasons of TV I Watched in 2014.

Rec. #838: Megan Amram on The PosCast

What: Megan Amram, genius writer of The Good Place, visits the podcast co-hosted by her boss, Mike Schur. The named focus of this episode is Houdini-related puns, but mainly it's Amram, Schur, and Joe Posnanski chatting about baseball, musicals, and wordplay.

Representative quote: "I don't know a lot about baseball, but I am very passionate about it ... I mean, I know what a baseball is. From the emojis."

How to get it: If you search for "poscast," Google will autocorrect to "podcast." You can find a direct link to the episode here.

Connections to previous Wreckage: The PosCast was part of List #92. See more Megan Amram content in Rec. #427, Rec. #445, Rec. #594, and Rec. #751.

Rec. #837: Why Powerful Men Love to Cast Themselves as Victims

What: In this essay for New York Magazine's Intelligencer (news) section, Rebecca Traister examines how powerful men use language of extreme violence --- "lynching," "witch hunt," "mob," "guillotine," "beaten to death" --- when they are facing (generally mild) consequences or critiques for their actions.

It's infuriating and it's everywhere.


Representative quote: "This is the truly grotesque factor: It is power itself that renders people recognizable to us, affords them our sympathy and empathy; it’s power that makes them more likely to be believed when they tell us of the injustice they have suffered."

How to get it: The article was published on October 24.

Read more: Kate Harding (see List #66) has an upcoming book on this very subject - Victim Complex: On Snowflakes, Witch Hunts, and the Cult of Personal Responsibility.

Rec. #836: I Am Your Pug and I Have Heard the Call of the Wild

What: From McSweeney's Internet Tendency, please enjoy this short imagined monologue.

Representative quote: "You domesticated us. The cat is out of the bag. And now I’m scared of cats. And bags."

How to get it: "I Am Your Pug and I Have Heard the Call of the Wild" was published last week.

Connections to previous Wreckage: Enjoy more from McSweeney's Internet Tendency with Rec. #461: "If Literature's 'Complicated Men' Were on Tinder" and Rec. #522: "The First Female President."

Rec. #835: Quote from a Fictional Character #103

"Loving someone means muting their flaws for two to five years."

--- Andrés,

Los Espookys, 2019