Motley Crew

If you don't live in my daily orbit - and therefore know a quiet existence, free from chaos - you may not know that I'm moderating two panels during SXSW next week. I am excited. I used to do this sort of thing semi-regularly, but divorce upended my life in thousands of tiny ways, and honestly I feel like I didn't completely get all my shit back together until a year or so ago.

Huh. That's a realization. Anyway.

I've been shopping! Due to being on stage in front of more than 5 people, I felt I needed to put on something other than my Bikini Kill t-shirt and cargo pants. (Aside: you'd be surprised how few people know who Bikini Kill is and instead assume I'm advocating beach-specific murders.) I'm coming to the point, I promise.

I have been hyper-focused on buying decent clothes the past couple of weeks, so haven't consumed a lot of media. You're therefore getting a motley grouping of Things today. Consider it a small drop of controlled chaos to make your Sunday fun.

RuPaul Doesn't See How That's Any of Your Business
If you're a fan of Drag Race (and if you're not, what are you doing with your life?), sashay yourself over to this interview with Ronan Farrow posthaste. It is brimming with fascinating anecdotes and quotes from a super-private person who has played a major hand in bringing drag and the larger LGBTQ+ community into the mainstream (for better and worse.) If you think you know him, and can therefore fit him into a neat little box, you are wrong. Check out this bit:
"Criticism also followed an interview with NPR, in 2020, in which he suggested that fracking, an environmentally destructive practice used to extract fossil fuels, was taking place on his husband’s Wyoming ranch. RuPaul remains defiantly annoyed about the matter. “Do you buy gas?” he said to me. “Before you point the finger, smell it first, bitch.” He sounds weary when discussing these controversies. “There’s no combination of words I can put together that would soothe the mob,” he said."

The Cinematrix
I don't know what has overtaken American citizenry to make us collectively obsessed with daily games, but I don't hate it. I'm now at the point where I'm spending a good 30 minutes every day solving puzzles: NYT daily crossword, Wordle, Connections, Tiles, and now Cinematrix, a movie category game from Vulture. (I have had it with Spelling Bee.) Cinematrix is a different kind of thinking from the rest, and you may not like it. But I've been playing it for a week and still haven't filled out the grid completely.

This clip of Richard Lewis and Larry David
Comedian Richard Lewis died this week, a fact which made me more sad than it normally might have due to the fact that I'm enjoying the last season of Curb Your Enthusiasm so much. He was a regular in it, but also a regular in Larry David's actual life—they were apparently born 3 days apart in the same hospital. What I cannot get out of my head is the eerie-ness of this clip, in what would turn out to be Lewis' last episode. (The bit ends at 1:30). Curb is entirely improvised, so it seems very possible that this was a real moment coming from within Lewis. I just... GAH.

I'm off to buy one more pair of shoes. Wish me luck next week!