Dear Gossips,
Canada Day is on Sunday so it’s a long weekend here in Canada which means we will be dark on Monday and back to regular gossip schedule on Tuesday. Long weekend or not, here are some weekend recommendations other than Drake – we’ll get to Drake, eventually, today.
As mentioned a few days ago, I’ve been saving Set It Up for this Saturday. Can’t f-cking wait. I have it all planned. I’m ordering pizza that night. The pizza will arrive at 745pm. I will then prepare my cocktail (elderflower liqueur, gin, and soda), I will take the cocktail upstairs and set it on a coaster on my nightstand next to the bed. Then I’ll go back downstairs, grab two Canada day napkins, the pizza box, and crank up the air conditioning. I will shout at Jacek to leave me alone. I will go back upstairs, close the door to the bedroom, get into bed, legs under the covers, pizza box on my lap, yell at my dogs a few times to stop scratching the door, wait five minutes for them to finally leave me the f-ck alone, and by then, it’ll be time to turn on the Netflix, precisely at 8pm. At 845pm I will hit pause, return the empty pizza box to the kitchen, pee, then get back into bed, fully reclined at this point, and resume. Because, as we all know, the second act of a rom-com begins at the 45 minute mark. That’s when the cuteness gets next level, followed by the prescribed misunderstanding, followed by the third act and the Big Plan to make it all better in the end. That’s when you need comfort. That’s when you need your neck to be resting on several layers of pillows and the duvet to be tucked in just so around your body – so that you can properly absorb all the emotions. The movie should be no longer than an hour and fifty minutes. At which point I’ll have to squeal-text at a few people, pee again, read every article and tweet about the movie, take a few deep breaths, and watch it all over again. Angie Han at Mashable says that Set It Up is “the throwback rom-com you’ve been waiting for”. I’m ready.
So the “watch” has been taken care of. Now it’s on to the “read”.
Ayesha at Last, by Uzma Jalaluddin is Pride and Prejudice only every character in the book is Muslim. This is what the online reading community calls an #OwnVoices story, a movement that supports diversity in characters but also diversity in authorship. We interviewed Uzma on The Social this week and she talked about how for so long – forever, really – so many of us consumed culture through a window, relating to the stories that are taught and broadcast without being able to see ourselves in them. A book like Ayesha at Last turns the window into a mirror for those who are not often the main characters and, at the same time, that mirror can become a window, introducing different faces, different families, different perspectives to others so that we can all better understand each other, so that we can all better empathise with each other.
And finally, here’s the “listen”. As I mention regularly, I love the Radiolab podcast. It used to be my favourite podcast. My current favourite podcast is Radiolab’s other podcast, More Perfect, about the United States Supreme Court. We could do a podcast episode of Show Your Work just on the work of Radiolab and More Perfect. There is no episode from More Perfect’s two seasons that isn’t relevant. But the one that I’ve wanted to shout out for a long time is "Justice Interrupted". I was on a two hour drive when I listened to that episode and I had to keep hitting pause to yell at the windshield because it’s so frustrating. When they give you the stats on how often justices are cut off – and specifically WHICH justices are cut off (spoiler alert: the female ones) – it will trigger something primitive inside of you. I almost don’t want to talk much about More Perfect because I’m so obsessed with it I want it to belong just to me. But More Perfect exists to show us how the law evolves and … devolves. How the court can save and ruin lives. How what’s decided on that bench can inspire but also devastate a generation. And in America, this week, I think you know what that might feel like. If you’ve been reading references the last few days to the Korematsu case, More Perfect presciently dedicated an episode to it in October that you can listen to here. It’s less than an hour unless, like me, you listen to it multiple times. I just replayed it last night. If you have time for it, please let me know your thoughts.
Have a great weekend. Happy Canada Day!
Yours in gossip,
Lainey
