Tuesday BARB UP July 24, 2018

These are a few of my favorite things at the moment, in no particular order….

Caroline Kepnes, Providence. Her first book since the Joe Goldberg double-whammy (YOU and Hidden Bodies). Read my interview with Caroline Kepnes, she’s brilliant.

Viv Albertine, To Throw Away Unopened. Her second memoir, not just about the final years of her mother’s life, but Viv’s revelations about herself, her family, and men. Much needed.

Dare To Be Different, the documentary about WLIR, the radio station that opened my ears to New Wave music. In 1983, I was living in Israel, at a women’s seminary in Jerusalem. And my brother would send me 90 minute long cassettes, recordings of WLIR in real time. Oh, the joy I’d feel upon receiving his packages. This was what streaming was for us then, janky tapes that I listened to on my walkman. Such a treasure trove it was—Echo and the Bunnyman, U2, the Alarm. And all thanks to my brother and WLIR.

Hannah Gadsby, Hannah. This special. Don’t get hung up on the “comedy” of it. It is a moment of truth. It is a moment of anger. It is a moment of a lifetime. Watch her. Stick with it. “There is nothing stronger than a broken woman who has rebuilt herself.”

Couples Therapy Podcast, hosted by Naomi Ekperigin & Andy Beckerman. I can’t listen to anymore political podcasts; thankfully, there is the podcast Couples Therapy. Naomi and Andy riff on being a couple, they bring up other comics who are in couples or are best friends or are mother and daughter who talk about being in a relationship. So funny, so so so funny.

Keep It Podcast. If you are avoiding politics and don’t mind listening to the trivial, Keep It is for you. Well, it’s for me. I like the obsessive nature, the deep diving on the most inessential detail of controversial pop culture. It’s a perfect respite from the nonsense.

And of course, Earth Hates Me by Ruby Karp, please order ten copies right now and RockythePug. My little bubbie.

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Michiko Kakutani: “I’m so short I could never actually see the bands.”

Janet Mock: “I have shown my body to men who did not come at me with violence, who were seeking out specifically my trans girl body, who came at me with want and desire and pleasure. That helped build up my own self-esteem, confidence, and contentment in my body before I had the resources to change it in the ways that felt medically necessary for me.”

Kelli Maria Korduki: “To me, the thought of financial interdependence with a male partner feels almost viscerally constricting — not because I don’t trust my own partner or have ever experienced anything even approaching financial abuse (quite the contrary!), but because financial independence continues to be the cornerstone of our ability as women and people of marginalized gender identities to have any choices at all.”

Women on Phillip Roth.

Coveting.