Our upstairs neighbors threw a party on Saturday night so we climbed the four flights of stairs that separate us, bottle of wine in hand. At the door, everyone had to write a secret down on a piece of paper and add it to a shoebox, which was already brimming with folded slips.
Inside the apartment, they had taped index cards with different prompts to the walls and people would strike up conversations under each of them, chat for a bit, pencil something in or not, then move on to the next one. The range was great, from the innocuous (what’s your mother’s maiden name?) to the taboo (what’s your salary?) to the flirty (who is your crush?). The whole night was a good reminder that spontaneous, low-stakes games are the best way to get a room full of strangers talking.
Last week’s cold called for the only natural remedy I believe in - Tucci, Tucci and more Tucci. His first season of Searching for Italy was a pandemic balm, with Stanley crisscrossing different regions and eating his way through local specialties. Each episode opens with his voice-over proclaiming “my name is Stanley Tucci, I'm Italian on both sides!”, a catch phrase that has become the new punchline in our house. The second season isn’t quite scratching the itch in the same way that the first one did but the ending of the Sardinia episode is very special. Four shepherds harmonize, standing in a circle, leaning on each other, like a barbershop quartet. It’s Cantu’ a tenore, a form of polyphonic folk throat-singing in the Olianese dialect.
The Compton Community Garden has been around for ten years but was suddenly listed for sale by the landowner last month. In the food apartheid that is South LA, where there are more liquor stores than grocery stores, the garden provides fresh vegetables, educational programs, food drives and a beautiful calm space. Their GoFundMe campaign is the only way for them to raise the funds and have a viable bid for the land. Part of this month’s subscription pledges will go towards their fund - if you are able to subscribe thank you so much!
This deep dive on Helen Gibson, Hollywood’s first stuntwoman, is the stuff of biopic dreams. She started out traveling the country as part of a Wild West show and wound up in California where she would ride her horse for miles to and from set. She jumped from speeding motorcycles and fell out of planes but as the film industry began to solidify in the 1920s, men in wigs were hired to double for actresses (a practice called “wigging” that still happens to this day).
When roles dried up, Gibson went back to being a trick rider, this time for the circus. She eventually found her way back to film, and performed her last stunt at the age of 70 in John Ford’s 1962 classic, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, for which she was paid $35.
Have fallen deeply in love with this poem from Jorie Graham, can no longer get up.
Ratcatcher, Lynne Ramsey’s first feature set in working class 1970s Glasgow, feels so assured it’s hard to imagine it was her debut film. I had never seen it before, so catching it on the big screen was a treat. The casting is amazing (you could stare into each actor’s face forever) and the visuals are hauntingly gorgeous.
It’s Day 10 of the Writer’s Guild’s strike and here is a good explainer. The picket signs are extremely witty, and it’s looking like this won’t be over anytime soon. HOLLYWOODSTRIKE.ORG is a hub for resources, mutual aid, and creative campaigns.
Kangaroos have two uteri and produce two different kinds of milk. I can’t unsee this and now neither can you.
Jordan Neely’s murder by Daniel Penny was senseless and our lack of public policy is also responsible. Certain states are now considering labeling violence against unhoused people a new category of hate crime. Unhoused people are being criminalized, robbed of their humanity and killed across the country as experts say the population may be as high as it’s been since Great Depression shantytowns.
The Wiyot Tribe has been reclaiming its ancestral lands of Tuluwat Island in what is now Humboldt Bay by buying it back piece by piece since 1999. The last land was returned in 2019, but due to the exorbitant cost of living in California, many Native people remain priced out of the local housing market. Now the Dishgamu Humboldt Community Land Trust is the first community land trust (CLT) under tribal law in the country. It’s a blueprint for creating permanently affordable housing on land under tribal control and its first order of business is rehabilitating Victorian homes into a youth housing project.
This short film is an ode to the Bulgarian national tradition of Kukeri, where people put on elaborate costumes with heavy bells to scare away evil spirits. The annual ceremony has been going on for centuries. "Evil is when we don’t want to be together."
Till next time,
ASK
PS: The next 2 weeks’ letters will look a little different as I will be traveling (!) and leaving my laptop behind while it gets a new battery…
this is the tucci catchphrase in my household https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw5NG580rBk