Tyrannosaurus Recs: April 2024

Bluey, the Knicks, Heidi Gardner breaking, and other things I love this month

Happy Thursday! Thanks to all of you who have subscribed so far and extra thanks to those who took the time to read my interview with Joe last week. Really appreciated hearing what resonated for you.

Thanks also to everyone who came out to the Monster Club: Monsters Take Manhattan event at Barnes & Noble in Cobble Hill last weekend. There were a lot of 10-and-under kids there (including my own!), which is something I’ve never experienced at my YA events, and it was really fun. For those who haven’t seen my eighty-five Instagram posts about this book, it’s a Middle Grade novel (aimed at readers ages 8-12) that I co-wrote with filmmakers Darren Aronofsky and Ari Handel. I helped them with the first book in the series as well, Monster Club, which was adapted from an unproduced screenplay they wrote and is mostly set in Coney Island. These books are fun, funny, moving, and action-packed, about a 12-year-old kid Eric “Doodles” King and his friends, who discover magic ink that makes their monster drawings come to life. The series has a fun, scrappy Goonies/Gremlins energy, plus a kick-ass New York City backdrop, plus some deeper emotional plotlines too. Great for kids, but I think a blast for adults as well. I hope I convinced you just now to read them. Or maybe it will take six more times, like the marketing experts say.

Now that I’ve ripped the band-aid off on overtly promoting my work on here for the first time, let’s turn our attention to THE MEAT of this week’s post. I’m calling this monthly segment of things I recommend Tyrannosaurus Recs because it made me laugh, or at least grin. And sometimes that’s enough, right? I guess I could’ve tied it in better to the idea of Slow Dopamine. Dinosaurs are slow. So maybe that’s the tie-in. I should work in advertising, I’m so good at this.        

Here, in no particular order, is stuff I love right now, all of which brings my brain, heart, and spirit closer to that elusive state of being: contentment.

Bluey

This show is all over the cultural conversation right now because there was just this slightly cryptic way-longer-than-usual episode, but let’s put all that aside for the moment.

Last week our whole family had the flu, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that our kids, ages 10 and 6, kept finding their way back to Bluey as their sacked-out-on-the-couch comfort watch. They’ve been watching this show for many years now, I think they’ve seen every episode at least five times and yet, here it was again.

And, as I sat and watched some of these episodes, a question occurred to me, not for the first time: is Bluey the smartest show…ever?  The way family life is depicted with such specificity and hilarity, from both the parents’ and children’s perspectives, and SO DAMN MANY moments of, “Holy shit that’s exactly what it’s like” is truly mind-blowing. And the whole time you’re watching cartoon dogs! In the span of each seven or eight minute long episode, they tell such brilliantly rich stories. And the artfulness… I found myself tearing up almost every episode, and it wasn’t exclusively because of my flu delirium.

I keep thinking about the very end of this episode “The Pool.” This is the one where Dad takes Bluey and Bingo to his brother’s pool but only brings the fun pool stuff and none of the boring important stuff that Mom always remembers, like sunscreen or their diving toys. So, all of their pool activities are limited because of the items they don’t have until Mom unexpectedly shows up with everything they need, at which point they can better appreciate and recognize that life can’t exclusively be the fun stuff. Very wise.

So they’re all triumphantly playing in the pool together, and it feels like the episode is done, but then Mom and Dad have this sweet, disarming moment on their pool floaty rafts where they lean in and kiss. And then—and this is the part that kills me—the perspective switches to Bluey underwater, looking up at her parents kissing, and smiling. And that’s the end of the episode. One of those kid moments where your world feels cozy and happy and right; you know Bluey’s going to remember this forever. It had already been a great episode, but this genius artistic choice for the last ten seconds elevates it into something even more transcendent.

The one downside of Bluey is, of course, that the parents play with their kids in this remarkably game, imaginative way that no human non-cartoons could ever sustain. “I want you to play,” our younger one said to Katie and me, as we lay there, the flu sapping us of all our life force. We looked at each other. “It’s because of Bluey,” Katie said. “Ohhhh,” I said. “No, we won’t be doing that right now. Sorry, buddy.” Hopefully our kids will still have some nice memories of us when they’re older.

The Girl Who Drank the Moon, by Kelly Barnhill

This is one of those books I’ve been meaning to read since it came out in 2016, and it did not disappoint. Probably the most smartly political fairy tale for children I’ve ever read. Technically a Middle Grade novel for ages 8-12, but I would without hesitation recommend this to kids and adults alike. It’s compelling, delightful, and moving, with brilliant characters and world-building and surprises all throughout. Quote I’ll hold onto:

A story can tell the truth, she knew, but a story can also lie. Stories can bend and twist and obfuscate. Controlling stories is power indeed. And who would benefit most from such a power?  

The New York Knicks

I have only been deeply passionate and committed to one sports team in my life, and it is the New York Knicks. If you are a resident of New York City, or even the tri-state area, you should know: the playoffs start this weekend, so now is a great moment to start paying attention to your hometown team.

Because these Knicks are so incredible and so much fun.

Look, over the past two decades, the Knicks have had some rough seasons. It’s mainly been rough seasons, in fact, long stretches of years of not making the playoffs, of holding big leads in games and then collapsing in the fourth quarter, of standing around and watching one star player try to do it all on his own instead of passing and moving and working together.

This current team is none of that. As led by the unreal Jalen Brunson, they compete hard every single game. They are scrappy, they are gritty, they are connected. They pass. They play defense. They don’t give up. 

As a longtime Knick fan, it feels borderline miraculous. They’ll be in for a tough first round series against Philadelphia, but I guarantee it will be a thrilling watch. First game is Saturday at 6 pm. Even if you don’t usually care about basketball, now is a fantastic moment to start.

The writing of Sondheim’s last musical

In case this hasn’t yet been made clear, I love hearing about people’s creative processes. I finally got to this New York magazine piece from last August about the writing of Sondheim’s last musical, Here We Are, and it was a joyful read. I never get tired of hearing what an epic procrastinator Sondheim was, but the real highlight was this exchange between Frank Rich and book writer (and one of my first playwright obsessions as a teen) David Ives:

FR: Did Steve’s advanced age make you anxious about completing the work before he died?

DI: Steve was too vital for it to affect me that way. I never thought of him as an old man. He felt like my contemporary. Which is what everybody feels like when you’re in the room collaborating. Everybody is as old as you are, which is 12.

I mean…yes. That’s it. When you’re collaborating, everybody is as old as you are, which is 12. That articulated something about the joy of making things with other people that I never had exactly put my finger on, but it’s that. Collaboration is play. Collaboration is connecting to your inner 12-year-old together. The fountain of youth is…COLLABORATION. Let’s all never stop making things together.

The Chaos Machine, by Max Fisher

I read this last year, but I still think about it all the time. It’s a smart, funny, absolutely chilling work of non-fiction about the evolution of social media.

We all know in a general sense that these algorithms have been predominantly horrible for society, but this book tells the story in a concrete, accessible way that serves as a wake-up call and a reminder that none of this casually just “happened.” The profit model of keep-people-engaged-on-our-platforms-for-as-long-as-possible means that the most extreme, emotionally manipulative content, especially on YouTube and Facebook, always rises to the top. These sites didn’t just give pre-existing white supremacists a place to connect; in many cases, they helped radicalize people who otherwise would never have gone down that road in the first place. 

It’s a profound read. And it’ll probably make you want to slowly back away from all the algorithms in your life. 

Heidi Gardner breaking

If you haven’t seen it yet, treat yourself to Heidi Gardner completely breaking during this SNL sketch from the Ryan Gosling episode. The sketch itself is a hilariously weird premise, but it’s Gardner totally losing it when she sees Mikey Day as Butthead that is the most magical moment.

Breaking during sketches, as Jimmy Fallon was famously known for, can be supremely annoying when it feels forced or lazy or inauthentic, but here, the break is so pure, so unfettered, so playful, so completely out of Heidi Gardner’s control that you can’t help but feel giggly too. And then later reading about how she’s someone who never breaks makes it even more notable. Sometimes the laughter is just too powerful. What a beautiful thing.

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Those are all my T-Recs for this month! Thanks for reading. Next week I’ll be providing a peek into my creative process, specifically the journey I went on when reading the first draft of the YA novel I’m working on.

Be present and stay slow! Like a dinosaur!