Tyrannosaurus Recs: May 2024

The Fall Guy, Doppelganger, alarm clocks, and other things I love this month

Hi. Hello. Good day. This has been one of those weeks (one kid has a virus! the other had lice!), hence this edition of T-Recs coming out on Friday instead of my usual Thursday. But the good news is that the main other reason I couldn’t get to it yet is because I’ve been doing final rewrites on a NOT-YET-ANNOUNCED BOOK COMING OUT NEXT YEAR (separate from the YA I’m currently mucking my way through) that I’m incredibly excited about. More on that soon, but hopefully in the meantime, this piece of Vague Book News (VBN) will bounce around your brain, subconsciously building anticipation in that way where you actually won’t remember it at all until I mention some more concrete news about it in the future.

In other news, did you hear that Trump was convicted on all 34 counts? I just found out while reading the morning newspaper during breakfast.

All right, enough weird jokes, here’s some stuff I loved this month that I think you might love too.

Alarm clock

After last week’s post about keeping phones out of the bedroom, numerous people inquired as to what we then do about an alarm clock. Well, this may shock you, but we solved this problem by buying an alarm clock. Here’s the one we have! We got it three years ago, and it appears to be sold out now, but Kikkerland has a great selection of others, many of them fun and vintage-y. They are not sponsoring me or anything—it’s not an affiliate link!—so buy yourself an alarm clock wherever you damn please (though perhaps not from a certain local-economy-destroying mega-site…?), but this is a good place to start if you are overwhelmed by capitalism.

Doppelganger, by Naomi Klein

And speaking of capitalism overwhelm, I finished this earlier this week, and I am going to boldly declare it is one of my favorite non-fiction books of all time. No joke. Naomi Klein writes about our current moment of polarization, social media, personal brands, capitalism, cancel culture, Israel/Palestine, and conspiracy in such a clear-eyed, engaging, and accessible way, using the ongoing online confusion between her and feminist-hero-turned-far-right-Bannon-buddy, Naomi Wolf, as a jumping-off point.

Klein’s writing is immensely comforting and clarifying even when the subject matter is horrifying; her brilliant deconstruction of what happened to society and all of us during covid, for example, is so cathartic.

One of the major ideas threaded through the book that really blew my mind is that conspiracy theories almost always originate with actual grievances, which are then twisted and distorted in strange ways (see: QAnon) to shift blame to other sources (e.g. Tom Hanks) instead of the actual ones responsible (e.g. unregulated capitalism and dark money in politics).

It’s a dense book, lots of ideas to absorb, so it was a slower read for me, but I really cannot recommend it enough. I’ll leave you with this passage:

“A commodified self may be rich, but commodification still requires a partitioning, an internal doubling that is inherently alienating. There is you, and then there is Brand You. As much as we might like to believe that these selves can be kept separate, brands are hungry, demanding things, and one self necessarily impacts the other. If countless numbers of us are doubled, all partitioning and performing ourselves, it becomes harder for anyone to know what is real and what and who can be trusted. Which of our opinions are genuine, and which are for show? Which friendships are rooted in love, and which are co-branding collabs? What collaborations don’t happen that should because individuals’ brands are pitted against one another? What doesn’t ever get said, or shared, because it’s off-brand?”

The Fall Guy

Shifting to something lighter, I am going to say something obvious about myself: I love going to the movies. And I especially love going to the movies in the summer. This is the cinematic season that brought us Jurassic Park! And Speed! And Men in Black! And many Marvel movies with varying degrees of quality! So, when summer movie season kicked off the weekend of May 3rd, you better believe we took the whole fam to The Fall Guy. (Yes, including our 6-year old. Our general policy is: strict on handheld screens, loose on comedic content)

And it was SO FUN.

Anchored by a hilarious, committed performance from Ryan Gosling that is the epitome of goofy-cool, this movie is a blast. It fits within a tiny subgenre of art I adore: Action Comedy That is Also a Love Letter to the Entertainment Industry. (I adore this subgenre so much, I co-wrote a musical within it!) In this case, the love letter is to stunt-people (the movie’s director, David Leitch, is a former stuntman), so the stunts throughout are fantastic and delightful and glee-inducing. Don’t get me wrong, this is a silly movie, and some of the plot points just straight-up make no sense, but if you go in knowing that, I think you will truly enjoy yourself.

On a bummer note, I thought for sure this movie was going to be a huge hit, but it flopped at the box office and, though it’s still in some theaters, it’s also already available to rent. I don’t think movie theaters are ever going to go extinct, but I do think the type of movies studios make may continue to shift in a negative, more soulless direction if we don’t support original, genuinely funny, heartfelt big-budget movies like this one. So, if it’s still playing near you, go see it! Or just rent it! Or go see some other quality-seeming movie at the theater! Just support good movies is all I’m saying. And they will support you.

The Thing About Jellyfish, by Ali Benjamin

Another month, another brilliant MG novel I’d been meaning to read for years and finally did. This book is beautiful and human, devastating and uplifting, about a girl named Suzy who, right at the end of the summer before seventh grade, learns that her best friend Franny has drowned. 

I know, super-intense. 

But—like in so many Middle Grade novels that tackle weighty subjects—it’s handled so artfully, without ever shying away from the dark reality of losing someone. What adds to the book’s richness is that it’s as much about mourning a lost friendship as it is a lost life—Suzy and Franny had been growing apart during the year before Franny’s death, and the last time they saw each other, the vibes were not good. This leaves Suzy feeling somehow responsible. And when her mom’s explanation of the death is “Sometimes things just happen,” Suzy is even more thrown, and desperate to restore some logic and order to her world. 

The book follows her search for the truth of what happened to Franny (hint: her theory involves jellyfish) while simultaneously tracing the arc of the girls’ friendship from when they met in a swim class as little kids through sixth grade. It broke my heart, it made me feel alive, and it left me in awe of the way “books for children” can be so sophisticated and profound. Bravo, Ali Benjamin.

“Helpless,” by k.d. lang

We were at Katie’s parents’ last weekend, and her dad put on a k.d. lang album from 2004. This song came on, and it stopped me in my tracks. It’s a cover of the Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young song written by Neil Young. This arrangement has all the stuff I love—chunky acoustic guitar! upright bass! sweeping violin! soulful vocals! steadfast piano!—and I haven’t been able to stop listening to it. It makes me feel big emotions. It also features the lyric “and big birds flying across the sky” which gives me a nice chuckle because I keep picturing Big Bird.

That’s all for this week, friends! Before I go, I’d like to recognize the Knicks one last time. Such an incredible season, they played with everything they had, and I love this team so much. 

Have a lovely weekend, and I’ll be back next week with an interview with stand-up/writer/actor superstar Naomi Ekperigin. SEE YOU THEN