Obsessions This Week: July 27–August 2, 2026

Hello, it’s me, your friend who has neither seen The Odyssey yet nor read translator Emily Wilson’s viral (and frankly erudite) critique about it that every man on Substack is mad about. As my friend Sarah said on Threads,

lowkey my take is that i do think that review was a little rude but i also think it’s very cool and chic to be a little rude

Correct!

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Possibly the most me-coded trailer of all time dropped this week:

Adapted from a short story I mean to read as soon as possible, this movie comes out (rightly so) in October, and I will be SEATED.

Conor and I are seeing our friend Audrey Jonas perform with Las Chingonas at The Laugh Factory this Thursday, August 6. Audrey is always great, and I have a little love for The Laugh Factory as a onetime intern there, a decade ago.

(The movies.) On Saturday, I finally made it through “Return of the King.” Would you believe it? Those crazy hobbits really did it. I truly thought our boy Frodo was going to die. And before you question me, yes, I had indeed avoided spoilers for 23 years, because I simply Did Not Care and Tuned Out whenever anyone anywhere talked to me about LOTR. That may or may not change from here on out; I haven’t decided yet. I will say those stories seem to me to be about teenage boys going off to fight in WWI, and that is the only way I can access a world that gives no care to the interior lives of women. It’s not FOR me. Which is not to say I don’t know plenty of LOTR nerds who are women—I know at least three!—I just find it borderline inscrutable. But I did cry, and I liked the zombie ghosts a lot. I have renewed respect for Viggo Mortensen.

While we mercifully watched the theatrical cut, which is merely 3.5 hours, it did take us closer to five, because I kept pausing to ask questions. Honestly, all three of the LOTR movies (all of which I watched for the very first time in my LIFE this YEAR out of LOVE for people who love those dang books and films) just gave me a vertiginous sense of deferred and borrowed grief. To think, had Tolkien but had a touch of therapy to process his profound PTSD, we wouldn’t have Dungeons & Dragons today.

Certain colleagues and friends in the Pacific Northwest have been sharing a lot of content about the affectionately-dubbed “Jimothy,” a wild raccoon with a spinal condition that everyone is finding adorable and/or odd. Adoddable. I worked hard to find the right clip, above, to introduce him to you if you have not yet seen him. The other charming find here is the Google doodle that animates across web results when you search his name.

I read it early last week, and I keep thinking about it. It was one of the more nuanced and interesting pieces I’ve read about ceramic versus traditional “nonstick” cookware. I’ve got both types in our kitchen, all hand-me-downs, and now I’m looking sideways at them both. Thought the article did a great rundown of the tradeoffs of each, as well as the false “toxic” versus “green” dichotomy retailers try to pull. I will never look at an Always Pan the same way again.

Friends and I watched this Thatcher-era period film starring a very young Helena Bonham Carter and veritably JUICY Cary Elwes on Saturday about Lady Jane Grey, “The Nine Days Queen,” so you can pretty much predict how it goes. Both leads are lovely, and the costumes are excellent. A young Patrick Stewart plays one of several villains, and looks great doing it.

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With his two index fingers—“the eagle method,”
as one says in Korea—he broaches everything else:
             the recent death of a Korean actress, lessons
             from the life of a sportswear brand chairman.
Then, a turn:I don’t like to use the word “love.”
It never feels complete.
             Away from him, me in my new country, everyone
             and everything is in love: I love
            your shoes, I love your hair, this, that, him, her.
When had my father and I said the word
to each other?
             How many times had I, picking up his call,
             ended it in a rush, bored, running
             to declare love to my boyfriend?
My teenage passions, precious;
my father’s loneliness, not my responsibility.
             My “wild goose father,” flying back and forth
             to see a closed room, only petulance left
             at the door, as I preened privately for nonexistent boys.
How easy it was to forget this man’s sensitivity,
his love for music, that he took saxophone lessons,
             coming home to an unlit apartment.
             A taciturn man, who sings alone.
             Who, when years later asked
what instrument he likes listening to the most,
said, the human voice.

Two absolutely top comics at the top of their respective games gave the big Just For Laughs (JFL) address this year:

Thank you to literally every algorithm that spies on me for sending me this on every possible feed.