Monthly Roundup Vol. 17

It's a 20% off sale!

Usually monthly roundups are for paid subscribers, but I’m making today’s free because I’m running a sale. That’s right, just like every business you’ve ever purchased anything from, I’m sending you an email about my holiday-adjacent sale. Should I have started this on Black Friday instead of Giving Tuesday? Well, sorry. All of these days are made up anyway. I can’t believe we’ve all been tricked into walking around saying “cyber Monday” as if that’s a normal combination of words.

Anyway! From now until December 15th, you can take 20% off an annual subscription to No One Asked. That gives you this monthly roundup, which is always very long and usually contains at least one personal/embarrassing story, plus I talk about everything I’ve been reading, watching, and listening to over the past month. Plus you get the monthly Alice recaps (although I am late on this month’s but please don’t judge me, we’ve been sick and I spent most of my time making magical healing chicken soup…more on that later!). And you get the satisfaction of knowing you’re supporting a writer, and really, can you put a price on that? You can, and it’s currently $40 a year. But only if you act now! Do I sound like a car dealership commercial yet?

Let’s get on with the roundup. I watched and read so much great stuff this month! Discussed: Mystery Science Theater 3000, marketing romance novels, Werner Herzog, finding appropriate rap music for an eight-year-old, getting nightmares from thrillers, the new Father John Misty, and my current favorite soup.

---

Movies

Beetlejuice. Confession time: until last month, I’d never seen Beetlejuice. This is for sure one of those movies I just smile and nod about whenever people mention it, because that’s easier than explaining why I haven’t seen it. I don’t know, it’s pretty profane and my parents were strict about that kind of thing when I was young (less strict about extreme gore, which is why my dad was showing Alex the Alien films when he was in, like, first grade). I’m always forgetting that a 1980s PG is very different than a 2024 PG—Beetlejuice drops an F-bomb. He’s supposed to be a bad guy, it’s fine, but my son was pleasantly scandalized and I think Hollis was kind of mad at me for not checking this one out on Commonsense Media. Whoops. I can only resolve to do better moving forward.

Single White Female. Still thinking about Steven Weber :’( Too bad there isn’t an emoticon for “stiletto to the eye.” I tried to create one but it’s just looking like a beak.

Ramona and Beezus. For reasons I don’t fully understand, my son was really set on watching Ramona and Beezus for our weekly family movie night. It’s from 2010 and stars a very young Joey King and still pretty young Selena Gomez. This movie is very sweet and I would recommend it if you want a pretty chill, family-oriented movie with nothing inappropriate. Sometimes I get stressed out by how much is happening in action-oriented kids’ movies—people are always going on quests and getting separated from their families, and even as a kid I found that sort of thing to be too much for me. Well, this is the opposite of that. Like the books, it’s focused on Ramona’s home life. I was so glad they kept the scene where Ramona accidentally cracks a raw egg on her head. There was one really sad scene that took us all by surprise (animal death). Hollis still doesn’t recognize any celebrity and I had to explain everyone who walked on screen. John Corbett, Bridget Moynahan, Josh Duhamel…I explained all their best-known roles. He already knew who Selena Gomez and Sandra Oh were (although he was like, “oh, from Killing Eve” and I had to be like, “That is NOT her best-known role, she’s a SURGEON, give me a break!”). It made me feel really bad for Ramona, much the way I feel bad for Dory when I’m reading Dory Fantasmagory. Everyone just needs to let her be! Being a kid is hard!

Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe. My son was rewatching the first episode of The Mandalorian (a great first episode) and mentioned that a scene was boring because it was “just talking.” And then I realized he was referring to a scene with THEE Werner Herzog and, well, this could not stand. I told him how much I love Herzog and he asked, “Is he your celebrity crush?” I mean, no, not exactly, but also…yes. Anyway I had to show him something short and appropriate that explained the appeal of Werner so I went with the 20-ish minute Les Blank short film Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe. He enjoyed it. I forgot that Werner said, “It’s not self-destructive to throw yourself into a cactus.” This is a good one and it’s streaming on Criterion. Watching it always makes me want to watch more movies and write more books.

Books

Big Fan by Alexandra Romanoff. I love, love, loved this short romance novel. At an event recently, someone asked if writing books makes it harder for me to enjoy reading books, which is a good question. And the answer is, sometimes! For example: I cannot stop thinking about the mission behind this imprint (at first I thought it was a freestanding company, but I think it’s an imprint of Simon and Schuster, or just connected to them in some way? I’m not sure!). The cool, bold, minimalist covers. The angle of “this is romance that’s smart.” It’s really interesting! I don’t want to read a thinkpiece about it, lol. I actually really like what they’re doing, but also their Instagram makes me think I’m not hot enough to read their books. In many ways, this idea (SHORT romance) reminds me of mass market paperback romances. You know, like Harlequin, where the focus is solely on the romance itself. In our current landscape, where so many of the most-read romance novels are 500 page slowburn BookTok recommendations and/or romantasy, this feels FUN. I genuinely loved this book, which is about universal basic income (lol but really) and a former boyband member. Highly, highly recommend. The point I’m trying to make is that even though I was so focused on the inside baseball aspects of this, it was so enjoyable that I still got caught up in it. And if you want to talk about the marketing angle here, my email and comments are always open.

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. Well, I finished it. I read it in conjunction with Conquer a Classic through The Bookshelf’s Patreon. I got extremely behind over the summer, but caught up in about a week post-election. What is there to say that hasn’t been said? It’s a modern classic and I’m so, so glad I read it. I would recommend this to almost literally any person and I’ll be thinking about it for a long time.

Any Person is the Only Self by Elisa Gabbert. Nothing better than reading a book that feels like it was written for you…although I am, admittedly, not as smart or well-read as Elisa Gabbert. I love reading about classics, but you really have to strike the right tone. I don’t like the “well these books are classics so they deserve our uncritical respect” tone, nor do I like the “well these books are irrelevant because they haven’t aged well” tone. I want to be able to love something and make fun of it and understand where it falls short. And I think this book does that with topics like John Updike (I loved the analysis of Rabbit, Run, which I haven’t read in like fifteen years), Sylvia Plath, Holden Caulfield, and Phil Collins. I read a library copy but I need to buy my own because I flagged so many pages. A perfect book, if you ask me!

The Quiet Tenant by Clemence Michallon. Ideally I read at least one all-consuming thriller a month, and The Quiet Tenant was this month’s. The concept is horrifying: a woman is being held captive by a serial killer who has a wife and a daughter who don’t even know she’s out there, handcuffed in their shed. And then the wife dies and the man has to move his family into town, away from the hostage shed, so he moves the woman into their new house and tells the daughter she’s renting a room. He handcuffs her to the radiator at night, but during the day she gets to come out and eat dinner with them and act like she’s a normal lady and the daughter doesn’t suspect a thing. And this guy is beloved in their town, like people are doing fun runs to raise money for him, and no one knows he’s holding this woman captive and he’s murdered MANY other women! Wow! This book literally gave me a nightmare. I imagined the serial killer/kidnapper as Ben Affleck and now I feel uneasy whenever I see a picture of him. J.Lo dodged a bullet…

Murder on Sex Island by Jo Firestone. After my nightmare I needed to read something less fraught. Last year for Christmas, Alex bought me this novel by Jo Firestone, who I love in Joe Pera Talks with You and also the podcast Dr. Gameshow. I find it inspiring that she published this herself (and released it as a podcast). It was very silly (good) and I laughed out loud twice. The title is great (it’s about a reality show called Sex Island) and here’s a funny interview with her about writing a mystery. I hope she writes another one!

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O’Brien. My son and I read this and we loved it. I hadn’t read it since I was a kid, so I remembered nothing, but it’s a pleasantly slow-moving book that’s kinda sci-fi, kinda fantasy? I was really happy reading this together at bedtime.

TV

Bake Off. I cried at the finale. No spoilers, though! My favorite part of this entire season is when Alison tried to do a little flip on the counter and fell off. I love her so much and I think this was an especially good season.

The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. You may remember that we’re watching Full House with our son, who absolutely loves Uncle Jesse. We’re continuing on our sitcom theme and showed him a Thanksgiving episode of Fresh Prince. No one was doing it like Will Smith. I miss laugh-track sitcoms actually being funny, you know?

Mystery Science Theater 3000

I was pretty obsessed with Mystery Science Theater 3000 as a kid, but I was almost never able to watch it. It came on the Sci-Fi Channel, but for some reason in my house we could never pay attention to TV schedules and it seemed very mysterious. But I truly thought it was the funniest thing I’d ever seen, and in retrospect it was a big influence on the way I like to talk about movies (it’s possible to love watching something and love making fun of it). Also it’s great to watch when you spend a lot of time by yourself. Well, young Kerry would be freaking out because Pluto (the free streaming service) has a 24/7 MST3K channel and a Rifftrax channel. You can just…watch bad movies with these guys talking over them all the time! What a life this is. I introduced our son and now he’s very into it. He would probably watch MST3K all day if I let him. We watched Gamera vs. Jiger (enjoyable on its own) and now he’s really into Gamera (who is, in case you didn’t know, a friend to all children). This can only be seen as a positive development, if you ask me. Even if you don’t want to deal with the long ad breaks on Pluto, you can watch individual episodes in various places, including the reboot on Netflix and certain episodes on Prime.

Music

Rejoice! A new Father John Misty album is here! In my ideal world, all music would sound like Harry Nilsson, and Father John Misty often does. I like music that sounds deceptively smooth—music that’s pretty but with some anger lurking beneath. I like a lot of instruments…give me some flutes, harps, a string section and we’re in business. FJM is doing all that on this album and more. I listened to She Cleans Up on repeat when I was really mad post-election. I’ve teared up to Screamland. Maybe my favorite right now is Mental Health, which really strikes that balance of beautiful and weird.

We’re seeing FJM for the fourth time in February. The first time we saw him, he was opening for The Walkmen and wearing a white suit, touring Fear Fun, and I mean it when I say I instantly fell in love. It’s always nice when I love an artist who’s currently living.

Otherwise, my house is full of rap music because my son is still convinced that’s the only good musical genre. This is proving to be very challenging for us, because…well, I was going to say I’m strict about what he’s allowed to listen to, but I don’t think most people would allow their eight year old to listen to Lil Wayne. We draw a hard line in our house when it comes to misogyny—something I’ve discovered as our son spends more time out in the world is that many people really do have a “boys will be boys” attitude. Boys will spend all their time playing video games, boys will hate girls, boys will not read books with girls in them, boys will beat each other up, boys will watch violent movies, boys will listen to explicit lyrics. Well, uh…what if they didn’t? Have we tried that? With our culture the way it is, it feels even more important now to really focus on raising a boy who is kind and empathetic above all else, and who understands that masculinity can mean many different things, and it doesn’t have to be toxic. Part of that is simply not letting him listen to lyrics that say, frankly, terrible things about women. One of the boys in his class loves Eminem and I cannot get over this. They’re eight! Also, in general, one of my most strongly held belief is that little white boys shouldn’t spend much time listening to music that frequently uses the n-word. Just seems like a bad idea. And so he essentially has a list of rap songs he’s allowed to listen to, most of them from a Spotify playlist called something like Parent-Approved Rap. The Lil Wayne “clean” mix on Spotify was simply not okay for eight year olds, lol. He’s currently claiming that Pitbull is one of his favorite rappers because he heard him on Usher’s DJ Got Us Fallin’ in Love (that is, unfortunately, the song where Pitbull says “yabba dabba doo/make her bed rock,” but the thing about Usher songs is that women are rarely denigrated…if anything, he loves women too much).

Hilariously, the one non-rap song he wants to hear on repeat is the Post Malone/Morgan Wallen collab “I Had Some Help.” It is catchy.

I didn’t realize this song had a video until now, and I’m not entirely convinced this song isn’t some kind of ironic experiment. When I say that Morgan Wallen looks like he would’ve gone to my high school and gotten kicked out of a dance for showing up drunk…like, if I saw him somewhere I wouldn’t assume he was a singer. I would just think, “oh yeah, he spit his chew into an empty Mountain Dew bottle in study hall.” Also I can’t stop thinking about the story of this video, I’m sorry. Imagine awakening on the ground after being kicked out of a bar and your best friend Morgan Wallen is standing there, tempting you into further debauchery. You stand in the bed of a pickup truck as an American flag flutters and fireworks shoot off behind you. Here’s a YouTube comment that spoke to me:

“This song is so much more than just a breakup song as is represented by the video, here is a great quote "You have the freedom to live and let live, to love and let love. Granting yourself that freedom is one of the healthiest, most constructive things you can do for yourself and the people who matter to you. - Martha Beck This is AMERICA! the freedom to fuck up, get back up on your feet and do it all again. Sin repent forgiveness”

Amen.

Soup

A couple of weeks ago I felt myself starting to get a sore throat (it wasn’t Covid). I happened across this recipe for Curry Coconut Chicken Soup on Shutterbean, and it sounded perfect. I wanted something brothy and spicy to clear out the ol’ sinuses, and I swear to you, I felt better after a few bites. I think it might be magic. Changes I made: I used green curry paste because I couldn’t find yellow, I cooked bone in/skin on chicken pieces in the broth because this felt more healing, I tripled the garlic and used a whole jalapeno. We had this with a scoop of rice and it was great. I just made another batch for Hollis yesterday.

Dakota Johnson Beat

enews

A post shared by @enews

It’s because she would draw penises on them. Do you think she still does that?

That’s it for now. I’ll be back later this week with an Alice post for paid subscribers…which could be you, if you take advantage of the sale! I think you have to use this link to save 20% off a yearly subscription. Imagine if you had this fun in your inbox every month. It could happen…

See you soon. xo