Carol and other movies! Holiday playlist! Faces quiz!

Hey friends,

Hope you’re all hanging in there. Apologies for interrupting the rare, blessed silence in your email inboxes, but it’s Sunday and that means I’m here to say… something.

Podcast-wise, we’re still mostly waiting for everyone to get back to work lol, but I’ve got a Gender Conceal recording scheduled for Tuesday, so we should still be able to sneak in a bonus podcast before the new year. Keep an ear out for that one.

Otherwise… hmmm… not much going on. It’s my second Christmas in New York and my week is full of very cute gay little activities with friends. Did you know that you can just stay home and vibe for the holidays? It’s legal, it turns out!

In other personal news, I spent way too much time yesterday joining Letterboxd and then trying to think of every movie that I’ve ever seen. (I was very into movies in high school and ultimately got a fancy film degree, but then I erased everything before 2016 from my brain so who the hell knows what I watched in that era.)

Letterboxd is so funny because some people are writing really long, earnest film reviews, and some people are doing little quips. I promise you now that I will never, ever, write a long and earnest review. Nor will I read them! For that matter, I only rarely watch movies. However! I love reading little jokes and making little lists, so here we are. (I said something about my elaborate list-making tendency on instagram yesterday and my friend replied that “this is exactly one of the questions in the autism assessments lol”; rarely have I felt more seen and also owned.)

Anyway, I saw Carol for the first time this week. That was one of my gay little activities. I’ve never seen a more realistic dyke-ex dynamic than Cate & Sarah Paulson’s! Love 2 b gay.

Photo: Letterboxd review of Carol (2015) that says "my favorite thing about having hot gay sex is when I wake up the next morning and find Sarah Paulson silently chain-smoking in the corner, waiting to drive me home."

OK, here’s Links & Stuff:

• The first note in my little list was “everything I recommended last week without reading it  turned out to be good, so write that down.” So.
• The 2023 faces quiz is here!! I feel like I learn so much about NYT readers from the results—mostly that they’re all sleeping on Ayo Edebiri. (I got 41/52, not to brag! It’s a gift link so lmk what you get)
• PORTLANDERS!!! You can weigh in on what the city should do about all those statues of white people that got pulled down during the protests! Vote here. 
• Speaking of Portland, I was really interested in this comparison of Portugal’s decriminalization of drugs vs Oregon’s recent attempts.
• This is probably too in the weeds for most of you, but if you’ve been wondering what’s been going on in the podcast industry this year, here are a bunch of takes. (IMO: it’s very bad!)
• I feel like this is half of a story and I really want to know what went down!!!!
• I very enjoyed this “medieval streamers” TikTok bit (which has a little narrative if you start from the beginning!)

Last but not least: I’m currently the progress of updating my perennial Christmas-etc playlist for this year, but here’s what it looks like rn. (This is an ancient playlist that I’ve expanded over the years, so it contains a lot of novelty stuff from my childhood and also 2012 indie hits.) (I wanted to add more songs from Matt Rogers’s Christmas album, which I saw him perform last night, but I listen to this playlist with my mom most years and I’m not quite brave enough to play RUM PUM PUM for her.) (Also apologies again for the Spotify links!)

That’s it for this week. Hang in there. Here’s your weekly Rhubarb.

Photo: Ruby perched on top of a door, next to a Jeff Rosenstock flag hanging on the wall, so that she appears to be directly next to a big "666."

Xo,

Yr resident gender detective

PS: Thank you Alyssa for the holiday mail! Everyone else, I really recommend checking out Alyssa’s work at Craft or DIY.