Friday Flames | 7.21.23
A weekly synopsis of what we figured out about big boobs, blockbuster bombs, and broken brains.
We begin with the Bursting Parental Pride portion of the newsletter
We’re very excited to report Business Insider has published our son Robert’s piece about working out west and living out of his car, which is teaching him more life skills than college ever could. It’s not the most conventional path for a 21-year-old to choose (or that we 50-year-olds could have predicted), but we do know he feels as fulfilled as we’ve ever known him to be. And that’s the real magic.
Barbie’s Oppening day
We had a chat this morning about the relative merits of Barbie and Oppenheimer that could be its own podcast episode. Will Barbie offer up underserved social commentary about second-wave feminism, or is it just a shallow cash-grab about IP that launched a million eating disorders? Will Oppenheimer explore the essential moral conflict within “the most important man who ever lived,” or is it just Jurassic Park with more plutonium?
The Barbie movie provides catharsis for a lot of Gen-X women who grew up with Barbies, and whose mothers didn't want them to have Barbies (and didn’t want them to want Barbies). So much guilt and obligation and expectation wrapped up in a child’s toy with impossible boobs. Magda and her contemporaries came of age during grunge and everything anti-pink, so for many Barbie has been a secret guilty pleasure for decades. And now here's this movie—by a women's college alum, no less—that brings all of that out into the open.
Magda can't wait to see it. Doug can wait to see it.
Doug used to love going to the movies, but now he thinks the best use of a movie theater is teaching your kid to drive in the parking lot. He will, however, go see Oppenheimer for the IMAX spectacle, for Christopher Nolan and Cillian Murphy, for humanity’s uncanny talent to create and destroy, and for the parallels with our current trepidation over AI.
This week on the podcast
For Episode 9 we talked to our longtime friend Jodie Ousley, who has spent the last 11 months recovering from life-altering injuries after a catastrophic car accident. Jodie recounts her story with wit, charm, and overarching optimism as she adapts to a very different life in a very different body.
Episode 9: "I don't know what my brain's going to do."
Listen now (62 min) | Last Labor Day Weekend, the car Jodie Ousley was riding in was rear-ended by another doing 120mph. Her car flipped eight or nine times across the highway, and Jodie, riding in “the death seat,” sustained catastrophic injuries from noggin to kneecap. (Note to the squeamish: Don’t do a web search for “degloving.”)
Talk about an Oppenhernia …
The IMAX reel of Oppenheimer is so large—it’s 11 miles long and weighs about 600 pounds—that some theaters need to build larger projection booths around it.
Games people no longer play
Just one week after Doug professed his love for The New York Times’s Digits game, the paper has announced the game will be discontinued on August 8. After they stopped digital Acrostics and killed its archives, Doug is now even more peeved by the challenging puzzles being sacrificed in favor of stupid-ass Wordle.
Currently watching
Doug and the 18yo recently finished a double feature of Lost in Translation and Her, Oscar-winning screenplays written and directed by former spouses Sofia Coppola and Spike Jonze. Each is compelling and immersive on its own, but the backstory, the disparate POVs of their marriage, and the themes of connection and loneliness make them even more insightful about marriage and modern culture when you pair them.
Magda started the new Project Runway All-Stars, but it's so biased toward recent contestants that it’s basically unwatchable. She’ll probably DNF it and get back to catching up on DOOL. (Only 106 episodes behind!)
Currently reading
Magda is reading After Jesus Before Christianity: A Historical Exploration of the First Two Centuries of Jesus Movements, about the 200 years between Jesus's death and the beginning of the Christian church. This is why she loves her church book club, which explores topics like this that she hadn’t thought about before. It's piquing her interest.
Doug is going to keep slogging through How to Stop Time until it’s time to stop.
Coming next week
Our next podcast conversation is with
, who grew up in a rigorous, patriarchal culture as a daughter of Korean immigrants and trained to be a music and brain scientist. She has since upended all of that (except the rigor part) to pursue her many talents as a writer, podcaster, and digital consultant, and we talk about how she hopes her Big Pivot will inspire her daughters to find their own paths independent of outside expectations.Thanks for reading, and happy Barbenheimer Day to all who celebrate!
Magda and Doug