weekend recs (aug 21, 2026)
- teenage sex and death at camp miasma is only in limited release but if it's in limited released near you, it's the most fun you'll have watching a movie this weekend! i went to an auditorium without recliners or assigned seating which shows you how hyped i was. hannah einbinder and gillian anderson deliver on something that is both smart and very entertaining. jane schoenbrun's first movie we're all going to the world's fair is one of my favorite modern horror movies and maybe the only time a single-person-in-a-room bottle episode movie has worked for me? i was colder on i saw the tv glow but i want to rewatch it eventually because it may have been a case of being a hipster complaining about the band's second album finding a larger audience (or i was just in a mood that day).
- idols of ash (mac, windows) only costs $2.49 and is a 10/10 perfect short video game in which you rappel down through vast underground caverns while being chased by a giant worm. the whole thing is built around the best video game grappling hook ever made. most 3d video game grappling hook interactions feel so stage-managed: you're bound to specific points where the game loudly announces that you can catch your hook and then you click it and hook it. with this one, there are no guides and no limitations: you just freely lob the hook and physics handles whether it catches (and so catches you). the kinesthetic rush you get once you get into the flow of throwing out your hook, jumping out before it lands and hoping it catches, feeling it catch and swing you forward with new momentum, then releasing it to fly through the air and throw the hook again can't be fully captured in videos, you have to play to know. (if you're good at video games, apparently you can beat it in like 25 minutes, but it lasted me a few hours)
- "how biden enabled israel’s aggression toward gaza—and iran" by david d. kirkpatrick- i'm in a constant state of catching up on back issues of the new yorker and the new york review of books and, as i read and there are articles i think deborah would want to read, i dog ear the corners of the first page of each chosen article and then put the magazine in an inbox for her to read while she eats her lunch. this article represents in great specificity the disgusting decisions of the biden administration (other recent coverage of these same staffers has sometimes felt like an easy opportunity for them to have reached their one day where everyone was against this, but this piece, with its profusion of damning detail surrounding their lame hindsight protestations about feeling bad about the genocide that couldn't have happened without their facilitation, is purely an indictment, imo)
- "talk ya shit" by busta rhymes. a new song made from a never-before-heard beat by the greatest beat maker of all time j dilla? with an exuberant feature from late period wayne, who i can never get enough of?! i like beat switches as much as the next Drake fan but i appreciate that they build the whole thing around a single short loop (with some occasional filter sweeps and etc). it's a level of confidence that i aspire to ("I got the game in my pocket, I'm playing keepaway") and i'm putting it in my backpack for strength.
- the frenchmen: or, my life in theory by emily eakin. i mentioned this in passing the other day but fuckkk this book is exactly what i always most want, which is to say a combination of personal memoir, accessible intellectual history, and dishy biographical anecdotes. example: "Like Lacan, Breton was a controlling and demanding man; despite preaching a doctrine of spontaneity and freedom, he brooked no dissent from his followers. The Surrealists were required to attend daily meetings at the time and cafe of Breton's choosing, and even to order drinks according to his specifications, from a personal hierarchy of beverages ranging from the anise licqueurs Pernod and Ricard (the closest one could get to absinthe, which was banned) on down to beer and vermouth. Unsurprisingly, the Surrealists—not unlike the Lacanians later on—were constantly fighting and breaking up"
- karly sargent. my favorite internet sketches lately: such a funny voice and one of the most lithe, expressive physical comedians around. for some laughs, try "POV godzilla hearing his friends use the term bridezilla", "when you walk into an empty store with only one employee", "the people who come up with new oreo flavors", "my impression of the guy who catches the elevator", and/or "saying hi to a baby"
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