Years ago, when I was a young office worker laboring away in the cubicle mines, I was a rabid fan of the history-themed web comic Hark a Vagrant. Much of what it covered was historical events, but it also explored literary classics, and on special occasions, the writer, Kate Beaton, would draw comics based on vintage Nancy Drew covers. All of these were very funny, but one of them has always stuck out in my memory, called The Mystery of Crocodile Island. In the strip, inspired by a vintage cover of ol’ Nancy facing off with a croc, Nancy cleverly says “This island is full of crocodiles! That explains so much.” And then a man responds, “It’s called Crocodile Island. This was not a mystery that needed to be solved.” That last line, “This was not a mystery that needed to be solved,” has been in my head for, at a rough estimate, 15 years. It’s partly because there’s something so funny to me about the notion of Nancy Drew solving that mystery that is not a mystery, but it’s also because it turns out there are quite a lot of situations in life where you’ll be confronted with some impassioned individual connecting dots that were essentially already lines.

This came up again recently because a friend and I were complaining about a not-to-be-named newsletter that seemed to be answering a question with pretty evident answers as though the wheel had been invented. But I think of it every time some person on the internet is all, “Rosebud is the sled!” or whatever. I realize there is some irony to me complaining about pointless newsletters in my newsletter, but sometimes I think our current age of having so much information at our fingertips makes people think they should always be pulling a rabbit out of a hat, so to speak. Are you really saying something visionary? Are you, perchance, answering a question that no one was asking?

Rest assured: I have not solved any major mysteries over here at Leisure Time HQ, including The Mystery of Who Keeps Leaving a Hairball in the Living Room. But I have been enjoying the notion that this one line from this comic still floats through my thoughts all these years later. It’s funny what sticks with you, isn’t it? You can’t really predict what’s going to lodge in your brain forever and ever. I bet you are thinking, right now, of a viral video you saw in 2008 that you still quote today, half-consciously, in front of audiences who won’t even recognize it. It’s OK, though. You don’t have to solve that mystery for them. Unless you think they might like to read some funny Nancy Drew comics (they’re all so good).

What I’m Reading Online

Catching up with the D&D movie tonight, but I enjoyed this piece about why Chris Pine so often rises to the top of movie star Chris rankings.

This is one of the wildest videos I have ever seen. A guy was skiing down a mountain and by pure chance noticed a snowboarder was trapped, head down, in a snow drift, and then rescued him. And now they are pals.

My brother-in-law has successfully indoctrinated our family to support the YIMBY movement, but I liked this interview with Sen. Brian Schatz that gets into some of the nuts and bolts of why progressives should be interested in the movement. Take it from Brian: “The seminal moment when I became an aggressively yes-in-my-backyard person was when I fully understood that zoning—exclusionary zoning in particular, restrictive covenants—came right after Jim Crow was outlawed by the Supreme Court of the United States. Folks that wanted to continue the legacy of Jim Crow figured out a way to do that which would pass constitutional muster. And so all of that stuff was designed to keep primarily Black people out of affluent neighborhoods. Even though there are a lot of progressives and environmentalists who invoke the phrase ‘Protect the character of our neighborhood,’ we need to note that history there is pretty dark.”

I don’t expect actors to be fonder of each other than any other random collection of coworkers, but the affection among the Party Down cast is really sweet to read about. This victory lap of a conversation between all of them after the new season ended is just pleasant to read. People who like each other and admire each other’s work made a good thing together.

Hey remember when I complained that Amazon Prime didn’t seem to care about building a brand around their shows? Here’s a whole long reported piece from the Hollywood Reporter about how they’re just throwing money at everything: “There’s no vision for what an Amazon Prime show is.”

Sometimes I read about things, like Twitter choosing to label NPR very ominously as “state-affiliated media” as though it’s a tool of the government, and it’s hard not to feel like everything just gets worse and worse? Like this is a smaller thing as compared to more serious concerns vis a vis climate change, reproductive rights, etc, but I think that’s what makes it feel worse, that it’s just a garbage thing happening on top of that as a symptom of a broader sense of unwellness. NPR has strenuously objected to it. This has been your weekly update on the ongoing destruction of Twitter.

Happy Passover!

Technically this is not something I read online, but it’s something you can read online! Take a peek at my review of the first two episodes of Schmigadoon for Episodic Medium. This one is free to read, but future reviews will be behind the paywall, if you would like to support a cool TV criticism newsletter.

What I’m Reading in Print

As I alluded last week, I am still reading an absolute brick of a fantasy book, so I have but one reading recommendation for you this week: The book is called A Day of Fallen Night, by Samantha Shannon. I realize this kind of thing is not for everyone! I got into that genre when I was little, and there was definitely an era when everything I read had a dragon or a sword or a horse or a horse holding a sword and fighting a dragon on the cover and was at least 800 pages long, and then there were like four sequels to read. I had really stopped doing it as an adult, though. And then back in 2020 when we were all collectively losing our minds, a coworker of mine wrote a piece where she asked all these local bookstores for book recommendations, and someone recommended this book The Priory of the Orange Tree. And there was just something about this giant book with a colorful cover promising to sweep me away into a different world that was profoundly appealing at the time. It was the beginning of a monumental shift in my reading habits, not necessarily into reading nonstop fantasy books, but as a way to cope with the [vague horrified gesture] of it all.

And now I read like two books a week and have embraced a policy of reading only things that make me want to dive in right that very moment, including the occasional fantasy brick. And the book I’m reading right now is the prequel to Priory. That was a lot of runway to explain this book without saying what it’s about, which is: In this world, a knight and a witch fended off a horrific monster called the Nameless One generations earlier, and in the current era, countries are split on their interpretation of what actually happened in that battle, and what needs to be done to prevent it from happening again, and whether it’s even possible for it to happen again. The story jumps between characters in a series of these countries, and each of them has a different awareness of what’s really going on, and different reactions once the Nameless One shows signs of reappearing. So there’s a reluctant princess whose bloodline is supposed to prevent the Nameless One from coming back, a witch whose order was founded in response to the Nameless One but may have lost its way, a kind of a viking dude, and a lady who rides a dragon. All the pieces you’d expect! I like Shannon’s fantasy books because they have predominately female main characters, which was certainly not the case in the books I read as a kid, and she’s very good at making her world seem like a real place, even as magic is happening. I would recommend Priory as a better entry point to the world, but the prequel is good too.

It Happened to Me: A Mouse Destroyed My Air Plant for No Reason

This week I arrived at my office only to discover that an anonymous CRIMINAL had dragged one of my air plants across the desk and then torn all the strands off and left them in a pile. The criminal also left some mouse turds on the desk, so my suspect list is short (again, a very solvable mystery). I’m pretty militant about not leaving food on the desk for this very reason, and now I imagine the mouse took this action to threaten me into leaving more. I will not be bullied!!! I also actually had left food out by accident this last weekend for the first time, but it is important to note that the mouse completely ignored the cheddar and horseradish flavored potato chips, possibly because they were kind of gross. I wanted them to be zesty and unusual, but I think the chip company might have flown too close to the sun on that one.

What I’m Watching

I started watching the Apple TV+ show The Big Door Prize this week. It stars Chris O’Dowd and Gabrielle Dennis and it’s about a small town where a mysterious machine appears in the general store. The Morpho machine looks like an old school arcade game, and after you provide some personal information, it prints out a little envelope that promises to tell you your destiny. But most of what the show is about is how these little envelopes really start to mess with people’s heads. How seriously should they take the advice? How much should their lives change because of it? What if the advice isn’t flattering? O’Dowd (possibly best known to you as Kristen Wiig’s love interest in Bridesmaids) excels at Mild-Mannered but Aggrieved, and his frustration over the implication that his altogether pleasant life could be better is palpable.

One of the joys of living in a city with some really nice independent movie theaters is that they’re constantly screening classic films so you can experience them on the big screen with a crowd of people. Case in point: This week, I saw the 1984 Wim Wenders movie Paris, Texas at the Coolidge Corner Theater. I went into it without knowing terribly much about the plot, which is probably the best way to experience the movie. It starts with a mysterious man, played by Harry Dean Stanton, who’s discovered wandering in the desert, and then…well, I actually don’t want to say anything else, because one of the joys for me of watching this movie was how profoundly unpredictable it becomes in the later stages. There are some expected things that happen early on after he’s discovered (his identity doesn’t remain a secret for too long, for instance), and then there was a tipping point where I had absolutely no idea what was going to happen from that point on. It’s a very slow-moving movie, but it absolutely rewards your patience, and has some phenomenal acting performances from Stanton and Nastassja Kinski.

I also watched the Brandon Cronenberg film Infinity Pool this weekend, which stars viking/vampire Alexander Skarsgard in his first role that made me say, “Wait. Is his hair dyed blonde?” He plays a failed writer who’s staying at a resort in the fictional country of La Tolqa with his much wealthier wife. While there, he accidentally kills a man while driving drunk, which is when he learns that La Tolqa has a very strange criminal justice system. In La Tolqa, after you commit a crime, if you have enough money, you can pay for the creation of a double, who is built with your full memories, and then you have to watch the double be killed in front of you. But what if, instead of that causing the criminal to feel grief and remorse, it turns out to be a bizarrely thrilling experience, one the criminal wants to recreate? What if this wasn’t an uncommon response?

It is, as you might expect, a pretty bleak and disturbing movie, with a heavy dose of commentary on the depredations a certain kind of wealthy tourist can wreak on the impoverished countries they visit. It’s gross and violent and possibly not the most subtle movie I’ve ever seen, but I enjoyed branching out beyond my usual wheelhouse, and a little social commentary is good for the soul. Plus, sometimes it’s fun to watch a movie with people where you can periodically yell at the screen about how wild the proceedings are getting.

Reader Testimonial

No more sex club mixups this week, but I heard from another satisfied Night Agent viewer: “I am unable to do anything till I finish the night agent now why am I so invested in this.” That’s just the magic of The Night Agent, folks!

Since I first started pulling this week’s newsletter together, the mouse chewed on another plant. It’s enough to make you ask yourself, Carrie Bradshaw-style, “Am I just providing a salad bar for rodents?” Pray 4 ya girl.