I saw the touring Broadway performance of Into the Woods over the weekend. It’s a bit splashier than the usual touring productions, because some big name Broadway stars are on this tour. It wasn’t my first show back since the pandemic started or anything like that, so I can’t claim any extra emotional resonance on that front, and I’m not versed enough in the stars of Broadway to fully understand the importance of who I saw, although everyone was very good.

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But as I sit here a few days later, what I find myself thinking about was the puppeteer who played the cow. Into the Woods threads together a series of fairy tales, and one of the stories is a retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk. Jack trades the cow for some magic beans, a choice that enrages his mother at first but then leads him to the land of the giants, where he finds treasure and misfortune in equal measure. One of the conceits of the show is that he loves the tragic old cow that his mother makes him sell, and since it’s onstage and a character for some of the show, this production has a puppeteer onstage making the cow move around.

I’m really not doing it justice with that description. This guy made a skeletal cow frame have a personality. It was amazing. He made the cow sad and scared and happy and affectionate simply by bobbing its head, or contracting its body, or by tipping its nose down. As a performance, it was just as impressive as everything else going on (the puppeteer is one of the Broadway stars who joined the tour, and even more impressively, had never done any puppeteering work before).

It also would have looked like nothing on a screen. And here we all were, in a crowd of thousands, laughing our heads off because a guy made a cow puppet react onstage.

No real broader point here other than it’s always wonderful to see good live theater, and I enjoyed the reminder of how magical it is to be in a room, with a full audience, caught in the same illusion together.

Oh, you’re annoyed you just read about musical theater instead of a sex club? I did say this newsletter is not about a sex club. You’ll just have to keep reading.

What I’m Reading in Print

One of the perks of my new job is that I get to manage the books section of the magazine. At the risk of sounding too booster-y for my day job, I will just say that I really enjoyed the book for our next issue, Kantika, by Elizabeth Graver. It’s a Jewish diaspora story and a refugee story and a story about mothers and daughters. The novel follows Rebecca Cohen, who spends the early part of her life in Istanbul before fleeing to Barcelona with her family, and then eventually settling in NYC. It’s also loosely based on Graver’s real family, and she’s interspersed actual family photos throughout the book.

I also read Scorched Grace, by Margot Douaihy, this week. It is about: a lesbian nun ex punk rocker trying to solve a series of arsons and murders at the Catholic school where she teaches in New Orleans. I think it’s set to be the first in a series, and it’s also the first book out under Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn’s new literary imprint, and it’s about as gonzo in tone as a book about a lesbian nun ex punk rocker private eye ought to be.

Do you also do that thing where it’s really almost time to get to bed, but you’re so close to the end of a book and you might as well finish it, and then you are going to bed at 1 a.m.? Great, perhaps you would also enjoying reading Hotel Magnifique, by Emily J. Taylor. It’s a fun YA read, about a pair of sisters struggling to get by who get jobs at a magical traveling hotel, and then gradually come to realize that (of course) the hotel’s thrilling enticements cover some very dark secrets. I’m partial to stories about sisters as a committed sister, although as a committed younger sister, I wish the younger sister in this one had had a bigger role. Younger sisters can be protagonists too, you know.

As always, if you decide to buy one of these using the Bookshop link, I’ll get a small percentage, except I did a regular Bookshop link for Kantika because I couldn’t decide if there were weird ethics involved there since I was paid to read it for work. I promise, I would recommend the book independently of the newsletter.

What I’m Watching

I’ve been watching the new season of Ted Lasso, which I still enjoy, but, to be totally honest, I might drop this time through if not for the fact that I like reading what everyone is saying about it. Sometimes it’s nice to watch big discourse shows so I can read all the interesting criticism being published about them, even if I’m not that into the show anymore. There are rumors the show might end after this season, but it’s starting to feel like they’ve played out all they have to say about the main character. The people surrounding Ted still feel narratively interesting, but I’m not sure that Ted himself does. I think that may be something of an intentional point the series is making: Why is Ted still in London? But as a central thread for the season, it feels a bit like asking what the point of the show is. Ted Lasso watchers, are you still as into it as ever?

Given the show’s speedy renewal for a second season, I know I’m not the only person watching the new Netflix show The Night Agent. It’s about this young FBI agent, Peter Sutherland, whose name I have memorized because it is said out loud to other characters approximately 400 times every episode. Peter, in the premiere, prevents a subway bombing from killing anyone, but because his father was an Accused Traitor who died under Mysterious Circumstances (they say his dad’s name a lot too—his dad is also named Peter Sutherland, and everyone is like, you’re Pete Sutherland’s kid? And he goes yes I’m Peter Sutherland), young Peter’s heroism is instead under a Cloud of Suspicion. Did HE do the bombing? If he wasn’t involved, how did he know to stop it??? Has everyone SEEN how square his jaw is? I don’t really get the cloud of suspicion because if he was involved in planning a domestic terrorism, why would he then thwart the domestic terrorism? Anyway, as penance he is given a boring desk job where he must sit in front of an emergency phone and wait for it to ring. His bosses are the deputy director of the FBI but ALSO the president’s chief of staff. I don’t know anything at all about FBI or White House hierarchy, but this seems absolutely baffling to me. Also, this is all established in like the first ten minutes of the show. So obviously the phone rings and it is a young lady who has just watched her aunt and uncle get murdered, and in the moments before the assassins appeared, they gave her the phone number and are like, call this and say the code! Coincidentally she is Good at Computers so eventually she and Peter Sutherland pair up to figure out what’s going on in this scandal that, would you believe it, could involve Traitors in the White House??

This show is very much outside my normal wheelhouse of shows but somehow I just…keep watching? I don’t really like cop shows! Who have I become? The dialogue is a bit cheesy and every new character is either a bad guy, a new main character (literally this happens like three full episodes in), or about to get murdered. But the action sequences are pretty suspenseful (Peter and his fellow sleuth are constantly barely escaping certain death) and the show has an unexpected affection for letting conversations between characters meander as they get to know each other. There’s a real patience for developing relationships in between all the spy stuff. Sometimes you just want to watch some quality cheese.

Here’s a webcomic to help you pick what to watch, if you can’t decide.

What My Readers Are Saying, or, Rather, Here’s the Promised Bit about the Sex Club

If you would like your feelings about the newsletter to be shared with my audience, please reach out! Perhaps another reader would appreciate your insights, such as what this anonymous reader has shared: “I got this in my inbox and suddenly was like, aaaahhh! What is this??? Because ‘leisure time’ is the name of a sex club my ex husband was interested in attending and I used to get their regular emails. LOL I am crying laughing that I moved it to junk. Back to inbox. I had scanned it and was like wow, maybe they’re trying a new tactic to lure people in—writing about real stuff.”

To remind you, last week’s newsletter opened with an anecdote about my elderly cat’s health, and I have not stopped laughing since at the notion that this reader skimmed past the cat stuff and STILL thought this was a marketing email from a sex club. In conclusion, I would like to affirm that I am NOT promoting a sex club. But maybe they should consider adding some cat anecdotes to their marketing material.

What I’m Reading Online

If you’re the type of extremely online person who has affections for or nurses grievances against specific New York Times columnists, this piece is for you. I shan’t clarify which of these people I personally identify with, but rest assured that my taste is exquisite and I don’t like any of the dorks.

Somehow the new movie about Dungeons and Dragons is supposed to be good? A pleasant surprise, although I think Chris Pine, who stars in it, may have that kind of movie star charisma that is just unstoppable no matter what the vehicle. The movie was written and directed by John Francis Daley, who a certain type of TV fan will remember as the nerdy Sam from the iconic and unjustly canceled early oughts masterpiece, Freaks and Geeks. And I know this is just a marketing video, but I’m nonetheless charmed that he corralled his old co-stars together to make this video.

There have been a lot of good pieces on the ways in which Twitter is dying, but I was partial to this one: “That our system allows wealth to be turned into a weapon to nuke things of broad societal value is one hard lesson we should take away from the wreckage of downed turquoise feathers.”

This is a tweet, but it’s more of a Reddit story: Someone drove into Washington DC, and then forgot which parking garage they’d left their car in. This is a wholly relatable nightmare to me, a person who both finds parking garages spooky and always forgets where her car is in them. Luckily for this Redditor, they randomly parked in the building where the Washington Post is, and the reporters helped find their car.

In an age where every moment of internet fame swiftly leads to the subject issuing merch, it’s refreshing to see Jorts the Reddit cat use his platform to advocate for workers’ rights, while still cycling in cat pictures and stories about getting trapped in trashcans for his fans. If that sentence is totally baffling to you, I am very sorry, but if you enjoy Jorts’ presence in the world, here’s an interview with him in which he claims to type out his tweets using his toe beans.

What I’m Listening to

Like every right-thinking person, I’m listening to the new Jenny Lewis single. A thing I’m doing this summer is seeing Jenny live twice to make sure I’m seeing her with as many of the J. Lew fans in my life as I can. If you or your loved ones need someone to see Jenny Lewis with, please release my bat signal into the sky (it’s your credit card information, because otherwise this is going to get expensive).

It’s opening day for Major League Baseball! As usual, I predict that the White Sox will win it all, but I would be pleased if they simply manage to avoid completely shitting the bed like they did last season. Get excited for next week, when I will only have one book recommendation for you, because I’m about to start on one of my favorite types of books: an absolute brick of a fantasy tome. And if you came here looking for the sex club Leisure Time, I’m very sorry to disappoint. I hope you find it.