Friday Night Dinner, 4.18.25

Approximately 10,000 horrible things happened this week, so I asked some friends to send me pictures of their pets as a palate cleanser:

Leia uses buttons to communicate and once kicked guests out of her house by repeatedly pressing the "all done" button until they vamoosed. Mouse killed her dad's bird friend and buried the carcass under the office filing cabinet AND heater (for maximum smell). A diabolical duo if I ever saw one.

Sheila effortlessly makes complex calculations to fit giant sticks through her doggy dog. We love a woman in STEM (just like Katy Perry)!

Theo prefers to avoid reality for as long as possible by snoozing under the covers until someone reluctantly rouses him.

Norman is a huge slut, and he believes in meritocracy. Puppy is a shoulder cat, and she believes in astrology.

Vern loves trash days, stealing PB&Js, and dreaming about fighting horses. He once sat on my lap and it was the happiest 5 seconds of my life.

Now that the serotonin's flowing, I can tell you what's been on my mind this week.

I don't like mentioning things you can buy because that's what 95% of the internet does and it's fucking annoying; however, I must make an exception for these stamps because I'm obsessed with children's book writer Margaret Wise Brown (who isn't even mentioned on the USPS website, WTF) and illustrator Clement Hurd. If I think back on the books that made the biggest impact on me as a child, they are undoubtedly "Goodnight Moon" and Patricia Coombs's "Dorrie the Little Witch" series. What I love about the former is the way it moves from physical descriptions of the great green room to something more cerebral. By the time "Goodnight nobody" hits and the rhyming pattern is broken, little brains everywhere start short-circuiting after their first brush with literary ambiguity. What does it mean? Who is nobody? In his 2019 revisiting of the book in LARB, Brian Goedde writes,

“Goodnight comb / goodnight brush,” the book says for the second time, calling to mind the old lady saying, “hush,” a rhyme — and a person — we know will follow, but the next page is unexpectedly blank. If the bunny is undergoing the process of individuation, “nothingness” is what the caregiver becomes as a result. At least, this is what we fear. Caretaking is self-erasure, in two steps. First, infants and toddlers squeeze every drop of us, as much as we love them. Second, they grow up and away from us, leaving us emptied out. After “goodnight nobody,” the quiet old lady appears once more, and two pages later, she’s gone.

🤯 In just two words, Brown annihilates the reader. Ernest Hemingway who? Even Pete Campbell finds the book so memorable that he casually references it while tearing Connecticut a new asshole:

To learn more about Brown, check out this episode of 99% Invisible and read Leonard S. Marcus's 1992 biography, "Margaret Wise Brown: Awakened By the Moon." There's a more recent one (2017) by Amy Gary, although I'm hesitant to endorse it because of the laborious writing style. I realize that I haven't said anything about Hurd's illustrations, which are obviously the entire focal point of the stamps, and in a way, probably responsible for my David Lynch obsession. I can't find any comments from Lynch on the book, but there's no way "Rabbits" (2002) wasn't inspired by it. The great green room is so cemented in my mind that I'm pretty sure I could draw a decent approximation of it from memory. Everything about it is unsettling in a way that is simultaneously comforting and I love all the easter eggs hidden throughout. I won't tell you exactly how many stamps I purchased, just know it was an irresponsible amount.

"Muriel's Wedding the Musical" is currently at the Curve theatre in Leicester until May 10th, and this short interview with writer/director PJ Hogan and actor Rachel Griffiths came out as part of the promotional push. I somehow never knew that Jane Campion was partially responsible for getting the film made by contacting the head of Ciby 2000, the company that financed "The Piano" (1993), and advocating for Hogan. In this interview, he credits Campion for his career, which includes "My Best Friend's Wedding" (1997), "Unconditional Love" (2002), and "The Dressmaker" (2015). While I've enjoyed some of his other projects, none have even come close to the perfect mix of humor and pathos in "Muriel's Wedding." If I need to cry on demand, all I have to do is think about Muriel telling Rhonda, "Since I’ve met you, [...] I haven’t listened to one ABBA song.  That’s because now my life is as good as an ABBA song." Without this movie, there would be no "Mamma Mia!" (2008) and there would certainly be no Cher singing "Fernando" in "Mamma Mia, Here We Go Again" (2018).

The first time I saw this movie, I expected a standard lighthearted romcom because of the deceptive DVD cover:

The marketing people behind this deserve a swift death for writing, "You'll love every hilarious minute." Like oh, yes, the hilarious suicide! L-O-fucking-L. The unsupportive small town suffocation chamber! I'm not triggered in the slightest. I still think this movie is a crowd-pleaser as long as it's not introduced as a "hilarious comedy about friends, fun and unexpected surprises!" It's so much darker than this cover might lend you to believe. It's not as dark as Toni Collette in "Hereditary" (2018), but comparable to Rachel Griffiths in "Six Feet Under." Watching it evokes the same visceral discomfort as "Young Adult" (2011), a film that gives me anxiety no matter how many times I've seen it. I still can't believe Australian cinema blessed us with "Strictly Ballroom" (1993), followed by "Muriel" and "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" the next year. I recommend watching them all in one go (with "Muriel" sandwiched between the lighter two) and basking in the glory of 90s Aussie nostalgia.

Ann Peebles is one of those incredible singers who never got the credit she deserved. "I Can't Stand the Rain," a song she co-wrote with her (now) husband Don Bryant and Memphis DJ Bernie Miller, was a big hit in 1973 and yet... I'm pretty sure a lot of people still think it's a Tina Turner original. Commendable covers aside, no one else did it with as much soul and grit as Peebles and it's a shame she's not a household name. In 1997, Missy Elliott sampled the song in "The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)" and brought Peebles along for her first ever appearance on "Late Show with David Letterman" (the one where he introduced her with an upside down CD). The song has also been sampled by Kaytranada, Mick Jenkins, Pizzicato Five, and Ghostface Killah, among many others.

It's not like Peebles was a one-hit wonder, either. Nothing else charted as high, but "Part Time Love" and "I Pity the Fool" made it onto the Hot 100 and several others performed well on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. She's an artist who, once you become familiar with her, pops up everywhere, especially if you're a Wu-Tang fan. “Trouble, Heartaches and Sadness” shows up on one of their songs for Jim Jarmusch's "Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai" (1999) soundtrack, along with on individual tracks by RZA ("Throw Your Flag Up") and GZA ("Shadowboxin'"). Even Le Tigre gave her a well-deserved shoutout on "Hot Topic." She's an artist's artist, someone who receives recognition/admiration from those in the industry while remaining far too unknown in the world at large. If we're lucky, maybe Doechii will sample her and the song will go viral on TikTok, inducting a brand new Gen Z audience into the Ann Peebles fan club.

Barbara Comyns has become a bit of an obsession of mine thanks to the reprints from NYRB, Daunt Books, Virago, and Turnpike, along with Avril Horner's 2024 biography, "A Savage Innocence." Thanks to this recent-ish resurgence, you should be able to find seven of her eleven books via your local library. I don't want to tell you too much about her because it's fun to independently discover those details, so I'll just say that Comyns used her rough, early 1900s British childhood to fuel her dark, funny, surrealist art. She didn't publish her first novel until age 40 and before then, scraped money together as a poodle breeder, classic car dealer, and artist's model (a painter herself, she also exhibited with the London Group). One small detail I think about often is the pet newt wrapped in a damp handkerchief that accompanied her during her first wedding to fellow painter, John Pemberton (which fell apart because she cheated with a dude who looks like Cary Grant). Ok, I've already told you too much.

"The Vet's Daughter" is the perfect introduction to Comyns because you can read it in one sitting and if you don't like it after the first sentence, I think you can safely conclude her writing isn't your jam. The novel is about a seventeen-year-old girl who deeply dissociates after her mother dies and she's left with her abusive veterinarian father. It's equal parts dark, gothic fairy tale and black comedy with a touch of magical realism. If you like any of these things, add Comyns to your list:

• The writers Sylvia Townsend Warner, Muriel Spark, Flannery O'Connor, Angela Carter, Celia Dale, Beryl Bainbridge, or Shirley Jackson
• The books "Jane Eyre" (Charlotte Brontë, 1847), "Excellent Women" (Barbara Pym, 1952), "Great Granny Webster" (Caroline Blackwood, 1977), "Matilda" (Roald Dahl, 1988), or "My Year of Rest & Relaxation" (Ottessa Moshfegh, 2018)
• The movies "Muriel's Wedding," "Morvern Callar" (Andrea Arnold, 2002), "Welcome to the Dollhouse" (Todd Solondz, 1996), "Igby Goes Down" (Burr Steers, 2002), or "Picnic at Hanging Rock" (Peter Weir, 1975 or the novel by Joan Lindsay)

Easter and 4/20 fall on the same day this year, so let's celebrate the holidays with Mary (Parker Posey), everyone's favorite tokin' library clerk, described by Katie Driscoll in her essay for A Rabbit's Foot as "the Girl Next Door Who Ran Away And Joined an Acid Sex Cult." Amidst all the fucking chaos of 2025, who doesn't want "A nice, powerful, mind-altering substance. Preferably one that will make my unborn children grow gills"?

I assume most people have seen "Party Girl" (Daisy von Scherler Mayer, 1995) but for anyone who hasn't, it's about an NYC club kid (Posey) who becomes a library clerk to pay her godmother back for bailing her out of jail after she's arrested for throwing an underground rave. The job is annoying until the power of ganja demystifies the Dewey Decimal System, inspiring her to go back to school to become a librarian. I guess what I'm trying to say is that if your life is falling apart, maybe smoking a joint and dancing around to Chantay Savage will unlock your untapped potential? It can't hurt. And in the meantime, you can always watch "Party Girl" on Criterion Channel and read Driscoll's essay, which helps contextualize the film both now and 30 years ago. (This piece in Lithub is good, too, and goes into the AI doom of it all.)

Things I'm going to watch but haven't yet: "North of North" on Netflix, Miguel Gomes's "Grand Tour" (in cinemas), and Andrew Ahn's remake of "The Wedding Banquet" (ditto). And yes, I did preorder "Notes to John" because nosiness > my moral compass.