Three Nice Things
I’m sending a little round-up of recommendations. Here are three things making me happy this week:
Detroiters. I recently signed up for a trial of Paramount Plus, and one of the shows I was excited to find on there was Detroiters, a Comedy Central series that debuted in 2017. It only lasted two seasons, and I barely got to enjoy it when it was on the air. I’d seen the pilot and really enjoyed it, and I was a big fan of Sam Richardson, who was hilarious on Veep, so I was excited to watch more. But I didn’t have cable, and in that prehistoric era before streaming services’ emerging, merging, and dying were daily occurrences, it was hard to find a way to watch the show. I’m making up for lost time now, though, and I’ve already watched most of the episodes. Detroiters manages to be extremely heartwarming, goofy, and crass all at once. Sam Richardson and Tim Robinson star as best friends and co-owners of an ad agency that makes pretty bad low-budget local commercials. At times, they seem very aware of their mediocrity, but usually they seem blissfully aware. Most of the time, they’re swinging for the fences, and the way they combine optimism, naïveté, and terrible ideas is truly delightful.
Redactle. The charms of Wordle didn’t last very long for me. I still play occasionally, when I’ve used up every other way to procrastinate. One byproduct of the Wordle craze was the proliferation of games that took inspiration from its format, in one way or another. Suddenly, there were a lot of puzzle games that ended in -le. My favorite is Redactle, which actually shares very little with Wordle, other than the fact that it’s refreshed daily, and it involves making guesses to reveal a correct answer. Redactle serves a Wikipedia page, chosen at random from one of the 10,000 Level 4 articles, with most of the words redacted. You have an unlimited number of guesses to uncover the article title. Your guesses will also reveal if the word exists in the article. By making increasingly educated guesses, as more words are uncovered, you can start to deduce what the page is about. You get an unlimited number of guesses, and sometimes it feels like you’ll never get the correct answer. However, when your words start to point in the right direction, and you start to build some momentum, it’s very exciting. The satisfaction from finally getting to the correct answer is far juicier, in my opinion, than any Wordle result. With Wordle, there’s too much luck riding on your first guess, and it's all over too quickly. With Redactle, it really feels like you've unlocked a mystery.
“Understand” by Omah Lay. Omah Lay is one of the young stars of Afrobeats, and this song is my favorite of his. I’m a sucker for a gentle synthesizer over a beat that goes hard, and “Understand” makes me feel sad and thrilled and want to get in my car and drive around with no particular destination. In short, it makes me feel like a teenager.
I hope you'll enjoy at least one or two of these recommendations. If you love all three, please leave a note in the comments section, because we’re probably meant to be friends.
In other news: the second episode of Book Exploder came out today, with author Min Jin Lee discussing her creative process and some deep feelings with Susan Orlean. They talk about how Min wrote a passage from her modern-day classic, Pachinko. You can listen here.
Come see me when I’m on tour this fall in the midwest:
October 26 - Chicago, IL - Sleeping Village - tickets
October 27 - Iowa City, IA - Englert Theatre - tickets
October 28 - St. Paul, MN - Amsterdam Bar and Hall - tickets
All of these shows will be with my dear friend and frequent collaborator, Jenny Owen Youngs.
Hope to see you out there.
Hrishikesh