media madness
Where has my gluttonous consumption gotten me? I hope it never stops
In a few weeks, I will achieve my long-held dream of visiting Portugal. This dream originated for two reasons:
My sophomore year TA told us he had the best steak in Lisbon for $7
A YouTube video on the most beautiful bookstores in the world.
The video I’m referring to has been bouncing around the internet for ages. “BOOKSTORES: How to Read More Books in the Golden Age of Content,” as it is officially titled, follows creator Max Joseph’s journey to understand how we can read more, why we read, and what value books (and bookstores) add to our lives.
After rewatching this video to prepare to set foot in Livraria Lello in Porto, I found myself thinking generally about the impact media has on my life. Joseph’s video essay ends with the argument for reading as a mode of meditation. Decorated academic and educator Dr. Ruth Simmons summarizes the importance of finding time for reading by telling the audience:
“Stop. Reflect. If you don’t do that you are a lesser person for sure. The business does not make our lives meaningful. It is the interior that makes the greatest difference to us in the end... If you enforce reading, you’re likely to enforce time for reflection.”
I believe reading inspires both self-realization and connection. Look no further than the number of people Joseph interviews in his quest to learn about reading: bookstore owners all over the world, habit experts, an esteemed professor, the fastest reader in the world.
Still, I wonder what effect my media gluttony is having. With more time than ever to read, watch, and listen, are these passions keeping me closer to the people I love or making the sum of my life stories that are not my own?
Let’s begin with a staple of my media diet: The Bachelorette.
On Tuesday morning, while making breakfast, I found time for my weekly viewing ritual. Despite the show’s hour-and-a-half run time, I have managed to find time for the brain cell killing series throughout high school, college, and working 60-hour weeks. My favorite part of keeping up with the show is the accompanying weekly recaps published in Vulture.1 The community that makes fun of this series is what keeps me invested, far more than the show itself. The Bachelorette’s 20 seasons (not to mention The Bachelor’s 27) provide plenty of material for “in” jokes that are better appreciated the longer one watches.
Most casual viewers like myself fade in and out of interest depending on the season and the lead. My dear friend Clare has just returned to the fold, which thrills me since I now have someone to discuss the drama with at length.
Clare and I are often exchanging recommendations. She’s expanded my contemporary music taste on multiple occasions, and I like to think I’ve enriched her life by forcing her to watch the live-action Scooby-Doo. Last week, we went to an outdoor screening of Network (1976), the culmination of our multi-year-long plan for her to see one of my favorite movies of all time.2 In the same week, I made good on my long-held promise to read Pamela Des Barre’s I’m with the Band: Confessions of Groupie, which Clare told me I would love back in our sophomore (or maybe freshman😳) year of college.
Pamela Des Barre’s salacious, sensational, romp of a memoir has been an absolute delight. It’s the kind of book you want to cancel plans to read because you simply have to know how the love affair of the week is going to end up. Miss Pamela is a delightful, shameless narrator who does exactly what every celebrity memoir should - names names. She lived the ultimate hot girl summer by sleeping with rock stars, crashing concerts, performing, designing shirts, and looking for the meaning of life in a free-love 60s spiritualism. Pamela recalls all of it with kindness. To use my mother’s phrase “she doesn’t have a bad word to say about anybody,” except for a few pervs. My only real critique of the book is its introduction by Dave Navarro, which ends with the quote:
“My personal advice to readers: Men keep a box of tissue handy… Women try to keep your deep feelings of jealousy and hostility at bay… you know you wish this was your story.”
I mentioned this to Clare’s-close-friend-turned-my-close-friend named Carmen, who agreed there’s plenty to be jealous of but also plenty of precarious situations you read with a nervous laugh and thank God you’ve never been a part of. Learning Carmen had also read and loved I’m with the Band, felt like an initiation of sorts. I realized this book had been passed around the friend group before I got there, and now it’s reached me. Understanding the allure of Miss Pamela made me felt like leveling up.
I owe my knowledge of all the thin curly-haired white boys Pamela Des Barres refers to a previous rock and roll education.
My father and I’s road trips run on Sirius XM’s 60s on 6 and Little Steven’s Underground Garage as much as they run on gas. I grew up with family viewings of Monterey Pop and a copy of The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s Electric Ladyland in my Christmas stocking. However, my musical knowledge reached new heights last weekend when my dad and I visited hallowed ground in Bethel Woods New York.
Also known as the site of Woodstock in 1969.
Walking around the museum was more meaningful than I could have guessed. Call me sappy, but I found something inspiring in the idea of 500,000 people peacefully coexisting in a field and connected by music. I never realized how close to disaster Woodstock came. They ran out of food on the first night. From personal accounts, it sounds like an event where everyone looked out for each other and stepped up to help. For example, there were tents where you could go if you were having a bad acid trip. Someone would talk you down until you became verbal again. Then, you’d stick around to talk down the next person.
My dad went to Woodstock when he was 18, which I’ve always been amazed by. Every guy his age that we met at the museum said they went as well. Still, the specificity of his Woodstock stories was thrilling as it always is to uncover a seemingly random detail of your parents’ previous life. He and his friends heard about the concert and bought the three-day pass for $18 without a clue how big it would become. While attending, he bought a wallet at one of the stalls and cut up his old one to sit on before it started raining. The highlight of course was waking up for Jefferson Airplane before their Sunday morning drive home. I’ve since inherited his extensive Jefferson Airplane vinyl collection, and cooking dinner this week to Volunteers, I can understand exactly why they’re his favorite.
On our drive home from the museum, I tried to think of a mass event I’ve attended that’s somewhat comparable. I concluded, there’s nothing in my life (yet) that can compare. The politically charged nature of the concert still fascinates me, and I wonder how my generation’s history will be remembered.
Will we have a revolution? Lord knows we need one.
Are we having our revolution right now?
Will we be remembered for this past weekend when throngs of people stormed their local AMC dressed in pink and sequins?
I’m talking of course about Barbenhiemer.
I participated in the movie event of the year by inviting my friends over for a Barbie-themed party Friday night. I spent months planning my pink drinks, pink balloons, Barbie trivia game, and how I would display my childhood Barbies around my apartment. Nearly everyone dressed up for the occasion, and after the trivia winner was crowned, we made a mass migration to the Angelika for our 10 p.m. movie.
Two hours of laughing, shrieking, and picking my jaw off the floor ensued. Then, we left the theater and had a fun, bizarre night out at the local bars, where every guy stopped to ask about our outfits.
A few of us stayed out long enough for 3 a.m. omelettes at a 24-hour diner.
By noon the next day, I was up and preparing for Oppenheimer and Barbie round two. Refusing to compromise on my party-hosting dreams or the one-day double feature, I decided to spend 2/3rd of the weekend at the movie theater.
When I arrived for our 2:30 pm showing it was a mad house.
There were far more Barbie dolls running around than World War II scientists, but there were still people dressed as Oppenheimer with the physicist’s signature hat. While watching trailers in IMAX with my Gatorade, Buncha Crunch, and popcorn, I did feel the thrill of being part of something big. Water cooler shows and mass movie events are few and far between these days, but there’s a special bond that forms when an auditorium full of people quote Nicole Kidman’s AMC commercial in unison.
I spent all day with Clare, Carmen, and another of Clare’s-close-friend-turned-my-close-friend Emily, and we were bonded by the sheer endurance it took to get back to the theater after experiencing Oppenheimer’s three-hour runtime. Once I’d seen Ken’s dance ballet a second time, our group headed to karaoke, where we were bonded by belting the 2000s hits we fell in love with before any of us met each other.
So, what’s my point in all this?
I’m honestly not sure. The fear is that all these incredible pieces of entertainment that fuel my weekends, my friendships, and my hours alone might make me a sum of other people’s ideas instead of my own. Reading about Miss Pamela’s wild youth, I couldn’t help wondering what I’m meant to accomplish with mine.3 I know that bouncing between British rockstars’ beds is not my path, but I also yearn for more stories than the ones I’ve collected thus far.
The nightmare is that in my obsession and ambition to create media, I might become like Diana Christianson (Faye Dunaway) in Network. During their breakup, her lover (played by William Holden) tells her:
***Spoilers ahead!***
It's too late, Diana. There's nothing left in you that I can live with. You're one of Howard's humanoids. If I stay with you, I'll be destroyed. Like Howard Beale was destroyed. Like Laureen Hobbs was destroyed. Like everything you and the institution of television touch is destroyed. You're television incarnate, Diana: Indifferent to suffering; insensitive to joy. All of life is reduced to the common rubble of banality. War, murder, death are all the same to you as bottles of beer. And the daily business of life is a corrupt comedy. You even shatter the sensations of time and space into split seconds and instant replays. You're madness, Diana. Virulent madness. And everything you touch dies with you. But not me. Not as long as I can feel pleasure, and pain... and love.
Harsh.
I love Network because I think Patty Chayefsky’s writing is some of the best in existence. Along with a million other questions, it makes me ask, “How do we retain our humanity?” How can we find joy in life’s corrupt comedy while keeping death more meaningful than bottles of beer? Does the media help or prevent us from doing exactly that?
Maybe the answer lies in creating a separation between one’s life and the songs and stories that make life more bearable.
Maybe the answer is to share media with other people so that you use things like The Bachelorette as a tool of connection instead of isolation.
Maybe the answer is introspective meditation and reflection…
And if you want to do that, you can always start by reading a book.
My dear readers!
If you’re still here, I want to sincerely thank you for giving me the space and freedom to write whatever I want. I cherish your readership and hope that this newsletter is a small piece of your media diet that brings you joy.
Outfit of This Era:
Recommendations of This Era:
Network (1976).
I’m with the Band by Pamela Des Barres.
Visiting the Woodstock Museum aka Bethel Woods Center for the Arts
Volunteers and anything by Jefferson Airplane.
Electric Ladyland by The Jimi Hendrix Experience and the live album Hendrix in the West.
Revisiting Janis Joplin.
Discovering Santana.
Barbie (2023).
Oppenheimer (2023).
These are currently written by Emily Palmer Heller, but I’ve been a fan since Ali Barthwell was behind them.
In another three years, we’ll get to All That Jazz.
Before I become an old maid at 25.
finally binge reading ur post , adding the book to my list as i, also love british rockstars