june is the best month in new york
don't fight me on this because you'll lose
It’s summer in New York again, the only time a year when I truly thrive. I realized a few summers ago that I would give anything to live in a perpetual June in the city: It’s the platonic ideal of warm weather. Summer is still novel and full of possibilities, and I still have a high reserve of energy from my winter spent resting. There are still the same hours in the day but the abundance of light makes them feel like we have more time, and when the sun finally goes down it leaves a technicolor cotton candy swirl as a parting gift. Central Park is so lush and green I swear that it must be computer generated, that I must be in a movie. I take the long way to the train, walk 50 blocks home after drinks outside with friends, run across the street to the bodega in nothing more than boxers and a tee shirt with birkenstocks and wet hair. We get tomatoes and strawberries and cherries AND blueberries—all the best foods are summer foods. A fire escape becomes a porch, Central Park becomes my backyard, a stoop becomes a lounging spot. I still genuinely believe that I’ll make the trek (which isn’t really much of a trek but feels like one) to the from Manhattan to Rockaway Beach more than just once or twice, and that I’ll try at least one other beach further out on Long Island at least one time. I’ll make a list of every adventure my friends and I should take in the next few months, as if we are 12 year olds in Now and Then and not 30 somethings with full time jobs. In June we can forget about that and be anything we want.
Here are some things I’ve been up to and enjoying, and things I’m looking forward to this June.
thanks sorry love you mean it bye
samia - bloodless
In certain parts of the American southwest in the 1970s, something strange was happening. Farmers began finding waves of their cattle dead, with their mouths and genitalia mutilated with near-surgical precision. The strangest part was there was no blood to be found: not around the dead animals, and not in them, either; they had been drained empty. Sure, there were some conventional scientific explanations to be grasped at. But many suspected something more sinister and unsolvable than that: some sort of unholy biblical action, or aliens, or cults.
Samia found herself drawn to the phenomenon, both as a metaphor for self-extraction and as a way to understand her experience with womanhood: shaping her personality around an idealized version of herself she imagined men would like. Who was she if all of those learned traits were suddenly gone? What would her purest sense of self be like? Would there even be a self? On Bloodless, her third (and strongest) full-length album, she digs into her obsession with absence as a concept across 13 Americana-infused indie pop tracks. It sounds terribly serious-verging-on-trippy—and it can be, if you’d like it to be—but one of Samia’s greatest strengths as a songwriter has always been infusing her evocative, detailed storytelling with a sense of tongue in cheek humor.
She can sing about a desperate yearning to be something impossible on “Bovine Excision” then follow it up with a track about the hole Sid Vicious punched in a wall of a Tulsa music venue in 1978 that has now been framed, a void canonized. She can equate revenge with mosquitos—“You can go outside on a hot night and clap, but you won’t get your blood back”—in the folksy “Fair Game” just as well as she can use a pair of jeans to question her selfhood. “Who was I when I bought these pants? They’re nonrefundable, now I’m questioning everything I am,” she sings on the album closer “Pants.” It’s a complex and introspective song about an existential identity crisis. But it’s also just about shopping for pants.
sg goodman - “fire sign”
Last winter, I briefly mentioned S.G. Goodman’s rip-roaring “Work Until I Die” on my tour of my most-played songs of the year. Now she’s back with “Fire Sign,” an even more smoldering song that would be a fitting b-side to the take down of life in late stage capitalism. Where “Fire Sign” is a relentless, garage rock riff-infused roots stomp, “Fire Sign” is a slow burn (sorry), downtempo East Nashville joint—but no less in contempt of productivity culture. What happens when you have to work until you die? You burn out, of course. But not without a fight first.
haim - “down to be wrong”
The clear melodic nod to Tom Petty’s “It’s Good To Be King” in the verses and a‘90s era Sheryl Crow put-the-top-down-and-drive-on-the-backroads kind of chorus? (After interpolating the refrain of another Wildflowers track, “You Don’t Know How It Feels,” in a very Joni Mitchell’s Reprise era-inspired production on 2020’s “Man From the Magazine”????) I’m once again saying: They are making music for me, specifically. And they are looking so fucking cool doing it that I’m constantly thinking I would be so much cooler if I could play guitar. Or bass. Or drums. I don’t know, I’d play any of them—the point is that I don’t because I have very small hands and a perfectionist complex that makes learning instruments very hard.
I didn’t love the overly-fawning tone of this GQ profile (I’m allowed to be fawning in my newsletter because I’m not interviewing them for a major publication but if you hired me to I’d be really good at being objective!!!!!!! Because I’m tired of this shit!!) but I do think their insights about consistently churning out rock-forward music while being relentlessly dismissed or patronized by the rock establishment (aka middle aged white guys) are worth reading.
ropetrick - “idlewild”
Okay, disclaimer, this is my friend. But that said: Even if I didn’t know her, I’d still have had her debut single on repeat. It hits so many marks for me: Raw, nostalgic lyrics; unexpected production choices (distorted shoegaze effects on the banjo, a fucking THERAMIN SOLO!?!?); Kate Bush-esque wailing, a chug-a-lug beat and bassline. Song of summer!
mission: impossible – the final reckoning
Is it good? No. It’s basically a messy reheat of the far superior Mission: Impossible – Fallout’s nachos. But as Vulture’s Bilge Ebiri notes in his review, it’s a fun mess. Sometimes it’s nice to sit in a dark room pumped full of air conditioning you are not personally paying for and have popcorn and 44 ounces of an ice cold, unhinged Coke Freestyle machine concoction for dinner and watch a movie star flirt with death.
I truly never thought I would be a M:I fan. I don’t do action movies. I’ve always been ambivalent about Tom Cruise. I’m not overly into spy flicks unless they’re tense ‘70s Alan J. Pakula-style conspiracy thrillers. But during the summer of 2023—when the Hollywood system was not good, but still managed to produce a new movie I’d see in theaters at least once every other week or so—I saw the Dead Reckoning trailer over and over and over again. “This actually could be something fun to see just for brain rot purposes,” I thought during one of those many moments when my heart rate began thudding at the sight of Cruise literally riding a motorcycle off a CLIFF. But being me, I also thought: “But I cannot watch this one until I watch the ones before it.”
Did it take two years for me to finally make good on that? Yes Does the speed and force with which I became M:I pilled make me a little concerned about my susceptibility to falling for a cult or something]? Yes. Am I choosing to believe it was just an ADHD hyperfixation spiral instead? Of course. In my defense: It was really cold and rainy the weekend in April in which I watched all seven Mission: Impossible films (all 15 hours and 32 minutes of them) in the span of 36 hours. They’re so good, actually! So much fun! The first one was made by Brian de Palma and is actually a film film! How did I go so long missing this!? How did I never seriously engage with Tom Cruise’s death drive in the name of saving cinema? (For more on that, I really recommend reading Jadie Stillwell’s excellent essay that I had the privilege and thrill of editing for BWDR about Cruise’s parallels to the earliest serial action stars.)
Nevermind that I didn’t get to sweat out of every pore in my body watching Tom Cruise free solo climb the Burj Khalifa on the big screen; I’d get to see him try to die one last time now. And you should, too! Even if you’ve never seen any—though I recommend, just in general, someday watching the first (again, it’s fucking de Palma) and/or Fallout, the best of the franchise-y ones (he jumps out of a plane at 35,000 feet?!?!?!)—you’ll be fine, since the first hour is full of enough flashbacks to the previous films to serve as an adequate previously seen on. Anyway, what better thing do you have to do? Go see Lilo and Stitch???????????
hacks season 4
I’ve been riding the Hacks train since the trailer dropped for its first season back in the spring of 2021, and, let me tell you, it’s wonderful watching everyone else start to catch up to the hype. Every season it somehow gets better: Sharper and funnier, more empathetic and heartfelt, and more skillful at dancing on the very thin line balancing those competing tones. Goofy, but not ridiculous. Tearjerking, but not saccharine. Most of all, this season served as a reminder of a central theme the showrunners have long been exploring within the evolving mentor-mentee relationship between Deborah and Ava: the messy, non-linear reality of people’s capacity for growth. We’ve seen both characters become their best selves and retreat back into their worst habits; we’ve seen them betray each other after making promises to do better.
Hacks is a comedy, of course it is, but I’d sell it as something more than that: It’s a love story. It’s a love story about comedy, and it’s a love story about television and Los Angeles. It’s a love story about two friends from two entirely generations who are different sides of the same coin, and it’s a love story about two coworkers who are polar opposites. Mostly, though, it’s a love story about that special bond that forms when you make things with your friends.
Jean Smart is terrific as per usual, but Hannah Einbinder? Girl, we are getting you that Emmy this year. I’ve never laughed harder than Episode 6’s “Mrs. Table” meltdown.
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
No, wait—I may have laughed harder for Julianne Nicholson’s completely out of left field guest spot as TikToker Dance Mom. Girl, we’re getting you that guest star Emmy, too!!! LFG!!!
i know i’ve said in the past that and just like that… is the worst show on tv and i love my lobotomy time but i don’t know if i can do it much longer u guys
jennifer elster’s the classics exhibition at the development gallery
I was more familiar with Elster as a stylist in the 1990s working with a who’s who of rock icons and scene queens like David Bowie, Trent Reznor, and Chloe Sevigny, but I found the multi-disciplinary artist, writer, filmmaker, musician, and designer’s exhibit fascinating. An early retrospective, it finds the artist uncovering an obsession with dystopian anxiety as a running theme throughout her life and work. Elster is a fascinating presence, walking visitors through with tons of insightful and expansive commentary. I hoped to write a longer feature on her but alas, pitching art features blows. We had coffee anyway and talked more about her experiences, the importance of art and community at this time, and our fears about where society is headed, and I can confirm: She’s one of the coolest (though I know that word has been stripped of meaning—I mean it in the way old school og New York downtown when Tribeca was a wasteland is cool) people I’ve met in awhile, and one of the most open and engaging ones, too.
It’s on view until June 20th.
the mike mills directed video for “psycho killer” starring saoirse ronan
I am once again saying that every intersection of my personal tastes has come together for me, personally. The video smartly avoids the surface level tropes it’s sometimes paired with in other needle drops chosen by lazy music supervisors to instead match it to the absolute brain frying insanity inducing experience that is…..being a human person who has to get up and go to work every single day.
“There’s something violent about the false normality of all the people around her,” Mills told Vulture in an interview about the concept. “There’s something violent in the banality of it all. It’s psychic violence, but it’s still hostile to me. I don’t think normality actually exists. It’s a construct.”
This is for the girls who think 20th Century Women should have cleaned up at the 2017 Oscars and not just walked away empty handed with only a sole Best Original Screenplay nom. (Annette Benning ROBBED.) It’s for the girls who sometimes watch Mills’ trio of West Side Story-inspired Gap commercials from 2000 when they want to feel something and really liked C’mon C’mon, actually. It’s for the girls who think Saoirse Ronan should have at least two Oscars by now, and for the girls who think the fact that she does not means all acting awards are fake. It’s for the girls who love Talking Heads all gas no breaks but will always, always talk shit about the way David Byrne gets a disproportionate amount of the credit. And it’s for the girls who would maybe kill themselves if they had to work in office five days a week again.
comedian and 737 pilot nathan fielder’s incredible appearance on wolf blitzer in which he called the faa dumb
I’m not saying anything new here when I say that this just-wrapped season of The Rehearsal was the most insane, groundbreaking, unfuckingbelievable, surreal television productions we will likely ever see in our lifetimes. It’s impossible to describe: It’s an earnest documentary series, but it’s also satire. It’s genuine, but it’s all a bit, but also maybe it’s a bit on top of a bit—the bit of making it seem like a bit so audiences will question whether or not it is, indeed, all a bit. If I said “Nathan uses HBO’s money to compress air in San Jose and transport it 350 miles via truck to LA to pump into a studio where he’s testing nature-versus-nurture with cloned dogs and that all somehow relates back to the central concept of airline safety and pilot communication” that would be maybe the least insane thing that happened on this show this season.
I’m so glad the jaw-dropping finale was not the last we’d hear from Nathan and his interest in commercial airline crashes. His appearance on CNN last week stretches the act out to hilarious lengths while playing it entirely straight is a gift. It’s actually a little concerning to me how into him I am. I should be concerned about that, right?
past features:
It has been one whole year since Miss May Does Not Exist came out. (Sorry, I hate when people are like “27 weeks of Insert Title Here!!!!” “2 months of Insert Title Here!!!” Tried not to do that but–) On the anniversary, I ate the last of the leftover cake that the bakers had done the funniest thing possible with.
Many of you informed me that this is something people do on their wedding anniversaries, which, sorry, I did not know because I don’t concern myself with whatever weird shit married people do. I just forgot about it in my freezer and then thought well I don’t know I guess I should eat this now or toss it and because I hate waste, I chose to eat it even though Bon Appetit said frozen cake has a food safety limit of 3 months. I did feel a little sick after but honestly I think that was just because of the sugar.
I went on WNYC to talk about the legacy of Aimee Mann’s (perfect) Bachelor No. 2 or, the Last Remains of the Dodo for its 25th anniversary. Hate that the host called me a “superfan” and/or “fangirl” which I think is dismissive for a journalist who’s written about someone’s work in a professional capacity many times, but what are you gonna do?
Speaking of which, I actually really liked this interview about Miss May I recently did where the “how do you write objectively as a fan” question was broached in a way that didn’t piss me off and I gave an answer I don’t think is dumb.
Pre-order a new 4K edition of Primary Colors to get my audio commentary lol
I wrote about one of my generation's sharpest satirical texts that’s been basic bitchified in the worst way possible (Mean Girls) and being a teenage girl in the mid aughts, fashion and power and Cookie Monster Pajama Pant Girls, and also somehow got a Robert Caro quote in there too (because who would I be if I didn't do that) for Bright Wall/Dark Room lol lmao even
coming soon:
I’ll be reading something new at KGB Bar in the East Village this Tuesday, 6/10, at 7 p.m. I can promise that it will be very much a STORY, a TALE, a YARN if you will, the kind you share over drinks, of course. I probably won’t be publishing it for a very long time (no it’s not book-related), if that’s any incentive.
I’ll be introducing Mike Nichols’ (perfect) The Birdcage and signing books after at the Museum of Moving Image in Queens on Saturday, 6/14, at 1 p.m. (Yes, this means I won’t be going to the “Q&A” “appearance” of the IRL Miss May at the Roxy’s screening of [absolute mess] In the Spirit that same day. I’m sure there will be some dismissal of my reporting on that production and I don’t really care to be present when someone who didn’t want to participate in the narrative talks shit about the narrative. lol! lmao even!!!!)
I’ll be reading from Miss May and doing a Q&A in Bryant Park on Monday, 6/23, at 12:30 PM
coming much later:
I know, I know, I know. I talked a big game about how I would “never write a book again” because “writing biographies is for insane people” and that “I’m just not suited for this timeline of publishing process.” I also know the writing has been on the wall that I lied, and that this is the project that would be making me a liar, for some time now.
The fact is, I can’t keep myself away from the mavericks and the independents, all the people braver (fuck the system in action) than me (fuck the system in spirit). We live in a time where anti-intellectualism and corporate slop are more an avalanche than a creep on our society, a time in which exponential profit growth matters more than honest expression. I can’t imagine writing about anything other than the creative partnership between John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands—two artists I love who refused to let corporate powers that be get in their way and fought against the system to tell raw, truthful, human stories that we have been forever changed by—right now. It’s gonna take some time, but if you have any tips, you know where to find me. 🫡
if you liked this and maybe want to read more, all archived posts live here.
my dms / replies / emails / calls and texts* are always open. say hi! tell me what you want to see from bed crumbs! please i need the feedback!! (*do not call me)
i wrote a book about elaine may and if u buy it i’ll give u a little forehead kiss :’)
bed crumbs is a reader supported publication and we would love it so much if u would subscribe now and tell ur friends!
okay that's it that's the end thanks sorry love u bye
Love this! These new S.G. Goodman singles are so wonderful.