Fran Magazine: Sunday Dispatch, April so far

Birthday, giant turtle, Death Becomes Her, Coachella, Jonathan Groff.

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Skin and bones

On Friday, I turned 34¹² which I celebrated by working a normal day, going to see Death Becomes Her on Broadway, and staying overnight downtown at a hotel. I did that for my 30th birthday at the Standard by the Whitney — I’m not sure if this is still the case at the Standard, but at that time, they had a little card next to the phone in every room with a phone number for your representatives in case you needed to call the government to complain about what they were doing while you stayed there. I’m as pissed at the government as anyone but still: lmao.

The room I got for my birthday came with a bath — something I had not requested but was happy to get. I used to be more devoutly pro-bath and then turned on the concept sometime in the past year. There comes a point where “sitting in the tub” becomes more associative with “having a migraine” than it does “relaxing,” but I also think I got overwhelmed by the notion of water waste and sitting in increasingly lukewarm water. But whatever: it was my birthday, I took a bath. I took stock of my aging body, momentarily worrying that a longtime scar had faded beyond recognition. I have little scars all up and down my legs from bad falls on bikes and rollerblades as a tween. I was active and careless — though wore a helmet — and couldn’t make it through most warm months without taking a nasty tumble. During the worst of which, a little pebble got lodged into my shin and the scar formed a small indentation the size of the rock. On Friday, I thought, maybe, when I hadn’t been looking for it, the skin bounced back, faded such that it was only a dark spot and not a cavity. I burned my hands while baking at a friend’s house as a kid — those scars are now only faintly visible to me, because I know how and where to look for them. I once tried to show a friend and they were like, “respectfully, there’s nothing there.” The scar from the pebble wasn’t gone, however — I found it later that night. I’d just forgotten where to look for it.

We went to go see Death Becomes Her and after a Broadway season full of screens and deconstructions it felt like a rare treat to sit through something that had big expensive sets and gags and costumes. There’s some great practical effects in the show: how do you simulate a hole in someone on a stage? for instance. I hadn’t even really put two and two together in that it’s a story about the fear of aging, decay, and rot. The musical fixes some of the third act issues of the film — no winking Elvis cameo, or whatever — and allows its women to walk off into the sunset with a little more spring in their step. The conclusion is kind of the best executed version of the speech poor Carrie Coon had to give in the White Lotus finale last weekend — that time is a currency unto itself, one that can be made valuable if you let it.

Last weekend we were in Texas for my brother’s wedding, which was a great, fun, exhausting time. Everyone kept asking what I wanted to do for my birthday, and the answer was get some sleep after an otherwise busy kind-of-vacation where I hadn’t expected to do Malort shots but there you go. I’d hoped it’d be warm enough down there to hit the beach or pool, but the weather was strange on days that were wide open and perfect on days where we had stuff going on. We went to a sea turtle sanctuary the day after the wedding to visit some guys rescued along the Gulf Coast. It was crazy to look at some of them, many the same size as me, but maybe twice as old.

this is gerry

I’d spent the past few months using my brother’s wedding as an excuse not to plan my own wedding. I don’t think this has come up here yet — though I have almost blogged about “the state of wedding dresses” a half dozen times… don’t get me going… — but: Phil and I are also getting married this year. I’ve basically never had a bad time at wedding, and I’ve been to everything from a full Catholic mass to courthouse to backyard ceremony to country club to bar. What I spent time reminding my brother and his wife was that going through this whole rigamarole of “having a wedding” is optional — but because you’ve chosen it, you should do it on your terms, as best as you can, with little worry spent on “tradition” or “ephemerality.” When I peruse wedding sites, I’m bombarded with the word “timeless.” I know what they’re going for when they say something like that, but something that takes place 10, 20, 40 years ago is going to look old no matter how quote-unquote timeless the individual parts are. My brother’s reception playlist — which featured no less than six Justin Bieber songs³ — was a good example of this.

Drop, Christopher Landon (2025)

Watched at AMC Lincoln Square in the same theater I saw The Brutalist — a movie only slightly better than Drop. I had high hopes for Drop, but this AirDrop Red Eye-esque thriller about a cat and mouse game played over the phone is burdened with tedious flashbacks that undercut its momentum. Why build a whole playground out of a stupid Chicago restaurant if you’re going to zoom back in time to consider all that led up to this? I think the fun about these types of movies is how present-tense they can (and should) be to avoid burdening them with meaning.

Death Becomes Her, Robert Zemeckis (1992)

Watched on Peacock. Laughter is something that can be so awesome. This is also my review of the Broadway show, which has zero memorable songs but many beautiful gowns — sometimes that’s enough.

Playworld, Adam Ross (2025)

Morgan recommended this book to me ages ago, and I picked up a copy in January I let sit for two and a half months. Ross’s novel is quite a tome: a coming-of-age novel set in New York in 1979-1980ish about a child actor at a crossroads of continuing on in his career or doing something else with his time. I thought this was a great character study which overcomes one of two modern hurdles of the contemporary novel: having characters you can tell apart, who don’t all sound like each other, who exist as named people rather than vague common nouns (the brother, the teacher, etc.). There is a vivid quality to everyone who walks in and out of the novel, and I appreciate its brief dips into the real world without getting too cute about it.⁴ For a novel whose hook is that of an illicit affair, I found most of what occurs in its 500-something pages to be funny, modest, and not hell-bent on the misery of teendom.

Skyrim

Started this yesterday and have no idea what I am doing <3

Gustavo Dudamel & the LA Philharmonic at Coachella

I’m going to be blurbing this set for Vulture, but it may necessitate a full-on Fran Magazine issue. This is how I felt watching.

Lady Gaga at Coachella

:)

Jonathan Groff explaining that “Splish Splash” is a song with meaning

Not a video you have to watch all eight minutes of but…

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Does it matter if I get a horse in Skyrim? Has anyone seen The Amateur yet? What other Coachella performances have been fun? What are you reading, watching, listening to? Is anyone going to see the Bobby Darin musical or is this just Jonathan Groff getting his blank check?

1. I’ve lied about my age long enough that it feels not true, but it is.

2. Or is it?

3. His favorite artist — I’m not kidding.

4. David Mitchell the novelist you are still on a list because of your Beatles cameos in Utopia Avenue, one of the worst books of the past ten years.