Fran Magazine: Sunday Dispatch, July 14-20

The King of Comedy! A book about paleontology! Looney Tunes! And a #MonoMoment!

This is the Fran Magazine Sunday Dispatch, a weekly culture diary for paid subscribers only. The Sunday Dispatch details what I’ve been watching, reading, playing, and listening to over the past week. Paid subscriptions help stabilize my writing career, but all readers — paid & not — are appreciated. You can also follow me on Instagram or Letterboxd (for free!). Thanks for reading!

TK TK TK

I am working on some overall formatting/design/layout changes to the Fran Magazine homepage, blog titling, and tags. Sorry if things look confusing for a bit. The only thing that matters is that posts still come out on Wednesdays (free) and Sundays (paid) until I tell you otherwise!

Also theres’s a sort of sale going on

I’m doing a mini-sale right now on paid subscriptions which grant readers a 30-day free trial through the end of July. You can cash in on that offer here. The Sunday Dispatches have never been more fun — the more the merrier!

#MonoMoment

I’m doing better enough from the mono right now to justify going out and about in the neighborhood — running errands, buying groceries, and even making a handful of trips to the movies this week. I would stay I’m still otherwise noticeably sick from mono due to a total lack of images on my camera roll (a week of screenshots) and that I fall asleep after almost every meal I eat. I have a number of friends who say something like, “That’s normal! I love getting tired after I eat.” When I say I get tired after I eat, I mean I’m laid out, sleeping completely overtaking me, too weak to get up. That’s not every day, though, more like every other. I’m back eating all the stuff I’ve always liked, even the crunchy foods. My glands have mostly gone down, though the ones behind my ear are still raised enough that I’m only wearing my most comfortable pair of glasses. I still get headaches in the morning and at night, but not every single day, which is a vast improvement.

This week in the magazine,

Emma Stefansky

and I talked about all the bugs I saw on residency. In Vulture, I spoke with IRL stormchaser Jordan Hall about his time out on the road chasing twisters in Oklahoma ahead of this week’s Twisters release, then I later blogged about the movie’s bizarre misfire of an ending.

On a completely different note from pop culture blogging, I was honored to contribute a small story to this public memorial in Triangle House for the writer David Burr Gerard, a friend, colleague, and email penpal, who passed away last December. David and I came to know each other through being fans of similar writing and similar films, and we later came to learn we both taught at Parsons. The rest of the story is in the post, along with a number of other rich, wonderful stories that paint a picture of a great writer and loving friend gone too soon. I am quite sad he’s gone and grateful to have his writing to return to again and again.