Fran Magazine: Sunday Dispatch, Sept. 1-7

Too many words on seeing Lilo & Stitch for free

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!

The Sunday Dispatch can come out at 10am if I want it to

I didn’t make ice cream all summer because I didn’t have the energy. It felt like more of a popsicle summer anyway, and I went through my popsicle-making phase in college which, while delicious, never felt worth the effort on the other end. The popsicles don’t come out of the mold, etc. As the humidity fell away this past week, I made ice cream for a dinner party: oatmeal and fig jam. The concept was like, “old lady breakfast,” but in truth, it’s what I used to have for breakfast a few years ago before my breakfasts got much more haphazard and unintentional. Now — as I wake up at the weather is in the 50s — I can only think about ice cream: flavors yet to be made, combinations of jams or toppings. I cleared the slate for the day so I could “get things done” only to realize there wasn’t that much to get done. That leaves cooking, which can take all day if you want it to, and today I do.

My week in writing: my review of Slow Horses’s fourth season came out on Slate, and a new career advice column aimed at Katy Perry’s latest album rollout came out on Vulture. I worked on the Perry piece for about a month or so: there was a lot to get right in terms of tone, sure, but it was also that every time I filed an updated draft, Perry would go and do another stupid thing I would have to address. It’s my most sincere career advice to Perry that the best thing she can do to fix what her deal is is give that house back to the nuns because they’ve clearly cursed her. If she’s not going to do that, she should just be a Call Her Daddy guest forever.

The two best things I read online this past week week were Frank Falisi’s conversation with James Ivory in Reverse Shot (I did not like the new Stephen documentary, but it’s a good overview if you’ve never seen a Merchant Ivory joint) and

BDM

’s op-ed on the Taylor Swift endorsement fantasy. I am casually reading reviews out of Venice and Toronto, but not caring too much beyond the fact that I had to learn against my will that there’s a new Mike Flanagan thing that will annoy me. Going to Venice and/or TIFF seems fun but I love being in my house and will be reporting live from NYFF in a matter of weeks — days, even!