I can't believe people actually like...

(a post for those out there, like me, who desperately need some distraction from Tuesday)

I spent most of October on autopilot mode, hardly able to think a week or two ahead because I was just focused on getting through each day. Nothing bad happened; my life was just unusually hectic. I visited Taiwan for the first time — Taipei, Alishan, and Tainan, specifically — while dealing with some personal stuff that’s been the source of more anxiety than I think I’ve felt in years. (It’s over now!) I then spent nearly a week in New York, where I moderated a New Yorker Festival panel with Amy Sedaris and Bridget Everett. (I hope you’re watching Somebody Somewhere on HBO! I think the current season — the show’s third and final year — is its best yet.) I prioritized shows and museums during my time on the East Coast, so I also went to MoMA for the first time (amazing! incredible! full of treasures!) and saw Oh Mary! and the Sunset Boulevard revival.

I’d heard raves about Oh Mary! from friends for months. (Cole Escola plays a deranged, cabaret-obsessed Mary Todd Lincoln, aka Abraham’s wife, in the last days of the Civil War.) It’s pretty much flawless for the thing it’s trying to do, and consistently funny, but couldn’t be slighter in its ambitions. I couldn’t help feeling like it would fade in my memory as soon as the curtains fell, and my suspicions were right.

The more memorable show, then, was the very hyped-up Sunset Boulevard, which stars Nicole Scherzinger as a 40-year-old Norma Desmond in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s slapdash adaptation of the Billy Wilder classic. The production gave me a distinct sense of “I can’t believe people actually like this,” which is one of the sentiments that led me to be a critic in the first place. I know we currently live in the era of “let people enjoy things,” and I think I generally agree with that statement, but my corollary is “let people complain about things they don’t enjoy.”

I happened to rewatch the 1950 film a few days before watching the Broadway version, and if I hadn’t done that, the show would’ve been borderline incomprehensible, since the book hews very closely to the movie’s plot but essentially fast-forwards through all the story beats between the numbers. Lloyd Webber’s music is atrocious. The few small changes you see from the movie mostly result in destroying subtlety in favor of luridness. And Scherzinger was… fine? Her singing was technically great, but her interpretations had no surprises in them. I never felt very much from the songs or from Norma’s characterization — not the pathos, not even the bathos. And 40 just felt too young to make Norma’s desperation feel curdled enough to lead to all that tragedy. (Gloria Swanson’s Norma is 50, which makes her comeback hopes feel that much sadder.)

I don’t write many pans in my current job (though I did make an exception recently for the Cate Blanchett vehicle Disclaimer). I’d rather use my time and platform to advocate for undersung gems (like Somebody Somewhere) than calling shit shit, but now I’m debating spending a little more time on this newsletter kvetching about popular stuff that actually kinda sucks. A return to my roots?

-Inkoo

P.S. Sorry for all the links in this missive coming from just the New Yorker and New York! As I said, it’s been a crazy month, and I didn’t have the time or energy to read too widely. But I really stand by these picks!

—“Ryan Murphy’s Latest Era of Cynical Hits.” Speaking of the popular and the terrible, I wrote about Ryan Murphy’s Menendez show and what the super-producer’s brand evolution looks like today.

—“The French Perfumer Behind the Internet’s Favorite Fragrance.” I don’t often wear perfume, but I love smelling it, sharing it, discussing it, and reading about the industry. I adored this profile of Francis Kurkdjian, Dior’s new nose.

—“Ta-Nehisi Coates and the Temptations of Narrative.” While I was in New York, I had conversations with at least three different friends about this book review. I haven’t read Coates’ book, but there are things that have rubbed me the wrong way during his press tour for the book (wholly unrelated to Gaza), and I appreciated how this review went deep in those areas.

—“The Architect of Zendaya’s Red-Carpet Style.” A very good profile of Law Roach, who endlessly fascinates and dazzles me.

—“Silicon Valley, the New Lobbying Monster.” A horrifying look at the crypto industry’s burgeoning power, courtesy of the man who coined for Hillary Clinton the rather prophetic phrase “a vast, right-wing conspiracy.”

—“The Music Man: Trump’s kitschy nostalgia is the point.” I’ve really enjoyed Sam Adler-Bell’s music criticism/reporting for NY Mag. This piece is another banger of remarkable insight, if only for this line: “Trump, we know, is a music lover. His dedication to Broadway, in particular, has always been endearing to me. (It identifies him as what he is: a wealthy 78-year-old New Yorker with queeny taste.)”

—“Michelle Obama Had the Best Closing Argument of the Campaign.” This is the political piece I didn’t know I needed. It is written by the GOAT Rebecca Traister, and it is moving and incisive and angry and surprisingly hopeful — exactly what I needed to emotionally prepare for Tuesday.