Jez Recs: What to Do With Your Weekend

Image: Grasshopper Films/Simon & Schuester/@fentybeauty

It was a long week. What week isn’t? In the realm of pop culture, it started with the Oscars Sunday night: Beautiful people won awards, as did adorable nerds. If you’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel for something to do this weekend, watch literally any of those movies. It’s never too late to have an opinion about Tar! But a lot of other cool stuff happened this weekend, too, which you may have missed—books to read, articles to read, French movies with subtitles to read. For this week’s Jez Recs, the Jezebel staff rounded up 10 pop culture gems that we very much enjoyed and think you will too. May they make your weekend shine.

Stash by Laura Cathcart Robbins

I must admit that I’ve only just started Stash: My Life in Hiding, but there is something so magnetic about Laura Cathcart Robbins’ prose and the way she takes you—your hand and hers, your body seemingly in her body—through her journeys of substance abuse recovery and divorce as a rich Black woman living in the very white, very lavish Hollywood Hills. This week, I had the privilege of hearing her talk about her new memoir and its significance to the genre colloquially known as “quit lit,” or books about sobriety. You see, this genre is heavily dominated by white women, leaving women of color without resources and examples on how to pursue and go through recovery themselves. At her talk, Robbins discussed how back then, she was deeply hesitant to ask for help—or even admit that she had a problem—because she didn’t want it to reflect poorly on other Black women, on other Black moms.

Having the entire reputation of your race judged by your actions as an individual is a weight that so many people of color carry across class lines. From the very first pages, her book is filled with the most heartbreaking of confessions: “The fucked-up truth is that being loaded is the only way I can continue to show up for my family. Loaded equals numb. And numb makes me bulletproof.” —Rodlyn-mae Banting

Florence + The Machine’s “Just a Girl” Cover

I am a ska lover and very insufferable about it. I also have always loved the novelty of transforming an oddball song into a commanding, haunting ballad. So naturally, this cover of No Doubt’s classic does something to me. Similar to another banger “Heavy in Your Arms,” Florence’s voice dominates and pulsates through the usual upbeat (and offbeat) ska rhythms with a grim retelling of girlhood. She commands the song so well that the twinkling of piano keys in the beginning, reminiscent of the original intro riff, seems superfluous. God fucking damn. Truthfully, I have yet to see Yellowjackets but now I’m especially inclined to, how you say, pick it up. —Vicky Leta

This Week’s Abbott Elementary (S2E19)

I recommend watching Abbott Elementary in general—it’s truly the rare breed of sitcom that simultaneously educates and delights, and is famously authentic to public school teachers’ real experiences. Whether you’ve been following the show or not, this week’s episode is especially powerful, as it wades into the complex terrain of charter schools, and how they often leave students and teachers behind. Quinta Brunson, the show’s creator and star, knows her stuff on the subject matter—to the extent that things got pretty heated on her Twitter page when she fought back against critics this week.

In other words, this week’s installment is perfect if you’re in the mood to learn more about just how bleak our primary education system is, or want to keep up with Brunson and her A+ Twitter. —Kylie Cheung

“Sloth bites teen during visit to Michigan pet store, ruining lifelong dream,” in MLive

The tongue-in-cheek (slash teeth-in-arm) headline would have been enough to justify this article’s inclusion here, but this multifaceted story straight outta Saginaw Township, Michigan, is entertaining from top to bottom. It concerns a sloth-meeting event at an exotic pet store and a teen who allegedly poked and prodded a resident sloth, pushing the slow-moving animal to the brink. If you ever wondered what sloth bite marks look like, or whether a sloth bites at all, this is the article for you. In the process of investigating this vicious attack, said teen’s mom was accused of not paying in full for the kinkajou she had previously purchased from the store. I love a good story with no heroes! No one behaved well, in my estimation—not the store for selling exotic pets and offering up-close experiences with a solitary animal that doesn’t want to be handled, not the girl for bothering the damn sloth, nor the sloth for its teeth-wielding, though the animal could hardly be blamed. Team no one! (OK, Team Sloth.) As my friend Caity Weaver pointed out in the tweet that alerted me to this story, “This is why we MUST support our local news outlets!!!” —Rich Juzwiak

Fenty x College Dance Squads

Normally I would never recommend a capitalistic venture when I could be recommending even a morsel of the beautiful art that’s currently being made in the world, but stay with me on this one. On Thursday, Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty appeared to launch a social media campaign highlighting college dance squads across the country. So far, the beauty brand has posted videos of the San Diego State University Diamonds—a student team formed in the style of traditional HBCU majorette squads—and nine-time National Champions, the Ohio State Dance Team.

A makeup brand collaborating with dancers, or cheerleaders for that matter, is in no way groundbreaking: MAC Cosmetics has been doing so for decades, and positioning femme-presenting dancers as the ideal canvas for beautification is quite a tired practice in 2023. But Fenty, like its founder, carries with it the promise of relevance and revolution. Highlighting these sorts of dance teams, who more often than not are passed over for traditional collegiate cheerleaders of the “rah-rah,” All American (White) Girl variety, is a small act of resistance.

Doing so both decisively expands the definition of beauty to include strength, individuality, and athleticism, and provides much-needed exposure for extraordinary young girls, often caught in the brambles of the “DaNcE iSn’T a SpOrT” trap. My hope is that this sort of attention from a global beauty brand will convince university administrators that these athletes are worthy of funding and resources and time. But you don’t have to tell me twice: I already consider them as precious, and as indestructible, as diamonds. —Emily Leibert

Korean American: Food That Tastes Like Home by Eric Kim

I did not consume ~interesting~ media this week; I watched The Bachelor tell-all/reunion episode live. I’ll leave the recommendations of cool arthouse films and whatnot to my coworkers. I’m recommending a cookbook instead! Korean American: Food That Tastes Like Home by Eric Kim (2022) is both a beautiful thing to have on your shelf and a fun tool in your kitchen. Personally, I’d recommend Gochujang-Glazed Zucchini with Fried Scallions. And maybe for Thanksgiving, I’ll try his Kim Family Thanksgiving Menu, which sounds incredible, from a Yangnyeom Roast Chicken to the Korean Pear Galette. —Caitlin Cruz

Rewind & Play

In 1969, legendary jazz pianist Thelonious Monk was interviewed by Henri Renaud, a white jazz musician, and asked to play some of his music on a French television program. Decades later, filmmaker Alain Gomis was provided with the raw footage of that interview, which revealed a more exploitative and hostile account, saturated with upsetting levels of casual racism, than the initial edit let on. Rewind & Play is Gomis’ spectacular edit of the interview between Monk and Renaud, shown here in a new light.

The film, which is almost entirely in French with English subtitles, made me reflect on the maneuvers of fluency. We watch Renaud speak in condescending English to Monk only to turn around and dismissively speak poorly of him in rapid French. We witness Monk’s fatigued patience while answering Renaud’s pointless questions. Most rewardingly, we get long stretches of Monk’s unrivaled piano playing, a language he was fluent in.

The film is at times both funny and heartbreaking, and never preachy or pedantic. I’ve been turning it over in my mind all week since seeing it. Go go go! It’s playing in select theaters across the country. —Kady Ruth Ashcraft

65

Do you love 93-minute action movies with mega-simple plot lines and casts of four? Then get yourself to 65, which stars Adam Driver as a sweaty space man who crash-lands on Earth…65 million years, when dinosaurs ruled and epoch-ending asteroids loomed. He’s there with a little girl, the precocious Koa, who needs his protection and maybe even his…fatherly love? It’s the buddy cop duo of a century. Make that 650,000 centuries.

65 is a riot in the dumbest way possible—a worthy use of the big screen!—and it also poses questions that ripple across the space-time continuum and into the real world. For example, is Adam Driver in serious financial ruin? He’s got that Star Wars money; why’d he take on this role? Fun money for remodeling a guest bathroom, perhaps? Post-White Noise palate cleanser? Also: Area paleontologists going to speak on how disconcertingly ripped the dinosaurs in this movie are? —Sarah Rense

Off Menu

James Acaster is one of my favorite comedians, and when my boyfriend told me at the end of last year that he has a podcast about dream menus, it was, well, the best accidental Christmas present I’ve ever gotten. Acaster and his cohost, Ed Gamble (another British comedian), prompt their guests to share the starter, main, and dessert (amongst other accoutrements) that make up their dream menus; if you like banter and food, it’s the ideal listen. In the last three months, I’ve made an impressive dent in the back catalog, but was also overjoyed when the most recent season launched with Paul Mescal (a favorite of the Jezebel staff). However, though his episode is good, I’m going to specifically recommend a more recent one with Cariad Lloyd (yet another British comedian), whom I’d never heard of before but am now a huge fan of. She hilariously tweaked the standard format of the show, and also talked poignantly about grief—but the episode still made me laugh out loud repeatedly. —Nora Biette-Timmons

Jezebel’s Taylor Swift Set List Wish List

This weekend, our esteemed colleague Lauren Tousignant is out in Arizona to catch the first night of Taylor Swift’s long-awaited Eras tour. Lucky gal. Before flying out, Lauren planned out her dream Eras set list, which is a great read, especially if you’re planning on engaging with Swiftie content online anytime in the next, oh, 800 years. (It doubles as a playlist queue.) Will Lauren’s set list dreams come true? Will she have to set herself on fire as promised if Swift doesn’t play “Cruel Summer”?? Time will tell all too well. —S.R.