📺⚖️ I'm Obsessed With Judge Mathis: Everything Comedian Samantha Irby Streamed in a Week
It’d be easy enough to start tonight off with Samantha Irby’s profile of Lizzo in Time Magazine (2019 Entertainer of the Year! A lovely read!) but - truthfully - it’s the author’s near-daily recaps of Judge Mathis that have won over my inbox:
I am obsessed with Judge Greg Mathis. His court TV show came out when I was 19 and I have been a loyal consumer of it ever since, and I am about to turn 40 in a few months. It is, unfailingly, my longest relationship? I mean, my parents died when I was 18, so technically I've known him longer than I knew them. Would it be weird if I started calling him Dad? A month ago I was home during the day, avoiding a deadline I had already missed, and his show came on so I settled in to watch it because how could I not, and as a joke I tweeted, "should i write a blog about who's on judge mathis every day?" and enough people responded YES that I, 1. immediately regretted having asked this joke question on a public forum that would hold me accountable, and 2. started that blog. I record the episodes every day on the DVR but I have to share that television with the other people who live in this house (a crime!) so a lot of times I watch old cases on my laptop so I can write about them. His YouTube channel (omg why do I even know he has one!) is a treasure trove of old eps, so sometimes I just buckle in and watch five in a row (each case is like 12ish minutes long) so I can write a bunch of recaps at the same time and set them to post automatically. How fucking stupid am I to let an offhand joke that I thought would make three people laugh turn into a JOB that I have committed to doing EVERY FUCKING DAY? I am my own worst enemy, truly.
You can read more and sign up for her newsletter here.
As a bonus, I would like to co-sign in entirety this take from Irby’s streaming diary re: The Voice.
I was just out of town for a week and I didn't take my computer because I tricked myself into believing that I wanted to be "in the moment," which is honestly a phrase I don't actually understand. When in the history of the universe has real life ever been better than what could be found on TV? I didn't do anything other than wish I had my laptop and watch sports on the hotel television. So the minute I got home, I was like, PUMP SOME SHOWS DIRECTLY INTO MY LARGEST VEIN.
As a homely person, the premise of The Voice appeals to me: empty out your soul onstage to prove your talent to a group of people who would otherwise probably throw garbage at you as they passed by you on the street. I love this show, and I cry at every single soft-focused "meet my hardscrabble grandma and watch me fake make a pizza for my 19 kids" introductory video and hold my breath watching Carson Daly hold the nervous accompanying dad's hand backstage. At some point in my life I just stopped knowing when the new television season begins, and I checked Hulu only to find out this shit has been back for either two months or two years. (It's hard to gauge because there are, like, nine episodes on every week so how can anybody keep track?)
I will watch the show with a burning passion and hunt down all of my faves on Instagram and listen to their Soundclouds or whatever, but I can only watch it until the episodes where America starts voting and deciding who gets to stay or has to leave. I wouldn't let my neighbor suggest a pizza topping to me, let alone decide if my favorite 29-year-old widowed country dad should be allowed to get a record deal with John Legend or whatever the fucking prize is. America always gets it wrong, they always kick off the weird people and the old people and the fat people until the herd is culled to two teenage Claire's employees, and THAT'S FINE but it's not my ministry, so I tap out while I still have hope that an elder goth from Pittsburgh can rocket to stardom on primetime TV.
Wow yes.
💔 February is Break-Up Season in Cape Town
Another from Rosa Lyster (of Thursday’s The Year in 5 fame). Her mom makes an another, altogether heroic appearance:
February is break-up season, undoubtedly, which means February is advice-giving season, which further means February is the unfortunate time of year where I am reminded that I am not all that great at giving advice. It’s not that it’s wrong. “You will feel better eventually,” is always true, as is “You will look back on this in the nearish future and think: lol.” They are the truest things that one can ever say to a person going through the dissolution of a shortish relationship, and everyone knows this, but that doesn’t mean that anyone wants to hear them. It’s like telling someone to get some sleep, or to eat. When you are in the throes of a bad time and marooned on planet “Different From Every Other Person Who Has Ever Lived”, stuff like that seems far-fetched at best. I know this as a veteran of two bad February breakups, when I was so sad I had to lean my head against doors and walls and windows in order to keep my brain from coming out my ears. There is nothing anyone can say to make you feel better, and you sort of know that, but that does not mean you don’t listen avidly to what literally anyone has to say. You listen to kind looking women in the supermarket. You listen to freaks who phone in to talk radio. You are moved to tears reading the jacket copy on The Alchemist. It is a disgusting and helpless time, and I know it extremely well, and the only piece of advice that has ever been even mildly effective is as follows. It is an email, from my own exceptionally wise and kind mother, sent to me during my very worst February breakup, when I was so sad I drove with the handbrake on for the whole day without noticing. I assumed the smell was just an olfactory hallucination from being so sad.
Click through to read the actual e-mail.
♠️♣️♥️♦️ The Man Behind the Curtain
Speaking of newsletter repeats, CJ Hauser is back (again! so soon!) with another revealing dive into her personal history. I’m not certain this is as strong as The Crane Wife or Small Talk Purgatory but since those were each lights-out reads that’s not necessarily a dig. Rather - I think if you’ve skated through both already - you’ve probably found yourself invested and this makes a rewarding companion piece.
🔌🏘 …Cyberhome?
Thanks for these, JA-T!
🧥 The Amazon Coat, One Year Later
What happens to a viral jacket…
When I first started wearing the coat, I expected to feel both warm and smug; what I did not expect was the emotional journey the coat took me on. It was common for strangers to stop me on the street, asking if this was “the coat”; for yoga teachers to grin and note how many coats they had seen that morning. It was ridiculous, but I loved the feeling of belonging to some kind of discount-shopper cult. I would smile at fellow coat wearers on the subway, secure in our knowledge that our coat was not available in any store.
…when it reaches year two?
A few weeks ago, during another unseasonably warm fall day, my husband, in a pensive tone, posed a question: “Will it be embarrassing for you, to put your coat on again this year?”
This seemed like an odd query, but I understood immediately what he was saying because my winter coat has a capital “c” — it’s the Amazon Coat. Along with thousands of New Yorkers (or at least what feels like thousands), I bought a $100-ish puffy coat from Amazon last winter.
Boxy, wide, with an unholy assemblage of zippers and giant pockets, the coat was not particularly stylish, but it was not not stylish. It kind of confused my eyes to look at it.
Yet in a world where the other so-called viral winter parka sported a goose label and can cost more than $1,000, the Amazon Coat was, well, cheap. Remarkably cheap. One click away. By the time it arrived in my Twitter feed around early 2018, it was a quick jump to arriving in my apartment.
In 2019, though, the coat seemed smaller, sadder and definitely dirtier, slumped in the corner of my closet. What happens when the moment for such a specific product passes? Who will be wearing the coat for another year, and who will be sending it to the great clothing bin in the sky?
“I put it on the other day and felt really weird about it,” said Caroline Moss, a writer. “I just felt like I was putting on a meme that was done.”
Lol.
“I’m so sad that I’m still wearing it,” said Emily Gould, a novelist in Brooklyn.
Annnnnnd lol. Goodnight folks!