Just Spring Things

Welcome to The Enthusiast, the newsletter that's all yum, no yuck! Every week I share five(ish) things I'm loving, from the latest in pop culture to seemingly random esoteric ephemera–all personally vetted and highly recommended by yours truly.

Happy Passover/Ramadan and belated Easter/Ostara to all who celebrate! Whew!! Clearly there’s a LOT of goings-on going on now that we’re blooming into a lush, verdant, and wild spring spring season.

I’ve had a lot happening personally over the last month, and I think I might need to make this newsletter a biweekly send? Lord knows I’ve not been consistent weekly over the last 8 months 😱, but consistency continues to elude me in most of my personal life, tbh. I’m working on it, I promise, but until I do (maybe, finally) get my shit together, here’s some stuff to love for this blooming season:

The Ten Commandments

Oh Moses, Moses, Moses, Moses, MOSES!

Like many holiday rituals, I don’t remember a time when I didn’t watch all four hours of The Ten Commandments on TV with commercials with my family. It might be the reason I love high camp as much as I do, it might be the reason I was into Ancient Egypt (still am, tbh)—shit, Anne Baxter’s lascivious Edith Head gowns, John Derek’s glistening bronzed chest hair, Yul Brenner being Yul Brenner were probably among my first queer inklings. I forget who called it the “best B-movie ever made” but I 100% agree. If for some reason you haven’t seen it, The Ten Commandments is director Cecil B. DeMille’s extremely expensive 1956 VistaVision Technicolor magnum opus remake of his own 1923 silent film that’s equal parts melodramatic beefcake/sexpot love triangle, revolutionary special effects extravaganza, and allegedly “historic” retelling of the Old Testament book of Exodus.

Charlton Heston, known asshole and obvious gentile, plays "Hebrew" Moses, but for me, the true stars of the movie are the Egyptians, particularly Baxter and Brynner, in all their gauche, gaudy glory. Once the Hebrews put some decent clothes on and finally do make their exodus from Egypt, about three hours in, it’s all golden calf worship and stone tablet-shattering downhill from there. I get it, though: you can’t really cut out the creation of the titular Ten Commandments from the movie just because the Egyptians are no longer around to be gorgeous and perpetually horny.

It’s a LOT of movie, one of the few true cinematic spectacles we have to behold, but even I, a lifelong fan, can only watch it once a year. The dialogue is hilariously overwrought (drinking game: every time someone says “Moses, Moses,” take a shot, and you might not even make it to Moses's exile), and it takes far less time to read in the actual Bible, but none of that matters. It is such a complete, fully realized and  lovingly crafted production that you don’t mind those four hours in the least.

The cast is one of the OG Old Hollywood stacked lineups, even beyond the leads—Vincent Price! Edward G. Robinson! Yvonne de Carlo!—and today’s billion-dollar CGI blockbusters can only dream of achieving this unmitigated epic scale and scope. Don’t wait until it comes on TV, however; do yourself a favor and find an HD version without commercials so you can kick back and enjoy all the campy magnificence in one fell swoop, including intermission, and pause for bathroom breaks (which you will need if you do that drinking game).

Easter Candy

Rabbits, eggs, chocolate, fertility–this holiday has it all!

Of all the candy holidays out there—including Halloween—Easter is the absolute best, and it’s not even close. Chocolate rabbits are all well and good, sure, but have you ever had a Cadbury Creme Egg with a Mini-Eggs Chaser? Starburst jelly beans, the true peak of the confection? Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs, which again, are somehow objectively better than the pumpkins or Christmas trees? The pastel marshmallow abomination that is Peeps?! Hershey-owned Cadbury has been trying to make other seasonal variations of the Creme Egg happen, but the Easter ones are the best, so much so that they’ve been using the same TV commercial for 35+ years.

The global chocolate industry is objectively bad in terms of child labor, grower exploitation, and deforestation and the Big Candy Conglomerates basically refuse to do anything real about it, so your Easter chocolate is almost definitely tainted by corruption. I try to buy all fair-trade when I can, but I can still close my eyes and get that tingling feeling in my back teeth upon biting into the gooey middle of a Creme Egg, my tongue celebrating the sweet crunch of the super-thin Mini Egg candy shell. The annual treat of the best candy nestled among shredded plastic grass long after I knew the truth about the Easter Bunny is one of the few things I still love about the Christian co-opting of Pagan fertility festivals.

Party Down, Season 3

"Are we having FUN YET?!"

Has there ever been a more perfect ensemble cast than the lovable catering crew miscreants of Party Down? I know I tend to wax poetic about this often, but besides VEEP (which remains the best TV comedy of all time, don’t @ me), I don’t know that any show has captured the abjectly hilarious pain points of work and modern celebrity culture than this snappy, snarky, under-appreciated little show.

Returning for a third season after it was unceremoniously canceled 13 years ago, Party Down is the rare reboot/update/reunion that feels like it hasn’t missed a beat while remaining true to its original tone and style. Momager Lydia (Megan Mullally) and bon vivant/recent heiress Candace (Jane Lynch) make a few guest appearances instead of working with the crew, with no Jennifer Coolidge, sadly. In their place we have two delightfully deranged new hires: Sackson (Tyrel Jackson Williams), an earnest TikTok star, and Lucy (Zoe Chao) a jaded chef whose hijinks fit seamlessly with our old friends. Said hijinks include a great throwback to the first season finale, where the the gang gets high on shrooms while working a secret police sting, and trying to play it cool when they realize they’re working a Far Right Neo-Nazi schmoozefest.

My favorite part of the show is its dedication to showcasing the banality of work as we know it—the only person who actually wants to be at any of these events is hapless manager Ron Donaldson (Ken Marino), and he’s actively terrible at it. The others dream of being writers and actors, or are just there to make extra cash for alimony payments. One of our former team members has achieved massive stardom in the last decade and—spoiler alert—they hate it. It’s cynical, sure, and that’s always been Party Down's angle, but it also slyly demonstrates the importance of coworker camaraderie, sticking together and standing up for each other no matter what stupid client request comes at them. The cliffhanger cameo in the finale gives me hope for a fourth season with this updated, dynamic crew, but even if there isn’t, I’m so glad they came back for a few more shindigs.

Sunroofs

(aka one of many reasons to have short hair)

I’ve got Barbie on the brain (see below) and one of my earliest Barbie accoutrements was her giant pink convertible, followed by her sporty open-air Jeep, and to me, there’s always been something deeply exhilarating and liberating about moving fast with the wind all around you. My dad recently got his first convertible as he nears retirement, but he also drove a motorcycle in college, and I’m sure that’s part of where my love for that air comes from (I’m also a Libra, which is an air sign, so—duh). I lucked into my first car at 16, a sparkly taupe Nissan Altima with what would become my favorite feature: a sunroof. Both of my parents' cars had them when I was a kid and they were almost never not open. Riding with my mom, I loved to reach my hand out above and feel the invisible force of 70 mph on the expressway, the sun shining down like it’s for you and you alone.

Sunroofs are such a simple but immensely pleasurable feature if you can’t spring for a convertible just yet, and it’s now a must-have for me. I had one car after my first without a sunroof, and I felt such constant disappointment whenever I  absentmindedly reached up for buttons that weren’t there that it is an absolute requirement for my next car and will be from here on out. Even my spouse's latest care got a car has a sunroof, influenced by yours truly. I still want my own Barbie convertible and/or Jeep, but the Ohio River Valley is not blessed with consistent weather (to say the least), and I’ve known several folks who have gotten caught in pop-up thunderstorms with their tops down. Until I’m able to drive an electric convertible/Jeep every day in perfect sunny weather, I’ll stick with my sunroof for both ease and enjoyment.

Matzo Ball Soup

The Chosen Soup

Fun fact: my spouse has some Jewish heritage on his maternal grandmother’s side, so we like to pay homage with his homemade Matzoh Ball Soup. And listen, my fellow goyim: it’s the best chicken soup out there. I’d never even had it before we got married, but when he did make some, I was immediately hooked on the rich broth and the deceptively light but satisfying matzo balls. For my chicken & dumpling people, imagine a mix between a fluffy drop-dumpling and a flat noodle-type dumpling, rolled up into a ball and saturated not only with the broth but also made with the schmaltz (chicken fat) to make it denser and more savory. It’s  relatively simple besides that: shredded chicken, broth, carrots, celery, dill, dumplings. It tastes great during winter AND spring, and for me, it’s one of the great comfort foods I never knew I needed.

Oh, We're Having Fun, All Right...

• 👱🏻‍♀️ The Barbie Trailer: For anyone living under a bland, flat rock, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie trailer finally dropped and it looks like an eye-popping, celeb-stuffed, meta-hilarious extravaganza beyond all our wildest dreams. It’s everything a Barbie Girl could ask for and then some, and the confused male reaction to it makes it even more delicious. I will be seeing it in theatres on day one, wearing all pink and maybe sunglasses so I don’t go blind from the gorgeous-yet-searing color palette.
• 🤳🏻 Barbie on Social: And since we are in a Barbie mania not seen since like, ever, check out this article on the meticulous art behind Barbie’s social media presence. Pro Tip: don’t ever make fun of anyone working in social media production ever again, because that shit is more detailed than a Hieronyous Bosch but way more fun, cheeky, and sparkly.
• 👸🏼 RIP Rachel Pollack: Several overlapping groups are mourning writer and polymath Rachel Pollack: comic book fans, tarot enthusiasts, sci-fi readers, and the queer/trans community. Being the first out trans comic writer and creating the first trans superhero was just one of her many accomplishments; she wrote several award-winning feminist novels, and published the best-selling and most impactful tarot guide of the modern era. I was only familiar with her tarot work, to be honest—reading her absolutely stacked obituary gave me an even deeper appreciation of her creativity and courage.
• 🌕 NASA Artemis II Graphics: Where my NASA nerds at?! I have a not-so-secret dream that one day we’ll need a senior marketing professional on the moon, so believe me when I say I am pumped about the new Artemis II mission—and not just because the design is a modern callback to dreamy, colorful pop-art mission iconography. Also, FINALLY we’ll have both a woman and a Canadian on the moon. Progress!

That's all for this edition of The Enthusiast! Thank you for reading and if you're not already subscribed, you should sign up (it's free!). Be sure to confirm via email link after signing up and you'll get new posts direct to your Inbox every week(ish).

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Until next time, tell "professionalism" to shove it, mourn the dumpster fire app we all love to hate until the World's Most Divorced Man keeps making it worse, and leave your your phone in your suitcase or bag when you go on vacation–I believe in you!

Yours in Unironic Camp,
LKH