10 Things: Fall, Fame, and the Foolish Frog

All my recommendations for what to read, watch, binge, contemplate, eat, buy, make, and listen to this week.

My Friends,
I always mean for these 10 things lists to be shorter and easily digestible, but hey, there’s a lot to say about the good things in life, and isn’t that a gift. The first three are free; paid subscribers get a movie, a podcast, sandwich advice, and the start of pie season. (We will start slow. THINGS WILL RAMP UP.)

1. RE-READ: “How to Show Up For Your Friends Without Kids — and How to Show Up For Kids and Their Parents” by

   Anne Helen Petersen

   

   This is a print that I made, but it applies.

   The always-brilliant and relevant AHP wrote this in 2022, and I remember bookmarking it then, but she updated it last week given the big questions we’re asking about community and togetherness in these post-election weeks. So much is so salient here, but a few paragraphs to highlight:

Everyone’s struggle is different — but life is not a struggle contest. Competing for the most aggrieved is what keeps us from actually creating the sort of solidarity that can result in change. (That doesn’t mean that some people don’t have compounding hostilities that make it more difficult to navigate the world; that means that obsessively comparing them is a road that goes nowhere).

I’m not suggesting we ignore our own hardships; I’m saying we also acknowledge others, even if, especially if, they are no immediately apparent and understandable to us. Empathy does not require living through the exact same thing as someone else. But it does require asking open-ended questions and attentively listening without comparing their struggle to your own.

2. READ / LISTEN TO: The Foolish Frog by Pete Seeger and Miloslav Jagr

   

   When I was, like, 4 years old and my family briefly lived at a stranger’s house in New Jersey (my dad was teaching for a semester there, I think), my mom found this light teal book on a shelf in one of the bedrooms. I remember wanting her to read it to us every night, and I think it’s possible that maybe she did. When we left the house, she stole the book. (If this was your book, I’m sorry. But what are the odds that you’re here now reading this newsletter!)

   This year, I saw the book again at my sister’s house. She’d taken it for her own kids to enjoy. I read it out loud to them and was transported. The illustrations! The strawberry pop! The soda crackers! Is this book pretty sexist? YES! All these wives with their frying pans marching down to the corner store to yell at their husbands for dancing during dinner! But is this book also BANANAS and does it go in a direction that you were ABSOLUTELY NOT EXPECTING? ALSO YES. (Content warning for the implied explosion of a frog.)

   I will not spoil it for you. Apparently, according to this one uploader on YouTube, Pixar showed this as a short before Toy Story 4 in 2019. (WHAT? REALLY!?) IMDB reveals that the cartoon was produced in 1971, and was updated for a VHS in 2004 called Giggle, Giggle, Quack. The only version I could find was this one with an annoying watermark across it, but it’s nevertheless iconic. Do you have seven minutes right now? Yes you do. Here you go.

Though the book is long out of print, I have found copies online at used book stores and eBay. I bought mine for $28, and have read it 25 times to my own daughter, who likes it fine. She’s not obsessed with it, but then again, it doesn’t have vampires in it. She’s only obsessed with vampire stuff.

3. WATCH: The English Teacher on Hulu

I should’ve recommended this great Brian Jordan Alvarez vehicle when I started watching it a few months ago, but I’m going to tell you the truth: I felt annoyed that this was a show about teachers in a public school, and seemingly only one of them was a woman. As I have been told many, many times: that’s not really what it’s about; it’s about being a comedy show, and these are great comedians who are finally getting their chance to be funny. Yeah, OK, but why aren’t there more women on the comedy show? THAT IS ABOUT TEACHERS? (Seventy-seven percent of American teachers are women — closer to the percentage on Abbott Elementary. And teaching is thankless, difficult, and hierarchically low on the totem pole — so at least let the women be on TV! But I get it. IT IS NOT ABOUT THAT.)

At the end of the day, The English Teacher is a smart, grown-up comedy that I hope they make 10 more seasons of. It’s perfect comfort television, updated for 2024. I feel so disappointed in the total lack of good comfort TV that exists anymore, and this is a wonderfully successful exception. It is also really smart and surprising around relationships, and is (I think) the only show I’ve seen that represents polyamory accurately. (It doesn’t call it polyamory. It treats polyamory as the rule rather than the exception among gay men, which I know is its own topic, but HOW AM I WRITING THIS MUCH ABOUT THIS? Just watch this show.)