June

Hello!

Summer is my least favorite season. It is hot, the sun stays out too late, and people have too much energy. Bring me fall! Bring me winter! I will even allow spring into my heart, a little bit. But, allergies. And also daylight savings. And the false promise of "freedom" once summer fully arrives, which is probably the best thing about spring—I mean the anticipatory joy—followed by the second worst thing, which is the delusion that summer equals freedom. Summer is not freedom, it is only a manic sort of outpouring of all of the pent-up emotions accumulated throughout (glorious) winter into the unstable vessel of too many activities, all mixed together with that wholly Puritanical conceit, that artifice, that hold-over from overly structured school days and school years, that is, the yawning maw of summer vacation, during which one can, having duly labored for ten months at school, guiltlessly, sweatily collapse into the couch to watch reruns of Pop-Up Video on VH1 for approximately 72 hours a day.

The only good thing about summer is ice cream (which can be eaten year-round), backpacking (which can be done year-round), and sitting on the porch outside (which fine, is best in summer). The actual best thing about summer on the East Coast are thunderstorms, which I long for now that I live on the West coast, but which I did not used to appreciate, reminding me as they did then of not only my own mortality, but seemingly the entire universe's. I now love to enjoy them when I am visiting, reminded as I am of my own vulnerability, that is, softness, that is, ability to be impacted.

This is all a long-winded way of saying that I have been reliving my version of collapsing sweatily on the couch to watch approximately 72 hours of Pop-up Video per day for the past month. Here are the Pop-Up Videos of June:

Tour de France: Unchained

A documentary about the 2022 Tour de France. Having never in my life followed cycling, aside from a brief raising of an ear during something about Lance Armstrong, doping, something, something, I now consider myself both expert in and die-hard fan of the grand grand tour. I have in fact watched at least some of the coverage of every stage so far in this year's TDF (which began July 1). The peloton is a haunted flock of birds. Cycling is what happens if you turn birds and physics into a sport. Visually, it is watching a lot of skinny, skinny white men turn their legs over and over unimaginably quickly up unimaginably long and steep mountains in France with faint grimaces beneath their windshield wiper sunglasses. Emotionally it is a fascinating dive into the psychology of elite athletes.

"The peloton is moving, it never stops. If you’re in the peloton, you’re alive. If you’re not in the peloton, you are facing death.” - Marc Madiot (Groupama-FDJ)

Icarus

A totally bonkers documentary, also on Netflix, about an amateur cyclist who happens to be an award-winning journalist, who wants to determine how well anti-doping regulations work to prevent doping in cycling. In order to determine this, he decides to undergo a semi-legal doping regimen, race in a bunch of races, and see if he gets caught. In the meantime, he accidentally uncovers the now infamous massive Russian doping scheme in the Sochi Olympics. I think the question of doping in professional athletics is interesting because, whether or not it is as widespread as some experts claim (e.g.,Don Catlin, renowned anti-doping scientist, claims in Icarus that every cyclist is doping), its unanswerability highlights the distortion between how we (plebians) see elite athletes and who they really are as people—and the danger of letting that distorted image determine how we feel about our own worth. Recommend!

Shrinking

This is non-TDF content. I have a free three-month Apple TV (or is it Apple+? Or Apple+TV? Who can know) trial, so I needed to watch all of Season 1 of Shrinking in two days. I am not entirely sure why I loved this show about a therapist who gets hyper-involved in his patients lives. Harrison Ford is funny as a grumpy therapist-mentor. Jessica Williams (of 2 Dope Queens!) is funny as a therapist-friend! Jason Segel, the therapist himself, is funny as a therapist! My standard for television is basically Did I Like It or Was It Stupid? Shrinking: I really liked it!

BEEF

I really liked it! Ali Wong and Steven Yeun and rage and despair and depression and repression. Ali Wong has really carved out a place for expressing anger and frustration as an Asian-American woman. I am always wondering who is writing and directing and generally shaping shows, especially about (insert: black, asian, latinx, poor, gay) people, especially in this day and age, in this country, when (insert: black, asian, latinx, poor, gay) stories sell and only because they sell, and about who is funding entire networks and, I guess are platform services networks now?, and what those people, who are not usually (insert: black, asian, latinx, poor, gay, etc.) people, want with these stories that sell, and how they are shaping them, and funneling them into our eyeballs, and again, why, and who is not being funneled, who is being left behind. But that is only one thing I wonder. Mostly, I really liked Beef.

Euphoria: Season 2

I really liked it! I watched Season 1 a couple of years ago and never finished because it seemed to be delighting too much in Rue's (played by Zendaya) misery. I was surprised by the tenderness in this season. But, you know, same questions as above.

Ultimately, I don't like summer because I lose focus, I lose motivation, I feel sluggish, slow, nearly not moving. I feel how soft I am, really, how little able to impact anything or anyone, how far from the peloton, which is life, which keeps moving.

Until next time,

Endria

P.S.

>> My short story "You Without Me" is an Apex Magazine reprint. You'll be able to read it online here on 7/25. It was originally published in Midnight & Indigo: Twenty-Two Speculative Stories by Black Women Writers.