Let’s get on with the show.

In this issue: Larry McMurtry, Joe Weisenthal, Claire Zulkey, John DeVore, whores, Prime Diane Lane, Richard Lorber, , Vincent Cassel, Tommy Callahan III, Marge Gunderson, Haley Stevens, Taryn Asher, Cecily Strong, Barbie Ferriera, Danny McBride and Chandler Levack.

HOW ‘BOUT A POKE?

It seems like everybody who is anybody is reading Lonesome Dove this summer. The Stalwart is reading it, is reading it, a whole bunch of ’s Feed Me readers are reading it, and your Uncle Grambo just finished it. My pal generously gifted Larry McMurtry’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel to me a few summers back when I turned The Big Five-Oh; at the time, I wasn’t sure when I’d ever be able to carve out the time to plow through a 860 page novel. Well, the fates intervened, and this summer proved to be the time. And what a time it was/is! It took me about 100 pages or so to get into the groove of this sprawling story, but once I fell into its rhythms, I felt compelled to crack it open whenever a window presented itself.

I faintly remembered the massive success of the CBS miniseries in the late ‘80s, although it was not something that captivated the Graham household at the time so I never watched it. (Certainly not like The Winds of War did!) I made a pact with myself to resist the powerful urge to look at who was cast as these characters that were captivating me, lest the faces of Robert Duvall or Tommy Lee Jones or whomever corrupt my imagination and break the spell McMurtry had cast over me. However, as soon as I turned the final page, I of course dialed it up on Peacock. And you know what I was NOT expecting?

McMurtry writes at length about the beauty of Lorena Wood (heh heh), the whore (his words! not mine!) of the titular outpost town, through the lens of horned-up ruffian cowboys like Jake Spoon and Dish Boggett, as well as through the more adoring (yet still horned-up) eyes of the retired Texas ranger Gus McRae, who’s never not begging her for a “poke.” Through all of these descriptions, though, your Uncle Grambo has to admit that he never once pictured a Prime Diane Lane as Lorie, popping out of the Rio Grande sporting a wet t-shirt like it was an ‘80s Budweiser spot. Just about fell off the dern couch when this scene unfolded.

Danny Glover gets it.

Anyway, I’m only 1.5 episodes into the miniseries, but the next time you find yourself in the mood to get lost in an unfamiliar world peppered with Pulitzer prose, please follow Johnny DeVore’s lead and pick up Lonesome Dove. You won’t regret it.

NOTABLE QUOTABLES

YEAH, IT MAKES ME FEEL

God damn Charli is on a heater. I’ve been a card carrying member of XCX Nation since The Grizz turned me onto her circa 2013 during the “You - Ha Ha Ha” days. At the time, I was unsuccessful at convincing the powers-that-be in Video Hits One’s Music & Talent department to select Charli to be part of our You Oughta Know feature for up-and-coming musicians — I also vividly remember striking out with them on the Lana Del Rey front, too, although M&T did book her for an interview that remains a career (and, frankly, life!) highlight of mine! — but her lack of basic cable TV recognition on Nuclear Seasons didn’t do much to slow down her long ascent to superstardom.

We’re now two full years removed from brat Summer, but I’m pleased to report that Charli’s latest long player, Music, Fashion & Film, is an equally captivating listen, and on my shortlist of the best albums of the decade. I’ll probably write at greater length about the LP’s searingly emotional closer, “No One Lasts Forever,” down the road a bit, but for now can we talk about “Camera”?

It’s an extremely tight (2:36!) confessional about Charli’s professional aspirations, fears, and anxieties in her post-brat existence; she got to the cultural mountaintop, yet still finds herself suffering through a full-blown identity crisis. What is success? What is failure? She doesn’t offer up any answers, nor any solutions, exactly, but she does find temporary salvation here through honesty. She candidly admits that what she really wants, after two whirlwind years filled with constant attention and headlining slots and media appearances and film sets and a wedding and doing enough drugs to numb an elephant, is to FEEL once again. She wants to feel new, feel needed, feel challenged, feel frustrated, feel elated, feel dangerous. Most startlingly, though, is that she wants to feel erased. It’s right there in the text at the end of the song, no subtext required: Acting is her “only way to feel like I’m not actually me.”

I actually don’t think that’s the whole picture, though. It’s not just acting that helps her feel: it’s cinema, baby. Charli’s an avid LetterBoxd logger, one whose (recent) range of interests spans from Derek Jarman homoerotic biopics to mindless Netflix schlock to Rebecca DeMornay knife play. She still loves to party, sure, but she also really seems to enjoy the movies, writ large; who among us, right? She’s in front of the camera, behind the camera, and obsessed with what the camera can teach us. And it teaches us to FEEL.

And this music video? Like whoa. It’s pure perfection in the way it pays homage to the way the camera makes ALL of us feel, especially while watching Vincent Cassel be French as fuck and emote like the God that he is. (Just STARE at his face below!) All hail VC, and all hail Charli. What a time to be alive!

JEEZ-O-PETES

There was recently a contentious Democratic Senate race in my home state of Michigan in which a low-level US Congressperson (Haley Stevens) got a taste of the national spotlight. Stevens grew up in Birmingham, an affluent northern suburb of Detroit, in the most affluent area of said town; she went to the high-falutin’ public school Birmingham Seaholm, not the still-affluent-but-much-less-so Groves (the latter of which was in the same high school sports league as Rochester Adams, my alma mater). Stevens drew media attention for being on the receiving end of a record-spend by AIPAC (somewhere between $50 and $60MM!!), but more so from a video soundbite of her speaking like the unholy offspring of Tommy Boy-era Chris Farley and Marge Gunderson.

I know enough to know that I don’t know enough about politics to weigh in about exactly why she lost the race, but I do know that she really leaned into speaking with an overly affected “Michigan accent” that people from Birmingham most certainly do NOT possess. (Cecily Strong did a fine job portraying this accent with her Gretchen Whitmer impression on SNL, a woman that comes from Lansing where this annoyingly nasal vocal style actually exists). This weird-ass choice by Stevens came off as both inauthentic and overly thirsty, and probably played a not-insignificant role in her defeat.

Compare that to the now nationally infamous outburst from recently fired Fox 2 anchor Taryn Asher, who is in the news for dropping an F-bomb and a blistering “bitch” during a confrontation with an overly invasive segment producer. You know what makes Taryn, not Haley, the epitome of Pure Michigan, though? The “jeez-o-petes” she emphatically drops in here, that’s what!

(Shoutout to Deadline Detroit for breaking this story that’s now being picked up by the likes of TMZ and The Wrap — without proper attribution, of course.)

LES MÉDIAS

ECOUTEZ: Suki Waterhouse, Loveland

LISEZ: Danny McBride, Thrilling Tales Of Modern Men

REGARDEZ: Chandler Levack, Mile End Kicks

Dee-ba-dee-ba-dee! Until next time (which won’t be another three weeks, promise!)…

—Your Uncle Grambo

In this issue: NWR, Kavinsky, the Grizz, the Leather Man, Keanesian, Adam Nayman, Justin Trudeau’s grubby paws, Gregg Araki, Sean Fennessey, Charli XCX, John Reynolds, and Jim Jarmusch.

SPEAK WOLF

Bronson was your Uncle Grambo’s first entry point into the singular ouevre of Nicolas Winding-Refn, but it wasn’t until The Neon Demon that I became obsessed with his very particular set of skills. I didn’t connect with Drive the first time I saw it — I think I was hoping for more driving? — and Only God Forgives was a huge mess, but a fortuitous run to the Forum 30 in the summer of 2016 with The Grizz and Keanesian cemented him as a director that I would follow to the ends of the earth.

And follow NWR, I have. Followed him into the streaming television purgatory, where his 13-hour-long voyage into the hellish, neon-soaked Los Angeles underworld of fascism, drug dealers, pedophilia, and police brutality (2019’s Too Old To Die Young) was so poorly received and polarizing that Amazon refused to promote it. (It ruled, obvs; if you can find it, you should absolutely read the recaps that I commissioned from Sean T. Collins.) Followed him once again into the streaming series abyss, where his 6-hour voyage into the hellish, neon-soaked Copenhagen underworld of drug dealers, sex traffickers, unscrupulous modeling agencies, and supernatural superfreaks (Copenhagen Cowboy) was so poorly received and polarizing that Netflix refused to promote it. (It too ruled, obvs, and I once again commissioned recaps from STC.) I also dipped into his back catalogue — you really gotta see his Pusher trilogy, which just came out in a gorgeous, 4K 7-disc box set from Nordisk, but can also be streamed free via Kanopy — and watched Drive a half-dozen times, fully succumbing to its hypnotic charms. (RIP Kavinsky.)

As we sit here in the waning days of July 2026, your Uncle Grambo is following NWR once again, only this time he’s FINALLY back in cinemas. Her Private Hell (NEON) debuted to terrible reviews in Cannes and even worse box office here in the United States, but don’t let the negative nellies lead you astray. If you’re a card-carrying member of the byNWR fan club, you’re gonna flip shit the second the movie opens on a hellish, neon-soaked (are you sensing a theme?) metropolis and Pino Donaggio’s gorgeous score starts kicking in. It’s a movie where you’ll swim in the warm waters of the male gaze for nearly two hours as a supernaturally evil force called the Leather Man (yes!) stalks a cast of bitchy, nubile foxes with daddy issues who bark at each other like wolves and say deliciously melodramatic lines like “I will always be your evil stepmother” and “I like freaky shit.” The vibes, my fine-feathered FOWs, are off the charts.

The closest analogue HPH has is David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, another inscrutable, phantasmagoric, nightmarish soap opera that polarized critics and landed with a massive thud with audiences. HPH is not for everyone — hell, judging by the opening weekend box office it’s barely for anyone — but I strongly encourage adventurous film fanatics with great taste to wander out into The Mist and trip the neon fantastic. (Don’t believe me? Adam Nayman agrees.)

EVERYBODY’S FREE (TO WEAR SUNSCREEN)

That first shot? Respect, eh. Putting the o-face into “O Canada,” I must say. Take off!

SONGS I LITERALLY NEVER NEED TO HEAR AGAIN LIKE EVER, VOL. III

LYNRYD SKYNYRD, “GIMME THREE STEPS”: “Play some Skynryd, mannnnnn!”

One of the least annoying subgenres of classic rock is Southern Rock (aka Redneck Rock), perhaps best exemplified by acts like The Allman Brothers, The Marshall Tucker Band, and, of course, Lynyrd Skynyrd. These bands all feature guitarists capable of ripping truly transcendent solos; there’s a reason that Skynyrd’s “Freebird” became a meme, after all.

Alas, the same cannot be said for “Gimme Three Steps,” a slow-developing song with one of the more irritating choruses in the history of recorded music: “Gimme three steps, gimme three steps Mister / Gimme three steps to the door / Gimme three steps, gimme three steps Mister / And you’ll never see me no more.” This corny tale of what happens when you hit on the wrong girl at the bar is neither interesting nor funny, it’s just plan embarrassing. (Evidence: The song’s protagonist pees his pants when an angry boyfriend pulls a pistol on him.)

Even worse, the narrator’s exhaustive pleading for “three steps” doesn’t make a lick of sense. Heck, even a cold-hearted assassin like The Freeze gives his challengers a 25 yard head start before embarrassing them in a footrace, so what are three measly steps going to do when you’re in a race against a projectile fired from a .44 moving at 1180 feet per second? Not much, mister.

The most reprehensible part of this song, though, is the conclusion. After trying to sneak a smooch on the dancefloor, our urine-soaked tall-tale-teller cowardly bolts from the bar, leaving Linda Lou to face the wrath of her riled-up, abusive boyfriend (who, need I remind you, is strapped!). Give me three wishes, mister, and I’d use all three to erase this song from all AOR playlists forevermore.

SEE ALSO: Bachman Turner Overdrive, “Takin’ Care Of Business” / Kansas, “Carry On My Wayward Son”

ARAKISS

What a time to be alive! NWR is back in movie theaters for the first time this decade, and so is Gregg Araki, the eternally horny cinematic boundary-pusher. I Want Your Sex is Araki’s first movie since 2014 — you gotta seek out his last project, the pre-COVID extraterrestrial sex farce Now Apocalypse, if you haven’t already — and lands at a theater near you this weekend.

Starring Cooper Hoffman and Olivia Wilde, this movie follows an impressionable young man (CH) seeking gainful employment in the fine arts who finds himself caught in the sexual tractor beam of prominent provocateur Erika Tracy (OW). It’s kinkier than most movies you’ll find playing at your local multiplex — Magnolia is opening this on 700 screens for some reason? — and spends some time castigating the sexual hangups of Zoomers, so here’s hoping that it does well with audiences. (It probably won’t.)

It’s worth financially supporting the work of the great Gregg Araki, so go buy a ticket or at least rent the movie when it inevitably ends up on PVOD by Labor Day. For more, definitely check out Araki’s conversation with Sean Fennessey on The Big Picture podcast.

IT’S GOOD IN THE DARK

It’s been 25 years since this century’s single most hilarious comedy grossed a pathetic $295,000 at the box office, making you realize a lot of the arguments you’ve been reading in those myriad “why comedies no longer work at the box office” thinkpieces are pretty stale. After all, neither COVID nor streaming can be blamed for Wet Hot American Summer’s faceplant when it was barely released in the weeks leading up to 9/11, but its affordable accessibility in the DVD era helped ensure that fans of The State and others intrigued by the burgeoning alt-comedy wave could get their hands on David Wain and Michael Showalter’s stone cold classic and judge for themselves.

If WHAS remains a comedic touchstone for you, you gotta hop on board the Never Change train, like pronto. Written by John Reynolds (the lanky, charming, bespectacled guy from Search Party, who also stars) and directed by Marty Schousboe (Joe Pera Talks With You), this movie takes all the hallmarks of high school reunion genre (think Romy & Michele, think Grosse Pointe Blank, and think WHAS: 10 Years Later) and marries them with the absurdist sensibilities of the very best Wain/Showalter projects. If you’ve never heard of it, you’re not alone; the movie’s IMDB page features literally NO QUOTES on it, despite being chock full of notable quotable one-liners. This movie was acquired by Hulu and released with very little in the way of promotion (on-platform or off-), but your Uncle Grambo and Keanesian recently dialed it up and laughed for 90 minutes straight. It’s got a slew of your favorite millennial comedians — John Early, Joe Pera, Patti Harrison, Zach Cherry, Carmen Christopher, Jo Firestone — and enough of a plot that you’ll start to plan your next viewing as soon as the credits roll. Plus, as its title suggests, it prominently features a tremendous LCD Soundsystem needledrop.

Don’t watch the trailer or anything — as I’ve long preached, don’t watch trailers unless you’re in the cinema waiting for your movie to start — just put your faith and trust in your Uncle Grambo and go with it the next time you need a laff. You won’t be disappointed.

LES MÉDIAS

ECOUTEZ: Charli XCX, Music, Fashion, Film

LISEZ: Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove (on page 711!)

REGARDEZ: Jim Jarmusch, Dead Man

Dee-ba-dee-ba-dee! Until next time…

—Your Uncle Grambo

But before I go! All the cool kids seem to rattle off a list of people at the beginning of their newsletters in a nakedly transparent effort to maximize engagement (and stroke some egos), so I’ll follow suit. This installment features: Kyle Brandt, Benny Blanco from the Bronx, Ari Kytsya, Steve Polychronopolous, Bret Easton Ellis, Those Damn Gideons, and The Face-Scraping Chimp from Primate. (Also, special shouts to Will Leitch and Michael Gowan, two people I have hung out with IRL since I last SubStack’d.)

SONG TO THE SIREN

Woof, The Odyssey. Your Uncle Grambo rolled up to the theater last Friday on Opening Day for the latest Nolan — shout out to Kyle Brandt, the ex-Real Worlder and current Rewatchables mainstay, who was at the same movie theater for the same showing — and was fully prepared to be blown away. Sadly, though, like just about every other Nolan movie post-The Prestige, I left the theater underwhelmed (if that’s a word, but I know it’s not ‘cause I looked it up). I mean, my favorite thing about the movies is when directors GET THE SHOT — and Nolan absolutely got the shots — but spectacle aside, nothing else about this movie worked. Matt Damon’s Odysseus couldn’t hold a candle to Maximus Decimus Meridius, Leguizamo leguizamo’d (meaning: he brought Benny Blanco from The Bronx energy to Ithaca), Charlize seemed bored, and the always incandescent Anne Hathaway gave an actively awful performance the likes of which we haven’t seen from her since Serenity.

My main complaint, though, was how Nolan treated The Sirens. Why were they so far away, especially when the whole point of IMAX is to fill a god damn frame? Why didn’t the sailors get out their proto-monoculars and scope those busty babes? You’re telling me Nolan couldn’t have convinced Sydney Sweeney and Christina Hendricks and Ari Kytsya to lounge on those cliffs for a few hours? Get our rocks off of those rocks, Chris!

It’s clear to this viewer that Nolan didn’t do his research. He really should have fired up his old VHS copy of John Duigan’s 1994 arthouse Skinemax cream dream Sirens before setting sail for The Isle of Polychronopolous or wherever he filmed this one. Who needs Helen of Troy when you’ve got Elle of Australia right there for the casting? (Norm MacDonald knew what’s up, as did Ellen DeGeneres, who saw this movie and knew that one day she needed to turn Portia DeRossi.)

NOTABLE QUOTABLES

WELCOME TO THE PLEASUREDOME

Speaking of getting the shots, have you had a chance to sample (or finish) Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed over on Apple TV+ yet? It failed to capture the public’s imagination in the same way that Widow’s Bay did, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t worth your while. Why? Well, first off, it’s a 30 minute drama, the best kind of TV show there is. Second, it’s got Jakey J in a prominent role, and you knows that your Uncle Grambo loves him some Jakey J. But third is that a HUGE chunk of the show was shot outdoors on location across New York City, an exceedingly rare luxury as the TV industry continues to constrict.

The kind of verisimilitude that you get when you’re shooting in Astoria and Sunnyside adds a layer of authenticity to the goings-on of this exciting thriller, helping to ground some of the more outlandish plot mechanics and make everything feel way more lived in. I have zero delusions that the production didn’t shoot a large chunk of the series at Silvercup or another local studio, but there are SO MANY moments in MPG where the city is a character that you can’t help feel but drawn even further into the story. (Or hungry for a slice from The Don of Dough.)

DON’T F*** WITH THE BABYSITTER

Did you know that your Uncle Grambo’s got a podcast? True facts! Myself, Keanesian, Maxabillions and Zachary The Bakery record the Back In My Day Pod once a month. Our tagline is simple: Old Movies. New Opinions.

Much like the best TV shows (see above), each episode is closer to 30 minutes in length than 60 minutes, and features discussion around the movies that myself and the wife watched when WE were 13 years old (the same age Max is now). We’re in all the places you’d expect — the Spotifys, the Apples, the Amazons — and also on the YouTubes. (We’re also cable access stars here in Westchester County; check your local listings if you live nearby!)

Our most recent episode features some PHCFYSB on two all-timers: Adventures In Babysitting and Clueless. Regarding the former, why weren’t there at least two or three sequels to the Lizzie Shue classic, John McClain style?

SONGS I LITERALLY NEVER NEED TO HEAR AGAIN LIKE EVER, VOL. II

KANSAS, “CARRY ON MY WAYWARD SON”: I’ll confess, I have been known to occasionally queue up “Dust In The Wind” while sitting in front of the SoloStove and knocking back my third tall glass of whiskey. (Who among us, etc.) That said, that’s as absolutely as far as I’ll go with Kansas, undeniably one of the most wretched bands of the AOR era. They trail other geographically inspired bands like Boston, Chicago, and Florida Georgia Line by a margin that’s wider than Asia (the continent, and also collective waistlines of the prog rockers).

Let’s see, what’s more durst: This song’s interminably dull intro (lasting, you guessed it, 69 seconds), or the dimestore Gideon-ass lyrics about being Born Again? Man, that’s a tossup (and a toss-off), so let’s just say they’re equally earsplitting and boner-killing. The church organ that announces itself every so often in this song is even less welcome than a church service featuring multiple sermons, and vocalist Steve Walsh’s first verse of the song is accompanied by what can only be described as an out-of-tune toy piano. Guitarist Kerry Livgren, who wrote the wretched lyrics, has the gall to begin this section by proclaiming “I was soaring ever higher / But I flew too high” (whut), which is subsequently followed up by committing the #1 mortal sin of lyric writing: rhyming “(blind) man” with “(mad) man.” The AUDACITY! No wonder he sought out the presence of The Lord a few years after this song first hit the charts.

Yet all of this pales in comparison to the chorus of this song, which features Walsh and Livgren harmonizing in a manner that not even the Virgin Mary herself could forgive. I know America was in a deeply depressed state of being when this song was released on Christmas Day (!!!) in 1976, but that does not excuse Classic Rewind for continuing to play this monstrosity in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand Twenty Six. Make it stop!

LES MÉDIAS

ECOUTEZ: Bleachers, everyone for ten minutes

LISEZ: Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove (on page 550!)

REGARDEZ: Johannes Roberts, Primate

Dee-ba-dee-ba-dee! Until next time…

—Your Uncle Grambo

Words and writing still matter to me, but rather than try to track down the logins to either the Blogspot or Tumblr editions of the site, I thought I’d try a little Substack action. (How very 2023 of you, Grambo!)

I have no idea how frequently I’ll be doing this, but I’ll shoot for once-a-week(ish) for the time being? If the response is good, maybe I’ll do more? No promises, though. (FIX KONG!)

HOW’S ANNIE?

Alice & Steve (Hulu) is one of a small handful of 2026 tv programs worth your while. The premise is simple: Fiftysomethings Alice (Nicola Walker) and Steve (Jemaine!) have been besties for decades, keeping things (happily and mutually) platonic after briefly dating many moons ago. The two remain thick as thieves until recently divorced Steve starts dating Alice’s twentysomething daughter (Yali Topol Margalith, who is kind of a dead ringer for FOW Rina Raphael), at which point things understandably go very much off the rails.

Squarely targeted at Gen Xers — hence the muted response for this show in the media-at-large — the series is quite well-written, deftly alternating tones between darkly hilarious, surprisingly tender, and emotionally raw. Better still, there are only 6 episodes, each about 30 minutes in length, so A&S never overstays its welcome.

But what I really want to talk about is the ENDING. So, if you have yet to watch the series, go ahead and skip to the next section, because SPOILERS AHOY.

…

…

Okay, did you make it? Good!

(Behind The Blogging: I learned that Substack doesn’t allow “spoiler” code, so this is the best I can do for now.)

Just so we’re clear, I’m going to go ahead and assume that you too have seen the wild climax of this show, perhaps the most surprising ending of anything I’ve seen since Steve Coogan was (nearly!) assassinated by a roving gang of Islamic extremists in Northern Africa at the end of The Trip to Spain. I mean, I was NOT expecting Alice & Steve to pull a Thelma & Louise and close on a freeze frame of the BFFs leaping to their (almost certain) death, were you?!?

I have NOT been able to stop thinking about this radical choice for weeks. I was really hoping for an ending where Alice comes to her senses, recognizes that Steve is a good-yet-very-flawed man who can give her (preggo!) daughter a solid foundation for happiness, but I was in no way emotionally prepared for BOTH OF THEM TO DIE. Because, despite the “(almost certain)” parenthetical I dropped above, these two TOTALLY DIED. Right?!?

I applaud creator Sophie Goodhart’s bravery to end her series on this particular note. Cliffhanger endings can be very polarizing, but this one escapes the trap of being frustrating and instead ascends into that rare category of Lingering Delights, much like David Lynch and Mark Frost ending the original Twin Peaks with Agent Cooper’s “How’s Annie?” gobsmacking closing question.

SONGS I LITERALLY NEVER NEED TO HEAR AGAIN LIKE EVER, VOL. I

BACHMAN-TURNER OVERDRIVE, “TAKIN’ CARE OF BUSINESS”: I’ve been spending a lot of time this summer driving my kids around town — camp, dr/dentist/ortho appointments, sports, you name it — and I’ve usually got the SiriusXM dialed into Classic Rewind or Classic Vinyl. There are other Sirius stations I tend to prefer, but during the summertime months, something inside compels me to listen to classic rock. (It’s almost certainly because I spent a few formative summers during my teenage years landscaping, and the lifers on the crew always had the radio tuned into WCSX while we were on working a job site, permanently altering my relationship to a genre I actively disliked in high school.) The programmers of these two stations generally do a great job playing the classic rock canon while also mixing in some choice deep cuts, but some songs really get my proverbial knickers in a proverbial twist. Hence, this recurring feature.

Okay, so this BTO track has always irked me. It’s not the guitar riff (which, ngl, kicks some ass), nor is it the twinkly accompanying piano melody, but the singer’s voice that grates. It’s a whiny, nasal nightmare, and the English major in me has always questioned why he sings “takin” (no g) in the chorus while then subsequently overemphasizing the “g” mere words later when he bleats “working overtime.” Are you a friend of the union man (“takin”) or a lackey management suck-up (“worKING”)? Pick a lane, putz.

ALSO! The DJs at CSX at least used to begin their fade-outs around the 4-minute mark of this song, but SiriusXM tends to play the whole extended 53-second outro where Bachman sings “Takin’ care of business” not once, not thrice, but FIFTEEN TIMES. We get it, dude.

DUDE SOUNDS LIKE A LADY

Like everyone else in the world, I’ve been loving the World Cup. I’ll never be able to fully convert into a footie fan, but I’ve found dialing in for three weeks every four years to be a pleasurable experience. More than the games, though, what I’m really gonna miss when it’s all said and done is the perplexing voice of Fox’s color commentator Stu Holden, who does for soccer what Mary Carillo does for tennis. Namely, make you wonder “Is that a dude or a chick that I’m listening to?”

THIS MEANS NOTHING TO ME

I’m insanely hyped for The Shards (FX on Hulu, August 5). I was THRILLED when Luca Guadagino was rumored to adapt the Bret Easton Ellis novel for HBO back in 2023, and then CRUSHED when he dropped out. I was THRILLED when Kristoffer Borgli came on board in May of ‘24, and then crushed when he dropped out. I was CRUSHED when HBO dropped the project altogether, only to be THRILLED when John Landgraf picked it up in May of ‘25 for Ryan Murphy to adapt for FX/Hulu.

Back when I read the book in ‘23, I painstakingly logged every song that Bret mentioned in the book, in the order that they were mentioned. (All 158 of them.) I turned this obsessive behavior into a Spotify playlist, which you can of course listen to, gratis. My sincere hope is that this gets you into the mood for some heavily stylized sex and ultraviolence, too.

LES MÉDIAS

ECOUTEZ: Suki Waterhouse, Loveland

LISEZ: Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove

REGARDEZ: Kirill Sokolov, They Will Kill You

Dee-ba-dee-ba-dee! Until next time…

—Your Uncle Grambo

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