A Dance-y Album, an Eviscerating Vlog, and Some Bloopers That Got Us Through the Week

It’s us, your beloved Jezebel staffers, here to recommend the best things we read, watched, and listened to this week for your weekend entertainment. Some are long (full seasons of television) some are short (a couple of TikTok accounts); all are guaranteed to help you peel your eyes away from the headlines and make your time indoors much more enjoyable, if you, like many of us, are suffering from the crushing weight of seasonal allergies.

For the first time in this series, we’ve got a special addition: a reader recommendation! That’s right, we’re opening this ongoing series to include the voices of you, our perceptive (that’s a compliment) readership. To recommend something for next week’s edition, drop it in a comment here, or email it to us at [email protected] with the subject line “Jez Recs.”

“We must make a cocktail so let’s get some things from the garden,” Carmen says in a recent TikTok before picking cilantro, a serrano, baby jalapeños, limes, and kumquats and crafting a mouth-watering spicy kumquat cilantro sour. The Los Angeles urban farmer has a sprawling garden where she grows fruits, vegetables, and herbs, and also has bees and chickens (whom she calls “the Ladies”). It’s probably the most wholesome content I’ve ever consumed in my life.

It’s not meant to be ASMR, but the sounds of her walking through her garden, harvesting vegetables, and picking herbs are so soothing; they feel like getting a head massage while lying in a flower-filled field with a cold glass of iced tea on a hot but not-too-hot summer day. I could watch this woman pick sage leaves and walking onions for hours.

Besides artisanal cocktails, she shares recipes like artichoke ravioli, lavender coffee, and scallion chive cheddar biscuits. She also gathers flowers and makes harvest baskets for her friends, family, and in-laws, which are filled with fresh produce as well as homemade goodies like orange marmalade, savory herb jelly, and lemon sage wine mustard. (The gesture has me questioning what I’ve ever done for anyone in my life.)

She’s also open about her mental health struggles, especially around a fear of failure, and talks about how gardening—which comes with an endless string of failures—has helped her handle stress and anxiety. She is pure delight and sunshine and her account fully satisfies my fantasy of escaping to the country to grow vegetables and have pet goats. For now. —Lauren Tousignant

Somebody Somewhere is like the first beam of sunshine to break through the clouds after a tornado touchdown on the outskirts of town. (As it happens, Somebody Somewhere features a tornado.) Everything is bad in the world and people are awful and our lawmakers are huffing hatred, but then there is this community of folks on TV—some queer, some not—in a place called Manhattan, Kansas, who bring joy to their friends and also to me.

Bridget Everett fearlessly, and occasionally pantsless-ly, leads the cast. Her second-in-command is a ruthlessly funny Jeff Hiller, and they’re backed up further by Murray Hill, Mike Hagerty, and a really hot guy who plays a fentanyl dealer (this is a great joke in the show, I promise). I think what I love the most about Somebody Somewhere is that when its main characters are given an opportunity to behave badly—to be mean, to skip the apology, to fuck up a second chance—they almost always pass it right on by and do the good thing instead. It’s a bit of small town superheroism that counteracts all the shitheads we see in prestige television today, and it is quite moving. The first season is already on HBO, and Season 2 premieres Sunday. Watch it! —Sarah Rense

This vows story about Hannah Shaw and Andrew Marttila falling in love and getting married in an animal sanctuary is the just most beautiful palate cleanser. To her 1 million Instagram followers, Shaw is known as the “Kitten Lady” and is also the person who inspired me to foster cats (23 and counting, thanks very much). The piece goes into details I never knew about the couple, like how their second date was to the premiere of Keanu where they met director Jordan Peele, and that Marttila moved in with Shaw on Valentine’s Day in 2017. The photos are incredibly heartwarming, as are the little details of the nuptials, like how their ring bearer, Hugo the former foster pig, was coaxed down the aisle by a flower girl dropping popcorn. He wore a white collar with a bow tie. Yes, this is basically a Disney movie. The only thing missing from the piece is the reason Shaw presented Marttila with a basket of calico kittens that they’d end up fostering: It’s because they’re his favorite <3. —Susan Rinkunas

“All right kids, it’s transin’ time.” If you have the two hours, this is well worth a watch/listen, as Natalie Wynn takes us through many issues concerning and adjacent to J.K. Rowling’s transphobia, as well as the current craze of bad-faith supposedly intellectual arguments that ultimately denigrate trans people for the sake of cis people’s comfort (and sadistic validation). In the third chapter of this video, Wynn discusses her participation in the not-very-good podcast The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling, hosted by Megan Phelps-Roper and brought to you by Bari Weiss’ the Free Press. Wynn discusses why she found the offer to appear irresistible (“I loved the idea that a famous former bigot could talk some sense into a famous current bigot”), why she disavowed it before it even aired, and why she takes full responsibility for her participation. Come for the humility, stay for the withering review of Phelps-Roper’s attempt at fair journalism.

Wynn is exacting when dressing down Phelps-Roper’s bothsidesism and the supposed ambiguity of the podcast’s title: “If you believe that J.K. Rowling is the misunderstood victim of a witch hunt, then just say that. Make the argument you want to make. Don’t crouch and hide behind this disavowal, this obfuscating veil of, ‘Just asking questions.’ Don’t rely on innuendo and framing and lachrymose Gregorian chanting to make your point while coyly denying you have any kind of agenda beyond, ‘I just believe in conversation.’” A really, really satisfying listen. —Rich Juzwiak

I love Taylor Swift, but I’ve never been a superfan and didn’t bother dealing with tickets for her current Eras tour (which I’ve heard is outstanding). But for whatever reason—perhaps my sudden investment in Gaylor or my fascination with Taylor as a representation of the mature “childless” pop star—ye olde TikTok algorithm has been serving up old performance videos of the singer’s and one in particular has completely undone me.

Earlier this week, I stumbled upon Taylor’s piano rendition of “Clean” from her Reputation tour at MetLife stadium in 2018. When it comes to pop music, my #HotTake is that far too many hit songs are overproduced. It’s only when they’re stripped down—lyrics, an instrument or two, a singular voice—that you can appreciate the anatomy of the song itself. And woof, do these lyrics hit when sung only atop piano chords: “The drought was the very worst/When the flowers that we’d grown together died of thirst.” In a stadium of tens of thousands of fans, this song feels intimate, and Taylor feels cracked open. I’ve been listening on repeat for the last four days, and I am beginning to wonder if I’m still all that far off from stan-dom. —Emily Leibert

My partner and I have many of the trappings of longterm commitment. We share chores. We have one insurance plan. We have a household budget. We’ve rescued multiple street dogs together. We are in love and like. But we don’t have engagement rings. Despite talking about what an ideal wedding would be and when that will happen, we haven’t yet fiancé-d ourselves. But I’ve found that if you dip the toe into even wedding-adjacent Google searches, engagement rings inevitably come up. Lately, I’ve been intrigued by lab-grown diamonds, which are cheaper and usually have fewer flaws than a mined gem—but, which I didn’t realize, made me an unwitting part of an ongoing industry war among diamond miners, sellers, growers, and more. The documentary Nothing Lasts Forever on Showtime, directed by Jason Kohn, shows the ugly parts of a supposedly beautiful industry that is hellbent on keeping diamonds around as the sign of commitment.

The film features diamond executives, diamond growers, gemologists, designers, and the people mixing lab-grown diamonds into the “real” supply. It’ll make you completely rethink a diamond engagement ring. —Caitlin Cruz

Earlier this month, my Americana empress Lucinda Williams announced an upcoming new album, Stories From a Rock n Roll Heart, which will come out at the end of June. Tommy Stinson, Angel Olsen, and Margo Price make appearances on the new album, her first since recovering from a stroke in 2020.

Along with that announcement, she released a new song, “My New York Comeback” featuring Bruce Springsteen and his wife, Patti Scialfa. It has a steady rousing beat and Williams’ iconic warbling voice, and her effortlessly poignant songwriting reminding us of her solid footing at the apex of the genre. I’ve had it on repeat. Though it’s not an immediate favorite of mine, the song has fulfilled its primary duty: getting me revved up for the new album.

Williams’ unceasing ability to bring valor to everyday moments is what makes her a reigning queen. To know I have a summer ahead of me where I’ll get to roll down the windows of a car (I do not currently own a car but that’s beside the point…) and feel the warm wind hit my face while listening to Williams’ music makes my eyes well up in anticipatory joy. —Kady Ruth Ashcraft

I don’t have time to consume much “culture” these days, so in lieu of that, may I present you these Between Two Ferns bloopers, which have had me laughing loudly alone in my apartment for the past 10 minutes and 22 seconds (yes, watched it twice). —Laura Bassett

An album that starts with a full-throated—yet melodic!—scream? That’s what I needed this spring. I’ve always loved Caroline Polachek’s songs but I don’t think I could count myself as a full-blown fan until this album. It came out in February and treats us to homages to Robyn and Sky Ferreira’s 2013 banger Night Time, My Time. It’s both angsty and incredibly dance-able, and full of lyrical phrases I’ve been turning over and over in my head over the last few weeks—including, but not limited to, the phrase that is the album title and one of the recurring lines in “Welcome to My Island.” The yearning to turn into the simple concept of desire?? Makes me want to write an art history paper! Put it on for your workout, or your mental health walk if you’re feeling a bit emo but still need a pump up. Better yet, put it on start to finish if you’re the DJ at the bar where I’m dancing this weekend. —Nora Biette-Timmons

The creator of the TikTok account Tips from Dead People turned her daily hobby of reading obituaries into the ultimate collection of lifehacks. She has read thousands of obituaries—the funny, profane, bittersweet, poignant, and even rude—in search of wisdom about what that means for our own lives. Hint: It’s not what you think. No one’s listing their resumé or home price in the obituary; when it comes right down to it, the things that matter most are the little things in life. You won’t regret going down this rabbit hole and will find yourself oddly inspired by the eclectic people you meet. —Jezebel reader Mary McGreevy