Summer of alien looks

"Janet Planet," "Owning Manhattan" + The Village Voice

Last weekend I saw JANET PLANET, the film debut from Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Annie Baker. Ask 13 people what this film is about and you’ll get 13 different answers, because it covers everything and nothing. It’s big and tiny, nostalgic and contemporary. While that’ll curl some viewers’ toes, I loved it.

The story takes place during a woodsy summer in 1991. Everyone looks at 11-year-old Lacy (Zoe Ziegler) like she’s an alien, while her single mother, Janet (Julianne Nicholson), strives to be seen.

Several details rang true for me — piano lessons in a strange house, crafting imaginary narratives in your bedroom, eating microwaved junk on a sick day — but the big one was that nonstop alien stare, being a misunderstood kid while none of the adults around you make a lick of sense, either. Being 11 is crummy, but being the mother of one isn’t that different: Just when you think you have life figured out, your body goes haywire and relationships sputter. (I swear it’s not a downer of a movie, though. There are also puppets!)

After I got home, I fell back into my routines of laundry and dinner and telling my kid to get off screens while I gazed at my phone. Later, I turned on OWNING MANHATTAN, a new Netflix reality series about agents who sell absurdly expensive real estate in New York City. Among their listings is a Central Park Tower penthouse for $250 million (not a typo).

Let me tell you, this show is like a sequel to The Ring — each episode Rip Van Winkled me so hard, I aged about nine years every 48 minutes, and yet I couldn’t avert my eyes.

Several of these agents — and buyers — are under 30. They live on TikTok, dress like clown-wedding guests and use slang that sounds AI-generated. They are aliens to me, existing in a Fellini frat party I deeply detest and slightly envy. If I saw them on the street, I’d shoot them curious looks they’d strut right through.

Rounding out this cultural buffet is the book I just finished, THE FREAKS CAME OUT TO WRITE, Tricia Romano’s 600-page oral history of The Village Voice. It’s a masterful record of the rise and crash of newspapers, the thrill of vibrant writing and the fragility of such operations if power slips into dumb/greedy/stupid hands.

If I had to find a thread between these things, maybe it’s that each left me wondering, Have I stopped being weird? Certainly no one looks at me in the strange-kid way they did when I was 11. Reality shows make me feel criminally vanilla, and I no longer work in a newsroom alongside fellow ambitious odd birds.

So along with my usual goals, I hope to regain some weirdness this week. Summer is for trying things, meeting people, taking chances. Bring on the alien looks, the laundry can wait.

with sunburned toes,
whit

yell | whistle | chill

P.S. TRUDY SELLOUT, my short book of short stories, is still for sale! PayPal/Venmo me 15 bucks, and I’ll send you a copy. (On Venmo, my account name is whitneymatheson. On PayPal, it’s whitmath@gmail.com. Put your mailing address in the note.)