Greetings, all, from the auspicious beginnings of my own personal Tony Soprano summer. Look, Tony Soprano isn’t a guy you want to emulate, exactly. But in a media landscape full of mealy-mouthed, conflict avoidant losers, it’s a rare treat to watch a character make actual (bad) choices and deal with their actual (worse) consequences.

What I’ve been up to lately

• I’ve been watching The Sopranos. Obviously.

• Apparently in the mood to appreciate Italian American cinema, I also watched Moonstruck (1987) for the first time, and: wow! We used to be a proper country, huh?
• If you didn’t already know, I’m delighted to inform you that Nicolas Cage is hot in this movie. In one memorable scene, Cher visits his bakery and demands he make amends with his estranged brother (her fiancé). Sweat-sheened and lightly manic, he rebukes her before turning to his coworker and demanding, “Chrissy, bring me the big knife. I’m going to cut my throat.” Iconic.
• I finished reading Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino. It’s about a girl from another planet who communicates with her alien superiors via dumpster-salvaged fax machine. (Oh, and she’s also Italian American! Culturally, at least.) I liked it. I made a short video about why I don’t think it’s a sci-fi novel.
• I added new section to website for reading recommendations—specifically stuff you can read for (mostly) free online. Thoughtful human curation is more important than ever, and I want to #DoMyPart. My hope is that when you’re bored in line at the DMV, you’ll think to yourself, “Doesn’t Mel have some reading recs on their site? I should check those out!”
• My most recent rec is “The Banal Horror of Jimmy Fallon” by Jon Greenaway for Current Affairs. It’s been making the rounds and deservedly so.
• Speaking of banal horrors, I accidentally read my first AI-generated fanfic. Well, maybe “accidentally” isn’t the right word. I was suspicious by the 30% mark, but I kept reading, unable to look away. Kind of like how I always watch the entire “Billie Jean”-dancing Chinese robot video when it crosses my feed. I’m inexplicably compelled by this robot—the awkward, frantic movements it makes before collapsing into a pitiful heap. Anyway, the experience of reading my first AI-generated fanfic was unpleasant yet edifying. I made a short video about it.
• I also made a short follow-up video about why the hell people are using AI to “write” fanfic in the first place.

• I’ve been trudging through The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison, a widely beloved 2014 fantasy novel that I was sure would be a new favorite. (Hubris!) At the beginning of the book, 18-year-old Maia, the banished son of the late emperor, is unexpectedly thrust onto the throne and into the deep end. He spends the book navigating his new role in a state of perpetual mortification. It’s tedious to read! He’s the literal emperor! Grow up! But I acknowledge that is what the book’s about: growing up, shifting from a reactive frame of mind to a proactive one, learning that you can never please everybody, etc., etc. If I’d read it at 18, I probably would’ve gotten more out of it.

• It hasn’t been a great reading month, I guess, because I’m also struggling to get through Ken Liu’s All That We See or Seem. That pains me to admit, because Ken Liu is MY GUY. His short story collection The Paper Menagerie is one of the few books I’d recommend to absolutely everyone on the planet without caveat. I know what his beautiful, shimmering mind is capable of, and it’s more than All That We See or Seem. Don’t get me wrong, the book does have some of the philosophical sci-fi elements you’d expect of Liu, but they’re flattened by his attempt to force them into the genre mystery format.
• I hurt my foot, so the podiatrist put me in a boot. I have to wear it everywhere. It looks ridiculous, but it’s easy to walk in, so I’m counting my blessings. Every few weeks, I return to the podiatrist’s office, and he tells me how much longer I have to wear the boot, which is always more time than whatever he said last. While I wait for my name to be called, I stare into the swirling abyss of the waiting room accent wall and contemplate my fate.

• Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke is the buzziest novel of the year. If you haven’t heard, it’s about a Hannah Neeleman-esque tradwife who’s transported back in time to 1855 Idaho. I haven’t read it, but I have strong feelings about Christian extremism, so I did participate in a bit of discourse about it.
• I think where I’m from (small town Kentucky) and my religious upbringing (liberal Presbyterian surrounded by evangelicals and Southern Baptists) has impacted my perspective on the long tradition of evangelicals attempting to penetrate secular culture. Tradwives didn’t fall out of a coconut tree, after all. I talk more about that in this month’s Patreon bonus video.
• All the Yesteryear talk got me thinking about what’s perhaps THEE most successful satire of American evangelicalism to date, the 2004 teen comedy Saved! I made a short video about it.
• I got a new personal high score on the Jurassic Park pinball machine (Stern, 2019)! Behold the triumphant self-portrait of the reigning T-Rex Rampage Champion.