Content Consumed: Righteous Gemstones, Doja Cat, Reality, and National Dish

Published in

Content Consumed

7 min readJun 20, 2023

Hey, hey! Happy Monday, happy summer solstice, and happy June. In today’s edition of Content Consumed, we’re chatting about…

🙏🏼 Righteous Gemstones’ season premiere
🩸 Doja Cat, Olivia Rodrigo, and a vampiric summer
🎀 Barbie’s marketing is only getting better
🎥 Sydney Sweeney gets artsy in Reality
📚 Demon Copperhead is essential reading
🥘 Get hungry with Anya Von Bremzen’s National Dish

Righteous Gemstones didn’t shock and awe (yet)

Righteous Gemstones is back, baby! The premiere episode aired on Sunday night along with the second episode (which I haven’t watched yet). We’ve got new villains(ish) to deal with, like the late Amy-Leigh’s sister-in-law.

By the way, that’s my main complaint about this episode: was there too much mystery or am I an idiot? Was I the only one who didn’t make that familial connection until Eli Gemstone tracks down the sister-in-law at the end? (They also seemingly resolve the issues, which makes me wonder where this plotline is going.)

Anyways, the Gemstones kids are as dysfunctional (and funny) as ever. Kelvin’s Smut Busters squad is helping the sex work industry more than hurting it, Judy is cheating on sweet and innocent B.J., and Jesse’s battling rival church family the Simkins. Eli’s disappointed about all of this. Amber’s MLM is taking off, if you were wondering. Zion’s Landing… debatable.

It felt like we were doing the same-old, same-old though. It felt a bit… slow. But maybe they put out two episodes at the same time for a reason. I’ll let you know how episode 2 goes.

Doja Cat’s single and a vampiric summer

Doja Cat just dropped a new single, “Attention”, at midnight this past Thursday. How many times has it been played on my Spotify since then? Too many, some may say.

But I am obsessed with it.

The magical, video game-esque background tinkling and the sweet-talkin’ chorus almost clashes with the rap verses but it DOESN’T because Doja’s just that talented. Rapping, singing, dancing, producing… my goodness.

She’s really funny with it too. The lyrics are worth just reading, even without music. She simultaneously cares so much but also doesn’t give a flying f-ck. You can tell she grapples with begging for attention—and saying f-ck your attention.

Olivia Rodrigo is also about to drop a new single, also featuring bloody visuals. Are we in for a vampiric summer? There’s supposed to be a Twilight reboot, after all…

I must discuss the “Barbie” marketing

Okay, this is just going to be a straight-up listicle of the incredible touchpoints that the Barbie movie’s marketing team has hit.

Bitches love Architectural Digest (it’s me, I’m bitches). So, a Barbie Dream House set tour, hosted by Margot Robbie / Barbie? Yeah, that’s a hit. Watch it here.
Ice Spice and Nicki Minaj are collaborating on a track called “Barbie World” featuring none other than AQUA’s smash hit. The entire soundtrack is going to be incredible.
Barbra Streisand inspired part of a promo shoot, which says so much about Greta Gerwig’s full-scale involvement in this.
Every tiny production detail (example…) gets me pumped. How could this movie possibly suck when they’re putting this much effort into it? (🤞)

“Reality” (that Sydney Sweeney whistleblower movie)

I watched Reality this weekend, an HBO movie chronicling the arrest of whistleblower Reality Winner. In 2017, she leaked evidence of Russia’s inference in the 2016 U.S. elections. The short movie presents Sydney Sweeney as Winner during FBI interrogation before her initial arrest. The dialogue and events are entirely based on a transcript made public later.

I understand why it was a film fest favorite—it’s dramatic, literary in pacing, and somehow very captivating. I watched it in two parts, which admittedly might’ve been the thing that helped me stay interested. Let me repeat: this is an hour and a half of people simply talking to each other (with maybe three short flashback scenes).

It’s artistic. But worth watching, if you don’t mind getting even more fired up about the absurdity of the U.S. government and its systems.

Read this please: Demon Copperhead

Well, I finally finished Demon Copperhead last week. Believe everything they say. This is a book that will go down as an American classic. (It’s already won a Pulitzer Prize.)

A young, poor boy grows up in the worst parts of Appalachia, and endures trauma after trauma: dead parents, abusive foster homes, child slavery (seriously), and then what may have been the worst of it: the opioids. That part made me furious. It should make any reader furious about the world and the crisis that so many innocent people have found themselves in.

But it wasn’t all bad, and that may just be the moral of the story. There are first loves, touchdowns, lifelong friendships, found family, and few but powerful guardian angels. Beyond the overdoses of those around Demon and, during the worst times, Demon himself: there was goodness.

[Please don’t read the rest if you haven’t read the book yet!]

I think it could be summarized well by one of author Barbara Kingsolver’s most lasting metaphors of the novel: Demon’s repeated attempts to reach the ocean. And in the end… we don’t actually know if he did reach it. But he’s as close as you can be.

Anya Von Bremzen’s National Dish

My favorite part of Anya Von Bremzen’s National Dish?

Really, it’s a tie between the intro and the Oaxaca chapter.

Even if you’re not familiar with Von Bremzen’s previous work (please read Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking!), you’ll catch on right away. She’s a master traveler, a culinary professional, and a lyrical writer. The way she describes food rivals that of Bourdain and other media-forward food writers-slash-chefs. She’s conversational but definitely an expert in her field. A joy to read, really.

A passage that stood out to me, showcasing this expertise:

“So why then would someone like me set out the explore national food cultures? Because with the rise and domination of globalization, nations and nationalism somehow seem both more obsolete and more vital and relevant than ever. There’s hardly a better prism through which to see this than food…
… Such full-flood globalization, you’d think, would have wiped away local and national cravings. But no: The global and local nourish each other. Never have we been more cosmopolitan about what we eat—and yet never more essentialist, locavore, and particulars.
As the world becomes ever more liquid, we argue about culinary appropriation and cultural ownership, seeking anchor and comfort in the mantras of authenticity, terror, heritage. We have a compulsion to tie food to place, to forage for genius loci on our pilgrimages to the birthplace of ramen, the cradle of pizza, the bouillabaisse bastion.”

And of course, I loved the Oaxaca chapter because I got married there earlier this year and it already feels nostalgic. I would point out a sentence to my husband—for example, “Olga would be waiting on the upper terrace kitchen of her current restaurant, Tierra del Sol”—with a “we went there!” every time.

It’s a great read that you can pick up at your leisure. The perfect summer vacation book, that’s for sure. Get educated (and get hungry) with National Dish.