One Sentence On 153 Cultural Experiences
In 2022, I had this whole grand scheme to have 200 cultural experiences and certain things counted and other things didn’t. I wrote a very long elaborate blog post about it at the beginning of 2023, which you can read here.
In 2023, I decided to forgo numerical goals and just enjoy what I was going to enjoy. However, because of who I am as a person, I still kept track of everything that went down, and I can’t just let it lie in my notes app. You all have to know. So, without further ado, one sentence on each of the 153 cultural experiences I had in 2023:
Television
Letterkenny, Season 11: I have zero (0) memories of watching this but I know I did and I probably enjoyed the puns.
Old Enough, Season 2: I will watch small Japanese children run errands on hidden camera for the rest of my life and I will enjoy it forever.
Abbott Elementary, Season 2: Abbott Elementary is the exception that proves the rule that I don’t like mockumentaries (and has inspired me to write my own… whenever I get around to it), because I love it so much and don’t like most of the other ones (DM me if you want to find out why I think most TV mockumentaries are not dramaturgically sound).
The White Lotus, Season 1: I love anything that involves Jennifer Coolidge, Murray Bartlett, and watching rich people suffer.
The White Lotus, Season 2: I love anything that involves Jennifer Coolidge, Aubrey Plaza, and watching rich people suffer.
Saturday Night Life, Season 48: They wrote a sketch about my life and if Lisa from Temecula doesn’t come back this season I will revolt.
How I Met Your Father, Season 2: This show is objectively very stupid, but somehow occassionally feels like a realistic depiction of dating in New York City.
The 1619 Project: An important and harrowing watch, and as with the podcast version that came out in 2019, the music episode was my favorite.
Poker Face: I love a murder of the week situation combining the forces of Rian Johnson, Natasha Lyonne, and a million random celebrities.
Last Week Tonight, Season 10: The greatest exercise in democracy I participated in all year was helping John Oliver get the pūteketeke named New Zealand’s Bird of the Century.
The Reluctant Traveler: My only memory of this show is watching Eugene Levy stick his arm up an elephant’s asshole (this is not a joke).
Daisy Jones and the Six: I will not apologize for loving this show and unironically enjoying the album they made, everyone gets to like their own kind of dumb pop culture things sometimes!
Ted Lasso, Season 3: I love this show and there is so much to say, but I heard Phil Dunster’s (Jamie Tartt) real voice the other day and was SHOCKED, like I forgot about actors doing dialect work or something.
Up Here: I saw the musical version of this show at the La Jolla Playhouse in 2014 and really enjoyed it at the time and the show was… very different.
Succession, Season 4: I hope the cast has enough room in their ludicrously capacious bags for all the Emmys they’re going to receive in two weeks time.
Schmidagoon, Season 2: I am biased on this one because the showrunner, Cinco Paul, is my beloved high school improv coach, AND I genuinely love this show that lampoons all of my favorite musicals- I think about Alan Cumming and Kristen Chenoweth singing about eating children regularly.
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Season 5: I am a Jewish New Yorker and this show is My Culture and if you want to debate the casting you can also shoot me a DM.
Barry, Season 4: This might be one of the most underrated shows of all time, and I need Anthony Carrigan to win an Emmy for playing NoHo Hank with devastating perfection, but I also think James Marsden might win for Jury Duty, and although I loved that performance, I would like to encourage any voters who may be reading this to consider the four seasons of comedic gold that went into fellow Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama alum Anthony Carrigan’s performance.
Jewish Matchmaking: Yes, I know two people who were featured this season, and yes, I have been on Aleeza Ben Shalom’s website, and yes, her services are out of my price range.
Queen Charlotte: It’s fun to watch this show with Hot Young King George III and then watch Jonathon Groff play Old Deranged King George III in Hamilton.
Queer Eye, Season 7: Do I remember anything from this season? No. Did I cry? Probably.
Shiny Happy People: Docuseries of the year, hands down. I love cults (not like, actually, like, learning about them, and being sort of in a couple… anyway you know what I mean).
Never Have I Ever, Season 4: Justice for Ben Gross was achieved and I am pleased with the ending of this show.
And Just Like That, Season 2: There are many reasons I will never forgive this show for bringing Che Diaz into this world, but chief among them is that this year I had to tell my mom what pegging is.
What We Do in the Shadows, Season 5: I also like mockumentaries when the premise is so ridiculous (four vampires live as roommates in a decrepit mansion on Staten Island) that the dramaturgy is following a completely different set of rules.
The Bear, Season 1: Yes chef!
The Bear, Season 2: The episode “Fishes” is an absolute master class in storytelling and needs to be taught in MFA Playwrighting courses.
Jury Duty: In 2007, I saw James Marsden in Enchanted, and knew he was special, and I have not been proved wrong all these years.
Hearstopper, Season 2: It’s just really freaking cute little gay British kids being cute and gay and British, what’s not to like?
Wednesday: If I have to see that stupid dance to the sped-up Lady Gaga song one more time I will kill someone.
Only Murders in the Building, Season 3: It is my duty to tell you that one day Meryl Streep was feeling kind of depressed about the state of the world and so she decided she wanted to act in a comedy so she texted Steve Martin and Martin Short and asked if she could be on their show and that’s how we got this season of television with Paul Rudd and Meryl Streep being super silly.
Beef: Honestly, I did not find this as enjoyable as everyone else seemed to.
The Last of Us: I held out so long on watching the video game show because I’m a snob and didn’t want to like the video game show and then I watched it and yeah it was really good and I cried when Murray Bartlett and Nick Offerman died, okay???
The Other Black Girl: This was a fun show based on a book I really enjoyed and it seemed like they were setting up the possibility of another season so let’s see what happens!
Sex Education, Season 4: I cried so many times at this season. These characters just ripped my little heart out.
Golden Bachelor: This was my introduction to Bachelor Nation, and what a ride it was. Gerry had a full character arc and he is now a villain. Justice for Leslie.
Big Mouth, Season 7: This is the exception that proves the rule that I don’t like animation geared towards adults but for some reason I have put up with seven seasons of this show.
Shrinking: Jason Segal, Jessica Williams, and Harrison Ford play shrinks with a bunch of their own problems and it’s fun and funny!
Dahmer: I’m not a true crime girlie and I probably will not be again.
The Gilded Age, Season 2: Bertha Russell for president!
The Handmaid's Tale, Season 1: When the world is fucked, why not watch a TV show where the world is even more fucked?
The Crown, Season 6: The first half of this season was impeccable, the second half floundered, I sobbed like I was actually there at Princess Diana’s funeral.
Letterkenny, Season 12: More puns to round out the year!
Movies (also, this was the category I did the worst job keeping track of, so there may be things I forgot about)
If These Walls Could Sing: A fun little documentary about Abbey Road, I think?
White Noise: I just had to google this movie because I completely forgot about it.
The Banshees of Inisherin: I love weird, sad, Irish shit.
You People: One of the worst movies I’ve ever seen and definitely Bad For the Jews.
Shotgun Wedding: If I can have one ounce of Jennifer Lopez’s trajectory by the time I’m 50 I will be a very happy person.
RRR: This movie was just crazy.
Beaches: We all cried.
Theater Camp: My roommate told me that she’d never heard me laugh as much as she did watching this movie.
Past Lives: weeps
Barbie: I truly have nothing to say about Barbie that hasn’t already been said. It was fun! I had a great time!
Red, White, and Royal Blue: I read this book at the very beginning of the pandemic and loved every second of it and somehow this was one of the stupidest movies I’ve ever seen.
You Are So Not Invited to my Bat Mitzvah: As a B Mitzvah professional, I loved this movie and found it fairly accurate, and it redeemed Netflix from last summer’s atrocious adaptation of 13 the Musical.
The Color Purple: Give Danielle Brooks an Oscar.
Anatomy of a Fall: This movie is as good as everyone says it is and I would put it up there with the episode of The Bear I previously mentioned as the best writing I saw this year.
Maestro: I really liked this movie and feel bad about how hard we all were on Bradley Cooper’s prosthetic nose cause I thought the makeup and prosthetics in the movie were very good overall.
Killers of the Flower Moon: This movie was too long, I’m sorry.
Oppenheimer: This was also as good as everyone says it is
The Zone of Interest: As a Jew, I did not like this movie, and would like there to be less Holocaust movies that center Nazis, even if the point of the movie is that Nazis are bad but also normal, which is an important point, but also, just read Hannah Arendt???
Air: As someone who knows nothing about basketball or sports marketing, I found this movie really good and interesting to watch!
American Fiction: This movie was very good, but a lot of the funniest moments were in the trailer, which is always disappointing.
The Holdovers: This movie was made for me in a lab. I will watch anything based on the premise that an older curmudgeon has to befriend a troubled teen. I will eat that shit up.
May December: I know there is a lot of Discourse about this movie and people are throwing around terms like camp and melodrama but tbh I just didn’t really get it!
Elemental: I loved this movie and cried a bit.
Theatre and Live Events
1776: I think this should have been nominated for best revival instead of Camelot and I think if it weren’t for the horrifically bad interview they gave in Vulture, Sara Porkalob would have been nominated for a Tony as well.
Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner: This was part of the last Under the Radar Festival at The Public (RIP) and I remember genuinely struggling with the actor’s accents.
Wolf Play: Hansol Jung never misses. One of the best plays I saw this year.
Some Like it Hot: Casey Nicholaw is an amazing choreographer, everything else about this show was pretty meh.
Sunday in the Park with George: I saw this to support a dear friend of mine who was in a non-eq production and that is all I have to say about that.
Leopoldstadt: I saw so much sad Holocaust shit this year and I don’t really want to talk about it.
Camelot: I thought this revival was really boring and I liked Arthur more than Lancelot. Yeah, I said it!
Best Friends: This was also a supporting a friend situation.
According to the Chorus: As was this.
A Doll's House: I was pretty underwhelmed with this production compared to it seems like everyone else in New York, but I did enjoy Amy Herzog’s translation and I really want to see what she does this year with An Enemy of the People.
Thanksgiving Play: I liked this play more than a lot of people in New York and was surprised at it’s lack of critical and awards success.
Life of Pi: How on earth did this play crush it in London and flounder here? Some of the best design and puppetry I’ve ever seen.
Summer, 1976: When your play is a two hander with Jessica Hecht and Laura Linney and I am bored out of my mind, the acting is not the problem.
Dancin': This revival ROCKED and I don’t understand why no one saw it.
Mups at BFS: This was a play at my friends school so I am not going to discuss the merits of a musical version of The Muppets Movie devised by 5-18 year olds, but I do want you all to know that it exists and I saw it and it was two and a half hours long.
Sweeney Todd: I had my doubts, but I was so glad I was proved wrong by Analeigh Ashford’s take on Mrs. Lovett.
White Girl in Danger: This is what happens when no one on a creative team is willing to say no to any ideas. This musical was very, very funny, but there was no reason for it to be three hours long.
Kimberly Akimbo: A fave of 2022 and (embarassingly) the star of my 2023 Spotify Wrapped. One of my favorite musicals of the past ten years.
Parade: Yeah, I loved it.
Bad Cinderella: I was advised by (redacted famous person) to get drunk before I saw it, and he was right.
Titanique: An absolutely hilarious night out for the girls and the gays. If you have the opportunity to see this, you need to.
Bar Bilbao (I think this is what this was called): This was a cabaret a friend was in.
Fat Ham: I am sad that Fat Ham did not win the Tony.
Good Night, Oscar: I am irritated that Sean Hayes won the Tony over Stephen McKinley Henderson or Wendell Pierce.
Shucked: This is one of the funniest musicals I have ever seen.
Just for Us: I loved this show. Yay, content about anti-Semitism that isn’t a total bummer!
Sofar Concert: Y’all, I am such a good friend.
The Nobodies Who Were Everybody: This was a random play in the back of a bar in Brooklyn about the Federal Theatre Project that I went too because I had to switch my flight to London while I waited for my passport and you know what, it was a good time and I learned a lot!
The Ocean at the End of the Land: I fell asleep because I was so jetlagged due to the aforementioned change flight.
(numbers 30-41 on this list are all shows I saw at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival)
30. Woodhill: This was a very bad play about a very important subject matter (prison abolition).
31. Trash Salad: Easily the fringiest thing I saw at the Fringe- a clown burlesque show featuring so much ridiculousness. I will never look at turtles and crocs the same way again.
32. Elvis Died of Burgers: Another delightful Fringe show about disability and food and grief.
33. Dragaoke Wonderland: Sorry, this was a cop out. You can’t dress up in drag and host karaoke and call it a Fringe show.
34. You Don't Know You're Beautiful: Stand-up comedy about being blind!
35. Singalong Pub Quiz: This was another Fringe highlight that someone needs to bring to New York- it was at a piano bar and we would also sing a song and then have to answer a trivia question adjacently related (for example, we all sang Hey Jude and then answered some trivia about Jude Law).
36. It Gets Worse: Another very Fringe moment- my friends and I were three out of the five people in the audience for this comedy show and it was one of the greatest comedy sets I’ve ever seen. If you ever have the chance to see Sophia Cleary (and she’s based in LA!) you will not regret it.
37. (.)(.): This was another wild night at the Fringe- this was a comedy show in the basement of a taco place after midnight, and it was supposed to be a comedy duo but one of them was in the hospital and so the other just went on and improvised something and handled the most insanely rude heckling like a champ. What a wild night.
38. Tana: This was also a pretty bad play, not gonna lie.
39. It's a Motherfucking Pleasure: This was an excellent play satirizing disability awareness performed by two blind actors and one sighted actor that did end with them calling the entire audience cunts and I loved it.
40. Greenbird: This was a fun puppet show from an East Asian tradition (the specific country is escaping me cause this was many months ago and I did not take notes) and it was delightful.
41. Midnight Yurt Magic: This was a drag king show in a yurt at midnight and it was spectacular.
42. Brighton Comedy Show: This was a night of amateur comedy at a random bar in Brighton and I was pleasantly surprised by how not horrible it was! New York amateur comedians could take some notes let me tell you.
43. Burnt City: This was a new immersive show brought to you by the Sleep No More folks and I got stuck in a loop and watched the same show three times. HOWEVER, at the after party I met my favorite singer songwriter, dodie, and I got to go up to her and hug her and tell her how much I love her music and introduce her to my friends so overall the night was a massive win.
44. Guys and Dolls: Immersive Guys and Dolls on the West End featuring one of my friends from college as Sky Masterson. Delightful from beginning to end. I never want to see Guys and Dolls again if I’m not allowed to get drunk at the Hot Box Club during intermission.
45. Next to Normal: The whole reason for this two week long theatre filled UK trip was seeing Caissie Levy in the Donmar Warehouse production of Next to Normal and it was so, so worth it. It’s going to the West End soon and if you can see it, you must. The kid playing Gabe is a star turn amongst a stellar cast. I couldn’t be more obsessed.
46. Regina Spektor Concert: I remember exactly where I was and how it felt the first time I heard Regina Spektor (age 14, the song was Eet, I was at a dance recital) and to see her perform live in Central Park as a 27-year-old was magical.
47. Rooftop Concert: My friends had a concert on their roof and I asked them if they had a noise permit and they said no and the cops came at 11:00 and I’m still feeling a little “I told you so” about that one.
48. Zionista Rising (reading): Zionista Rising was the winner of the 12th annual Jewish Plays Project and is a play I really loved getting to have a small part of, however, since October 7 the playwright has had to pull it from consideration for producing, which is both very sad and very reasonable.
49. Hadestown: I first saw Hadestown in 2019 with the original cast and it was fun to revisit with a mix of old and new actors. It’s still a really good show!
50. Greenlight Bookstore Reading: I don’t remember what this was about but I do remember going with my roommate. It was definitely about revisiting American history through a Black lens but I don’t remember the author… or the book… my roommate would though.
51. Marble Rooftop, Emma Has Church (reading): This was also a play of a reading I worked on and I love this play and I am not biased at all.
52. Merrily We Roll Along: Maria Friedman really fixed one of Stephen Sondheim’s most famously difficult plays to get right, and this one come down almost entirely to good casting.
53. Aladdin: For a variety of reasons, this was one of the worst experiences I’ve ever had in a Broadway theatre. The original animated movie is so much better!
54. Stereophonic: Everything everyone is saying about this is true, yes, it is that good, no, it does not feel like it is three hours long, if you didn’t catch it Off-Broadway get your Broadway tickets now.
55. Here We Are: With all due respect to the late great Stephen Sondheim, I fucking hated this show, but I received the funniest email of my life during intermission and now those memories are beautifully intertwined.
56. Being Anne Frank: Once again, I am a really good friend.
57. MJ: Close second to Aladdin for worst experience ever in a Broadway theatre. I truly do not think this show should exist.
58. How to Dance in Ohio: I have so many feelings about this show and one sentence isn’t really enough- I am planning on seeing it one more time before they close so maybe I’ll write a full blog post about how much this meant to me and why I think they’ve had such a hard time getting butts in seats.
59. Shucked (again): Just freakin’ delightful. Catch this on tour if it’s coming to your city!
60. Flinch (reading): Sometimes I think I need to learn to be a worse friend, actually.
61. Spain: This was a play about fascist propoganda which isn’t horrifying or relevant to our current times at all… not at all.
62. The Workshop Salon (two readings): Another instance of me being a really good friend, to two people, but only one of them I was aware of in advance! Importantly, there was a talkback afterwards and I asked the best question. I won the talkback, a thing that is both normal to want and possible to achieve.
63. Hadestown (again): This night I saw a lot of understudies, and it was so fun! I am almost never disappointed by understudies on Broadway and, without naming names, some of them were better than the more famous folks they were covering for.
64. CO/LAB Showcase: This was a series of short plays, songs, and sketches devised by the members of a theatre company for adults with disabilities I volunteer at. They all rocked!
65. Jerusalem Syndrome: If you’re going to write a satiric musical about religion, and it isn’t as a good as The Book of Mormon, there kind of isn’t a point.
Books
Babel: I really loved this revisionist history/light fantasy about Oxford in the 1830s and how language and translation can be tools for colonialism or for liberation.
The Intersectional Environmentalist: A solid intro course to the concept of intersectional environmentalism and why it’s so important.
The Oldest Boy: I saw this play at Lincoln Center in 2013 and it has been stuck in my brain ever since and I finally got around to reading it ten years later and Sarah Ruhl is so freaking good at writing.
Book Lovers: I finally delved into contemporary romance and this book inspired what I went on to dub my “smooth brain summer.”
This Time Tomorrow: I love time travel/New York City books. What a delight.
Beach Read: My brain has smoothed out completely at this point and I’m loving every second of it.
People We Meet on Vacation: See above.
The Ocean at the End of the Lane: I read this in preparation to see the play and honestly it’s all very muddled together in my brain now.
Fourth Wing: I’m going to be 100% honest- I think this book is pretty stupid, but I like to buddy read stupid dragon books with my friends sometimes, which is why you will see the sequel pop up a bit further down this list.
The Psychology of Money: TL;DR humans are bad at understanding risk and reward.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: I am in a constant state of rereading Harry Potter because I read along with my favorite podcast, Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, and it’s a weekly highlight!
Foster: I am so here for the Irish literary fiction world takeover and the “no plot yet vibes but somehow I’m sobbing” energy that these writers are bringing to the world.
All Souls: This is the first time I ever purchased one of those “blind date with a book” packages because I was in Oxford and that was posited as the most Oxford-y book ever or something, and I found it mostly pretty pretentious, but that was probably the point.
Before the Coffee Gets Cold: I love time travel books that are very specific and follow rules and this is both of those things! And very sad. I am considering reading the others in the series but I can’t find them in paperback in the US (I also bought this in the same bookshop mentioned above).
in the even this doesn't fall apart: Sometimes instragram poetry is good. Yeah, I said it.
They're Going to Love You: This might be my favorite book of the year- a woman has to go home to visit her estranged father cause he’s dying. There’s also ballet and AIDs and flings in Mexico and non-linear storytelling. I loved it.
Iron Flame: The second of the stupid dragon books; I found this one lest stupid, but no one on the internet agrees with me.
Museums
Brooklyn Botanic Garden: When my brother visited me, we went to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and ran into at least three people I know, because actually only eight people live in New York City and I know all of them.
MoMA: I went here when my dad was in town and this was the only thing he specifically wanted to do, especially because of the Guillermo del Toro Pinocchio exhibit, which was really enjoyable considering I haven’t even seen the movie.
Museum of Broadway: I thought this was going to be a tourist-trap, Instagram-ready museum and I was so pleasantly surprised to be wrong. I went with three friends who are all also theatre people in a professional capacity and we all were blown away with the attention to detail and how much we learned, especially from the videos and interactive features. It is expensive, but I highly recommend a trip. (to be clear, it is also Instagram-worthy)
Tate Modern: After I got off the plane in London, I walked around until I found a cafe that had ample seating for me and all my crap and then I had coffee and fell asleep sitting up and eventually wandered over to the Tate Modern because it is both free AND has a free bag check, and I’m sure if I looked back through my photos I would have some more thoughts but honestly I was so exhausted.
Pitt Rivers: The Pitt Rivers is an archaeological and anthropological museum on the campus of Oxford, and my friend who I was with took classes in that museum. One of the classrooms we walked by had a plaque on the door that it was the room where Charles Darwin presented his theory of evolution and everyone literally shat their pants or something to that affect. American universities could literally never.
So…. that was my 2023 in a nutshell. Or in 153 little nutshells. A handful of empty pistachio shells after an eating frenzy. I’m gonna stop with the metaphor now.
And 2024 is off to a great start. I’ve already had 11 cultural experiences, so maybe after this I will start dropping monthly posts instead of yearly. And if we’re feeling crazy we can work our way up to weekly? Or daily like I did for three months during the pandemic? Only time will tell.