Hi friends. Sorry this is hitting your inboxes a little late in the day — I’ve been under the weather, so I thought I would do things a little differently this Sunday. In today’s letter, Did You See This has become Water Cooler Corner, a segment for pop culture news, and New on the Shelf, a bookish category, has stepped in for The Graze this week. If you know me you’re probably aware that I have something of an affinity for reading whatever is on my screen, and that includes fluffier pieces of news. I don’t particularly care about celebrities, but I like reading about what’s happening in their world.
I’m sure I could argue that this inclination stems from the same reason I enjoy watching reality television—people are fascinating, and so is the culture that surrounds them—but I’ll lean on some lesser facts: sometimes you don’t want to read a long-form story; you want to gossip around the water cooler that is actually just a group chat with friends. So today we’re indulging in some water cooler chat here at Barn Sour. Consider this our tabloid issue. Here’s a song for your time.
Too Many Tabs Open
Are tampons safe or harmful? Study finds that tampons contain arsenic, lead, other materials “According to a news release about the study, tampons ‘are of particular concern as a potential source of exposure to chemicals, including metals, because the skin of the vagina has a higher potential for chemical absorption than skin elsewhere on the body.’”
How Celebrity Book Clubs Actually Work “That [celebrities] pet projects have a tremendous influence on a complex and vital industry isn’t really their problem, but they also claim to care immensely about authors and the industry whose waters they’re playing in, so it would be worthwhile for them to pay more attention to this one element. If celebrity book clubs committed to selecting authors outside of the Big Five, it could have an enormous impact on smaller houses and their authors.”
Why America’s Berries Have Never Tasted So Good “The U.S. berry market is worth about $9 billion annually, which is more than 40% over the past five years, according to NielsenIQ. Strawberries are the most popular berry, but the entire category is one of the most promising areas of growth in the entire grocery store. In fact, berries now sell twice as much as any other fruit.”
‘I was handed to a complete stranger’: the survivors fighting to end child marriage in 37 states - and the people who want to keep it legal “However, child marriage, which activists describe as one or both parties entering a union while under age 18, remains legal in 37 US states. There are no federal laws against it, meaning minors can marry, with parental consent, before they can vote, drink, or buy lottery tickets in the majority of the country. Some states have a minimum marriage age on the books, which ranges from 15 to 18. Four states — California, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Mississippi — do not specify any minimum age at all.”
‘Horse detective’ adopts wild mustangs, reunites them with herds “The Bureau of Land Management plans to capture 20,000 equines this year, which would leave an estimated 67,000 (including about 14,000 new foals) roaming free in 10 Western states, said Jason Lutterman, public affairs specialist for the Bureau of Land Management’s Wild Horse and Burro Program. That’s far fewer than large herds found on the land in the 1800s, when there were an estimated 2 million wild horses.”
Water Cooler Corner
Katy Perry makes music for gays who don't know who Ethel Cain is… and I think that’s beautiful
It almost feels longer than 10 years since Dashcon happened on that one fateful day…
Almost 20 years since the release of the much-beloved 2006 movie The Devil Wears Prada, a sequel is reportedly in the works at Disney, with the original screenwriter (Aline Brosh McKenna), producer (Wendy Finerman), and director (David Frankel) each set to return. According to a Puck News exclusive, Meryl Streep will reprise her role as Miranda Priestly, and Emily Blunt, who played her former assistant Emily Charlton in the original film, is set to star as a “high-powdered executive at a Kering or LVMH-style luxury group, whose advertising dollars Priestly desperately needs.” Anne Hathaway told V Magazine back in April that a sequel to the film would “probably not” happen. I’ve always felt neutral toward The Devil… (lol), so I am neither here nor there about this news, but I was invited to the premiere of The Fall Guy a few months ago and was struck by how stunning Emily Blunt was when she walked on stage, so I guess you could say I’m at least looking forward to more posters of her beautiful face being wheatpasted across Los Angeles.
A documentary about Lilith Fair is somewhere on our horizons. The culturally impactful touring music festival was conceived by Sarah McLachlan in the late 1990s after her growing disillusionment with the mainstream festival circuit and male-dominated music industry. The festival exclusively featured female artists and bands during the summers of 1997 to 1999. McLachlan, Erykah Badu, Sheryl Crow, Mýa, Brandi Carlile, and more are set to appear in the film. I was nowhere near old enough to attend Lilith Fair, but I remember always wishing I could experience what it must have been like. I really hope they lean into the nostalgia factor with this one.
It looks like Emerald Fennell, writer and director of Saltburn, will be adapting Wuthering Heights. “I’ve always been obsessed with the gothic,” Fennell wrote in a January 2024 column for the Los Angeles Times. “Whether it was Edward Gorey’s children who are variously choked by peaches, sucked dry by leeches or smothered by rugs; Du Maurier’s imperiled heroines or the disturbing erotic power of Angela Carter’s fairy tales, the gothic world has always had me in its grip. It’s a genre where comedy and horror, revulsion and desire, sex and death are forever entwined, where every exchange is heavy with the threat of violence, or sex or both.” The last feature film adaptation of the Emily Brontë novel was directed by Andrea Arnold in 2011, and starred Kaya Scodelario as Catherine and James Howson as Heathcliff.
In more movie news, Lena Dunham will no longer be directing the Polly Pocket adaptation. Dunham’s focus is instead on her upcoming Netflix series Too Much, an autobiographical rom-com about a woman who moves to London after a breakup in New York City and finds herself falling in love with a musician. “I was not willing to have another experience like what I’d experienced around Girls at this point in my life,” Dunham told Rachel Syme during her New Yorker profile. “Physically, I was just not up for having my body dissected again. It was a hard choice, not to cast Meg [Stalter] — because I knew I wanted Meg — but to admit that to myself. I used to think that winning meant you just keep doing it and you don’t care what anybody thinks. I forgot that winning is actually just protecting yourself and doing what you need to do to keep making work.” The show will star Megan Stalter and is slated for a 2025 premiere.
Oh, and apparently an assassination attempt was made on Donald Trump’s life at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania yesterday. The suspected gunman has been identified as a 20-year-old registered Republican.
New releases: film & television
Just shy of two years since the last season, HBO Max dropped an official teaser trailer for the third season of Industry, the thinking man’s Succession (joking!!), which finally premieres on August 11. Everyone is talking about Kit Harington appearing in this season, but I’m most curious about Sarah Goldberg, aka Sally Reed in Barry. Imagine NoHo Hank as a finance bro.
And after almost three years since the first season premiered, Apple has released their own teaser trailer for the second season of Severance, set for a January 17, 2025 release. I suggest catching up with both series ahead of their returns if you’ve never seen the debauched drama following the lives of top investment bankers in London or want to delve into a dysthymic world of office drones.
Neon’s highly anticipated horror movie Longlegs was released in theaters on July 12 and my friends and I saw it at 11 in the morning. I loved it. Did you know Osgood Perkins, as in Dorky David from Legally Blonde, is the writer and director? Crazy stuff.
Writer, director, and producer Laurent Bouzereau’s documentary Faye became available to stream on Max on July 13. The L’Œil d’Or prize nominee at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival reflects on the private life and esteemed career of Oscar-winning actress Faye Dunaway.
National Anthem, a drama following a 21-year-old construction worker (Charlie Plummer) who joins a community of queer rodeo performers in New Mexico, was released in select theaters on July 12 and expands nationwide on July 19.
A different version of the documentary Eno, about pioneering artist Brian Eno, will be screened each day from July 12 through July 25 at Film Forum in New York City. This is neat. Wish I were out east (not in The Hamptons) right now.
We also lost quite a few beloved figures in Hollywood this week.
Shelley Duvall, seminal actress and patron saint to strange young girls watching movies alone in their living rooms everywhere, passed away at 75 on July 11 due to complications from diabetes. “My dear, sweet, wonderful life, partner, and friend left us last night,” her long-term partner, Dan Gilroy, shared. “Too much suffering lately, now she’s free. Fly away beautiful Shelley.” Long may she live in our hearts, floating over Texas bluebonnets. Last week, Texas Monthly published the story of how Shelley Duvall’s archivist, Sarah Lukowski, came to befriend Duvall herself, and it was lovely. Give the piece a read if you’re looking for something sweet to eat.
Just one day after his 76th birthday, Richard Simmons, beloved fitness guru and angel of my aerobics-loving heart, was found deceased at his home on Saturday. It is believed that a fall the prior evening may be to blame. Dancing in our living rooms, sweating to the oldies with friends, eating a big, crunchy salad for dinner — all of these seem like good ways to honor Simmons’ big heart and the warmth we felt because of it.
Dr. Ruth Westheimer, famed American sex therapist and talk show host originally from Germany, also died this week at 96. Living in hindsight can blunt the impact she left on society for those of us who are younger and were raised in a post-Dr. Ruth talk show population, but she singlehandedly revolutionized the way we spoke and thought about sex and sex education. Her legacy will surely leave an indelible mark on the world. I worked with her at an old job in the past and always found her to be a really lovely, thoughtful woman. My heart goes out to Westheimer’s community.
Shannen Doherty died at 53 on Saturday after living nearly 10 years with breast cancer. After initially being diagnosed in 2015, the Charmed actress went into remission in 2017, but the cancer returned by 2019. She was diagnosed with metastatic stage 4 breast cancer the following year. By June 2023, it had spread to her brain. This is really just so plainly sad. I don't know a single person whose life hasn’t been affected by cancer in some way; it is a staggering, isolating way for anyone to live and for their family and friends to lose them. I am heartbroken for everyone Doherty loved in this world.
New on the Shelf
Another baby has been born, and she’s New on the Shelf. I know many of you are here because of Warren’s inherent bookish nature, so I've been considering how to incorporate more literary content into Barn Sour as well. I’m unsure of the capacity or frequency this will happen, but today we’re focusing on five book releases from this week that have piqued my interest. What do you think?
From Farrar, Straus and Giroux comes Laura van den Berg’s State of Paradise, a novel about a nameless ghostwriter living in small-town Florida when things begin to go awry after a pandemic disappears from the world as quickly as it disrupted it. I am a big fan of van den Berg’s stories and how beautifully she captures the strange and singular atmosphere of Florida, so I’m eager to read this.
A new edition of Gary Indiana’s memoir, I Can Give You Anything but Love, has been published by Seven Stories Press and is currently 30% off through the publisher’s sitewide sale until the end of July. I first read Indiana for a friend’s book club several years ago and fell face first into the incisive and droll way he depicted the world on the page. “Gary Indiana has composed a literary, unabashedly wicked, and revealing montage of excursions into his life and work—from his early days growing up gay in rural New Hampshire to his escape to Haight-Ashbury in the post-summer-of-love era, the sweltering 1970s in Los Angeles, and ultimately his existence in New York in the 1980s as a bona fide downtown personality.”
Aysegül Savas’s latest, The Anthropologists, was published by Bloomsbury this week and follows a young couple who dream of the life that will open up before them once they find an apartment in a foreign country. Sounds like a good book to escape the summer heat with, plus I’m always trying to read more Turkish authors.
Doubleday Books brings us Irish writer Kevin Barry’s The Heart in Winter, his first novel set in North America. Rolling western landscapes, two lovers on the run, stolen horses and big dreams and bucolic backdrops, and nineteenth-century San Francisco? I think this could be fun.
Yasmin Zaher’s The Coin has been published by Catapult and is the story of “a wealthy Palestinian woman with impeccable style and meticulous hygiene. And yet the ideal self, the ideal life, remains just out of reach: her inheritance is inaccessible, her homeland exists only in her memory, and her attempt to thrive in America seems doomed from the start.” This one has steadily crept its way up my reading list since I first heard of it several months ago; everyone I know who read advanced reader copies seems to have fallen in love. I’m excited to potentially do the same.
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Sour Reflections
No real reflections this Sunday, although I will share two little tidbits from my mostly lethargic week. Feeling a little better than I had in days, to help continue lifting my spirits and because one of my friend’s loves bananas and I never want to show up to someone’s home empty-handed, I began baking chocolate banana nut and cherry muffins to take to my friends for movie night. I wanted to keep my mind preoccupied while I did this so I scrolled through recent podcast episodes in my queue, came away empty-handed, scrolled through individual show channels, and settled on an episode of This Is Love about light pollution and its effects on earth, and Isle of Sark, the world’s first dark sky island, in the Channel Islands. Turns out this was just what the doctor ordered. Stirring and meditative in its storytelling, I am glad to have opened my mind up in this way.
And the following evening, having indulged in the some of the best vodka pasta I’ve ever had in my life, after acquainting ourselves with one of the cutest foster kittens to ever live and walking to the beach and settling into movie night, our gracious host offered us Rose Delights’ strawberry singles, an Albion strawberry-flavored Turkish delight infused with 1MG of THC. I’ve eyeballed this brand before, but have never bought from them because I honestly assumed it would be a waste of money, that the product was basically just a tasteful pipe dream, but as soon as we made it back to her home from our post-dinner stroll and sat on the couch to watch the movie, I was high — and it was pleasant. I felt neither called to traverse the universe from wherever I happened to be sitting at the time nor delirious with sleep. I was just there, afloat on a cloud made of fabric with two of my closest friends. It all felt very old school and was over after a couple of leisurely hours. I liked it a lot.
I know this week’s letter veered from form, so please let me know what you think in the comments! I’ve been unwell, then yesterday was spent celebrating what is essentially a big holiday in my personal life, but I’m feeling better today and we will be back to our regularly scheduled programming next Sunday. I do this because it is fun, and allows me to habituate more and more to a pattern of writerly discipline, but also because I genuinely enjoy sharing what I’m reading and thinking and consuming with you all and having you share your thoughts, feelings, and wisdom in return. Your insight means a lot to me; from liking a post to subscribing to commenting to forwarding an email to friends — all forms of your engagement with Barn Sour are meaningful to and invigorating for me, and I hope you’re as much enjoying having this little letter show up in your inboxes every Sunday morning as I am writing it. Thank you for being here, truly.
I have something neat cooked up that should be heading your way soon, but in the meantime, I hope you have a great week. See you next Sunday.
a few weeks ago while on my hour lunch break I too listened to the This is love episode about Sark and loved it, it made me want to travel to Sark and visit more places in the world that are categorized as Bortle scale 1 dark sky places. The notion that everyone living there is always looking up and admiring the night sky made me long to experience it alongside them. also loved that Enya’s Dark Sky Island is inspired by Sark, I did not know that previously!
The water cooler chit chat is so fun! I love a little celeb gossip, and also what’s up and coming in the book and film realms. You keep me in the know <3
I hope you’ll feel better soon! ❤️🩹
I loved this special episode, lots of fun bits in the water cooler section and that “Oh and” throwback comment about Trump made me giggle because of the way it was tacked on at the end .. it’s what his dumb ass deserves as far as news coverage goes