the flannel roundup

june 2025 edition

Wapow! Boom! Kraaak! Pride Month is over and it’s time for all the homos to hang up their jockstraps and return home to their wives and children. See you next year, boys!

Here’s what I consumed this month in between a work trip to Chicago and the 800 cold showers I had to take because Philly is more humid than the literal ocean:

Watching

You know I gotta watch my girls bounce around the field in America's Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. This season they didn’t unionize but they got a raise, so, good for them. I’ve also been putting on the old CMT DCC show, which is a great time capsule of the myriad ways we used to humiliate women on television. (Now we’re a little more subtle about it. Not on this show!)

A whole host of mysteries: Death Valley on BritBox is a sweet and fun take on the “aging detective actor solves real crimes” plot, and Dept. Q on Netflix was… fine. (The mystery was interesting, but the whole show was like, about how Matthew Goode is a BAD BOY detective. He’s an ASSHOLE. Aren’t you INTRIGUED by this man who does not PLAY BY THE RULES???? The supporting cast is great, though.)

Still on season one of Deadwood, but I do love that 90% of the show is people watching other people walk by their window and then going “Hmmm…. walking under MY window? I must betray them.”

Some movies I loved this month: Friendship (the drug-trip scene was my favorite thing I’ve seen all June); No Bears (my first Jafar Panahi joint, very compelling); The Handmaiden (a rewatch of the masterpiece that very nearly made my top ten list); and 3 Women (how did it take me so long to watch this? Women can be sooo annoying!!!!).

Listening

I like the new Lorde, Virgin, mostly “Favourite Daughter”. Been dipping back into brat because I’m editing the novel I wrote while listening to that last summer. Also the I Saw the TV Glow soundtrack and, for some reason, the West Side Story and Evita soundtracks. Oh no, am I backsliding into musicals? This can’t mean anything good.

Reading

Poirot Investigates by Agatha Christie - this is a collection of extremely short little Hercule Poirot mysteries. I like to grab a Christie or two whenever they have some at my favorite used bookstore and this was perfectly fine, although the casual racism that pervades a lot of her work is… not great.

A Queer Case by Robert Holtom - this is a more recent mystery in which a big ol’ homosexual named Selby Bigge (an excellent detective name) gets to solve a murder in the 1920s. I thought the mystery was interesting but also really enjoyed the depictions of what it was like to be queer in the 20’s, and will definitely be reading any future Selby Bigge adventures.

Babel by R.F. Kuang - I strongly recommend this one to anyone who likes fantasy and/or historical fiction. It’s kind of like Harry Potter — a young boy is taken from his home in China to study a specific kind of linguistics-based magic in 1830s Oxford — if Harry Potter ended up realizing that the British Empire needs to be destroyed through violent revolution. The story is fast-paced, the etymological asides are genuinely fascinating, and I loved the characters.

My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout - a very interesting and sweet novel, though it didn’t resonate with me as deeply as some of her other work. Lucy Barton talks with and about her mother when Lucy is in the hospital for several weeks; over the course of the novel, you learn more about Lucy’s childhood and her relationship with her parents.

The Sellout by Paul Beatty - an outrageous, absurdist satire of race in America. The narrator, a Black farmer in a small town just outside LA, slowly begins to reinstate slavery and segregation in order to improve his town. It’s extremely funny and impressively free-wheeling, even if I will bravely admit that I don’t think I got every joke.

Exhibit by R.O. Kwon - this one’s short, but it packs a punch. Jin is a photographer who’s feeling stuck in her life and career: her husband wants kids, she doesn’t, and she also wants him to hit her in bed. Everything changes when she meets Lidija, an injured ballerina. Kwon’s second novel (after The Incendiaries, which I also really liked) deals with sex, power, art, and intergenerational trauma, and I really enjoyed it.