Blame it on the years I helped gather them together for an alternative weekly, but I LOVE a year-end list. In the smooshy liminal space between one year ending and another beginning, there’s something nice about just being told what to watch, listen to, read, and think about. I’ve been spending this week of dirtbag leisure between Christmas and New Year’s watching endless bad reality TV, doing a tiny little bit of work, eating candy, and reading on my Kindle with the Yule Log on TV, my Christmas tree looking tired but festive, and my cat snoozing on her heated pillow in the corner. In the truly Anne of Green Gables sense of the word, it has been DELICIOUS.
So delicious that I decided to make you a year-end list!
This year has been, like most years, a weird one. It has been a very rough year for self-employed people. When I first started freelancing, I very rarely asked for work. It sounds crazy, but it just came to me. This year I actually had to hustle, and while I’m proud of how much I was able to adapt, pivot, and maximize my client load to finish the year with my business in a stable and healthy place, it wasn’t easy, and I know that thanks to luck, long-running client relationships, and editors who always say yes, I have it better than most of the freelance media workers out there.
So if you have freelancers in your life, there’s never been a better time to buy their books, subscribe to their newsletters, or just remind them that you understand a functioning democracy requires a well-funded, appropriately skeptical fourth estate, and you notice and appreciate their work.
If you pay for this newsletter, you helped make my work possible this year. Isn’t that cool? I’m very grateful. And if you don’t pay for this newsletter yet, you can do that right here:
Okay, onto the recommendations!
From the Calendar Year of 2023, Burbank Industries Endorses the Following:
Things I Watched (Eds. Note: Though I consumed all of these things in 2023, some came out earlier. I am a rebel.)
Barbie (dir. Greta Gerwig): I loved Barbie so much I wrote an essay about it. An Oscar for Ryan Gosling!
The Holdovers (dir. Alexander Payne): I loved The Holdovers so much I put in my holiday movie roundup. An Oscar for Paul Giamatti and his movie-magic contact lenses!
May December (dir. Todd Haynes): Okay, maybe actually an Oscar for Charles Melton, who is incredible in this campy-slash-deeply disturbing Todd Haynes take on the Mary Kay Letourneau case, which was all over local newspapers when it unfolded in 1990s Seattle. What I appreciated most about this movie was that it did so much to humanize the Vili Fualaau character, played by Melton, and allow him to have a kind of emotional blossoming, however tragic it may be, while Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman’s performances show how the trappings of white womanhood can be weaponized to cause long-lasting harm.
Priscilla (dir. Sofia Coppola): In a similar reevaluation of less recent history, Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla reminded me how much I love Sofia Coppola. The casting is perfect, as are the vibes and the music choices, and the film conveys the odd particulars of Priscilla Presley’s life through a gaze that turns Elvis into a Bluebeard-esque antagonist but has nothing but empathy for its heroine and her capacity for growth, transformation, and escape—which is exactly how it should be.
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (dir. Laura Poitras): Nan Goldin is one of my favorite artists, and as the emotional center of this documentary, she shares her longrunning battle against the Sackler family, whose opioid production and distribution have ruined many lives, and almost ended hers. Goldin and her fellow activists are the driving force behind efforts to remove the Sackler name from the rarefied corners of the art world, and what’s incredible is that they’ve succeeded. This is the kind of documentary to watch when you’re feeling hopeless, because it shows just how much one person can survive—and emerge ready to fight even harder.
You Hurt My Feelings (dir. Nicole Holofcener): A Nicole Holofcener joint about a very nice therapist married to a high-strung novelist whose latest work he secretly doesn’t like, this movie made me feel newfound compassion for all of the people I’ve dated who have put up with my writerly nonsense. I laughed very hard at Julia Louis-Dreyfus and also myself, which is probably good. Writers are so serious! What is wrong with us?
Framing Agnes (dir. Chase Joynt): This documentary explores the stories of transgender patients who were part of real-life case studies conducted at UCLA’s Gender Clinic in the 1950s, and features a cast of trans actors reenacting their experiences and deconstructing them, with academic insights from historian Jules Gill-Peterson. I’m making it sound dry and academic, and it is fairly cerebral and high-concept, especially compared with frothier approaches to documentary currently dominating the genre. But that’s also what makes it fascinating: This is a movie about people seeing themselves in the experiences of those who came before them, and building a lineage across time and space, along the way revealing how shaky the gender binary always has been, and how profound a freedom can be found in resisting it.
McCabe & Mrs. Miller (dir. Robert Altman): One of those movies made in the ’70s where you watch it and you’re like “Wow, movies used to be really good.” This one stars Julie Christie and Warren Beatty as enterprising businesspeople who open a brothel in a tiny frontier town. McCabe was filmed in the Pacific Northwest and it really looks like the small mountain towns I’ve visited so many times, which I’m sure were once odd, lonely places like the one in this movie. This is also a Robert Altman film, so it’s tinged with moments of levity and everyday beauty alongside darker themes, which makes for a truly enjoyable, subversive spin on the Western as a genre. Also, the music is by Leonard Cohen.
Yellowjackets (created by Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson): Also set in the wilderness, this remains my favorite new TV show of the past few years, because I love Twin Peaks vibes and horror stories featuring teenage girls and maladjusted women instead of violent men. Even though the second season wasn’t as good as the first (they rarely are), I am buzzing for season three.
Things I Wrote
The longest story I wrote this year is about the Chicago underground abortion service known as Jane. This Crosscut story brought me to Portland, where I had the pleasure of meeting Judith Arcana, who was one of the original Janes and now is a writer and activist.
For The New Republic, I wrote about the many ways the anti-abortion movement fits the definition of a moral panic.
Also at Crosscut, I wrote about the national strategy behind Idaho’s so-called “abortion trafficking” law.
I also got back into culture writing in 2023, a change I really needed after the onslaught of 2022, which was a weird time to be a reproductive health policy reporter. Of those stories, my favorites are the ones I wrote on Britney Spears and Barbie.
Things I Read
Happening and Things Seen (Annie Ernaux): A fictionalized account of Ernaux’s attempt to get an abortion in 1960s Paris, all of the content warnings apply to Happening, but I loved its stark, poetic language and emotional spelunking into how class dynamics shape the meaning of reproductive rights in practice. Things Seen is a lighter read, a diaristic collection of moments Ernaux’s narrator encounters in public spaces in Paris at the end of the 1990s. I lived there when I was 22, and I had a two-hour commute each way on public transit, so the moments she describes felt deeply recognizable to me. It’s also a resonant account of what it’s like to go about everyday life while tracking a geopolitical conflict that feels simultaneously far away and very close at hand.
The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore (Kim Fu): If you love Yellowjackets you will love this book about a group of girls stranded in the San Juan Islands. I’m still thinking about the characters months after finishing it.
Mrs. Nash’s Ashes (Sarah Adler): An almost perfect romcom—delightful and with some depth—this book is such a pleasure to read from start to finish, despite some iffy depictions of behaviors that would be dealbreakers in real life, which is often just the price of admission for these kinds of books. I love this one because, in addition to its charming central couple you WILL be rooting for, it also features an intergenerational friendship and midcentury queer romance where nobody is recuperated in the end! How refreshing!
Shameless: A Sexual Reformation (Nadia Bolz-Weber):
is my favorite feminist Lutheran pastor who writes beautiful memoirs—okay, so there was not very much competition, but I think this is changing and that’s great!—and Shameless is a glorious reclamation of healthy sexuality and happy relationships in the face of shame-based, anti-sex, anti-LGBTQ+ ideologies that claim they’re rooted in religion without ever citing their sources. This book contains one of the best breakdowns of the true origins of the anti-abortion movement I’ve read anywhere, and it helped me find the language to frame my conviction that the conflation of religion with opposition to abortion is simply not supported by the facts of history or the widely varied experiences of people of faith everywhere. I loved spending time in the comforting company of Bolz-Weber’s words, and I bet you will too.The Woman in Me (Britney Spears): I promise I’ll shut up about it now.
Things I Listened To
If Books Could Kill: I pay for the Patreon for this podcast because I get a mean little thrill out of hearing other people say cutting things about counterfactual op-eds and the New York Times’ nonsensical coverage of my own alma mater.
Search Engine: This podcast should really just be called “Answering questions the old fashioned way—without Google!” because that’s what it is, but I especially appreciated its series on fentanyl, which does a good job of explaining everything that’s wrong with our drug supply without sowing panic or exploiting people in recovery.
The Dream: Jane Marie’s latest podcast, an exploration of the grifty practices behind life-coaching, has a relatable, messy start and gets better with each episode, growing into both a powerful indictment of an unregulated industry AND a personal narrative about why people are drawn to it, how hard it can be to ask for help, and what a relief it is when you finally do. It also includes a fascinating interview with a death doula that I still think about semi-regularly.
The Turning: Room of Mirrors: It’s rare for ballet dancers to critique George Balanchine, the man responsible for much of American ballet culture in its current form, but this podcast goes there, beginning with detailing what an absolute creep he was, and getting real about the way ways in which he set ballet up to be the racist, sexist, eating disorder-promoting, and deeply dysfunctional practice it so often is. I love ballet, but I think part of loving ballet is taking a good, hard look at the ways it causes harm, and finding ways to practice and support it that cultivate joy, connection, and justice instead. Room of Mirrors shows how.
The National, First Two Pages of Frankenstein: It’s time I faced it. If you look at my listening habits, you will see I have more in common with aging PNW Bumbershoot dads than cool Gen Z kids. The other day, Wilco’s “Heavy Metal Drummer” came on while I was driving, and I just ROCKED OUT like some 45-year-old guy named Brian in a band T-shirt reliving his youth on the way to carpool pickup. If you can relate to Brian, who isn’t real but who illustrates a useful point, you’ll love this album. “Tropic Morning News” is catchier than any song about doomscrolling deserves to be.
Things I Did
Bought clothes that fit: One of the things I’ve learned in my thirties is that bodies fluctuate, and this is just a normal thing about being a monkey in a dress (or suspenders, or very cool socks), which is what we are. It’s a good reason to invest in clothing that fits and makes you feel good and adapts with changes rather than making you feel weird about them, which is why I finally jettisoned most of my college-era wardrobe this year when I realized it could no longer accommodate my style or, after a journey into lifting weights, my arms. It’s been very freeing! (In the process, I’ve also learned that American clothing sizes were standardized using an arbitrary shape that has very little to do with real human proportions, and this is even worse if you’re a person of bra experience. Due to a long history of wacky marketing decisions, most people who wear bras are in the wrong size. If you think you might be one of them, shops like The Pencil Test, which has locations in Portland and South Seattle, can help set the record straight.)
Got over my long-distance driving fear: I’ve always feared freeway driving and solo road trips. But I’m also very financially motivated, so when a client offered to pay me to drive around the entire Olympic Peninsula so I could report out a story in October, I said yes. Fueled by podcasts, crunchy snacks, and a steady stream of coffee, my little Jetta and I grew acquainted with narrow coastal highways, roadside oil top-offs, instrument-panel indicator lights, bumpy poorly paved state highways, and twisty oceanside roads, and along the way, my fear receded, as a new feeling of freedom grew where it had been. Earlier this month, I drove to Portland in the middle of an atmospheric river that caused flooding all throughout Oregon and Washington. I drove through fog, heavy rain, and the worst visibility I’ve ever encountered behind the wheel, and while I didn’t savor every minute, I didn’t panic either. The drive wasn’t a big deal—which was a very big deal for me.
Stayed in a tiny home in Portland, a little cottage on Vashon Island, a Disneyesque cabin on Hood Canal, and a haunted lodge on the Olympic Peninsula.
Flew to Salt Lake City to dance at Ballet West for five hours a day as part of this ballet intensive, which means I can never make fun of Type 2 Fun again, because I am part of the problem.
Fulfilled my destiny as a ballet aunt. Listen, I was always going to be SOMEONE’S cool aunt, I think that much is obvious. But I do my best work as an aunt with kids who are old enough to go out and do stuff. As a child, I loved having cool adults in my life who would take me to see movies or go shopping or peer into the pit at the orchestra before The Nutcracker, and this year, I had the pleasure of taking my cousin and her seven-year-old to The Nutcracker, followed by cake. One of the best things about getting older is getting to be one of those fun adults for the increasing number of kids in my life. I still don’t really know how I feel about having kids myself, but if you’re fretting about it, I’m here from the future to tell you that the parent-non parent friendship divide is only as real as you allow it to be.
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A note about this newsletter: I’m aiming to send it out twice a month. Burbank Industries is just me, a reproductive health policy reporter at the dawn of the theocracy. This post is public, but most of the content on this account is paywalled, so if you want to follow it, I would strongly recommend getting a paid subscription.
The reason for this is that I cover things on here that are just personal writing and not my reporting, or delve into the thorny aspects of that reporting, and I like to keep some separation between these things. Additionally, as a freelancer, I don’t benefit directly from subscriptions to publications I write for (although you should support them!) so this is a great way to support my work directly if it’s meaningful to you. Thank you for reading!
Playing you out: Choose your own adventure for 2024—world-weary hope from the Zombies:
Or glib cynicism from R.E.M.
For me it’s a combo. See ya next year!