party people
It’s everyone’s favorite season (awards) and I’ve made a list of the best/most remarkable things I watched in the past year (that I can remember right now) in important categories like: Most chaotic comedy feature film to make me cry. The awards are the second half of today’s post!
BUT FIRST, our regularly-scheduled programming of unanswered cover letters makes a triumphant return with this revealing and truthful email application for a job running events at an arts & crafts venue. Yes, that is a real job. And no, I have not heard back from them, but I have no regrets about the contents of this letter:
Hi REDACTED-
I saw your TikTok about hiring an entertainer/host for REDACTED and it sounds like a great role for me! I have lots of experience hosting dinner parties, friends’ birthdays, book clubs, and themed movie days for fun. And in previous roles in fundraising and communications, I’ve staffed events at private homes, museums, and every size venue in between.
I have also served on a couple of volunteer boards that hosted networking and educational events. For Lean In DC, I facilitated networking mixers at local bars and ran training events at the offices of corporate partners, which meant finding creative ways to use an existing space and create logical people flows for maximum impact. While I was in grad school at Loyola Marymount University, I served as VP of the School of Film and Television Women’s Society. We hosted screenings and panel discussions at the school’s theaters, usually with some sort of snack-and-chat period beforehand. We had both undergrads and grad students coming to our events, sometimes showing up alone or coming to their first-ever campus event, so we practiced greeting people where they were and circulating the room during social hours, catching anyone who might be a little too shy or anxious to start conversations in a room full of strangers.
They asked to hear applicants hosting philosophy and about the best event we’d ever hosted—this next section was so fun to write that I’m almost not even mad that I never heard from them :)
My event-hosting philosophy is that comfort is everything. I want people to be greeted verbally and visually in a way that can put them at ease, so they know that now that they’re here, they’re in good hands. To me, that means being organized, doing thorough walkthroughs to imagine how attendees might see the room, and prioritizing clear communication with anyone else working an event.
The best event I’ve ever hosted was a party at my old house in DC that my friends and I co-hosted, aptly called The Rando Party. The concept was simple—invite all our rando friends, introduce them, and see what happens! We had giant poster-sized post-its on the walls of the dining room with silly questions written on the top and markers on string taped to them—nothing breaks the ice like an activity. We gave each floor of our old row house a different vibe: dance beats and drinks stations for maximum impact downstairs, R&B and lamp lighting for flirting on the second floor, and indie jams and twinkle lights to juxtapose the political debates that always ended up on the third floor. As a host, it was an extrovert’s delight! We had a great turnout and got to spend the night introducing people from all the pockets of our lives: “Wait, you have to come meet REDACTED’s coworker, she’s obsessed with this song too!” And at the end of the night, those giant post-its were full of answers, inside jokes, and drawings. The evidence of a night well spent.
Soooooo, they never responded to this email, and that’s sadly their loss! And also mine!
But honestly, I’m impressed at the level of professionalism and restraint I showed in that cover letter, because I did not include the detail that my friends and I bring up most when we reminisce about the Rando Party: that the tagline for the event was “taste the rando.” It’s so good!! A nod to the Skittles slogan mixed with the promise that the party would have so many cool, fun, random hotties that people would meet their next hookup there. And I can confirm, someone tasted the rando that night. And that is a quantifiable metric of party success.
Moving on!
It’s time for today’s awards.
The rules for eligibility in the to whom it may concern End of January Awards are as follows:
-The film or television episode had to either air on my iPad or have theatrical release within the last twelve months.
-I have to remember it off the top of my head right now.
-That’s all!
And the winners are…
Most chaotic comedy feature film to make me cry:
KNEECAP
The fictionalized origin story of the Belfast-born hip hop group Kneecap, starring the actual members of Kneecap with a supporting stint from Michael Fassbender, it’s a story about defiance, determination, and the power of language. The main characters are so fucking funny and all over the place, and I was rooting for their disastrous asses the whole time as they work to put out some real fuckin’ jams while fighting for their right to speak Irish in Northern Ireland, which is still under the rule of the British government. Know what year it became legal to use the Irish language in courts in Northern Ireland? TWENTY TWENTY TWO. If you like DERRY GIRLS or OLD SCHOOL, then KNEECAP is for you.
Most “I actually can’t talk about it, but it’s really good” movie:
BABYGIRL
I …………… I really can’t, I don’t have the words that can be put down into..… it’s *deep exhale* and… for— see, there was a moment when I was real worried but maybe actually everything is gonna be okay?!!? I don’t know???!? Do you want a cookie?
Most “this is one character’s story but also an allegory” movie:
THE LAST SHOWGIRL
I fuckin’ loved this movie—its messyyyy and the protagonist is full on tragic. But her story is also SO representative of a class, generation, and type of person whose idea of themselves and the world was fixed at too young an age, perhaps because it had to be, and who’s now struggling to come to terms with how the world has changed around her, and what she’s lost because of it. AND it’s a meditation on the way society hammered the importance of beauty, style, and glamour into women for generations, then turned around and mocked us for caring about those same “superficial” things that we were told gave us value.
This movie also made me think my late grandpa, who landed in an orphanage with his siblings just in time for the Great Depression to hit, who maybe graduated high school, who I’d guess got every job he had by walking into offices or stores in New York and offering a firm handshake, a charming smile, and a well-timed joke, and who ended up with retail clients who were U.S. Presidents, Ambassadors, and Oscar winners. Something about this film made me think about trying to explain to him that now, the way to find most jobs is sending resumes off through the web, and 99% of the time, they never even write you back. I’m not sure how he’d react to that, but I am sure that his parents did not leave pre-independence Ireland for his grandchildren to live in a world like this hahahahaaa :/
Best non-verbal, surprising, hilarious moment in a comedy series:
ENGLISH TEACHER, Season 1, episode 3 — 14min 3sec mark
I SCREAMED when I saw this moment the first time. Watch the whole scene! Watch the whole episode! And the whole season! You too will scream! Ahhhhhh!
Most “omgggg" former co-stars on-screen reunion:
SHRINKING, Season 2 — Liz & brewery guy, formerly known as Ellie & Grayson
These two played characters who haaaaated each other on COUGARTOWN, but they do not hate each other on SHRINKING, and that gets complicated. Cul-de-sac crew 4eva (iykyk).
Best episode of LAW & ORDER: SVU for tension:
“911” (Season 7, episode 3) (I couldn’t decide if I should hyperlink to Hulu or Peacock so if you wanna watch the rest of these, just google it, I believe in you <3)
Honestly, season seven of SVU as a whole is on another level. I am dying to know where the writers room was ordering lunch from on the reg that year, cuz something clicked into gear and their brains were working on overdrive!! And there’s a level of urgency that’s maintained through this particular episode that is unparalleled. The emotions are palpable, the conflict is intense, and the detective work and the acting are both top notch. 10/10, no notes. Not even going to write a synopsis because I could never do it justice—but if you’re only gonna watch one episode of this show, make it this one.
Best episode of LAW & ORDER: SVU for moral dilemma:
“Part 33” (Season 20, episode 14)
I looooove a bottle episode, or as I like to call them, “stuck-in-a” episodes, which are when the characters get stuck in an elevator or a bank lobby or a hotel bathroom for the whole ep. They exist to save money, cuz you’re doing one location, a smaller cast, which means fewer setups for lights/camera/etc. But the beauty is, characters get stripped down to their truest selves when they’re physically stuck in a room together!! And “Part 33” is a quasi-bottle ep, with the full team of detectives together in a holding room in the courthouse, all waiting for their turn to testify in a murder case—a murder that may or may not have been justified. But justifiable doesn’t make it justice! It’s character-revealing, psychologically complex, and puts the screws to the personal and professional relationships amongst the team.
Best episode of LAW & ORDER: SVU for twists & turns:
“Scheherezade” (Season 8, episode 10)
Okay most of the time, I can figure out the mystery of a case pretty early on, and I have a good idea of what roadblocks might pop up. So I’m watching to see if I’m right, and to see how the characters are going to find enough evidence to arrest/convict. Cuz we gotta get those warrants! But this episode?? I did NOT see aaaany of this shit coming! In a classic SVU move, a priest asks one of the Catholic dude detectives (theres always one: Stabler, Amaro, Carisi, the guy with the beard whose name I can’t remember rn) to talk to some guy cuz they heard something sus in confession that teeeechnically they can’t tell anyone about cuz they promised Jesus or whatever, except that they always do grab one of these detectives after mass and tell them they, “heard something concerning,” aka there’s big crime afoot. SO we go check in on this old guy, Mr. Tierney, who’s gonna drop dead any second now and wants to fess up to some stuff—but he’s gonna have some fun with it. Over the course of maybe a day or two, bro drops little bits of info that send the detectives out to solve some decades-old crimes, uncover family secrets, and ultimately figure out why Tierney did any of this stuff. There’s a ticking clock as his health rapidly deteriorates, father-figure emotional complications for the detectives with daddy issues (which is all of them, but on this day mostly Olivia), and so. many. twists. Reveals I never would have guessed. The layers, the levels, it is a fucking masterpiece.
Okay that’s all I’ve got for now—keep on keeping on, kids. Ttyl! Luv u!