I've Got Homework For Ya 🙇♂️
A newsletter delay and a show you *need* to get into
Hello, hello friends!
So it’s Presidents’ Day, a federal holiday no one celebrates except for the fact that it gets most of us* a long weekend.
*I don’t think I actually have off from work today, you never know in the startup world. I guess we’ll find out when the first meeting rolls around 👀 🤷♂️
Anyways, on this day of George Washington’s honorary birthday celebration (I say honorary because, fun fact, he was actually born on Feb. 22), I don’t have a newsletter for you. Long story short, I took the weekend to catch up on some much needed R&R.
I did, however, spend A LOT of that time thinking about queer issues – something I always tend to do but especially this weekend as I fell face-first into a binge-watching mania of Pose. For those that haven’t seen or heard of it, Pose is a popular Netflix series that takes place in the world of the underground gay ball culture of a circa late-1980s New York City. It serves us narratives of long-hidden world, a world that was first exposed to the mainstream with Madonna’s hit single, Vogue and the infamous documentary Paris is Burning, only it humanizes these narratives in a way that a hit song or documentary looking from the outside in never could (in my opinion).
Co-written, directed and produced by the black trans writer, director and advocate, Janet Mock, and starring a stacked cast of queer black and latino actors, the series confronts everything from the plague of the AIDs epidemic in 80’s and 90’s to the horror of a queer child being forced out onto the streets by their own parents with the kind of raw, real emotion only authentic representation can bring.
Damn, you guys, I cry like 4 times each episode now I swear 😂 😭
So, in lieu of the regularly scheduled Monday newsletter this week, I have some homework for you instead 😉 – go watch Pose on Netflix! And for those with HBO access, watch We Are Who We Are, not being dramatic when I say it changed my life (a little artsy and slow at times and definitely strange, but so, so worth it).
With all the thinking binge-watching Pose has got me doing this weekend, I’m sure I’ll have no trouble at all delivering you all a fresh newsletter for tomorrow, hot off the press 🔥
Look out for That’s Gay Volume 17, 10:00 A.M. tomorrow (Tuesday)!
In the meantime, here’s your excuse to say a toast in the name of good ol’, wig-wearing Washington (and if you still have work to do, just make sure your laptop camera is off first).
Love,
Till