Culture and entertainment musts from Elaine Godfrey
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Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer or editor reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is Elaine Godfrey, a staff writer at The Atlantic who has covered the Iowa caucuses, the national fight over abortion rights, and America’s most misunderstood marsupial.
Elaine loves TV shows starring the Irish comedic actress Sharon Horgan and all “varmint-forward” content on Instagram. She is also a Las Culturistas superfan and the proud owner of a gently used Old English Sheepdog lamp.
First, here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic:
The Culture Survey: Elaine Godfrey
My favorite way of wasting time on my phone: I’m a big fan of Instagram Reels, which is basically TikTok, except a different company gets your secrets. There’s a woman on Reels who cleans people’s houses for free when they’re having a tough time and the mess has gotten out of hand; it’s really soothing to watch. I also enjoy any varmint-forward content. I would watch a ferret do anything.
I haven’t stopped reading stories about the Rat Hole, which is a perfect impression made by a rat (or maybe a squirrel) in a sidewalk in Chicago’s Roscoe Village neighborhood. It’s been a huge sensation online, in part because of its whimsicality—it looks as if a rodent plunged straight through the earth, like a cartoon character running through a wall. A couple held their wedding ceremony there, and visitors are leaving gifts and offerings to the “rat.” There’s just something so joyful about the Rat Hole, despite the almost-certain death of the mammal involved. [Related: Long live the Chicago Rat Hole.]
The last entertainment thing that made me snort with laughter: The Las Culturistas podcast, which is hosted by the comedians Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, makes me laugh so hard. I don’t even watch half of the shows they talk about, but they just have so much fun yapping with each other. I especially love their annual Culture Awards, which included such prizes last year as the Diva Down Award (Person Who Fell Hard Award) and the Slouching Towards Bethlehem Award for Chicest Book to Hold. I only listen to Las Cultch at the gym, and if they don’t have a new episode, I don’t go to the gym!
An actor I would watch in anything: Easy: Sharon Horgan. This absolute powerhouse of a comedic actress could release a one-woman Netflix play about, like, the Earth’s crust, and I would sprint to my couch to watch it. She’s so clever, and she just seems like she’d be a fun, sturdy pal to get drinks with. My favorite shows of hers are Catastrophe, a rom-com she stars in with Rob Delaney; This Way Up, which I would describe as a more heartwarming, Irish version of Fleabag; and Bad Sisters, a black comedy about murder and sisterly love. Sharon is just the best. Sometimes I sit and wonder: What is Sharon up to now? Is she happy? Would she want to hang out? [Related: Catastrophe and the comedy of the self-aware marriage]
A good recommendation I recently received: I am a big fan of the series A Court of Thorns and Roses, which is, yes, extremely smutty, but is also full of cool faerie-fantasy world-building. The dialogue is cringey, but if you can get past it, the story is worth it. A friend recently recommended that I read Fourth Wing, which is apparently similar, but with dragons. I’ve started it, and I’m already hooked: a school for dragon riders? A female protagonist with something to prove? A ruthless and smoking-hot mortal enemy? Count me in.
The last debate I had about culture: I might be stepping in it here. As a onetime Barbie-doll obsessive, I had fun watching the movie. Visually, it was stunning, and Weird Barbie was a genius character. But I don’t think the movie, in the end, knew what it was trying to say. America Ferrera’s speech felt random to me. Why were the Kens at war? Anyway, it’s strange that this film, which has enabled a toy company to sell more toys, has become some sort of stand-in for feminism. And people seem to think it’s a crisis of progress that Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig were snubbed in the Oscar nominations for Best Actress and Best Director, respectively, while Ryan Gosling got a nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Even Hillary Clinton popped up on X, previously known as Twitter, to compare the situation to her losing the 2016 election to Donald Trump.
I guess I just want to remind people: Barbie made over one billion American dollars! Collectively, we must get a grip. [Related: Why the Oscars overlooked Greta Gerwig]
Something delightful introduced to me by a kid in my life: There is a child who lives in my neighborhood, and our dogs play together at the dog park. He has a beagle named Lucy, and I have a scruffy terrier named Sugar. The other day, this kid looked at Sugar and said, “I call your kind of dog a Scraggle Dog.” A Scraggle Dog! I can’t stop thinking about that. Now, everywhere I go, I’m seeing Scraggle Dogs.
An online creator whom I’m a fan of: I’ve never loved art museums. Sometimes I wonder if I get art. But there are a few creators whom I follow on the internet because their work makes me laugh or smile. (Maybe that is the point of art?) Anyway, Janet Hill paints lively scenes of people and places, and she has a series in which a governess teaches dogs different lessons on etiquette. I have a framed print of six dogs sitting around a table, wearing fancy little pillbox hats and bow ties as they politely wait to enjoy some cake. I also love Elizabeth Graeber, who makes these wispy and endearing watercolor portraits of people (and sometimes Scraggle Dogs).
A sculpture that I cherish: One of my terrible habits is that I often scroll through Facebook Marketplace to see what goodies people are selling, and then I convince myself that I need that thing. Recently, I stumbled across a man selling an Old English Sheepdog lamp. It is a ceramic sheepdog with a big light bulb sticking out of its head and a shade on top. The man’s mother apparently raised sheepdogs, and, for decades, the lamp sat on a nightstand between her twin bed and her husband’s. I can’t resist a dog lamp with a good backstory, so I bought it. It’s so regal and handsome—an instant classic. Unfortunately, the lamp is very big, and my boyfriend is mad.
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