mean, it's still a big L for the president, right?

It absolutely is a big L, and he could use even more of them, in my opinion, particularly from the Supreme Court.

But I think what you both mentioned about the framing of the decision is really important, right? Because I would say that it's all but guaranteed that that this issue will be back before the Supreme Court, I would say next year, right? Because what they have said is that, oh, you just wanted to do it too soon, and we don't have enough time to overhaul the mail-in ballot system right now.

And so...

The conservative side, they're going to take that back as information, right? And they're going to retool, right? And they're going to resubmit in whichever way that they can to get this through.

This is the same strategy that we've seen them do with enforcement of so-called immigration practices.

This is the same pattern that we've seen them do when it comes to the rollout of the anti-trans laws and legislation throughout the country.

What are your thoughts?

So how were you making sense of it? How did you deal with that?

You know, there's a concept called masking, which is taking on these personas, these attitudes as a means of survival with every form of discipline, either that I was receiving around my gender expression or that the others around me were receiving about their gender expression.

They were teaching me things.

They were telling me, you can do this and get away with it.

You can't do that.

And so I took it on.

I was the quintessential child that I think any parent would love, minus the whole trans queer thing, which is to say I was super ambitious.

How have you dealt with what Dave Chappelle would say? Just a bit of joke telling, you know, deal with it.

Yeah.

Um, it just didn't work.

I was looking for something more, something different.

It felt like one of those movies that you'll just, you know, it'll be number one on Netflix 'cause we'll put it on, and then we'll go wash dishes or something.

You know what I mean?

Mm-hmm

... about it that I think is supposed to, you know, it's supposed to remind us of this style of a production, um, that many of us are familiar with from the early 2000s in particular.

But for me, I just did not feel like there was any evolution.

Uh-huh.

But there's so much gravitas and so much, like, I think expertise and skill on display in terms of her range in this show, and the range of Matthew Law, of Alain Noel, of the, the two sisters who you mentioned earlier as well.

Yeah.

This show has those and also so many others that I haven't seen in a host of productions that are set in LA.

Um, and so I thought that they were also really interesting.

And this goes back a little bit to the point you were making, Aisha, in terms of the kind of early 2000s nostalgia-

Hi,

hi.

Thank you all for having me.

I haven't been here in a month of Sundays, and I love this for me.

What's good? Okay, so I have been on a whirlwind of a travel situation this past weekend.

But the thing making me most happy, I was able to experience opening weekend at this new restaurant in Vegas.

It's on the Strip.

to see you again uh what do you want to plug for our listeners

Yeah.

I don't know.

It was a little distracting for me, so much so that the scenes where I guess we're supposed to get more information about, you know, his desire to look out for his family or, as it were, look out for himself, as it came off near the end of the movie, it was just hard for me to lock in in those ways and allow, you know, those characters to explore.

I did think Nia Long had some, you know, some shimmers of wondrousness.

Yeah.

Yeah, but it wasn't, it didn't really hit in the ways that I remember the Genius, um, series hitting that conveyed something new to me about this person being a one-of-one talent, and I think that's one of the things that's missing in this film based on what we all have lived, right? Like, you mentioned scenes with the audience members, you know, falling out, which did happen-

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

And a young Black girl at the time carrying this out, but then years later, both of the main friendships and relationships, right, in this film are interracial relationships.

[laughs]

Uh, it is just, it's, it's odd to me.

And so in, in my head and how that lands on, on me as someone who's been doing this for as long as I've been doing, and I'm like, "Oh, is this one of those narratives where y'all just changed, you know, the actor that you had in mind?" But it didn't really have anything to do with the story, right-

Yeah.

I mean, so it really adds to the viewing experience if you can, you know, be with other people who you don't know, who are going to process and, you know, come to the film with, with their own lived experience and their own, you know, takes and feelings on certain things.

Ooh

...

in an interesting way, and it did indeed make me happy.

And so I know it will do the same for y'all.

This is a mix from DJ Michael Dante and Black House Radio that takes Impossible, the song from Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella-

Do you feel like you came out of it getting a sense of who this person is? Or was it more just like, oh, this was fun?

Good question.

I feel like I have an idea, right? Like the Charli XCX character is kind of positioned as warring, really, with herself and her creative desires and kind of the broader industry that wants to make this moment continue as long as they can.

Say what we want, but pop stars are human too, right? And I feel like that is kind of the thing that the film is trying to push and trying to showcase.

It obviously is not new in doing so, but I did feel like Charlie had a little on-screen

What's making you happy?

Okay.

What is making me happy? Now, I have recently discovered this show called Moonshiners.

How are we feeling about the beauty?

I think Ryan Murphy should be held accountable for his crimes, okay? I think that, to your point, Roxana, there is so much here, but I think it's too much.

I think he read, you know, an Atlantic article or a New Yorker article and was like, oh, let me put this in here.

And then he added a little of this on top.

It's just too much for me.

I also think, and maybe this is just like a byproduct of us, you know, being able to watch more episodes at one time than the audience, you know, when it comes out.

But the body horror aspect after those first few episodes, I was bored.

Mm-hmm.