We know you just got off work, but we assigned ourselves this task, and I got to say, it was worth the effort.
LISTEN
Collabs that work
In the streaming age, collabs can sound more like marketing strategies than artistic partnerships. These examples are the exceptional exceptions.
-AK
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WATCH
Severance continues to pull back the layers of absurdity in your workplace
I brought up Severance here during its first season, back when Ponytail Press was barely long enough to be held in a hair-tie. Three years later, and we’re finally past the half-way point of Season 2. All that time only increased the anticipation for a show that seemed too good to be true. I’ll be real. I was afraid they would find a way to ruin it. My faith in Kier wavered.
Back in 2022, all the talk around Severance was focused on its twisted take on the workplace drama, so I felt the need to point out that it had something to say outside the walls of our individual placeholders for Lumon. These past seven episodes have changed all that. Instead of the eerie comparisons between the fictional company’s culture and the real ones indoctrinating us every day, everyone is obsessing over Cold Harbor, ORTBO, and all those baby Kiers in the opening credits.
So, oddly, I feel the need to point out that, while continuing to take over our brains with theories and predictions for the next episode, Severance is also expanding on its commentary of corporate “culture” and the insane level of control we give to the companies that employ us.
I can’t think of a better example of this than Lumon Management’s opinion of its “innie” employees—chiefly the growing number of them that don’t recognize the basic humanity of these second consciousnesses. The company takes the term “human resources” to its darkest extreme, and the results reveal the very real problems with how our current capitalist overlords view their workforce (I’m looking at you, Musk and Bezos).
They sell you a job by calling it an opportunity. But clearly, with a quick glance at the extreme income disparity we’re seeing today, we’re handing them mountains more opportunity to them than they’re giving back. I know I’m sounding a lot like a classic Marxist right now, but fuck it.
Innies, Unite!
-AK
READ
A classic novel that’s worth the work
I’ll be honest, out of the three forms of media that we talk about in this newsletter, it’s reading that always feels like the most work for me at this point in my life (and unsurprisingly it’s the section of Ponytail Picks that often feels like it takes the most work for me to write). Music is easy to throw on and engage with at whatever level I may feel like in the moment. And even if it might feel like work to stay informed on all the new movies and TV that everyone’s talking about, I’ve mostly given up on those efforts and have no issue with just rewatching another episode of one of my favourite “22s”, as my wife and I like to refer to sitcoms (Schitt’s Creek is our current go-to). But reading is a different exercise entirely, and it’s evident that the muscles in my brain that do the work of focusing on and engaging with longform writing are a little out of shape. But much like how the work of physical exercise ultimately makes me feel good, so does the work of reading, so I’m trying to be more intentional this year about doing it on a more regular basis.
One of the places where I’m trying to do more reading, incidentally, is my workplace, so my pick for this week will be my current lunch break read, which furthermore is a novel that’s first big plot point is a guy getting a unique new job (and shoutout to my brother and sister-in-law for getting me a pre-movie publication of the book for Christmas).
Speaking of the movie, I had heard that King wasn’t a big fan of Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 adaptation of his novel, and even though I’m only 100 pages in, I can already see why; the book is jammed full of compelling character study that the movie doesn’t really touch at all. At the same time, I can see why Kubrick trimmed as much as he did; the book digs so deep into the thoughts and memories of each member of its central family (I’m already ¼ of the way into the book and the family has only just arrived at The Overlook Hotel where the aforementioned new job—an offseason hotel caretaker—is located) that a mini series would probably be a much more suitable way to capture it all.
Anyways, I’m glad to be putting in the work to give this classic a read. The crafting of characters has been absolutely brilliant and it’s filled me with even more dread for the horrors that I already knew are to come (not all jobs are worth the work, I expect).
-JB
We’re clocking out for this week. Join us next time and see what buds are forming this