Pop Culture Diaries

Pop Culture Diaries: Mary Mahoney’s Week of Podcasts, TikTok, and Reality TV

Sep 18, 2024

Welcome to a new feature in Landline called Pop Culture Diaries. Here, I’ll ask people to take us through a week of their lives and share what pop culture they watch, listen to, read, or otherwise consume. This could be memes, YouTube videos, music, books, commercials, movies, plays, tv shows, TikTok, internet beefs, museum exhibits, you name it. This feature invites us to enjoy the thrill of reading someone’s diary without boiling someone’s week down to what they eat or how much they spend. Instead, we’ll learn about someone else’s world and find some new pop culture to love.

Today: I’m kicking off this new feature with a week of my pop culture life. Spend a week with me and check out all the random and wonderful stuff I’ve been obsessed with—think TikTok finds, podcasts, nostalgic rewatches, and watching Nicole Kidman be a legend we don’t deserve on Netflix.

If you’d like to submit your own Pop Culture Diary, you can do so using this online form.

Name: Mary Mahoney

Occupation: Hard to say(?), but technically digital scholarship strategist | historian | writer | podcaster

Location: Hartford county, Connecticut

Sunday

I started off my week with a reset day. We woke up and said goodbye to some friends who are like our chosen family. They have a sixteen-month-old who is adorable and I loved chasing him around our house this weekend. His mom is my wife’s longtime bff (and now mine), and the three of us have a book club where we take turns picking a book to read and a cookbook to draw on for dinner. We get together and talk about the book and make dinner and it's always very fun. This month we read Horse by Geraldine Brooks and made dinner from Gregory Gourdet’s Everyone's Table: Global Recipes for Modern Health. Not surprisingly, I am not super involved in meal prep (but enjoyed hanging with Cass and his dad while the others cooked). The cookbook was A+ and Horse was genuinely buck wild and felt like Felicity Merriman wrote it if she lived in 2024, was from Australia, and had a lot of unprocessed white guilt. I recently started watching I Kissed a Girl on Hulu (a lesbian version of Love Island) and one of the narrators is someone who did one of the voices on the audiobook of Horse and I’m still triggered every time I hear her.

Our friends left late in the morning, and I spent the afternoon working on some projects with The Sopranos playing in the background. My wife doesn’t like anything gory so the shows I watch solo are mostly shows that make me feel like a dad (The Sopranos, Band of Brothers, Deadliest Catch) or someone living vicariously through the drama of reality tv (Real Housewives, Below Deck, etc.) I don’t know what has inspired this rewatch, but should I be worried about me?

I finished the day watching Season 2 of Traitors UK virtually with some friends and former coworkers. I love texting and watching a show with distant friends. These friends (all librarians) make me howl with laughter.

Monday

During the pandemic, I started waking up and scrolling TikTok instead of reading or listening to the news. I can’t tell if this habit has made my life better or just lazier. I still read the news, but now transition to reading it at lunch or some other time when I feel more awake or better able to curate what I take in. I like Tiktok for the queer pop culture, music finds, and crafting/DIY hacks I learn. I’ve been getting served a lot of TikTok featuring country artist Zach Top and I pull up his album on Spotify while I get ready for work. The TikTok I saw of him was marveling at his ability to sing and play while smoking a cigarette which I didn’t know was a skill anyone should aspire to (?) My wife teases me when she hears country playing. She is not as much of a music person as I am, so she doesn’t know who this is and seems perpetually surprised by the lack of boundaries on my taste. I tell her he reminds me of a 90s country, which I love. I’d just feel more confident listening to him if I knew where he was on January 6th.

My day job is at a college where I consult on digital projects (helping people and partners make websites, podcasts, digital exhibits, etc.) At lunch, I take a walk and listen to a podcast called To Live and Die in LA. I have been completely taken in by the first season, which follows a journalist’s search for a missing woman. I’m not really a true crime person because I find so much of it exploitative and gross in the way it delights in the misfortunes of others. I have been interested in this one in part because of the care it’s taking in reporting the story and how transparent the journalist is on his process. I love process stories of any kind. On my way home from work, I listen to Who? Weekly, one of my favorite go-to podcasts.

At night, my wife and I watch Antiques Roadshow. On tonight’s episode, I spot Jill Zarin showing up as a normie with her daughter Ally to have x appraised. Love when my pop culture worlds collide.

Tuesday

After work, I go to meet with my friend Erica with whom I run a digital consulting business. We help small businesses and nonprofits tell their stories with digital tools. We do weekly check-ins at a local coffee shop we like, and en route, I listen to Ashlee Simpson’s first album, Autobiography (again). I’m doing a recap of The Ashlee Simpson Show for the paid members of Landline and I find myself listening to “Pieces of Me” five times in a row. Again, should I be worried about me??!

I genuinely try to get my newsletters done in advance so I’m not livin on a prayer/ click clackin at 11 pm the night before it goes out, but this is the first week of school at work and life has been busy. Still, I watch some of The Challenge with my wife over dinner before I get to work. We’re watching that virtually with a friend who loves it and made us a powerpoint to catch us up on the many seasons/players we need to know to get invested. I love a good powerpoint in the service of pop culture! What a true act of friendship. We’re going to make her one on the WNBA before the playoffs start. Elli the Elephant will be getting a lot of coverage. I then retreat to my bed (my preferred writing spot) and put on headphones with ASMR and instrumental lofi music as I write my draft. I once went on a house tour years ago of The Mount, the home of Edith Wharton. On the tour, I learned she wrote in bed and basically threw completed pages on the floor for servants to collect. Having no servants, I just lie in bed and type until I have something that sort of makes sense. I take a break to rewatch some of The Dealership TikTok show that I’m writing about this week. I’m in awe of the college-grad who conceived and produced this with the team at Mohawk Chevrolet. It genuinely makes me laugh every time I watch. I finish up around 11 PM and read a bit of a romance novel I found on Libby (The Holiday Trap by Roan Parrish) to fall asleep.

Wednesday

Tonight, my wife and I go on a date after work. I can’t remember the last time I went out on a weeknight and so this is very exciting for me. We went to one of my fave CT restaurants (First & Last in Hartford), and then to see The Conversation at Cinestudio, an independent movie theater. I used to volunteer there when I was in college and it's where I first saw The Conversation years ago. It was cool to bring my wife there and sit in the same seats (back row, middle, on the ground floor) I did when I was 19 and first learning how to take things like movies seriously. I found Francis Ford Coppolla’s film on surveillance in the Watergate era haunting then and now. It’s crazy to think how the advent of the internet and AI have made the question of who is listening in on us and to what end even more pressing. Anna had never seen it and I’d forgotten a lot of it, but we both talked about it the whole drive home. Spoiler alert: the movie ends with Gene Hackman trying to find a hidden microphone he believes is listening in on him. We’re still debating where we think it’s hidden (the movie never takes a stand on this).

Thursday

I woke up and watched some Sportscenter with my wife while we had breakfast. I love getting to start my day with her. Some days she leaves for work while I’m still getting my life together. She is a morning person, and I am . . . not. We like Sportscenter because it’s not the news and we both love women’s basketball (and other sports). I love to gently tease my wife because she is a Seattle Mariners fan and fall is not the best time to stan this team. I ask if we think we’ll see them in the Top 10 plays, and she asks if I have an “off” button.

At lunch, I take a walk and finish To Live and Die in LA. While I eat my lunch, I read through magazines online. I bookmark things I think are interesting to share out in my weekly links and recommendation email for paid members (called Sidebar). I realize I’ve read a lot of great profiles of women this week. In addition to rewatching The Ashlee Simpson Show, it has me thinking about what a special hell it must have been to be a woman in public life in the early 2000s. Pieces on Corinne Bailey Rae, Kate Winslet, and Chappell Roan make me sad for women who have to navigate being themselves in public. I’ll decide later what to include in the email that will go out in the morning. I know it will include a meme I love of skeletons posed on someone’s front lawn doing the “Hot to Go” dance.

After work, I listen to Sabrina Carpenter’s new album on my drive home. I really love all of it, but have been listening to “Bed Chem” and “Juno” on repeat.

Friday

After work today, I watched two episodes of The Ashlee Simpson Show. I had planned to recap the next episode in my series (Season 1, episode 3) to email out tomorrow. However, my health issues have been flaring this week (I have two autoimmune diseases), and I’m tired. Watching the show makes me realize that 1) the end result will be better if I rest instead of pushing myself to do it tired. 2) I want to switch to audio for my recaps and invite friends to talk with me about what I’m seeing. The show is such a time machine to the early 2000s and I can imagine it will be fun for me to chat with people who can share their own hot takes on both Ashlee and that moment with me.

After dinner, Anna and I start The Perfect Couple on Netflix. My mom has been hyping it to me all week, and now my friend Erica told me it is worth a watch. It is truly something. Nicole Kidman, why are you like this? I am laughing at the opening dance number which feels out of pocket, and loving every performance I’m seeing. I like mysteries that aren’t gory or scary, and this is exactly my speed. It is camp, Nicole Kidman is insane and giving 110 for no reason, and I want Dakota Fanning to be appointed the Dean of NYU Tisch School for the Arts YESTERDAY. Also dying to know if it was weird for Nicole Kidman to be on set with Liev Schreiber post his divorce from her bff Naomi Watts. What does Australian solidarity look like here?

Saturday

In the morning, my wife and I went to the public library to return books and grab more. I always check out more than I can possibly consume in the time allotted, but that is the kind of greed or gluttony that inspires zero regret. I am particularly excited that they have a copy of Cue the Sun (a history of reality tv) which I’ve been excited to read.

Afterwards, we drove to Northampton to visit the Smith College Museum of Art. My wife is an alum, and we were admitted to the same class. I still kick myself that I didn’t go there if only because I could have met Anna sooner. Northampton is a special place for us, and we like to go for the day sometimes. I’d never been to the art museum before and loved it. I’ve always loved Alma Thomas’ paintings and was delighted to see one in person for the first time.

Alma Thoma. Morning in the Bowl of Night. 1973.

They also had a painting by Florine Stettheimer which was very cool. Her paintings from the 1920s are so bright and colorful and present queer people without judgment. I am also obsessed with her sister’s dollhouse, so it was cool to see her work in this collection.

Florine Stettheimer, *Henry McBride*, 1922

I take a lot of photos to look up new artists (to me) later. Shoutout to the alum who endowed the museum to make it free for everyone. We love to see it. We go for lunch at a coffee shop nearby (Woodstar) and browse some bookstores.

Browsing at a bookstore. Should I read this?

Later, we pick up Thai food on our way home because we need fuel to finish the epic that is The Perfect Couple. As we watch, I google some of the artists whose work I saw earlier to learn more about them and their work. This includes John Bankston, Romare Bearden, Mishima Kimiyo, Merl Meisler, and Huong Ngô.