Pop Culture Diaries: Rebecca Grawl

This week: A tour guide plays games, catches up on some movies with family, and tours a mansion in DC

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Name: Rebecca Grawl

Occupation: Tour guide, public historian, and author

From: Washington, DC

Week Covered: February 2-8, 2025

Sunday:

I’ve lived in DC for the past 15 years but I actually kicked this week off back home in Houston, TX visiting my mom and sister. I usually start my mornings by reading my newsletters. Since the decline of Twitter a few years ago, I started transitioning to Substack and other newsletter subscriptions and with the enshittification of most social media channels, this is my primary source for news and culture. Today I dug into Men Yell at Me, Healthy Rich, The Opt Out, After School (I think Casey Lewis is brilliant and this newsletter really makes me feel more connected to pop culture), and ScholarSunday Threads.

Since this is my last day in town, trying to focus on family and stay off screens. Weirdly, we keep hearing Super Bass by Nicki Minaj everywhere we have gone this week. Not a complaint - the song remains a true bop thirteen (!!!!!) years later.

Scratch that - my flight has been delayed long enough that I’ve been given the option to change flights at no charge. I’m now departing Monday morning, which frees up an evening of movie-watching with my family. My love of movies comes from my parents - we were definitely a Blockbuster family. Every Friday night, my sister and I would get to check out 5 movies and we’d binge them over the weekends.

My mom is eager to catch up on Oscar movies, so we streamed The Substance (a rewatch for me) and that was a big hit. My sister chooses the newest straight to streaming rom-com - You’re Cordially Invited with Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon. It’s moderately entertaining and the supporting cast is surprisingly stacked (I’m most excited to see Jimmy Tatro who I loved in last year’s Theatre Camp, the always-on-point Vinny Thomas, and Ramona Young from Never Have I Ever) but it is wild to think a movie like this might have been a big screen money machine back in the 1990s and now is relegated to the Amazon Prime bargain bin.

My sister heads home (she’s a teacher and has an early morning) but Mom and I watch A Real Pain together, which I absolutely loved. A 90-minute film is catnip to me - I love efficiency in storytelling and Jesse Eisenberg’s script and direction are so good. Working in the tourism industry, the film’s themes hit a chord with me.

We did not watch the Grammys but us Texas girls are thrilled that Beyonce won and we spent the last bit of the evening scrolling Beyonce reaction memes.

Monday:

Head to the airport - it’s tough living far from family and I am always a little melancholy when it’s time to leave. But DC really is home and I’m excited to go back after a week away.

I hit the morning newsletter rotation while waiting for my flight to board - The Oldster (reading this is the flip side of After School, where I feel like I get to delve into a totally different perspective on life and culture), Noah Frank’s Pretty Good, Platonic Love, After School (pretty much never miss a day), and Episodes from Emily St. James (whose work I have been following since the AV Club days.) AV Club used to be the first website I would check every morning (until the unfortunate G/O Media years) and I’ve been trying to get back into the hobby of checking it out now that Paste owns it. Most of the critics and culture writers I read religiously today are ones I discovered on AV Club.

Monday also means my morning phone routine includes Learned League - it’s a world pop music mini-league and has been super challenging but it’s made me add a lot of music to my “to listen to” list.

Tried to read on the flight - I just started Ina Garten’s memoir - but it’s too bumpy and I am an anxious flyer under the best circumstances, so I switch to my version of a weighted blanket: Sondheim.

I keep a handful of Sondheim cast recordings downloaded on my phone at all times for any situations where I’m stressed or anxious (which given *waves hands wildly* has been frequently.) I listen to the 2011 Follies new Broadway cast recording (Jan Maxwell, gone too soon!) followed by the 1970 original Broadway cast recording of Company. They both work in keeping me relatively calm and we have a very smooth landing.

Happy to be back home in DC and to see my husband. We got out for dinner and enjoyed the warm-ish evening with a walk back to the apartment. The evening is spent with a little TV watching - one episode each of St. Denis Medical (highly recommended as I think Superstore was the best sitcom of the past decade), Elsbeth (where I clock one of my favorite theatre influencers!), and Matlock (Jason Ritter, always happy to see you.)

Tuesday:

January and February are off-season for my work in tourism, so it’s a quiet week in terms of actively leading tours but today is my first real day “back” since going to Texas, so I have some computer work to do to get prepped for the next couple of weeks.

I hit my morning routine of Learned League (I advanced to the championship round for world pop music and did terribly but I loved learning about new types of music) and then did some newsletter reading: Healthy Rich, Oldster, The Life Edit (we recently downsized and I find Shira Gill’s writing on materialism and minimalism very thoughtful and of the moment), The Review of Beauty, After School, Hunter Harris’ Hung Up (will read literally anything Hunter Harris writes, no one is exploring culture like her!), The Purse, The Reveal (more former AV Clubbers - I love reading all the Sundance coverage!), and Untrickled.

To amp myself up for a day of laptop-based working, I throw on my SuperYaki Nicole Kidman shirt, which never fails to make me giggle. My moviegoing experience is always enhanced when I get a chance to recite our national creed.

After dinner, my husband and I stream the Please Don’t Destroy film from last year, The Treasure of Foggy Mountain. It reminds me a lot of Hot Rod and has the typical pitfalls of a SNL-based film but I find the majority nepo baby crew really funny and sharp and there are some genuinely hilarious parts. We had a chance to see PDD back in 2023 and those three sad virgins make me laugh.

Since I’ve already got the Peacock app open, I start the Ladies and Gentlemen…50 Years of SNL Music documentary. It’s directed by Questlove and it’s worth watching just the opening montage (which allegedly took Questlove a year to put together!) I’m impressed with the deep archive of music performers referenced and enjoy the behind the scenes aspects (hearing the control room audio during the Ashlee Simpson incident, seeing rehearsal footage of Kenan reacting to Kanye, and more.)

More Ina Garten reading before bed. The chapters cover her and Jeffrey’s time in DC and it makes me want to develop a “Where Ina Was” walking tour.

Wednesday:

Morning newsletters in bed - Men Yell at Men, After School, and Landline (obviously - particularly loved Mary’s observations on the Kennedys and the current political moment)

Prepping for a private tour event I’m arranging tomorrow morning, so I head out to run errands as well as grab groceries for the rest of the week. I usually listen to music on the bus but I end up reading more Ina instead. I really fell off of reading last year and I did not hit my reading goal, so I’ve been trying to build back up a habit of taking my e-reader with me and reading on the bus rather than look at my phone. I am successful about 50% of the time but it’s a start.

In addition to tour guiding, I also teach classes for au pairs (who are required to earn a certain number of educational credits as part of their work visa.) I feel like there are some very distinct stereotypes about the kinds of young people who work as au pairs and the sorts of families that hire them but I have found over the past two years that they are engaging, curious, and bright young people who are often really excited to explore other cultures. Tonight is our orientation class on Zoom and it’s interesting to get the perspective on America and our government through the eyes of young international visitors who are here working.

After class, I decompress on Board Game Arena - I love board games and hate math, so it’s fun to play in an environment where I don’t have to calculate or tabulate anything. I play a few rounds of Potion Explosion and Seven Wonders Duel, and then crawl into bed with Ina’s memoir. How easy is that?

Thursday:

An early start for me, so I skip my morning newsletters but do allow myself to get sucked into this Vulture piece on a couple banned from Club 33 at Disneyland. I am a childless elder millennial who enjoys Disney (and feels conflicted about it often) but I am always interested in the culture of private clubs and membership and what happens behind closed doors.

My morning was spent touring the Perry Belmont Mansion in Washington, DC, which is now the headquarters of the Order of the Eastern Star. I had helped coordinate the visit and was particularly excited as the mansion is rarely open to the general public (although it is one of the most desirable wedding venues in the city.) It was built for Perry Belmont and his wife Jessie, who had quite the scandalous start to their marriage (she very likely began an affair with Perry while married to her first husband and her second marriage happened a mere five hours after her divorce was finalized.) This put them a bit on the outs of polite society, so what better way to force everyone to come to your parties than to build the prettiest Beaux Arts mansion in the nation’s capital? The entire tour gave big The Gilded Age energy and made me desperate for the return of Carrie Coon, Christine Baranski et al.

Used my commute home to catch up on newsletters: The Up and Up, Pop Culture Happy Hour (NPR Movie Club edition) and to read this absolutely fascinating interview from Denzel Washington in Esquire. Denzel is an incredible artist and a deeply interesting person and I loved how different this was from the typical celebrity piece. It also reminded me that I have got to watch The Piano Lesson, which has been on my viewing list since it dropped on Netflix.

I also checked my ranking in the Vulture Movies Fantasy League, which is one of my favorite annual traditions. I really took the time to analyze my draft this year (it is not about picking the best movies or the ones you think are amazing, you want to balance your roster between box office and award shows) and I am performing considerably better than the previous two years. To put it into perspective, there are 14,465 teams and I am (at the time of this diary) ranked at 164! Top one percent! I am genuinely thrilled (and happy to share my roster in the comments.)

Headed out to a local eatery for board game night - we played a few rounds of Sushi Go! and then a new-to-us card game called The Big Shuffle we picked up at a game shop in Philly two years ago. The Big Shuffle is basically a film noir come to life - you take on the persona of classic noir character and through card based play, you try to reach your agenda. The artwork is beautiful and evocative of classic noir films and we had fun with the tropes and gimmicks of the card play.

Wrapped up the evening with a 4 episode binge of Abbott Elementary, which feels like curling up with a cozy sweater. Quinta Brunson is a genius.

Friday:

Spent my morning and between tours bus time cracking into The Demon of Unrest: A Sage of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism At The Dawn Of The Civil War by Erik Larson. I’m generally a fan of Larson’s work (The Devil in the White City is maybe one of the most engaging works of non-fiction I’ve ever read and helped inspire me to want to be in the public history space) but had hesitated to jump in when it was published due to some understandably pointed criticisms. I decided to take a break from Ina (I generally read two books at a time, one fiction and one non-fiction, if the Libby gods are kind) and dive into this one. It feels a little too relevant to everything happening but thus far, I’m enjoying it.

Led a morning tour of Arlington National Cemetery. I never tire of sharing it with visitors - my grandparents and great grandparents are buried there.

Evening newsletter reading on the way to my night tour: Pop Culture Happy Hour, Untrickled, Hmm That’s Interesting (if you only know Clara from her hilarious PR videos, definitely subscribe to her newsletter!), Episodes, Landline (Sidebar), What’s Alan Watching (I have all of Alan’s books - including/especially his one on The O.C., which prompted my rewatch of the show last year), Oldster, After School, Platonic Love, Teniade Topics, Hung Up (I may save other newsletters to read later but I almost always click Hung Up as soon as it comes through.)

After dark, I lead a ghost tour of Historic Georgetown, the oldest neighborhood in DC. I do not like scary movies and generally am not a scary person, but I enjoy the tour, which focuses on some genuinely creepy stories as well as some real tragedies. The tour ends at one of the most iconic pop culture sites in DC - the Exorcist Stairs. Despite having only watched the movie once, I have probably brought thousands of people to see these creepy stairs.

Saturday:

Today is au pair class in the field. We are out for about six hours exploring the city. I really enjoy getting a chance to show them some of the most iconic sites in our city (Capitol Building! White House! Lincoln Memorial!) as well as engaging with them to think about our country’s history, its complexities, and the people whose stories we don’t always hear about.

I think the au pairs’ favorite stop was the Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress - it is an absolutely stunning building finished in 1897 to house the library’s collections. It’s fun to show them the Main Reading Room, which has been featured in a number of films (including National Treasure 2, J. Edgar, and All the President’s Men.)

I ended up with a free evening but was chilled to the bone from a day of cold, freezing rain. It was a classic bed rot situation - I buried myself under blankets to finish up with Ina (enjoyed her memoir, wish it had been a little bit dishier) and spent way too much time scrolling.

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Thanks for reading!

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