Welcome to OBSESSED.
What you can expect from this Substack.
Welcome to OBSESSED: a once-weekly dispatch on what I’ve watched, read and cannot stop thinking about.
That’s the rough format I’m going for. It might change. There’s a chance it’ll grow horns! But the constant theme here will be my fixations on culture and stories in, around and completely outside the zeitgeist.
What the hell is this, mama?
It’s my Substack, dingbat! Which is basically a free subscription newsletter.
When you signed up for OBSESSED, you’ll get one newsletter per week dumped straight into your inbox (please, god, don’t let it die in spam). A typical dispatch might include ruminations on…
An episode of the latest HBO offering I’ve gobbled up like a good little piggy,
that wild New Yorker profile everybody’s talking about, and
an equally wild excerpt from an article that nobody’s talking about, and I can’t stop screaming about.
I’ll probably throw other forms of media in there. Podcasts, for sure. Maybe some ancient scrolls? Either way, I’m aiming to keep these things sweet & succinct. Because we’re all busy, and we all poop. Let OBSESSED be the thing you read while you poop.
Who the hell are you, mama?
Great question, reader, and you asked it gorgeously.
First, a little about me: I’m a writer, comedian and journalist living in Brooklyn. I’ve written for places like The New Yorker, The Onion, McSweeney’s, Reductress. I perform storytelling and stand-up around the city. For around a decade, I’ve also worked as a journalist, mostly reporting on real estate development and housing. Unrelatedly, I’m convinced that, uh, wanting to build skyscrapers might be a symptom of an underlying psychiatric condition.
And here’s some real stuff about me: I’m 31 years old. I’m from Houston, where I was raised evangelical and, thanks to some then-undiagnosed OCD, kissed my cross necklace every day at 9:11 a.m. and 9:11 p.m. and prayed for the victims of, you guessed it, the Great Chicago Fire. Kidding! It was 9/11. (Wow, that felt nice to share.)
I’m a twin! I married my high school sweetheart. I collect vintage ashtrays. I’m obsessed with narcissistic politicians, religious grifters and clinically psychopathic CEOs. I love horror movies, pottery, trolling Facebook Marketplace for home goods and piss-stained rugs, walking my two angelic pooches through too-busy neighborhoods, contemporary fiction, good ol’ fashioned fiction, meaty exposés about powerful idiots, fart jokes, quilts, big pants, R&B, dogs, oil paintings. ENFP. Virgo. Extrovert. Queer. Middle child, sort of. Cellulite. Night owl, but cheerful in the morning. Stupid and silly, mostly. Affable neurotic.
OK, that’s enough “I” statements for about twelve decades.
Leave me the hell alone, mama?
Say no more, queen!
Thanks for reading. If you dig it, pass it along to your friends. If you don’t, pass it along to your friends and tell them not to open a single newsletter, thus epically owning my ass by tanking the open rate.