The two faces of Gemini 👯‍♀️ & a review of Magic Mike Live [Like You Know Whatever]

Hi friends!

How are you? I’m doing pretty well. A few hours after this comes out, I’ll be flying to New Jersey to spend some time with my family, specifically, my dad, who I mentioned in my previous newsletters had a stroke a few weeks ago. By all accounts he is doing very well, but I still expect to run the gamut of emotions over this next week. On Tuesday, I’ll be heading back to L.A., and then a dear friend of my husband and mine will be staying over at our place, and then all three of us are heading down to San Diego for a wedding. As if that weren’t enough, the Sunday after THAT wedding my husband Ross and I have to head right back to L.A. for… you guessed it, another wedding! I’m really looking forward to both weddings, because both are great couples, I love love, and I love a fancy dress-up party with friends and dancing and an open bar. So, with allllll of that going on, I have all kinds of anxiety and worry and anticipation and excitement cued up for this next week. It’s… a lot!

It seems fitting to me that on Monday the 22nd, we’ll enter Gemini season, coming out of our earthy Taurus cocoons to float in Gemini’s sunny socialite air. Geminis are intellectual, witty, flirty, youthful, gossipy, social, trend-loving charmers. They are master communicators and seem to be constantly in motion, and when it comes to relationships, they are famously commitment-phobic. They LOVE a party. They can seem superficial on the surface because they’re so chatty and bubbly, but they actually love to read (they love words in general) and collect facts like trinkets.

The symbol for Gemini is the Twins, and Geminis are infamous for having two sides to them, one they show to the world, and a more secretive inner life. I think Marilyn Monroe is a great example of a classic Gemini, a flirty and charming “it” girl to the world and an intellectual deeply devoted to learning and developing her craft in her private life. Another great Gemini example is the Olsen twins, because, well: twins, but also, they seem to have something deeper going on behind their fashionista/former child star images, don’t they? There’s almost a Scorpio-esque mysteriousness about Geminis’ “other” sides.

As a fellow air sign (a Libra), I am supposed to get along well with Geminis, but I will be honest, I can never fully trust a Gemini!! Those two faces, man, they’ll get you! Specifically, I think my gripes are with Gemini men, who I have seen cause a lot of pain and destruction in my friends’ lives (and in the U.S. in general: Trump and Kanye are both Geminis. Need I say more?). But then, Tupac and Kendrick Lamar and Allen Ginsburg were/are all Geminis, too, some of our greatest American poets. Gahh! It’s the two sides, like I said!

So, how best to live Gemini season to the fullest? Say yes to that party invite you would’ve turned down a month ago! Try that hot pink lippie or chartreuse eyeliner! Read that juicy celebrity memoir you’ve been meaning to get around to! Hell, read just about anything and everything! Take a multi-city trip and meet lots of fabulous people! Or maybe just do something adventurous and non-committal in your own city, like a taco tour or foreign movie marathon! Keep it light, keep it social, and most of all, keep it moving. Remember: feelings are for Cancer season!

Later on in this newsletter, I’ll share my uncensored, XXL review of Magic Mike Live (it really is lengthy. And, depending on how you’re reading this, girthy). I had so much to say about it: on sexuality, on objectification, and, perhaps most surprisingly, on friendship. But first, let’s get into some things:

- Littlewood (available on Steam). I’m telling you, after I first downloaded it, I lost a full day and a half of my life to this super relaxing town building RPG, which has big Animal Crossing vibes with a splash of Stardew Valley thrown in. I barely ate, slept, or went to the bathroom, all I could do was chop trees and mine ore and grow Motatoes and Bloccoli (some of the crops have these cute names that sound like a toddler trying to talk). Of course, after about 20 hours of play, I kind of overpowered myself and burnt myself out on the game, but I’m still hoping to harness its time-suck abilities for my flight today. My favorite villagers are Toby the Catfolk, Lilith the witch, Bubsy the snobby bird, Dark the reformed evil wizard, and Ash, the dreamy miner himbo. It’s 50% off on the Steam store until May 22nd, so go snap it up if you need a relaxing diversion for $7.49 (and in this modern hellscape, who doesn’t?).

- Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (Paramount+). My experience with Dungeons & Dragons (the game) is thus: I played a few games with some friends way back when I was living in Brooklyn a million years ago (my character was a dwarf named Blargus who would frequently shout his own name), aaaand I watched approximately 100 hours of Dimension 20 when I worked at CollegeHumor, which is their excellent DnD-based role-playing show. So, I have a pretty decent background in the mechanics of the game, all of which is to say, you don’t need ANY of that to enjoy this movie based on it which came out at the end of March! It is basically just your typical fantasy quest movie with a motley group of adventurers trying to save the world. I thought it was fun! There’s a lot of humor in it, Michelle Rodriguez is tough girling, Chris Pine is Chris Pining, and Hugh Grant is the villain, which is always delightful. A solid movie night pick!

- Jury Duty (Prime Video with ads). This show is as hilarious and fun as everyone says it is! The conceit is that everyone in the cast are actors except for one man, who genuinely thinks that he’s serving jury duty in Los Angeles County. How that is possible, I’m not sure, but wacky antics ensue. James Marsden plays himself as a douchebag, which we always love to see, don’t we? And isn’t he just adorable? He has eternal goodwill in my household from being the love interest in both 30 Rock (for me) and 27 Dresses (for Ross–it’s one of his favorite movies of all time, for reasons vast and mysterious). Anyway, sometimes you just need a show that’s easy to watch, and Jury Duty fits the bill!

- Woke Clue. When we’re with our parents, Ross and I like to play board games, so last time his folks were in town, we headed to Target to stock up. We ended up walking out with Clue, which is a classic, right? Except, we didn’t realize until we got home and took a closer look at the box, it’s gone woke! I say that mostly in jest, but: the characters are no longer all white people, which is great, but they also gave them all professions?? Mrs. White is now Chef White, Mr. Green is Mayor Green, and most egregious, Mrs. Peacock is Solicitor Peacock! Are we in England? What’s going on? Most baffling of all, Miss Scarlett is still just Miss Scarlett! I’m confused. Why not make her “Ms.” Scarlett, if you’re really going to be progressive?

I guess I just don’t really understand why everyone has to have a career in this game. Isn’t the point that they’re all a bunch of wealthy society types with secrets? Who else would be invited to a billionaire’s mansion for a dinner party? Now they’re *shudders* middle class. Also, I know you might say, “But Liz, this is a game that mostly children play, isn’t it good for them to have role models to look up to?” To which I would remind you that all of the characters in this game are potential murderers! I know that this is maybe a bit of deep lore, but they’re all being blackmailed by Mr. Black, the man who gets murdered, for doing terrible things. So, no, I don’t think they need to have aspirational professions. Sheesh!

A review celebration of Magic Mike Live

I’m in love with a stripper… movie franchise.

My relationship with the Magic Mike cinematic universe is a unique one, because it all originated with my dear friend Jason, who happens to be a straight man. I’ve written about him in here before: long story short, he’s one of my best buddies, we were both in the same film program together in college, he works in TV & film now, and he officiated my and my husband’s wedding. Wayyy back in 2012, when Magic Mike first entered our lives, we were all living in Brooklyn together—I actually believe that he and my husband, Ross, were roommates at the time, while I surely lived in some random Craigslist roommate situation, but was over at their place all the time.

Jason is a big film lover, as are most people who work in the industry, so when the trailer dropped for Steven Soderbergh’s next film, a dark exploration of a male stripper’s life starring Channing Tatum and Matthew McConaughey, he was PUMPED. But, and this is a critical point, he was pumped on a cinematic level, as a fan of the director’s work. He was looking forward to the cinematography and the writing and the performances, like any true cinephile. So when the release date finally rolled around that summer, he organized a group of about 10 of his friends, most of whom were straight dudes, to see the movie on opening day at a theater in the East Village. We waited in a line that stretched outside the theater and around the block to get in.

Once we got inside, we took up the entire back row of the movie theater, and that’s when we started to realize that Jason had wildly misread the trailer, because almost everyone else in the theater were women. Horny women. Somehow, we ventured a guess that they weren’t there for Steven Soderbergh’s auteurship. Then, the movie started. Any time Channing Tatum removed so much as a sock, the theater’s female audience members went wild, whooping and cheering, while my guy friends in the back row awkwardly giggled amongst themselves. At one point a woman in the front row even threw a fistful of singles at the screen. It was certainly a scene.

I don’t know if you’ve seen the original Magic Mike recently, but it’s kind of an odd movie, not sure what it wants to be. The dancing parts are fun, of course, but it’s also a little depressing. The titular Mike lives in Tampa, Florida, and has to work as a roofer during the day to make ends meet. His main flirtation is with Cody Horn, who truly shines in the role of “my dad is the head of Warner Brothers.” And then there’s Matthew McConaughey, who seems to be starring in a completely different movie, something much darker and grittier, perhaps a Scorsese-esque character study. It was certainly one of my more memorable movie viewing experiences.

Of course, three years later, when Magic Mike XXL came out, Jason sent an email to a smaller, devoted group of us including my husband and me simply saying, “Your attendance is required.” We saw the movie on opening night at Brooklyn’s notorious Court Street theater, which was where we went when we wanted to sneak alcohol into a movie and didn’t particularly care about people behaving poorly or yelling at the screen. We poured whiskey into our 64-ounce Diet Cokes from the concessions stand and prepared ourselves to be wowed.

I fortunately wrote about the experience for posterity in my email newsletter (yes, I’ve been writing this that long!), which I recently revisited, and one strange fact that I recalled was that even though it was the movie’s opening night, the theater was unusually empty. Which is a total shame, because I think XXL is so much better than the original! It shines light into all the places where the first one was mired in darkness. It’s basically just a fun road trip movie about a group of male dancers making their way to a male stripping convention in Myrtle Beach. On the way, they participate in a drag contest where they treat the other queens with the respect of professional peers, go to a sexy haunted house to recruit Jada Pinkett Smith to be their MC, and stop at a MILF plantation to flirt with Andie MacDowell for… reasons. Overall, though, the film is a celebration of the straight female gaze, which is something that very much comes through in the live show as well. (Also, on the way out of the movie theater, we ran into a woman walking her bunny on the sidewalk and accosted it to take pictures!) (Remember: whiskey.)

Then, years passed without a magical Michael in our lives. Ross and I moved to Los Angeles, Jason moved to Portland, Channing Tatum moved on from his wife. Sunrise, sunset. Until! In 2017, male stripping was once again brought to the people, where it has always belonged, with Las Vegas’ Magic Mike Live! I actually first learned of the show when my improv teacher at the time had to quit teaching our class early because she was cast as the show’s first MC! Ross and I were both dying to see the show, but we waited, hoping to go with Jason and some of our other Channing Tatum fan friends. And we waited. And waited. More years passed, and we underwent a global pandemic, out of which I think we all took away the message that life is short and it’s important to grab the moment by the metaphorical balls when you can. So, when Ross and I recently decided to spend a Saturday in Vegas with a guy and a gal pal of ours, we decided that it was finally time for us to experience every inch of Magic Mike Live.

We arrived early at the Sahara, the casino where the show is now held, after years at the Rock Hard–excuse me, I mean the Hard Rock. Part of my ongoing struggle with travel anxiety is that I maybe get a little worked up about being places on time when we have tickets or a reservation for something. So, we showed up to the Sahara about 45 minutes early, and decided to kill time by gambling. After a few rounds of slots, I joined my husband and our two friends at a blackjack table. In small talk with the dealer, Ross mentioned that we were there for the show. She, an older woman, seemed very thrown by this, and kept saying that the show was “usually for girls.” Ross just good naturedly replied something about “gotta support Channing Tatum,” a pop culture reference which flew right over her head.

She was being homophobic, but the thing is, she wasn’t wrong about the show’s audience. It WAS mostly women. Once we got into the theater, I had flashbacks to my first viewing experience of the original movie, because we were one of the very few mixed-gender groups there. In fact, I’d say we were one of the few groups there who weren’t part of a bachelorette party, period. I have never been around so many brides and bridesmaids in my life! That’s Vegas in general, but it was especially concentrated inside the theater. And they were hor-NY! These women were shaking the walls and floorboards screaming for these men to take off their clothes! But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I’m going to now try as best I can to describe the show without giving away any “spoilers.” The theater the show is held in is made to look like a nightclub, and the show is technically theater “in the round,” meaning the audience is all seated surrounding an elevated stage in the middle. There were stairs and wide aisles and platforms that the dancers made use of as well. Essentially, the show is from the MC’s point of view, a woman who wishes on a magical unicorn and has all her fantasies come true in the form of hot men, which she shares with the audience. I know that that sounds ridiculous, but wait, there’s more: the unicorn is (briefly) voiced by Channing Tatum, who was one of the producers of the show. The guys dance, strip, tumble, and even do some light aerial acrobatics throughout the performance. There’s no tipping, but audience members are given fake pink money to throw at them during the show. Most people didn’t really use theirs, although I did see some women shaking their fake money to try to get dancers’ attention, which was hilariously stupid. Ladies, it’s not real money. Simmer.

I guess I just get tripped up when I start thinking about how complex the landscape of Magic Mike Live is in terms of all the sexual orientations and genders at play. It’s fine if the show is a place for women attracted to men to celebrate their sexuality; after all, how few spaces like that even exist in the world? And yet, at the same time, women aren’t the only gender that enjoys watching shirtless men hump the floor (or chairs, or the stairs, or sixty women wearing matching “Bride” tiaras). So, when the MC constantly addressed the room by only speaking to the “ladies,” it felt a bit exclusionary of all the other genders in the room. Because while they were definitely in the minority, there were other genders in the room.

That doesn’t even touch on the fact that while the intended audience of women may be loudly and enthusiastically objectifying the male dancers, not all of the male dancers are even attracted to women! After all, they’re dancers. At one point in the show, the dancers handed out roses to various audience members, and one of them handed out his final two roses to my husband and our male friend. My husband is straight, but our friend is gay, and after the show, he said, “I felt seen.” He also managed through the power of the Internet and social media to confirm that the dancer who gave him the rose is in a long-term relationship with a man. I just wonder what it must be like, night after night, for a gay man to play a role in a show that is basically a celebration of heterosexuality, having women throw fake money at you and yell, “Put your dick in her face!” (Okay, so that only happened once, but man. I told you these women were horny!)

On top of seemingly all of them ovulating at the same time, the women in the audience were pretty drunk, too. We went to the 10 P.M. show, so I guess some rowdiness was expected, but on occasion, it crossed the line. One bride sitting right in front of the stage clearly felt that she wasn’t getting enough special attention from the dancers, so she kept standing up at inappropriate times and, worst of all, touching them. Her friends kept trying to get her to stop. We thought she might get kicked out, but she didn’t really start grabbing the dancers until almost the end of the show, and an employee speaking to her seemed to stop her behavior. But it was pretty gross. As Ross pointed out, “This isn’t a strip club, and you’re not allowed to touch the dancers at a strip club, so you’re certainly not allowed to in a theater.”

That level of respect was established to go both ways very early on in the show. The second number was all about consent, a/k/a “permission,” and we were given the safe word “unicorn” to say if a dancer was ever engaging us in a way that we didn’t like. Furthermore, our female friend observed one of the dancers having a long pre-dance talk with an audience member before giving her a lap dance on stage, in which he laid out everything he was going to do and confirmed that she was okay with it. I thought that that was just awesome. Me being me, I avoided eye contact with all the dancers and thankfully nobody tried to dance on me; my friend being my friend, she got a lap dance and was equally thrilled.

In general, I walked away from the show thinking that the cast did a great job of trying to give everyone individual attention who wanted it over the course of the show. This attention was also very size and body inclusive; while they fully picked up some women and brought them on stage, others, they had sit in chairs on stage or danced on where they were sitting. I just thought it was nice that they accounted for all different body types and levels of mobility. We had seats on the floor, but they also seemed to be just as attentive to the people in the balconies or the “cheap seats,” climbing up ladders to dance in or near their sections.

Overall, I really enjoyed Magic Mike Live and all the hard work and thought put into it. Quite honestly, I had much more fun there than at the Cirque du Soleil show I saw the same weekend, where my husband fell asleep. It was rowdy, it was funny, it was weird. It was the culmination of a many years-long obsession with the little known story of one male stripper from Tampa, Florida named Mike.

Next time, I’m bringing Jason with us.

Did you read all of that?? God bless you. That took me way too much time and effort, but it felt important, ya know?

That’s certainly all for this week!

Don’t forget to like and comment on this newsletter if you’d like–you can use the buttons at the bottom or the top. You can also see all the premium content available to you as a paid subscriber right here. Thank you so, so much for your support, it truly means the world to me!

Until next time—long live Magic Mike.

Love,

Liz

XOXO