Saturday Night/Sunday Warning S2E9: Everyone will be Shah for 15 minutes

Another instalment of weekly recommendations and miscellaneous items.

This is the weekly round-up of things I liked in the past seven days + extra content for paid subscribers. But this week, the whole edition is free for all.

5 Things I Actually Enjoyed This Week

1. ARTICLE
Andy Warhol in Iran - rethinking the absurd
Hamid Dabashi for Middle East Eye

Some history that has passed me by: In 1976, Warhol went to Tehran to paint the queen's portrait. Hamid Dabashi writes:

Warhol’s attraction to the rich and powerful, including the shah of Iran and his family, as well as other celebrities such as Mick Jagger, Liza Minnelli, John Lennon, Diana Ross and Brigitte Bardot, was both good business and symptomatic of his abstraction of the superficial and the powerful - the fusion of which he had made an art form.

Thus his trip to Iran was so banal and cliche-ridden that it fitted perfectly with his art…

… The former Pahlavi queen had a taste for modern and contemporary European and American artists - with Warhol just one of them - and a wealth that meant she could indulge her taste. The artworks she collected remain in Iran.

How many soup cans do the ayatollahs own?

---

2. ALBUM
Tribute To — Jim James
Apple Music | Spotify | Vinyl

This week’s album recommendation isn’t new, nor is it a recent re-release but I’ve been listening to it a lot over the past few days. This collection of sparse and sometimes spacey George Harrison covers reveals the bones of these songs, picking out elements that you might have become inured to in the familiar originals. For me, James’ versions of ‘Long Long Long’ and ‘All Things Must Pass’ have almost become the definitive readings.

(btw. His latest album Regions of Light and Sound of God (2022) is an incredible record too)

---

3. ARTICLE
The Whale is not a masterpiece – it’s a joyless, harmful fantasy of fat squalor
by Lindy West for The Guardian

I could practically quote every line from this. Here’s a particularly good and excoriating segment:

The Whale is not a real fat person telling their own raw story with all the complexities and contradictions of lived experience. Charlie is a fictional character created by a thin person, a fantasy of fat squalor, a confirmation that we “do this” to ourselves: that we gorge buckets of chicken like mindless beasts, that we never see the world, never let the sun warm our bodies, never step into the sea, never make art, never feel human touch, never truly live. Portrayals like this steal from us in two directions: we are denied both the freedom to enjoy food and to have complicated relationships with it. I suppose my criticism boils down to this: a fat person, even one with a life identical to Charlie’s, could never have made The Whale. It is fundamentally not of us and therefore incurably untrue.

---

4. ARTICLE
Worried about rent? Spare a thought for your poor landlord
by Eva Wiseman for The Guardian

It’s rare that I recommend two pieces from the same publication in a row in these weekend editions; it’s almost unheard of that two of them come from a British newspaper but facts are facts: Eva Wiseman wrote an A+++ column this week, which comes with a very high risk on the modern internet ironic headline. Get past that and you’ll find a brutal bodying of the rentier class:

My favourite #PropertyTok videos – I say favourite, I mean, the videos that inspire the most emotion in me, a reaction, albeit allergic and bilious, the feeling that the world is made of paper and about to fold in half – are the ones where the landlord explains how to “rent to rent”. Subletting, is what you or I might call it, but here it has been rebranded as a cheeky life hack, much like deodorising your microwave with lemon juice. “Rent to rent” means renting a flat, then letting it on Airbnb for twice what you’re paying, your tenant now crushed under a double-weight of landlords, a rare experience in that it is absolutely nobody’s kink.

---

5. PODCAST
The Right Time with Bomani Jones
for ESPN

Bomani Jones is a superstar and he doesn’t need me to recommend his podcast The Right Time (or his brilliant HBO show Game Theory) but as he opens most episodes by reminding the listener to rate the show five stars and not four lest he be inclined to include you’re a hater…

It helps that I am obsessed with basketball but I also think Jones is the most entertaining host and talker on any topic working today.

---

Updates, Corrections & Clarifications

From this week on, I’m adding this section to improve my transparency in writing the newsletter. I always make corrections — which this newsletter hasn’t needed often — quickly and prominently but want to make sure people don’t miss them. This week there was one update to the edition on Chris Moyles, adding perspective from someone mentioned in the piece. Read it here.

---

Here’s where the paywall arrives. Beyond the wall? No monster but a smattering of paid subscriber content including the micro-essay, the newsletters I nearly wrote last week and the bonus recommendation.