I remember buying a walkman when I was a kid and getting to pick an audio preset when streaming FM radio. The presets were genre titles, like pop, rock, rap, jazz. The idea was that you could select the appropriate genre and the device would make that particular type of music sound even better. Same thing with the TV – there’s a presets for different levels of saturation and color settings.

Spoilers below. There’s a moment where Kayla is about to walk out into a pool party in her bright green swimsuit. Right as she works up enough courage, she pulls the screen door to the side and it gets stuck, causing her to walk out sideways. Such a real moment. That element of surprise in an already intense moment is something Bo Burnham does exceedingly well. At one point, Kayla lies to a boy in her class about her oral sex skills, which results in her looking up a tutorial on YouTube, which results in her trying to practice on a banana, and her dad almost catches her.

+++ title = “01” date = 2019 +++ There are two types of friendships. The first one, or the one that most of us are accustomed to, is spread across days like jelly. We start small, maybe in a class or at the office, getting to know each other. Maybe we have a meal or a coffee and figure out what we have in common. Maybe we meet every few weeks for a movie, or a TV binge.

+++ title = “01” date = 2019 +++ The rain in Orlando is ripping through the palm trees, like footage from a hurricane on TV. Only it’s just a normal storm. It’s over in an hour. I watch it end from the window of my hotel. Palm trees are more dramatic than even the ocean or the clouds. And whether it’s MTV or Netflix or the 9 o’clock news, TV is merely a window for drama.

If I’m ever asked about love, joy, sadness, triumph, fatherhood… my response these days is usually the same for all of them. “It’s a feeling so big,” I tell everyone, “that I have to break it into pieces just to understand it.” Like dissecting frogs or anything else involving the scientific process, I have to examine all the angles. It’s not enough to just feel joy anymore; I have to understand how it was constructed, how the gears fit together, how the machine functions.