THIS WEEK

a close up of an actress who looks like Marilyn Monrose — Ana de Armas stars as Marilyn Monroe in *Blonde*. (Photo: Netflix)

📖 READ: The real history behind the Agojie warriors in The Woman King. Björk: Mother, daughter, force of nature. Lulu Garcia-Navarro thinks we need to talk more about how our bodies change in midlife. How I reconnected with my mother through Wordle. BRB, gonna go shoot Botox directly into our armpits. Naomi Watts wants your menopause stories.

👀 LOOK: Stranger Things home décor overload. When the news is too much, scream into the void. A TikTok gift for a Gen-X mom. How a secret camera got backstage at a 1983 Depeche Mode show in Belfast. A funny game to play with your kids or Gen-Z friends.

🎧 LISTEN: Podcast, The Sum of Us, follows Heather McGhee on a road trip to examine the cost of racism. Anne-Marie Slaughter and Tressie McMillan Cottom go deep on the future of feminism. New music from Sudan Archives.

🤣 LOL: We’re sorry to inform you that we’ve live-blogged the Queen’s funeral. Please don’t dress up as Anna Delvey for Halloween. We have a few questions for the people behind the Irish farmer calendar.

🛒 ADD TO CART: Chloë Sevigny for Warby Parker. Loud: A Life in Rock N’ Roll by the World’s First Female Roadie. Live Nation is doing a Club Pass thing that gets you unlimited concert access. BYO face mask.

📺 WATCH

Now: Patton Oswalt's latest standup special, We All Scream (Netflix) and Reboot, with its all-star cast, looks hilarious (Hulu).
Wednesday: Season 2 of Abbott Elementary (ABC, then Hulu on Thursday).
Thursday: Kaley Cuoco and Pete Davidson star in Meet Cute (Peacock).
Friday: Ana de Armas plays Marilyn Monroe in Blonde (Netflix); Allison Janney stars in Lou (Netflix); and Sidney, the Oprah-produced documentary about the life and legacy of Sidney Poitier (Theaters and Apple TV+).

OBSESSED: Nimesh Patel, My New Favorite Comedian

Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photo by Lloyd Bishop/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images

By Margaret Crandall

Last week, after realizing that I hadn’t watched any movies or series in months, I canceled Netflix, Hulu, and HBO Max. My evening entertainment has become reading books and watching TikTok, a service I would happily pay for (but happily don’t have to) because it brings me so much joy. Without TikTok, I doubt I ever would have discovered comedian Nimesh Patel, a former SNL writer who’s blown up so much on the (Chinese-owned) platform, he even named his (free) special Thank You, China.

Let me get this out of the way: He’s hot. There, I said it. The internet says he is 14 years my junior, so if that makes me some kind of “cougar,” so be it. It’s not just his face, voice, and shoulders. It’s also the way he carries himself — with confidence and no fucks given. And while his demeanor has elements of East Coast bad ass, when he cracks himself up, he almost giggles. He’s having just as much fun as we are.

I also love that his politics align with mine. Most of the videos he posts are either excerpts from his special, or clips of him engaging with audience members. (Which is kind of genius when you think about it, because that way he’s not giving away any of his material from his current tour.) In one of those audience clips, a MAGA woman heckles him. His response was so perfect and hilarious, I may have howled.

He’s on tour right now. So if anyone reading this wants to go check him out at the Warner Theater in Washington, DC in early November, hit me up!

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TUENIGHT 10: Sari Botton

two photos of the same woman wearing glasses and looking at the camera, one indoors and one outdoors

Age: 56.

Basic Bio: Sari is the author of a memoir in essays, And You May Find Yourself... Confessions of a Late-Blooming Gen-X Weirdo. She edited the bestselling anthologies Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York and Never Can Say Goodbye: Writers on Their Unshakable Love for New York. She publishes Oldster Magazine.

Beyond the Bio: Getting older has helped me to become the truest version of myself to date. This is remarkable because, as I write in my memoir, I have struggled all my life to be authentic, to not try to change myself to please others. Also, a hysterectomy in my early 40s freed me up from a lifetime of agony, and so I love this post-period time of my life more than any other.

What makes you a grown-ass lady?
I feel like I’ve done adulthood backwards. In my 20s, I was busy being “precocious.” I married and divorced young the first time, then went through something of a protracted adolescence. My inner 11-year-old is still very much alive. But when I honor my word with people, and do my best to be kind toward people I find trying, and do good work as a writer/editor/teacher, then I feel like something approaching a grown-ass lady.

Here’s her TueNight 10:

On the nightstand: Kim Gordon’s memoir.
Can’t stop/won’t stop: Doing karaoke both privately and publicly. Singing is my greatest joy.
Jam of the minute: At the Ballet from A Chorus Line.
Thing I miss: New York City!!! Always.
‘80s crush: James Garner.
Current crush: My husband, but also Bob Odenkirk.
Latest fav find: Glow Juice moisture spray.
Last thing you lost: My glasses, in a lake.
Best thing that happened recently: I was on the Everything is Fine podcast with Kim France and Jennifer Romolini, talking about my book and Oldster Magazine.
Looking forward to: Hopefully traveling to Portugal early next year.

STORY: Manju and Me: Finding Gratitude in an Unlikely Friendship

(Women in a rice paddy field in India. Photo Credit: Farshid Ahrestani)

By Savita Iyer

It was the summer of 2006 and I was over the moon about moving to India, the country of my birth, to spend two years during which my husband conducted his doctoral research.

But I was also terrified.

I had visited India many times, but I’d never stayed there for more than six weeks at a stretch, I’d never run my own household or managed — dare I use the common Indian term —“servants.”

The word itself made me cringe, but in India, servants are part and parcel of most households. By and large, their presence isn’t acknowledged, it’s ignored. But their chopping, cooking, cleaning, stirring, scrubbing and serving are what keep the wheels of a household turning.

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Happy Rosh Hashanah, TueNighters!

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