Weekend Plans With Jonathan Majors, Star Of ‘Run Hide Fight: Infidels’

honor culture

jonathan majors

lifestyle

meagan good

run hide fight infidels

<p>“Barely any of these Gen Z kids know how to make eye contact, let alone hold a conversation.” That’s what one editor said about my age group, while I, an eager 21-year-old Zoomer, met him for coffee, where we’d do precisely those two things.</p>
<p>His observation is nothing new or unique: I’ve had teachers, coaches, and coworkers say the same. I’ve watched as my peers (and myself, at times) flat-out avoid social interactions as small as a wave hello in the hallway. Despite hearing the same diagnosis for years, his remark reminded me why. During my freshman year of high school, COVID-19 obliterated social communion as we knew it. My generation faced a tall task: persevere in a world that came to a stop during our most formative years. Once Zoom classes ended, though, it was hard to face a world that was forever changed. Gen Z lost more than half a decade of authentic social interaction, but the time has come to recover it. What better place to start than at the bar?</p>
<p>While we are certainly not blameless, lockdowns and pandemic pandemonium undoubtedly fostered Gen Z’s social paralysis. A <a href="https://theharrispoll.com/articles/covid-19-5-years-later/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://theharrispoll.com/articles/covid-19-5-years-later/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1789650763993000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2ZZdMvhxlND9A8qp4XYbyy">2025 Harris Poll</a> found that two-thirds of Gen Zers (65%, compared to just 22% of Boomers) say they had to relearn social skills after pandemic restrictions were lifted. Likewise, a recent <a href="https://preply.com/en/blog/communication-skills-in-the-virtual-era/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://preply.com/en/blog/communication-skills-in-the-virtual-era/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1789650763993000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3GrxKKhHbdOCKvki-Ul76F">Canadian survey</a> revealed that 52% of Gen Z reported a decline in social skills following the pandemic.</p>
<p>Six years later, the effects linger, and the old drivers of social interaction are dying: A new <a href="https://www.workday.com/content/dam/web/en-us/documents/reports/human-connection-workplace-index.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.workday.com/content/dam/web/en-us/documents/reports/human-connection-workplace-index.pdf&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1789650763993000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3uccqaD4OMXN_DveS0RAjG">Workday report</a> found that Gen Z employees are 12 times more likely to feel completely disconnected from their colleagues than their Gen X coworkers, citing feelings of distrust and lack of substantive conversations. Though once a hit, even dating apps aren’t cutting it anymore. About 79% of Gen Z users experience dating app burnout, according to a <a href="https://www.forbes.com/health/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.forbes.com/health/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1789650763993000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2N33v83Rlnf4IhxkVAKTfp">Forbes Health</a> survey. While the statistics paint the picture, anyone who&#8217;s encountered the gaping emptiness of the &#8220;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gen_Z_stare">Gen Z Stare</a>&#8221; needs no numbers to illustrate the crisis at hand.</p>
<p>Whether in the workplace, on dating apps, or even in this eerily developing age of parasocial relationships, young people are yearning for community. Might I suggest grabbing a beer?</p>
<p>I know this might ruffle some feathers in the wellness community, especially among my peers who are apparently attending the frat &#8220;<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@ayychild/video/7681301075277745422" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.tiktok.com/@ayychild/video/7681301075277745422&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1789650763993000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3K0JVjgwsbHr6tw1L5lqft">wellness darties</a>&#8221; (darties = day parties), but I mean it. Several studies have found that Gen Z is drinking &#8220;differently&#8221; than its predecessors, <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/non-alcoholic-beverages-flourish-as-more-americans-cut-back-on-drinking" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/non-alcoholic-beverages-flourish-as-more-americans-cut-back-on-drinking&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1789650763993000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2-Nzc2uSocrRwVmOXMR_Cj">replacing cocktails with mocktails</a> and trading Thursday keggers for <a href="https://www.mensfitness.com/news/run-clubs-are-replacing-bars-for-young-men-heres-why-everyone-is-joining" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.mensfitness.com/news/run-clubs-are-replacing-bars-for-young-men-heres-why-everyone-is-joining&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1789650763993000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3gpYxzCW2GMJZws3jYOBuC">run clubs</a>. No shade to the wellness crowd, but let&#8217;s not forget the golden rule: Everything in moderation. Gen Z socialization needs just a little something to take the edge off.</p>
<p>Slight alcohol consumption provides disinhibiting benefits that reduce social anxiety, and <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/health-37383682" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.bbc.com/news/health-37383682&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1789650763993000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1wM1OofdC8Kb0RH6jjtwF2">research suggests</a> a drink also makes people want to be in a happy, talkative environment. A little bit of liquid confidence can help spark conversations that would never happen over text, leading to substantive connections and friends — and a reason to come back next week for more of the same.</p>
<p>I’m not suggesting every person struggling with community needs to drink; I am, however, suggesting that a few casuals with your friends will build social confidence in ways that other proposed remedies fall short. Take THC, for example, which is increasingly popular among young adults: A PubMed <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7792981/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7792981/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1789650763993000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3DuLNGC9AQsLAtYa3djDHh">study</a> found that frequent use of marijuana, but not alcohol, is linked to higher levels of loneliness and psychological distress.</p>
<p>And, yes, group dinners and Strava runs are excellent social scenes gaining real momentum — but the Gen Z stare is still staring. Run clubs and fitness circles will never match the social design of bars. I know the last thing I want to do after finishing a run is socialize with my peers, and I’d venture to say that’s not just me. Conversations begin at a barstool, not a starting line.</p>
<p>Going to the pub like Ted and Marshall in &#8220;How I Met Your Mother&#8221; or the roommates in &#8220;New Girl&#8221; will not only help ease the rampant social tension, but it will also provide the chance to get to know that coworker more, or to buy that pretty girl a drink instead of finding her on Hinge to avoid the conversation.</p>
<p>Maybe next time I meet up with an editor, I&#8217;ll do it over a cold one instead of a coffee.</p>
<p>***</p>
<div><em>Julia Cassidy is a senior at the University of Pittsburgh and an alumna of the National Journalism Center, where she wrote over 150 articles for Townhall. She writes and makes video content for the College Fix. </em></div>
<p><em>This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream</a>, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.</em></p>


GettyImages-2155135276

Gen Z Has Forgotten How To Socialize. The Cure Isn’t Run Clubs — It’s The Local Bar.

alcoholism

dating

gen z

mental health

social media

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">One of the cardinal rules I have for op-ed writers is to avoid opening lines that list three newsy things before introducing the unrelated subject you want to discuss.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“With a war in Iran, rising inflation, and a looming AI apocalypse, it can be easy to forget about railroad maintenance.” Something like that. It’s lazy and cheap, like opening an essay with “since the dawn of time.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">But today, I’m breaking my own rule. Because with a war in Iran, rising inflation, and a looming AI apocalypse, people on the right seem mostly concerned with a film adaptation of “The Chronicles Of Narnia.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Are you kidding?</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“Lady Bird” director Greta Gerwig is producing a movie version of “The Magician’s Nephew” for Netflix, a project with built-in buzz thanks to Gerwig’s last film, “Barbie,” another adaptation of a classic children’s property.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Things went haywire this week when it was confirmed that Meryl Streep would voice Aslan, the titular lion from “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” and one of the protagonists of the Narnia series.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Based on how conservatives reacted to this news, you would think that Ms. Gerwig dug ol’ Clive Staples Lewis out of his grave and used his bones in an X-rated puppet show.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">It’s woke! It’s an attack on Christianity! It’s poisoning the youth! Aslan is Jesus and Jesus is a man so the lion has to be a <em>boy</em>!</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Do you hear yourselves?</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Before I really get into it, let me clarify a few things this piece is not. This is not some self-righteous argument that we shouldn’t care about the adaptation of a Christian fable because Christians are being persecuted in China (although, come to think of it, that’s not a bad argument). But no, culture is important. The stories we tell ourselves matter. I actually much prefer talking about culture than about things like macroeconomics. But that’s not why this is silly.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Nor is this a Christian apologetic in which I point out that, no matter how much Greta Gerwig tries to blaspheme Our Lord, He remains the King of Kings. Although, again, the latter is definitely true. But I don’t think Greta Gerwig is trying to subvert Christianity; I think she just wanted to cast Meryl Streep. And, even if she were, having a symbolic Christ voiced by a woman is at least the fourth worst thing ever to happen to Jesus, after <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piss_Christ">Piss Christ</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godspell">Godspell</a>, and, you know, the Crucifixion.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">No, this freak-out is not worth our time because we’re talking about a film adaptation of a children’s book about an anthropomorphic lion.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Yes, I know Aslan is supposed to be Jesus. But he’s not. He’s a lion. And they’re different. The reason I know they’re different is that every Sunday when I take my family to church, we don’t kneel before a wooden carving of the king of the jungle.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">I want to say this again, because I really don’t think conservatives who like “The Chronicles of Narnia” have internalized this. </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The lion is not Jesus. </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">So, when commentator Kangmin Lee </span><a href="https://x.com/HumanEvents/status/2100655693850087609?s=20"><span style="font-weight: 400;">says</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> the Gerwig adaptation is “a desecration of Lewis&#8217;s work,” I say: No, it’s not! You can’t desecrate that which isn’t sacred. And a fairy tale, no matter how inspired it may be by Christian teaching, is not holy.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">So, no, you can’t get this mad that Greta Gerwig’s riff on Narnia is a David Bowie-inspired, gender-bent kaleidoscope. That’s what happens when you write fiction that enters the public domain or, as is the case here, is licensed to directors by the corporation that manages your estate.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">It’s baffling to me that conservatives don’t get this. We Republicans are the party of reason, of reality, of “facts don’t care about your feelings.” We stand up and say that men can’t be women and criminals should go to jail and countries need secure borders and all these important things — and then we threaten to kill ourselves on social media because a hipster cast a lady to play a lion.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">This isn’t just about this particular adaptation. Conservatives of a certain stripe are bafflingly obsessed with all of Lewis’s novels, as well as his pal J.R.R. Tolkien&#8217;s “The Lord of the Rings” franchise. Don’t get me wrong, I’m as nerdy as the next guy, and I like these books fine. But folks on the Right have imbued these retellings of the Bible with such meaning that they have a news cycle’s worth of a meltdown whenever someone dares change or criticize them.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">This is dumb, just like it was dumb to freak out that “Hamilton” said our first Treasury secretary was a rapping Puerto Rican. Artists are generally liberal, and liberals love to do things like this. Some, like “Hamilton,” are good. Others, like most modern adaptations of Shakespeare, are bad. I don’t know where Gerwig’s “Narnia” film will fall, but I’ll tell you this: I would much rather my children watch a movie with a female Jesus lion than see any of the tantrums my fellow conservatives threw about said big cat.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Last month, liberals lost their collective mind when a golf company released an ad that depicted a man body-checking a woman. Our editor-in-chief Brent Scher rightly <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/maybe-we-shouldnt-destroy-an-entire-golf-brand-over-one-dumb-ad">chastised</a> the woke mob, saying, “Did I miss the time machine back into the height of cancel culture idiocy?”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">He was right then, just as I’m right now. We on the Right tend to be better than most about this stuff, but when it’s our favorite things at stake, we clutch our pearls as ferociously as any blue-haired bozo. But we are, and ought to be, better than that. Some things — most things — matter more than Greta Gerwig’s “Narnia” movie. On some level, we all know better. We should act like it.</span></p>
<p>***</p>
<p><em>This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream</a>, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.</em></p>


GettyImages-454165771

Aslan Isn’t Jesus. He’s A Lion.

cancel culture

greta gerwig

meryl streep

narnia

netflix

opinion

<p><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Welcome to the Bright Side, a weekly roundup of all the good news and ideas you might have missed from the past week.</span></i></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">***</span></p>
<p><b>Air Horse One</b></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">This week, I met up with friends at the bougie Herban Market (aka “Nashville’s Erewhon”), where the conversation flowed from children’s horseback riding lessons to a friend’s imported filly from Denmark. Well, I was today years old when I realized they fly horses around the world for the right price. Having just watched the Netflix </span><a href="https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/instadocs-the-decoy-plane-what-to-know"><span style="font-weight: 400;">mini-doc</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> about how the Secret Service shuttled the president onto a decoy plane in a catering van, I imagined horses flying first class and munching on toasted hay and caramel apples, watching “Seabiscuit.” </span></p>
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<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">I had to know more. Accommodations are comfy, with lots of room for horses to stretch their legs. They get a lounge, a disinfectant foot bath, a vet check, a private concierge (their groomer), and unlimited snacks and water. These posh stallions don’t fly on regular passenger jets, but now that I know this is a thing, I can’t help picturing every plane cruising along at 35,000 feet, full of horses. Sure beats hoofing it on land.</span></p>
<p><b>A friendship test</b></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Have you ever heard of the “two beers and a puppy” test? It’s a theory developed by </span><a href="https://forge.medium.com/the-2-beers-and-a-puppy-test-is-my-greatest-contribution-to-the-world-17a7feb8cb93"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Ross McCammon</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> in his book “Works Well With Others” to vibe-check your feelings about someone else. The concept goes like this. There are 1) People who you’d happily have two beers with, but wouldn’t dream of leaving in care of your dog, 2) People whom you’d totally trust with your pet, but never your happy hour, and 3) People you’d toast any day of the week, who would also love your pup like a second mother. When you find them, stick with ‘em like white on rice. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Of course, you can make up your own benchmarks (two matchas and a goldfish, two Diet Cokes and grandma’s diamond ring, two hot cocoas and wherever you buried the body — just kidding). For the record, I would happily sip a couple beers and let my dog play with this pelican who regularly swooped in for playtime at a daycare in Japan, back in the ‘80s.  </span></p>
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<p dir="ltr" lang="en">In 1989, a pelican started visiting a daycare in Japan every day, where it happily played with the kids <a href="https://t.co/yCCvGe9YV4">pic.twitter.com/yCCvGe9YV4</a></p>
<p>— Science girl (@sciencegirl) <a href="https://x.com/sciencegirl/status/2095842445325971544?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 4, 2026</a></p></blockquote>
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<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">His name was Katta-kun, and he was the first pink-backed pelican born in Tokiwa Park in Ube, Yamaguchi Prefecture. He was raised by hand in an incubator, which made him fearless around humans. Especially the little ones, whom he quietly joined for piano lessons. He inspired at least two books and a movie before he flew off into the heavens. </span></p>
<p><b>Cash, card, or cheese?</b></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">One of my little treats is quickly becoming a luxury investment. A doorstop-sized wedge of parmesan cheese at the grocery store (the kind with the rind because je ne sais quoi) suddenly costs $20 — if I can even find it. My spidey sense told me something was sour in Cheeseville, so I did a little recon and found that Italy’s heat wave is reportedly ruining our cheese … or something. This kind of crisis can only be solved by charcuterie.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Still, upon further investigation, social media sensationalists had the story totally wrong. It wasn’t the heat. (My case remains active.) Real Parmigiano Reggiano has to come from a certain place, from certain cows eating special things, and age for at least 12 months. So where do purveyors keep all these glorious wheels until they reach their prime? In banks. And boy howdy is this cheese worth some cheddar. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Italian banker-owned Magazzini Generali delle Tagliate currently stores 500,000 wheels of cheese worth a cool $350 million. Forget about exchanging cash for physical gold, I’m putting everything into Parm wheels. And yes, for anyone who’s asking, I’ll be cooking my pasta in it too.</span></p>
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<section><a title="@foodporn" href="https://www.tiktok.com/@foodporn?refer=embed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@foodporn</a> Have you ever had truffle pasta cooked in a cheese wheel? 🧀🔥🤷🏽‍♂️ We’re at @osteriapastella to try it out! 🤯 <a title="fyp" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/fyp?refer=embed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">#fyp</a> <a title="foryou" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/foryou?refer=embed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">#foryou</a> <a title="pasta" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/pasta?refer=embed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">#pasta</a> <a title="cheese" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/cheese?refer=embed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">#cheese</a> <a title="foodporn" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/foodporn?refer=embed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">#foodporn</a> <a title="♬ original sound - Foodporn" href="https://www.tiktok.com/music/original-sound-7294937070949272321?refer=embed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">♬ original sound &#8211; Foodporn</a></section>
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<p><b>The beauty of a dead zone</b></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">I’m pretty sure no one likes waiting for a Pinterest feed to populate or for ChatGPT to respond. What was life before hotspots and Starlink? But this poem has me seeing freedom in bad cell service. In the spirit of intentional screen time and prioritizing life offline, I’ll be memorizing a few lines of “</span><a href="https://poems.com/poem/35275-2/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Places with Terrible Wi-Fi”</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> by J. Estanislao Lopez:</span></p>
<p><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Garden of Eden. My ancestors’ graves. A watermelon field in Central Texas where my father once slept. Miles of rivers. The waiting room of a hospital in which a doctor, thin-looking in his coat, shared mixed results. A den of worms beneath the frozen grass. Jesus’s tomb. The stretches of highway on the long drive home after burial. The figurative abyss. The literal heavens. The cheap motel room in which I thought about praying despite my disbelief. What I thought was a voice was simply a recording playing from another room. The cluttered attic. Most of the past. The very distant future, where man is just another stratum in the ground. The tell of Megiddo. The flooded house and the scorched one. My favorite cemetery, where I can touch the white noise distorting memory. What is static if not the sound of the universe’s grief? Anywhere static reigns.</span></i></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Next time my iPhone goes on the fritz, I won’t be so quick to ask, “Can you hear me?” Maybe it’s the moment of quiet I didn’t know I needed.</span></p>
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<p><b><i>Last one:</i></b><i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> My coworker sent me a photo of a tree with brown fall leaves, writing, “Thank God the colors are changing,” since we’re all feeling hopeless about the heat in Nashville. But on closer inspection, the “fall colors” were the brown needles of an evergreen tree, caramelized by the sun. It was like seeing a mirage in the desert leading only to more sand. But it still makes me laugh. I’m so desperate for sweater weather, I don’t even care if this </span></i><a href="https://x.com/gazatr/status/2099822129516593573"><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">baby goat greeting his human sister</span></i></a><i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> in three feet of snow is AI. See you in the comments (or pop by my </span></i><a href="mailto:lbair@dailywire.com"><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">email</span></i></a><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">). Hope your weekend is as chill as possible! — Lauren</span></i></p>


Bright Side: Air Horse One, Pricey Parm, And Why Terrible Cell Service Might Be A Blessing

RHF_Infidels_Hostages_Lizzie and Avery

Go Behind The Scenes With The Cast Of ‘Run Hide Fight: Infidels’

arts

behind the scenes

daily wire

film cast interview

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">If you tell people, “Annie Dillard has died,” most of them will say, “I don’t know who that is.” And there’s no shame in that, for them or for her.</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br />
</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br />
</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Annie Dillard, the great naturalist, essayist, and Christian interrogator — and minor novelist — died Tuesday at her home in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, at the age of 81. She was the antipode of Joan Didion, as blonde and soft and rural as Didon was dark and twitchy and urban.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“We can live any way we want,” Dillard wrote in her signature essay, “Living Like Weasels.” “People take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience — even of silence — by choice. The thing is to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way, to locate the most tender and live spot and plug into that pulse.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">That’s who Annie Dillard was: a woman who stalked her calling, weasel-like and unabashed.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Born Meta Ann Doak in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on April 30, 1945, Dillard was raised in a well-heeled progressive family that she detailed in her first book, an autobiography called “An American Childhood,” which literary scuttlebutt says succeeded because she was upper-crust and photogenic, a pin-up Thoreau who experienced the outdoors between opulent meals.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">She was 29 at the time, married to the poet Richard Dillard — thus her name. But they soon divorced and she married twice more, teaching, traveling, and living the life of an academic star, which insulated her.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Her critics pointed out that it was easy for young, chain-smoking Annie to explore nature, what with her tenure and big publishing payouts. She never denied it, referring to her “suburban wilderness.” She was honest about the fact that her adventures were simple, safe day trips to observe local wildlife, and she always returned after a couple hours to her comfortable home.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dillard was a writer’s writer, someone whose biggest mark was on literature itself rather than the masses of paperback readers and filmgoers. Her career receded as she aged, but the echo of her observations about what it is to live in the world and make a transcript of it is loud.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“While writing is an art, it’s not a martial art,” Dillard wrote in the introduction to her 1989 book, “The Writing Life.” </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">I&#8217;ve repeated this mantra to every nonfiction writing student I&#8217;ve ever had, and I say it to myself at least once a week.</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Like Janet Burroway, who wrote the classic “Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft,” and Vivian Gornick, whose “The Situation and the Story” is essential for both essayists and eulogists, Dillard — a longtime English professor — was best-known for her writing advice. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Writing that’s designed to settle scores or argue a case is boring, she taught. When memoir is written in order to attack, it’s obvious; it’s bad art. She was right. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">When I attended the Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program in 1999, Dillard was canon and those guidelines were workshop staples. </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Did you hold yourself accountable? </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">We would ask the writer of each piece. </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Was your account fair? Is the conclusion earned, or is it simply a rant?</span></i></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">These concerns have been lost in an era of confessional personal essay and memoiristic screed. Titles such as “I’m Glad My Mom Died,” the runaway 2022 bestseller by child actor Jennette McCurdy, violate every one of Dillard’s stately directions. And it’s everyone’s loss.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The best of literature is, as Annie Dillard wrote, designed to illuminate and elevate, not belittle or argue. “No manipulation is possible in a work of art, but every miracle is,” Dillard wrote in “Write Till You Drop,” </span><a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/99/03/28/specials/dillard-drop.html?_r=1"><span style="font-weight: 400;">an essay</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> for the “New York Times Book Review.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">She also provided the single best piece of writing advice I’ve ever heard: Spend it.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">” </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The punchline is that Dillard repudiated her own terrific book on writing, insisting (through her third husband, the Thoreau biographer Robert D. Richardson) that “The </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Writing Life” </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">was “an embarrassing nonfiction narrative.” About her famous essay, “To Fashion a Text,” which appeared in “Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir,” edited by William Zinsser, Dillard wrote on her own website: &#8220;This is emphatically not interesting; I renounce it.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">It’s ironic that so many readers’ favorite title is the one she couldn’t stand. But it’s also consistent with her never-still character. Above all, Dillard was a seeker, and this is the third piece of her legacy. Nature, writing, God. Raised in the Presbyterian Church, she was an on-again-off-for-short-times lifelong Christian who defined herself not by sect but by her relationship to paradox and sanctity — which she found everywhere in the world. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Again, she started with that which she abnegates: creationism, dogma, the idea of a personal God. “Did God create people? Sure, if that’s how you like it,” Dillard wrote in “</span><a href="https://www.christiancentury.org/article/how-my-mind-has-changed/do-i-consider-myself-christian"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Do I Consider Myself a Christian</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">?” for “The Christian Century” magazine. “We didn’t create ourselves. We evolved, just as all other living beings evolved. Every creature alive today is a pinnacle of creation. So is every extinct creature.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Hers is a modern response to works such as G.K. Chesterton’s Christian apologetics, “</span><a href="https://app.storyaliz.com/read/3f138a7a-58e6-443a-b173-76dd47700c46/about"><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Everlasting Man</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">.” And true to her progressive roots, she wraps in Hasidism, Islam, and Buddhism, but concludes with something so fundamentally true, it seems — in the vernacular of the book Dillard abjured — “earned.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“I know only one thing for certain: there is holiness,” she said. “Standing there, a person can sing myriad songs.”</span></p>
<p>***</p>
<p><i>Ann Bauer is co-founder of the serialized classic literature platform </i><a href="https://www.storyaliz.com/"><i>Storyalīz</i></a><i>.</i></p>
<p><em>This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream</a>, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.</em></p>


Gemini_Generated_Image_y7sxmiy7sxmiy7sx

The American Writer Who Refused To Play By Today’s Rules

annie dillard

christianity

memoir

obituary

<p>I know writing this is going to generate some not-so-nice comments, so let&#8217;s just get it out of the way: I&#8217;m a beige mom. I do not want my house covered in fire-engine red, electric blue, highlighter yellow, and that particular shade of green apparently reserved exclusively for children&#8217;s plastic toys. I don&#8217;t understand why becoming a mother was supposed to mean surrendering every room of my house to something that looks like a preschool classroom circa 1997. And before anyone starts typing furiously: My children are fine. Actually, they&#8217;re more than fine. They&#8217;re spoiled rotten.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m a mom of two: a four-year-old girl and an almost three-month-old baby. We have toys. <em>So many toys.</em> We have colorful toys, too. I simply don&#8217;t want every single thing my children touch to look like a rainbow threw up on it. Which is why I have a bone to pick with Little Tikes.</p>
<p>Of course, now that my daughter is four and I have already purchased virtually every toy a small child could possibly require, Little Tikes decides to release its gorgeous &#8220;Cloud&#8221; line. White. Beige. Soft, muted colors. Where were you people four years ago?</p>
<p>When my daughter was younger, finding a basketball hoop or play structure that didn&#8217;t come in Ronald McDonald colors was practically an archaeological expedition. And when you did find one? Prepare to refinance your house. Parents who have gone searching for &#8220;aesthetic&#8221; toys know exactly what I&#8217;m talking about.</p>
<p>Take children&#8217;s brand Smol, which bills itself as &#8220;a fun company with good taste.&#8221; Its products are beautiful. Slides, sensory tables, and a basketball hoop that won&#8217;t make your living room look like a Chuck E. Cheese. There&#8217;s just one small problem: A chic basketball hoop can <a href="https://www.playsmol.com/collections/play/products/basketball-hoop">run</a> you around $200.</p>
<p>Would I ever spend that much money on a white basketball hoop just because it was aesthetically pleasing? Absolutely not. Did I put it in my cart multiple times? Absolutely.</p>
<p>Thankfully, somewhere between &#8220;add to cart&#8221; and &#8220;check out,&#8221; the functioning portion of my brain would wake up, smack some sense into me, and remind me that I was contemplating spending hundreds of dollars so my toddler could miss baskets in a more aesthetically pleasing environment. I resisted.</p>
<p>And now Little Tikes strolls in years later with a beige-and-white basketball hoop for <a href="https://parade.com/living/little-tikes-cloud-collection">around</a> $35. That&#8217;s less than a quarter of the price of the luxury baby items I stared at for years.</p>
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<p>What took so long? To be clear, this isn&#8217;t a hit on Little Tikes. Quite the opposite; I love Little Tikes. Its stuff lasts forever. I love the look of those gorgeous wooden outdoor toys as much as anyone, but plastic wins outside. It survives rain, mud, toddlers, forgotten juice cups, winters, and whatever unidentified substance your child has smeared across it. Hose it down and move on with your life.</p>
<p>Little Tikes just needed better colors, and I told it as much for approximately four years. I emailed the company multiple times asking some version of: When are you going to make white and beige toys? Or at least give us colors that don&#8217;t assault the eyeballs? Give me a light pink. A sage green. A soft blue. Anything.</p>
<p>Every time, I&#8217;d get a polite response along the lines of, &#8220;Thank you, we&#8217;ll take that into consideration.&#8221; Well, apparently the company did. It only took four years. You&#8217;re welcome, America.</p>
<p>But here&#8217;s the part of the beige-mom debate that drives me crazy: Somewhere along the way, not wanting a neon orange slide in your family room became evidence that you&#8217;re depriving your children of a childhood. I&#8217;m not a bad mom because I don&#8217;t like obnoxiously colored toys. My daughter has colorful things. I just prefer those things to have a home when we&#8217;re done playing with them. If a toy is going to permanently live in my family room, kitchen, or backyard, yes, I&#8217;d rather it not scream &#8220;DAYCARE&#8221; from across the street.</p>
<p>And that&#8217;s not just about being picky. Not every family has a designated playroom where they can close the door on the Fisher-Price explosion. Plenty of parents live in apartments, city homes, townhouses, or smaller houses where the living room is also the playroom. Why shouldn&#8217;t they be able to buy a play kitchen or basketball hoop that can sit in the corner without taking over the entire room? If I want to invite my girlfriends over last-minute, I don&#8217;t want to perform an emergency evacuation of every toy my children own. A little beige camouflage goes a long way.</p>
<p>And no, I don&#8217;t buy the argument that my daughter&#8217;s imagination is somehow suffering because her toys aren&#8217;t fluorescent. My child could entertain herself with three sticks, a tissue, and a rock. Her imagination has always amazed me. I bought her a dollhouse (the black and white one from Joanna Gaines&#8217; Hearth &amp; Hand line at Target) when she was about one, and by two years old, she was creating elaborate little scenes that made me wonder what exactly was happening inside that tiny head. She&#8217;d position everyone, invent relationships, create stories, and keep herself occupied forever.</p>
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1179951" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_7450-300x225.jpeg" alt="" width="300" height="225" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_7450-300x225.jpeg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_7450-768x576.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_7450-1536x1152.jpeg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_7450-2048x1536.jpeg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />.         <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1179947" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_7446-300x225.jpeg" alt="" width="300" height="225" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_7446-300x225.jpeg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_7446-768x576.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_7446-1536x1152.jpeg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_7446-2048x1536.jpeg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />         <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1179941" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/643FE1BD-B75D-4304-9B25-AEFA9EC044CB-225x300.jpg" alt="" width="225" height="300" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/643FE1BD-B75D-4304-9B25-AEFA9EC044CB-225x300.jpg 225w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/643FE1BD-B75D-4304-9B25-AEFA9EC044CB-432x576.jpg 432w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/643FE1BD-B75D-4304-9B25-AEFA9EC044CB-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/643FE1BD-B75D-4304-9B25-AEFA9EC044CB-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/643FE1BD-B75D-4304-9B25-AEFA9EC044CB-1536x2048.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/643FE1BD-B75D-4304-9B25-AEFA9EC044CB-scaled.jpg 1920w" sizes=" (max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px" />    <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1179943" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/CEBA5F8D-CF9D-48D1-A46B-5E869450BD9A-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/CEBA5F8D-CF9D-48D1-A46B-5E869450BD9A-300x225.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/CEBA5F8D-CF9D-48D1-A46B-5E869450BD9A-768x576.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/CEBA5F8D-CF9D-48D1-A46B-5E869450BD9A-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/CEBA5F8D-CF9D-48D1-A46B-5E869450BD9A-2048x1536.jpg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />.                                    <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1179945" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/F4D87B3E-E34B-4712-85C7-CCBE420077E4-225x300.jpg" alt="" width="225" height="300" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/F4D87B3E-E34B-4712-85C7-CCBE420077E4-225x300.jpg 225w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/F4D87B3E-E34B-4712-85C7-CCBE420077E4-432x576.jpg 432w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/F4D87B3E-E34B-4712-85C7-CCBE420077E4-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/F4D87B3E-E34B-4712-85C7-CCBE420077E4-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/F4D87B3E-E34B-4712-85C7-CCBE420077E4-1536x2048.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/F4D87B3E-E34B-4712-85C7-CCBE420077E4-scaled.jpg 1920w" sizes=" (max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px" /></div>
<p>We also never relied on screens to entertain her, and I&#8217;m incredibly thankful for that now. She learned how to be bored and then figure out how not to be bored. She can entertain herself. She can sit nicely at a restaurant. She can turn practically anything around her into a game. None of that required a neon green plastic table.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m not trying to raise beige children. I&#8217;m not banning color. I&#8217;m not standing over my daughter with a Sherwin-Williams swatch and confiscating anything above a certain saturation level. I just don&#8217;t understand why children&#8217;s toys spent decades operating under the assumption that kids can only experience joy when an object contains every color of the rainbow simultaneously.</p>
<p>Children bring enough chaos into a house on their own. There are Goldfish crumbs in places that defy physics. Someone or something is always sticky. If I can make even a small portion of that chaos sage green instead of radioactive lime? I&#8217;m going to.</p>
<p>And apparently a lot of other parents feel the same way. For years, &#8220;aesthetic&#8221; children&#8217;s toys were treated like a weird luxury niche. If you wanted something in softer colors, you had to hunt for it, pay more for it, or accept that the primary-colored version was your only reasonable option. That&#8217;s changing. Mainstream toy companies are finally giving parents something incredibly simple: choices. And that&#8217;s all I ever wanted.</p>
<p>If you love the classic red, yellow, and blue toys, buy them. Fill your house with them. Build a primary-colored kingdom. Your kid will have a blast. But so is mine with whites, dusty pinks and sage greens. My daughter isn&#8217;t experiencing some color-deprived childhood because Mommy prefers neutrals. She has imagination. She has creativity. She has plenty of color.</p>
<p>She also has grandparents. Trust me, she&#8217;s getting enough neon.</p>
<p>So yes, I&#8217;m a beige mom. Get over it.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p><i>This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.</i></p>


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I’m A Beige Mom. Get Over It.

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<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Okay ladies, huddle up. You’re probably hearing a lot of buzz about who qualifies as a “real” female athlete in women’s sports. Does it count if you happen to be frolicking in the nude with strategically placed footballs for a betting platform? The internet will be the judge of that. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">By this point, you may be able to recall Sydney Sweeney’s scantily clad </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp0T184hVY0"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Novig ad</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> as she beats the “sports … sports … sports” drum backed by a funky Anderson. Paak beat. “You can’t trade this, I just look good here,” she says while draped over a billiard table in nothing but Novig-branded tighty-whities. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“No betting on wars or deaths, and no politics,” she assures us. Glad we cleared up the meaning of “sports.” Tying a bow on the brand for which </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/14/style/sydney-sweeney-sports-ad-novig.html"><span style="font-weight: 400;">she’s an equity partner</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, she says, “Just you, your takes, and sports.” Like every other Sydney Sweeney promo (does she ever </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">not</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> flaunt the goods?), the ad did its job. Cue 40 million views and the obligatory outragepocalypse.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Four-time Australian Olympic gold medalist </span><a href="https://apnews.com/article/sydney-sweeney-ad-novig-02491031050ed505840b8bda8ac2fdb3"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Ariarne Titmus</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> posted to Instagram, “I can’t describe how infuriated I feel … How do we live in a world where monetizing a woman’s body and sexualizing women’s sport is still a thing?”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Just after a race, British sprinter </span><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DdRI7oKCpOH/?img_index=2"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Amy Hunt</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> breathlessly told the BBC, “Sydney Sweeney, this is what women in sport look like … muscles, hard work, sweat, blood, tears.” </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Taking the cue on the so-called “healing” moment from a few big stars across the athletic space, social media immediately drowned itself in videos of women (nay beasts, which by the way is a massive CrossFit compliment) deadlifting, sprinting, tumbling, throwing weights every which way and that, and flexing their fittest form at their competitive best. It was the spontaneous internet Olympics of muscle mommies and fit girlies. To quote Chris Farley in “Tommy Boy” when it comes to their capabilities: “Holy schnikes.” </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">U.S. gymnast </span><a href="https://www.facebook.com/reel/1395360435904060"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Gracie Kramer</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> noted, “We shouldn’t all have to worry about the way we look every single day in order to do the things that we want to do.” She told the </span><a href="https://www.bbc.com/sport/athletics/articles/c9dw905jw5no"><span style="font-weight: 400;">BBC</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> that she “just wanted to uplift women and remind them that you may see these types of ads but remember that this is not the only thing that matters.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Kramer essentially launched the trend of female athletes posting their own me-toos with the battle cry “this is what women in sport look like.” Along with a carousel of herself and friends in thong bikinis, crop tops, and sports bras, she </span><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DdR8SclEmD0/?hl=en&amp;img_index=1"><span style="font-weight: 400;">wrote</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, “Recognize that your value extends so far beyond your appearance.” But just in case it doesn’t, here’s a cute butt shot from the stands of a WNBA game.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Under the caption, a supportive comment read, “Now let’s show the same enthusiasm about getting men out of women’s sports [muscle emoji].” That was followed by another user’s reply, “Don’t use this movement here to spread your transphobia.” </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“It’s amazing women are attacking women and yet protecting men in women’s spaces. Make it make sense,” wrote a third person who appeared to be a man, totally mansplaining, right?</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">I wondered if I missed the part where Sweeney claimed she was actively participating in</span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">all the sports she was promoting. She’s obviously not getting drafted for the NFL anytime soon, but I’m pretty sure even women’s flag football typically requires a mouthguard, at least. And, like, somewhere to attach the flags. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">For the record, Sweeney’s a former athlete. “I grew up loving sports,” she told </span><a href="https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/a/khal/sydney-sweeney-novig-just-sports-campaign-exclusive-interview"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Complex</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. “I was on a soccer team, I was on a softball team, I was on a snow ski team. I learned how to slalom ski when I was little, and I did MMA. So sports have been a really big part of my life, and I love watching hockey and boxing … I have a really huge appreciation for every single fighter.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">So is the problem that we can’t accept that the curvaceous denim darling from the American Eagle “</span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK8s3iqL99c"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Great Jeans</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">” commercial could also exist as the sexed-up bombshell from the Novig ad? Or that our acceptable vision for women — despite our ongoing yo-yo diet of obese Sports Illustrated Swimsuit models and red carpet Wegovy waifs — remains unwaveringly narrow, despite the current “positivity” thing?</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">If the issue comes down to her come-hither poses with various sports balls, how dare Sydney Sweeney reel in participants by appealing to the basest concupiscence of the prediction market! But heck-to-the-no if she thinks she’s getting away with trivializing women in sports. Perhaps we should all be like the </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">European Broadcasting Union </span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-strange-new-rules-for-womens-sports-coverage">banning</a> “sexualized” camera angles on female athletes. Still, isn’t it sexist to assume that women who literally spend every waking minute perfecting their bodies so they function at an elite level wouldn’t want to be seen on the world stage? You know what? Maybe we shouldn’t show women on TV at all. Just men! Solved. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">I’m no expert. I’m just a woman who works out, who was once a girl who loved high school soccer and watching my sister crush NCAA D1 gymnastics at Penn State. But I have another theory about the hot mess Syd Sweeney backlash. In our misguided cultural effort to forward the movement our athletic ancestors so graciously handed to us on a silver platter — Title IX — we women destroy ourselves by obsessing over who counts as women in women’s sports. The current scorecard:</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">She/her = yes. But not too much of her actual body, her politics, or her voice.<br />
</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">He/him = yes. If he identifies as </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">she</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">. Full stop. The world is his/her oyster.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">We’ll pass out holding our breath waiting for the outrage mob to catch on to the fact that not all biological sexes should be welcome in women’s sports. What about all that blood, that sweat, and those tears we’re supposedly aiming at Sydney Sweeney? The same contingent screaming their guts out about a pretty girl doing sports wrong seems totally fine with a man doing whatever he wants all over the equal playing field. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Listen, before anyone gets their knickers in a twist, it’s perfectly fine to support women’s sports without condoning commercialized debauchery — or even gambling in the first place. Yes, Sweeney’s ad is meant to be tantalizing. But it’s not about women’s sports. And I’d argue it’s not really about women, either. There’s a larger conversation to be had around who gets to step into the arena and represent women. And it ain’t about Sydney Sweeney.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">As most of the internet swims around in a memory hole of mid-2000s Carl’s Jr. campaigns and comes to terms with the Sadie Sink </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=We_VjVJ7_cs"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Calvin Klein</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> ad that — while bursting with euphemism — didn’t quite achieve the same “brand awareness” that Syd’s did, I’m holding out hope that women can find a way to support each other. Aimed at the right target, this kind of outrage machine could actually make a difference in protecting women’s sports for girls and women. Yes, even those who look like Sydney Sweeney. </span></p>
<p>***</p>
<p><em>This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream">Upstream</a>, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.</em></p>


Sydney Sweeney Outrage Has A Pretty Obvious Blind Spot

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<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Squirrels live almost everywhere in the United States, terrorizing bird feeders and darting across roads with reckless abandon. They are self-sustaining, free range, and organic. Until 1997, “The Joy of Cooking,” quintessential cookbook that it is, included recipes for preparing them. Given their plentiful nature and mild flavor, they were </span><a href="https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/why-i-eat-squirrel-really"><span style="font-weight: 400;">once a staple</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. During the Great Depression, a young Arkansas boy named Cecil Redditt would head into the woods near a section of the White River, walk five miles to a logging camp, shoot squirrels along the way, and sell the squirrels to the loggers. On the way out, he’d shoot more squirrels to feed his family and then use the money to buy shells for the next day. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">By the time I met Cecil, I was a young man with decidedly more advantages, including the houseboat on land my parents purchased in the unincorporated area of Aberdeen, Arkansas. For us, it was a weekend getaway for hunting and fishing. Cecil, on the other hand, lived there. And like generations of men before and since, he loved telling tales. Maybe it was five miles, maybe it was really just two. The important part wasn’t the veracity of the details, but the storytelling ability. The same is true for Joe Wilson, founder of the World Champion Squirrel Cook-Off, an annual event in Northwest Arkansas, one born not from an exaggeration, but a lie. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">I’ve heard several variations of the cook-off’s origin story. The first through line through all of them is that he’s a character. The second is that when television producers meet him, they start to get ideas about how to get him on the screen. In the first telling I heard, the producers wanted to him to discuss living off the grid and prepping, two things which he very much does not do. But instead of rebuffing them for their ignorance about what people in Arkansas are actually like, he decided to have a little fun, so he invited them to the World Champion Squirrel Cook-Off. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The only problem was there was no such thing as the World Champion Squirrel Cook-Off, so he had to will it into existence. He had </span><a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/3I24C23jtnca4TVM7gZNqO?si=123a7b07943e43d2"><span style="font-weight: 400;">three weeks</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. Naturally, he succeeded, in no small part due to the credulous TV producers. Fellow Southerners would’ve spotted the tall tale before he had a chance to get it off the ground.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">As of Sept. 12, 2026, though, the cook-off has been around for 15 years, growing from a smaller gathering held on the Bentonville square to one held at the J.B. and Johnelle Hunt Family Ozarks Nature Highlands Center, an Arkansas Game and Fish Commission facility in Springdale.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">On Saturday, we welcomed 27 teams and somewhere north of 5,600 attendees. </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Those attendees came not just from the United States, though there were </span><a href="https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1752960223208308&amp;id=100054830419351&amp;mibextid=wwXIfr&amp;rdid=vmZ9b2bdQBUXDMwJ#"><span style="font-weight: 400;">visitors from</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> 15 states. At least one bloke from across the pond was there as well. </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">That’s a whole mess of people coming together for a chance to try some chili and gumbo made from limb chicken.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">They come knowing that not everyone gets to sample the competition dishes, which are reserved for the judges. Some teams make extra for those crowds; some don’t. Some people show up and cook other wild game just for the love of the game. Over the years, everything from raccoon to bear to beaver to groundhog have been available for anyone willing to try. For the less adventurous, volunteers whip up plates of fried catfish and chicken tacos. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The main competition is just there to complete the lie. The real reason for the event, and for its continued success, is because of Wilson’s belief that “we need bigger tables and smaller fences.” And the squirrel cook-off is all about bigger tables and smaller fences, particularly as there are no tickets required for entry into the facility, for samples, for catfish, or for tacos, hence the fact that thousands of people show up knowing they’ll never get a bite of squirrel bacon ranch pizza or squirrel birria. </span></p>
<p>Anyone can try the world’s hottest squirrel, though, assuming they want more than a bite. The entrants into that contest scoffed when I made them fill out a waiver, even if it took me a few hours to round up 10 people willing to put their pain receptors on the line. After <a href="https://www.facebook.com/reel/1035744382853979">the contest</a>, when the winners and losers were busy pouring water onto themselves and, to put it delicately, ensuring they weren’t going to actually digest any of that hot squirrel, the waiver didn’t seem so crazy. Perhaps including <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fogh93S26B0">chocolate primotalii</a> pepper in the final sauce was a little much, but doing things halfway isn’t Wilson’s style, as evidenced by the other big side competition of the day.</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The newly christened Clifton Jackson Squirrel Skinning Competition, named after a biologist with Arkansas Game and Fish who has been instrumental to the cook-off and won the first four cleaning competitions, required a little magic and a little pageantry. See, Clifton lives in Little Rock and had a funeral to attend Saturday morning, but Wilson couldn’t let him miss the event that was being renamed in his honor, so he put out the call. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">When Andy Griffith exhorted Aunt Bea to </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa1ez7yL_T4"><span style="font-weight: 400;">call the man</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, he was highlighting an important thing about community and knowing who to contact when you need to make things happen. In this case, the man was a friend of the cook-off and </span><a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cookin-up-a-story/id1624969096"><span style="font-weight: 400;">the podcast</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> who arranged a helicopter to bring Clifton from Little Rock to the Springdale. The pilot did a flyover before landing in a nearby field so Clifton could be driven in to attend the naming ceremony and defend his title. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">He came in second, but no matter. The trophies were busts of Clifton, and he sees himself in the mirror every morning. He congratulated the winner, smiled, and gave interviews, grabbing his prize on his way out but forgetting the large bust Wilson had made for him. It’ll decorate the podcast studio until such time as he decides to claim it. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">First place for the actual cook-off went to a crew from my hometown of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, who made squirrel gumbo. It was delicious. Being a small animal without a preponderance of heft, squirrel is best served in dishes where the meat has a chance to fall off the bone. (Wilson’s preferred preparation is a confit.) </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Not a bad day for an event that sprung from a lie Joe told the Travel Channel when its representatives came calling about an episode of “Bizarre Foods” — another version of the story — one hinged on their stereotypes about Southerners. Joe could have been honest. He could’ve gotten upset. He could’ve written it off. A not-so-secret fact about him is that he’s not a native, but originally from California, albeit rural California. He may love Arkansas and call it home, but his dog in this hunt is an adopted one. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">It may be 2026, but perceptions about the South persist. The reality is that most of us in Arkansas, particularly the northwest corner, are more likely to go to a restaurant or Walmart for our dinner rather than heading into the woods. Squirrel isn’t usually what’s for dinner. </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Joe could have educated the TV folks about that. </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">He may be the official redneck of Northwest Arkansas, but he practices the small fence-big table ethos he preaches, even if he tells some lies from time to time.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">And, in the words of George Costanza, it’s not a lie if you </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sX6YdtufE7s"><span style="font-weight: 400;">believe it</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. George’s goals may have often been ignoble, whereas Joe’s are more about lifting people up, but the important thing is he did believe his lie and in turn make it a truth. That the people who believed the lie had no idea just how much they were underestimating our region is immaterial. We’re accustomed to being underestimated, except when it comes to the size of our tables.</span></p>
<p>***</p>
<p><i>Rich Cromwell is a writer living in Northwest Arkansas. He produces the Cookin’ Up a Story podcast, which you can listen to </i><a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cookin-up-a-story/id1624969096" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><span class="s2"><i>here</i></span></a><i>. You can also follow him on X: <a href="https://x.com/rcromwell4">@rcromwell4</a>.</i></p>
<p><i>This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.</i></p>


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The Wild Southern Tradition That Started With A Made-Up Story

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food

southern culture

world champion squirrel cook off

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Gangster cinema often signals a mob boss’s maturation through negotiating prowess. In Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather Part II,” a newly confident Michael Corleone responds to a crooked Nevada senator trying to squeeze him with an offer of precisely nothing: “not even the fee for the gaming license,” which he expects the politician to pay himself. Season 2 of Guy Ritchie’s “The Gentlemen,” streaming on Netflix, gives Eddie Horniman (Theo James) a similar moment of criminal arrival. Negotiating with a politician, Eddie suavely settles the matter for a few thousand pounds, despite being prepared to proffer millions.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Picking up where the first season left off, Ritchie’s British-aristocracy-meets-Mafioso crossover borrows heavily from Coppola’s world and its moral order. James reprises the role of the 13th Duke of Halstead, now formally entrenched in the marijuana empire he spent the first season trying to escape, with new ambitions and seemingly unquenchable avarice.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“I want it back, Geoff. I want it all back,” he tells his loyal gamekeeper (Vinnie Jones) in the opening episode, standing beside a fleet of Range Rovers and overlooking a verdant estate already larger than most suburban neighborhoods. Eddie wants to restore his dukedom to its former glory in landmass, wealth, and reputation.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">His ambitions soon extend beyond England. Stately Italian palazzos have been retrofitted into cannabis farms, bringing Eddie and Susie Glass (Kaya Scodelario) into the orbit of Mafia “boss of bosses” Marco Moretti (Sergio Castellitto). Conquering Italy is still insufficient. Eddie also sets his sights on the House of Lords, where he hopes to influence a bill decriminalizing cannabis and turn his criminal enterprise into something approaching a legitimate business. This puts him at odds with Bobby Glass (Ray Winstone), who, having apparently spent enough time in Canada to see hippie cannabis shops lining every other street corner, wants the bill buried.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The season retains its predecessor’s fixation on life’s finer indulgences. In one memorable sequence, Eddie hosts his new Italian partners at Halstead and takes them shooting — appropriately clad in tweed. The armory contains no gaudy wall of practical firearms like ARs or AKs, only a gentlemanly collection of antique shotguns made by artisans. Elsewhere, the script casually name-drops prestigious wines such as Petrus, Masseto, and Mouton. When Michele Morrone’s Cico Maldini — a criminally underused character this season — theatrically accuses Eddie of serving a corked 1989 Mouton at dinner, the writers clearly understand this is the sort of thing you can get killed for.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Yet all this elegance cannot disguise the season’s central problem. Eddie’s darker descent into ambition saps “The Gentlemen” of much of its freewheeling humour. A coked-up Freddy (Daniel Ings) being forced to dance like a chicken or impersonating an Eastern European gangster while trying to buy a sports car produced some of Season 1’s funniest scenes. Here, Eddie’s drug-addled brother spends much of the season locked away in rehab before being handed an unfortunate arc with unmistakable echoes of “The Godfather,” which I will not divulge for the sake of spoilers.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The same shift alters Eddie’s relationship with Susie. Their playful dynamic once paired her seasoned criminal maturity against his wit, nerve, and determination to find an exit. Season 2 increasingly becomes the Eddie Horniman show (he doesn’t need her guidance anymore), leaving Scodelario with scant opportunity to parry with James.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Despite the Coppola parallels, Eddie seems remarkably uninterested in furthering the Horniman lineage. Religious portent hangs over his ascent, supplied by Stanley Johnston (Giancarlo Esposito), who spends much of the season extolling Eddie’s ancestry, and the menacing biblical butcher Gospel John (Pearce Quigley). Eddie eventually marries the affluent Italian heiress Bella (Benedetta Porcaroli), a union whose business advantages are obvious, yet the romance is so thinly developed that its emotional significance never quite lands. The pair share less chemistry than Susie Glass and a pair of flats.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">One welcome beneficiary of the expanded story is Geoff, whose long-clandestine affair with the Horniman matriarch finally comes into the open. His daughter Charly’s (Jasmine Blackborow) partner, Nanny (Benjamin Clementine), father of the Horniman heir Tarquin, meanwhile drifts aimlessly through much of the season (making one wonder why he is there at all) before revealing formidable military prowess in a tense and highly entertaining finale.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Eddie’s transformation is a logical progression for a man who discovered that narcotics trafficking suits him rather well. But where “Goodfellas’” Henry Hill regarded ordinary middle-class existence as a kind of hell, and Michael Corleone was drawn into the family business to protect his own, Eddie could be wafting across the Mediterranean on a yacht. He had an out. He wants the power and is as drawn to it as his brother Freddy is to cocaine.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">That choice makes his descent more interesting, but the series sacrifices something in completing it. There is still plenty to enjoy in Ritchie’s impeccably tailored criminal playground. Somewhere along Eddie’s path toward conquering the underworld, however, “The Gentlemen” lost much of its fun.</span></p>
<p>***</p>
<p><i>Harry Khachatrian (</i><a href="https://x.com/harry1t6" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><i>@Harry1T6</i></a><i>) is a film critic for the Washington Examiner. He is a software engineer, holds a master’s degree from the University of Toronto, and writes about wine at </i><a href="https://www.betweenbottles.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><i>BetweenBottles.com</i></a>.<i></i></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;"> </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">This article is part of </span></i><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire"><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Upstream,</span></i></a><i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.</span></i></p>


TG_201_Unit_00855_RT

‘The Gentlemen’ Season 2 Takes Its Gangster Ambitions Too Seriously

guy ritchie

television review

the gentlemen

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">On vacation two years ago, I traipsed</span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">around in a pair of Brooks running shoes. They were the best shoes I had in my closet: cushy, comfortable, and made for distance. But soon, I was stopping every few steps with foot cramps. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">That experience sent me down the “barefoot” shoe rabbit hole, and this summer, I ditched my normal shoes full-time. I’m not the only one questioning the promises of conventional athletic shoes. Several track-and-field athletes have </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7341810/2026/06/09/puma-mercedes-lawsuit-allisson-thomas-jr/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">launched a lawsuit</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> against Puma and Mercedes F1. The athletes claim that the performance design of the Deviate Nitro 2 and the Deviate Nitro Elite 3 shoes altered their biomechanics, causing repetitive stress and, ultimately, career-altering injuries.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In contrast, the design of barefoot shoes is supposed to mimic a more “barefoot” or natural feeling. Proponents advertise </span><a href="https://xeroshoes.com/blogs/blog/barefoot-shoes-benefits"><span style="font-weight: 400;">benefits</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> such as strengthened feet, improved posture, better running form, and more. These shoes feature a foot-shaped toe box, and rather than a “wide” toe box that simply expands a conventional shape, barefoot designs are shaped the longest at the big toe and taper for the pinky toe in a downward slope. They also feature a “zero drop” design so that the heel of the foot sits at the same height as the toes, rather than being elevated by a heel platform. Alongside the zero-drop design, they sit low to the ground with a minimally cushioned insole and flexible outer sole. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In the ever-expanding market, there are a plethora of options that fit this bill. I accumulated three pairs (on sale) over the course of a year and wore all three this summer: </span><a href="https://xeroshoes.com/products/prio-women"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Xero Shoes’ Prio</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> for outdoor walks and jogs, </span><a href="https://xeroshoes.com/products/prio-neo-women"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Xero Shoes’ Prio Neo</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> for the gym, and </span><a href="https://earthingharmony.com/products/grounding-barefoot-ankle-strap-sandals-for-women"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Earthing Harmony’s ankle strap sandal</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> for all other occasions. </span></p>
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<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Upon first impression, I noticed how much </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">more </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">of the ground I could feel. The small bumps in the earth and chunks of gravel were noticeable through the sole, though nothing poked or was uncomfortable. This increased ground feel is one of the purported benefits of barefoot shoes, and by allowing the wearer to feel small changes in the terrain, the shoes are </span><a href="https://www.vivobarefoot.com/uk/blog/benefits-of-barefoot-shoes"><span style="font-weight: 400;">intended</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> to improve balance and walking or running form. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Indeed, I </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">slowly</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> started to notice improvements in my running form. Granted, I’m not a serious or dedicated runner, but I’ve always struck the ground hard with my heels. Any attempts at fixing this form have felt unsteady or unnatural, but in barefoot shoes, I have been able to more comfortably practice the </span><a href="https://www.runnersworld.com/beginner/a20811257/proper-running-form-0/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">recommended</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> mid-foot strike.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The downside to this new stride and shoe style is that my running and walking speed immediately slowed by half a mile per hour. Performance-based shoes used by elite athletes aim to </span><a href="https://sites.nd.edu/biomechanics-in-the-wild/2025/10/27/how-do-super-shoes-affect-running-performance/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">return as much energy per step</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> to propel the runner forward. While running shoes for the weekend athlete lack some of the intense methods of elite performance shoes (like carbon-fiber plates embedded in the soles), they do rely on the same principles and feature some of the same methods such as a lifted heel and thick foam sole. I don’t have the genetics to be a fast runner, so speed has never been my goal. But the slower pace is certainly noticeable when I’m walking with others who are wearing conventional athletic shoes.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">I also noticed that missing cushion when jogging on pavement. For long-distance runners, city streets and sidewalks would be a beating on knees and ankles — an observation </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyc0A3U392k"><span style="font-weight: 400;">shared</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> by other minimalist shoe adopters. The balance benefits of barefoot shoes are also less impressive on pavement compared to the unpredictable and softer terrain of trails or grass. On the few occasions when I’ve relied on a beat-up pair of old conventional shoes for garden work, the difference in stability — especially on hills — is night-and-day. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Because of these differences, many barefoot proponents </span><a href="https://anyasreviews.com/ufaq/how-do-you-transition-to-barefoot-shoes/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">recommend</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> starting off slow to strengthen the foot and get used to the new design. But after years of working from home, my daily life includes little shoe-wearing. As a result, I didn’t notice major negative side effects from the shoes, especially since I began wearing my first pair only when out walking or at the gym months before going all-in this summer. Similarly, I didn’t see any of the dramatic health improvements that could be potential benefits: my arches don’t seem any stronger, my toes have a marginally wider splay but my old shoes still fit (I checked), and I didn’t have major injuries I was attempting to heal. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">As summer comes to an end, I will return to my conventional shoes when the occasion calls. After all, I do love a stylish heel and my platform Doc Martens. It would also cost a small fortune to replace all my shoes overnight. But when it’s time to replace my knee-high boots or canvas lace-ups, I’ll get one of the barefoot shoe choices instead. The market is full of options for all styles, and heels or platforms aside, there’s an alternative for any shoe type. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">For me, barefoot shoes are </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">far</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> more comfortable than the cramped toe box of a conventional shoe, and knowing that I am staving off the potential injuries and downsides that can be associated with performance-based shoes is enough to keep lacing up my new sneakers. </span></p>
<p>***</p>
<p><i>Jordan Jantz is the assistant editor at IW Features as well as a freelance writer, editor, and website designer.</i></p>
<p><i>This article is part of </i><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><i>Upstream</i></a><i>, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.</i></p>


GettyImages-2286792433

I Ditched Normal Shoes All Summer. Was It Worth It?

barefoot shoe

fitness

footwear

running

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Tattooed professor Ian Wright steadies Sally Owens, placing his palm on her chest in the hopes of releasing her true magic. “May I?” he says in a devastatingly British accent. Sally rolls her eyes. “Love this,” Gillian Owens excitedly stage-whispers, getting a laugh. If you loved the tragic romance the first time around, “Practical Magic 2” still casts its spell. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Cranking out two hours of nostalgia bait, nineties aestheticism still hits like it did way back when. Slip dresses may be cut with a slightly different silhouette these days, but the minute the death beetle’s buzzing folded into the barebones strum of Stevie Nicks’ “Landslide,” I happily took a butter knife to the heart. With the butter. Give me that sentimental slop. Don’t stop until I say “when.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Let me sum everything up with a single scene: the one where sisters Gillian Owens (Nicole Kidman) and Sally Owens (Sandra Bullock) lean their heads on one another’s shoulders and sigh. We didn’t really need all the smoky spirits from the underworld. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Critics panned it, but the kind of popcorn-lovin’ comfort is exactly why audiences have scored “Practical Magic 2” at 92% on </span><a href="https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/practical_magic_2"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Rotten Tomatoes</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. Like many other women (at least enough to temporarily knock “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/why-spider-man-is-succeeding-where-so-many-superhero-movies-failed">Spider-Man: Brand New Day</a>” off its </span><a href="https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/article/weekend-box-office-practical-magic-week-1/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">box office</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> throne), I bought my ticket and signed its secret contract. I agreed not to concern myself with the plot or most of the dialogue. Instead, I hoped for miles of flowing hair extensions, smoky eyes, and full faces of makeup at bedtime, ethereal dressing gowns, fairytale candlelit interiors, and a soundtrack that weaves a Brandi Carlile cover of Billy Joel’s “And So It Goes” into a sentimental score that feels like it came from before we got used to seeing everyone’s pores in hi-def. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">And voilà! That’s what I got. An easy watch for spooky season. The hardest part was coordinating pre-movie margs with gal pals who wouldn’t miss this for the world. At least this time the Owens sisters finally addressed the fact that the “lime in the coconut” song (“Coconut” by Harry Nilsson) isn’t a recipe for blended margs, even though it’s the soundtrack to midnight margaritas. The most gaping story hole was quickly sewn up in minutes. I&#8217;m already thinking too hard. Moving on.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“You’re afraid of your power,” Ian says after pressing his hand over Sally’s heart.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“No. I’ve seen what my power can do,” Sally replies. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“You ignore your heritage at your peril,” he warns.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“Oh my God, can we please not do the ‘peril’ speech?” Sally says, with the throwback comedy stylings of Jennifer Aniston on “Friends.” Kind of whiny and cheesy with a little </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">oh come on, you guys </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">thrown in. It’s exactly what we’ve come to expect from stars like Sandra Bullock who hit the big time during Y2K. Once a nineties it girl, always a nineties it girl — even at 62.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">I just watched “Practical Magic” for the first time, so it’s not like I’ve spent the better part of my life waiting for this sequel. I’m also not really a witch movie person. (I imagine “Hocus Pocus” playing in the waiting room of purgatory.) But this one isn’t about hunchbacked biddies cackling over bubbling cauldrons. Instead, it feels more like Sarah McLachlan hanging string lights and “Building A Mystery.” Botanical babes who have no Amazon subscriptions for bulk frog toes and newt eyes. They’re just your eccentric, ridiculously gorgeous neighbors who can drum up a spell should you need someone to fall in love with you against their will. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">After fully recreating the 19th century Queen Anne-style home from the first movie — and unlocking brand new Cotswolds imagery when the whole gang headed to the U.K. — “Practical Magic 2” didn’t need to work too hard to live up to the bewitching hype around the Owens family aesthetic. Of course, there were more serious “shenanigans” (as Dianne Wiest’s Aunt Jet says on her birthday) in store for viewers.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Calling back to the gothic, storybook sorcery of the first movie, “Practical Magic 2” isn’t totally dark arts-free. I was a little unnerved by the evil out-of-body monster voice that sounded too modern to believe. And the whipped cream pentagram of the original returned, but fully engulfed in flames. The clearly possessed “Book of the Raven” offers the only chance of breaking the romance curse against the Owens family in time for Sally’s daughters to fall in love.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">There’s a feather light hint at a same-sex relationship and loving “how you want to love,” or something like that. But it was so fast, I missed it. I was more focused on how anyone dances with full margaritas, and whether my real life relationship holds up to the cinematic portrayal of two people in love. (Of course not. Maybe the discussion over which toothpaste is their favorite happens in “Practical Magic 3: Annoyingly Practical, Not At All Magical.”)</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">You’ll also have to do yourself the favor of overlooking Hollywood’s obsession with a muted palette. Still a moody depiction of witch life in a similar setting, the original &#8220;Practical Magic” was saturated with color. Now, the brightest features on screen are Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman. They are indeed gifted in the looks department (with the obvious interventions), but even the next generation of Owens women (played by Maisie Williams and Joey King) were almost physically muted so as not to outshine their snatched and Botoxed elders.</span></p>
<p><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Sigh. </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">I still kind of wish I could pop open a parasol and casually float down from a rooftop. Or stir my coffee without having to hold the spoon. I just want to lose myself in the story. It’s so rare that it’s worth the $20 price of admission to attempt it.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Still, if it’s the movie equivalent of nineties Gap knitwear that you’re after, plenty of other cozy films don’t compromise on story (because they haven’t yet reincarnated the originals). “You’ve Got Mail” and “When Harry Met Sally” make the most of an autumn love story in New York. “Chocolat” technically takes place in spring, but the sweets-based romance is sweater weather-coded. You can also put your heartstrings to the test with the American Film Institute’s “ninth most romantic film” of all time, 1970’s “Love Story” set during a fall semester at Harvard. Or tangle football season with a dance competition in “Silver Linings Playbook.” Please also see the Hallmark Channel.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“Practical Magic 2” didn’t set the stage for an expanded trilogy. But never underestimate Hollywood’s ability to raise a franchise from the dead (like “Practical Magic’s” Jimmy Angelov). In the meantime, I’ll be catching cozy fever from movies that serve hot cocoa without ruffling any feathers — or summoning cranky spirits from the dark side. </span></p>


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