July 8 – August 13, 2023

Transatlantic LGBTQ+ romance Red, White & Royal Blue is a flop

Tonight, the sun will begin to set before 8 P.M. once again, a milestone that always fills us with some low-level dread. This is all the more reason to participate in summer fun of all varieties. Here’s what the Review’s staff and friends are looking forward to next week:

Wine & Water Lilies at the New York Botanical Garden, August 17: Between 3 and 6 P.M. next Thursday, come to the New York Botanical Garden for a drink with a side of plants! This recommendation comes from our new intern Izzy Ampil; you can have a water lily–themed cocktail, a glass of wine, or a brownie with marshmallows while wandering among the lotuses. There will also be music.

The National at Madison Square Garden, August 18: Are you feeling vague malaise for no particular reason, which seems to sort of seep into everything, but is also not entirely unpleasant and in fact maybe kind of nice? If you’re not, and you want to be, you should join our web editor, Sophie Haigney, and go see The National, the prolific, excellent, low-grade-sad band whose new album includes a song that goes: “And there you are, sitting as usual / with your golden notebook …”

Annie Baker’s Infinite Life at the Atlantic Theater Company, opening August 18: This new play, an excerpt of which first appeared in the Review’s pages, features five women in chaise longues at a fasting clinic discussing life, sex, and chronic illness. Their exchanges are unforgettable: “You had great sex with him but you left him because he was a screamer,” one woman says. “No he left me,” her friend responds. “He left me. And I was a wreck.” Their conversations probe the connection between physical pain and sexual desire, and much else; they show, in a sense, where conversation can lead. In partnership with the Review, the Atlantic is offering tickets to shows between August 25 and September 10 at a 30 percent discount if you use the code PARIS online at checkout. 

We’re back with a Patreon teaser! Every Wednesday, subscribers to the Football Ramble Patreon get a special extended version of the show that is ONLY available on our Patreon feed. There’ll be listener emails, bonus Donaldson anecdotes and much, much more - you might even find a few of the outtakes that don’t make it onto the main show!

This week on Ramble Uncut, Marcus, Andy and Pete got stuck into their experiences of airport lounges, train carriages with football fans, and Marcus' hatred of tomatoes.To subscribe for just $5 a month, head to patreon.com/footballramble!

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May 7 – August 13, 2023

May 20 – August 12, 2023

“With a diving suit and helmet,” said Yannick Poirier, the owner of Tschann bookstore on the boulevard Montparnasse, where he has worked for thirty-five years, “and with dark glasses, earplugs, and a plan for survival and retreat to the countryside. I hate sport. That’s personal, but I hate sport, and I have a horror of circus games, and, how to put this. You are American? So you know Jean Baudrillard. For us he was a friend, Jean Baudrillard. So he has The Consumer Society, like Debord has The Society of the Spectacle, and all that sticks to us like shit. No, frankly, the Olympic Games—for me they leave me neither hot nor cold. They leave me totally indifferent.”

“There are books about sport,” offered a bookseller at Le Genre urbain, “but they are very distant disciplines, all the same.”

“If there are any,” they said at Le Monte-en-l’air, “and if they are good, we have them.” This clerk, like their counterpart at Le Genre urbain, was “against” the Olympics (“in a personal capacity,” they added at Le Genre urbain). Both bookstores, singled out for questioning out of the city’s hundreds, are in the twentieth arrondissement.

“We’ll of course have a few books,” they said at Les Traversées, “but in a corner.”

How ridiculous Eurodance comedy tune Planet of the Bass has entranced the world

Julen Lopetegui’s stint at Wolves is officially over, but thankfully his return ticket to the continent is probably still valid. Today Marcus, Andy and Pete are here to discuss whether Gary O’Neil is the Gaviscon that Wolves now need.

Andy then tries to win the West Ham fans over by explaining that their new signing is “tough as old boots”, before we explain why Kevin de Bruyne is the Eeyore of the Premier League.

Subscribe to our European football show, On The Continent, here!

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Sign up to the Football Ramble Patreon for ad-free shows for just $5 per month. Sign up for an annual membership before the end of August and you’ll get 15% off! Just click here: patreon.com/footballramble.

Why it's such a struggle to depict the 'real' Virginia Woolf