Entertainment For the End Times: The Best Stuff I Read, Watched, and Listened To in 2021

Remember when people thought the world was going to end in 2012?

Crazies! we said. Well—as it turns out, they were probably only a decade off, because surely 2022 is going to be the end. If the deadly ice storms don’t kill us, the wild fires will. And the survivors will be left to contend with whatever novel coronavirus variant happens to be ravaging the world at the time.

I’m increasingly consumed with dark thoughts about how the Earth will likely give out before my body does, assuming I don’t die from a new, horrible strain of Covid.

Here are the best things I read, watched, and listened to in a vain attempt to stave off my ever-growing sense of existential dread and detachment from reality. Enjoy them all now before it’s too late.

Black Buck (Mateo Askaripour)

Written from the point of view of the main character (the titular Buck), this book chronicles a young Black man’s rise from a Starbucks barista to a leading sales exec at a tech startup. Working sales-adjacent in tech, I found the setting semi-relatable, and the novel is simultaneously a fun, fast read and an insightful commentary on race. Without being heavy-handed, Askaripour does a great job of highlighting both the subtle—and unsubtle—racism that exists even in spaces liberal white people like to think of as “woke.”

Succession (HBO)

Succession is the ultimate nihilist television show. I started watching it on New Year’s Eve 2020 and its third season, which just finished airing, did not disappoint. It’s like Arrested Development meets Veep meets American Psycho. All the characters are super wealthy and super terrible and I can’t recommend it enough. It’s not a show you watch to root for the characters, but it shows us a world where the rich eat themselves and that’s what I’d like to manifest for 2022.

Red (Taylor’s Version) (Taylor Swift)

I like to say that 2020 is the year I became a Swiftie. I watched Miss Americana and you know? The propaganda worked. Then she released folklore and evermore and that’s how I ended up her in her top 2% of listeners. Her re-release of Red, in addition to including the masterful, 10-minute “All Too Well,” reminds us of the good times. Simpler times, before there was a motherfucking plague and before a steaming stack of shit in a skin suit destroyed our democracy. But Red’s re-release, which, ICYMI, gives Tay herself the profit from her music, also gives us hope that better things lie in front of us than lie ahead.

The Very Nice Box (Eve Gleichman, Laura Blackett)

The setting and theme of my other favorite book of the year is similar to Black Buck, but the books are very different tonally. The main character works at a trendy furniture company, where she’s a product designer. She has a tragic past, and, upon the book’s open, a new boss. This book is a bit of a thriller, but at its core it’s an examination of male entitlement.

Hadestown (Anaïs Mitchell)

I realize this show came to Broadway and therefore mainstream popularity in 2019 but time hasn’t been real for like three years and not enough people are talking about how Anais Mitchell wrote “Why We Build the Wall” in the year of our lord two-thousand-fucking-six. 2006! This prophecy! It’s all about climate change and the evils of capitalism. It will stop being relevant only once the combination of these two things have completely eradicated humanity.

The Challenge (Paramount+, or MTV for you weirdos who still have cable)

Confession: CT turning Johnny Bananas into a human backpack is the only thing that really brings me joy anymore.