Office Crush: The Songs, Shows, Snacks and Cars We Can't Get Enough Of

Editor's Note: Office Crush is a monthly series that allows the Scene's writers to gush over their current obsessions.

I've been very into the TV series Pose, a love-filled glitter bomb that dramatizes the New York City ballroom culture of the 1980s. The balls were created by queer African American and Latinx New Yorkers to establish family, community and safety — and to vogue and throw shade. Folks, I don’t know how I lived within 50 miles of New York City for 30 years without learning about the balls, but I know now, and I am very much here for it. On a similar note, the Belcourt is midway through its

, and I caught the new restoration of the documentary

earlier this month. The theater was pulsing with positivity and pride, and the film was followed by — what else? — a vogue-off. All of the Pose performances are excellent — Billy Porter is a national treasure — but the heart and soul of the show is Angel, played by Indya Moore. In May, Moore was the first nonbinary person to ever grace

. (The Emmys decided not to blaze a trail and nominate Moore — or any of the trans actresses of Pose — this year. But we won’t get into that.) Moore recently posted this on

: “Unabashed because damned if I do & damned if I don't in the loveless, unforgiving eyes of the world.” #Hero. — ERICA CICCARONE

At the risk of presenting a fairly basic Office Crush (HBO prestige programming? How niche!), I’m nevertheless going with a pair of six-episode HBO miniseries. The first, Chernobyl, was some of the best television I’ve watched in years, thanks in no small part to performances by Jared Harris, Emily Watson and Stellan Sarsgard (all of whom received Emmy noms) and creator/writer Craig Mazin’s research. I’d wager that most Americans age 40 and younger have a relatively superficial knowledge, at best, of the 1986 nuclear disaster, and Mazin & Co. do a great job here of telling a complicated story in compelling fashion. The production design is also remarkable. The other six-part miniseries I’m currently rapt by is Years and Years — of which only four episodes have aired in America. As I’ve noted in tweet form, Years and Years is extraordinarily good, but it requires you to lean into the anxiety and existential dread of being alive (and not totally oblivious to the state of geopolitics, climate change and technology) in 2019. Some people watch TV to escape. I often do not!

As far as music is concerned, I’m really enjoying the latest releases from punk-skewing power poppers White Reaper and Mannequin Pussy, as well as garage-rock legends Reigning Sound. Oh, and THIS FKA TWIGS VIDEO, which was directed by Andrew Thomas Huang. (Warning: That clip would probably be considered NSFW in most workplaces. I can’t tell what’s normal, I’ve worked at an alt-weekly for 11 years this week.) — D. PATRICK RODGERS

It’s been a great year for rap, especially the past four Fridays, a run which included Benny the Butcher’s new EP, the reunion of Freddie Gibbs and Madlib, a joint album from música urbana titans J Balvin and Bad Bunny, a compilation from J. Cole’s Dreamville label, and a new LP from Big K.R.I.T. They all offer something for the daily rotation, but the two tracks I return to the most are “Crowns for Kings” off Benny’s The Plugs I Met and “Palmolive” from Gibbs and Madlib’s Bandana (the follow-up to 2014’s heralded Piñata). The stars of each track are featured guests Black Thought and Pusha T, two veterans who may be the best active lyricists. Thought’s face-scorching verse on “Crowns” shows he’s not slowing down in his quest for GOAT status — a claim previously dramatized by his epic 10-minute freestyle from 2017, though fans of The Roots have long been converts. Similarly, Pusha T — who last year dropped the modern coke rap classic Daytona and unleashed a brutal diss blasting Drake and his deadbeat dad status — put on a lyrical rap clinic with his “Palmolive” appearance, standing out on an album full of vicious bars. — ALEJANDRO RAMIREZ

For the past six months or so, I’ve been indulging in Swedish salty black licorice. It’s a little too expensive for my budget, so I buy one pack of Lakritsfabriken and hoard it for a month, savoring it one bite at a time. I first found it on a trip to Denmark. Made with salmiak salt, it’s soft and a little less bitter than the black licorice you might be used to. — AMANDA HAGGARD

When I need to kill a half hour or so before leaving the house, I don’t turn on an episode of The Office or Parks and Recreation. I don’t tidy up in silence or turn on music. I flip to the Trailers app on my Apple TV and watch ten movie trailers. Some of them are for movies I know I’ll never see, others are for movies I convince myself I want to see based on the reaction the trailer evokes in me. Oddly enough, I tend to steer clear of trailers for movies I’m already anticipating or expect to be great. Some recent favorites: Hustlers, Mulan and Hobbs & Shaw. (A disclaimer: These are trailers I enjoy watching, not necessarily movies I promise will be good.) — STEPHEN ELLIOTT 

A couple of years back, I discovered that YouTube is jam-packed with shows about cars. One of my perennial favorites is a channel out of the U.K. called HubNut, in which host Ian Seabrook highlights the extraordinariness of everyday cars. There’s a good bit of variety. Sometimes he’s reporting from the field at car shows (or hosting his own); sometimes he’s working on restoring his Invacar; currently, he's driving Elly, his beloved 1986 Citröen 2CV, across Europe to Croatia and back. He's got a deep knowledge of fast and fancy cars — he used to be the editor of a magazine for Jaguar enthusiasts — but he homes in on what's been in most people's driveways (in Europe and the U.K. at least) since WWII, and that tells you a lot about the role of the automobile in culture. Even if the car in its present form needs to go away eventually for the good of the planet, it's useful to understand how it got to be the way it is, and Mr. Hubnut can tell you. — STEPHEN TRAGESER

I’m late getting to it, but I’ve started listening to the first season of Fiasco, the podcast series on Luminary. The host, Leon Neyfakh, made two seasons of the podcast Slow Burn for Slate — the first on Watergate and the second on the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal — before moving over to Luminary to make a new version of the same type of show. The debut season of Fiasco is about the 2000 presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore and the, you know, fiasco that followed. It’s great. I have also, for some reason, been listening to The Format again. This is the band started by Nate Ruess and Sam Means, and the one that should’ve made Ruess rich and famous long before “We Are Young” made his next band, fun., a Grammy winner. Every song on 2003’s Interventions + Lullabies is great, but if you want a quick sample, check out “The First Single,” “Tie the Rope,” and “On Your Porch.” — STEVEN HALE