HELL YEAH BROTHER
one i am obsessed with this tiktok lady nobody cares but mama. she is mesmerizing to me. this is the only kind of social media thing i want to watch, regular ass funny moms with no makeup on and normal teeth just talking about whatever dumb shit. yes, my brain is fried, but this “prepping the dogsitter” video made me cry laughing. who is this woman? why aren’t we close personal friends??
two i am “working” on “a new book” which of course means i spend (waste) many, many minutes (hours) trying to find the perfect vibe/the perfect soundtrack/the perfect music to write to (nonexistent) and lately my fave is an album (i’m not sure if it’s really a real album made by real artists or a joke i don’t get) called jazz for kittens that sounds like the kind of music they play in an upscale shopping mall.
i’ve also been listening pretty heavily to this crunchy fall playlist i made two years ago that still bangs pretty hard. i’m trying this new thing where instead of being embarrassed by my past self i just try to shut the fuck up and……………….let that person exist? so far i’ve been marginally successful at it.
and i’m really into a gloomy, grey-skies-and-loneliness autumnal vibe, as opposed to a pumpkins in the back of a rusted pickup on an apple cinnamon-scented afternoon i guess, and for me the perfect mood-setter of late has been the song passenger by interpol. it’s been on repeat all day over here, i’m sure the plumbers tearing out our rotted bathroom floor are becoming huge fans (they’re blasting hair metal, they absolutely do not care), and it’s the kind of song that comes on and makes you feel like you need to pull on a sweater. it’s giving “do you feel a draft?” and i like that.
three i love watching what i like to call, in an extremely serious tone of voice, a “business show.” a crisp and clean office and/or newsroom and/or government show that features somber orchestral theme music and many scenes in which the only sound you hear is some fancy person’s heels click-clacking across an impossibly shiny floor down a cavernous empty hallway. succession is a business show. house of cards is a business show. and industry would be a business show if everyone wasn’t fucking all the time. industry is a steamy bodily fluids show, like euphoria except at a bank. i don’t mind a sweaty butt show, and some business shows manage to inject a little non-moist romance into them without it becoming a huge distraction from all the urgently ringing telephones and important meetings, but mostly i want to watch ambulatory business suits rushing into and out of nondescript buildings and shiny black sedans. the diplomat is an incredible, nearly impossible to understand television program about a warship getting blown up?? and felicity (exasperated and disheveled, a good look for her tbh) swooping in to calm turbulence between nations??? gun to my head i couldn’t list the names or occupations of the people on this show but i do love it so much and season two is coming so soon!
four i look forward to every single episode of the great british bake off, which never fails to be the most wholesome and charming show in existence. noel and alison are perfect, i am obsessed with them and secretly hoping they have sex.
five my “read a couple chapters until i fall asleep with the kindle across my face” book right now is bright young women, a “‘breakneck thriller’ examining ‘our culture's obsession with serial killers and true crime’ following two women on the pursuit of justice against all odds.” it’s good as hell and not what you think: rather than glamorizing the killer, the book is instead written from the perspective of women whose lives were touched by his crimes. it sucked me right in, the narrators’ voices are so real and good, highly recommend.
six we have too many cats and my favorite one (don’t tell the others) is a little orange and white shorthair we named carrots, who is tiny and soft and perfect. a week ago she had a second bout of bloody chin acne and i took her to the emergency vet (could it have waited until our regular guy could get us in? probably, but i am psychotic about this girl) and i knew there would be a wait so i grabbed i was a teenage slasher on my way out the door, another perfect horror novel by stephen graham jones, and i read a good chunk of it while we waited two hours to be told i might have been overreacting a little bit and it’s great. (she got antibiotics and wipes and pain meds so it wasn’t like she didn’t need to be seen but whatever!)
seven headshot by rita bullwinkel is an emergency book i’d tossed in the back of the car forever ago (my other emergency car items: a sweatshirt, a broken comb, glasses wipes, this shit) and i started it while waiting for an oil change and i love it. it’s told from the perspectives of eight teenage girl boxers at a competition and it’s like nothing i’ve ever read before. literally stunning!!
eight months ago i decided i needed to develop more analog hobbies because i was on wellbutrin and the associated photosensitivity was making it hard to spend time staring at my phone, so i got really into crossword puzzle books because they don’t hurt my eyes and also it’s nice to have a reason to buy pencils. you can’t use pencils in your regular adult life unless you’re an architect (?) or a mathematician (??) and i love erasing. currently working my way through this monster and it’s great; the toughest questions i want to be asked on any given day are head-scratchers like “who’s this guy from everybody loves raymond” and “six-letter word for abode that’s abuzz.”
i also got some collage making kits from art life practice because it makes me too mad when shit doesn’t look right when i try to paint or draw, but gluing beautiful pieces of paper to other pieces of paper seems soothing? also, i’m planning to get obnoxiously into playing cards.
nine the new kim deal songs are so so so good. also we saw neko case last night in grand rapids and her voice is still crazy amazing, plus she sang “calling cards” which is a bonafide jam and now that i’ve witnessed it i can die happy.
ten i subscribe to a lot of newsletters both because i am wracked with insane guilt and because i need the shit beamed into my eyeballs to be as curated as possible. i’m really into as seen on written by ochuko akpovbovbo, a young nigerian woman living in germany, which she describes as “business, culture, and gen z trends as seen on my group chats.” she’s smart, she’s funny, she’s interesting, etc etc.
eleven my lady had a birthday last week (two weeks ago? what is time, other than a thief) and one of the things about spending 12+ years with the same person is that you will reach a day when there is simply nothing left to buy for them. even if you don’t go ham and overdo it, let’s say you just buy one thing for every birthday and christmas and anniversary and mother’s day (i refuse to buy presents from “the kids,” sorry brother but this expensive thing is from me; those people do not have money or jobs, they don’t remember anything that doesn’t directly relate to something on their phone, and they don’t know where to purchase things a perimenopausal woman might be interested in), one night-before-their-birthday you will wake up and realize there is nothing in the world that you can afford to give them that you haven’t already.
one of the most humiliating parts of my life is living in what i like to call the bad wife museum: my own home, a graveyard of glaring miscalculations and off the mark presumptions, with evidence of my goofs tucked in drawers and hidden (behind other, better items) on shelves. i talk to this woman every day of my life and somehow i still buy her the wrong shit, so now i just buy her something weird and hope it makes her laugh. this year she got a $36 anatomically correct fennel candle.
twelve i don’t have a properly fleshed out argument in support of this, BUT i think i understand now why all your grandpas can’t stop reading giant books about world war two: modern life is too fast and confusing, and also once you get to a certain age there’s a certain kind of pleasure and deep satisfaction in being able to recall an event from your youth and maybe learn something about it you hadn’t known at the time. i’m 44 and sometimes i feel an unsettling despair when i can’t remember something from my own life ten or twenty years ago or i feel a painful nostalgia and longing for something i can remember that will never exist again. recently: cassette tapes, roller rinks, kmart bodysuits, pauly shore.
aging is weird! like, i can clearly remember the day i purchased the first cypress hill cd at blockbuster music but there are entire people/jobs/apartments/relationships that have blown out of my brain like dust. it’s jarring to think about and i hate it.
the newest season of slow burn is an absolute fucking banger, as is every other season of slow burn, even the ones you think you won’t like. this one is called the rise of fox news and it’s a jam and do y’all remember air america radio? or the year when craig kilborn hosted the daily show?? i kind of didn’t either and it was nice to be reminded. (like i said, i’m your dad.)
thirteen my old ass perfect movie, 10/10 no notes!
xoxosos