things i am watching and/or reading and/or listening to instead of doing my work

do you like tearing up over basketball? also, i have 14 days to make a real book.

nba fans making half court shots for money/cars compilation
i like to spend my time on the internet the same way your grandmother probably does, looking at cats doing stuff and watching videos of people being nice to each other. i’m sorry but we live in hell and i cannot stuff more hell into my eyeballs or i will die, so i try to only look at things that make me cry in a good way. my primary source of this specific type of serotonin boost is youtubes of people making half court shot attempts, because it really is so nice to watch an entire arena scream their faces off with joy for one scared, nervous regular non-athlete person who is probably about to shit themselves in front of a dozen television cameras. i can’t think too hard about the people who don’t make the shot without doing bad crying, so let’s not, but this is a good pick me up if you feel like shit. my favorite is the girl five minutes in wearing the dirk nowitzki shirt making the shot in front of the real dirk nowitzki??? i would have vomited all down my front, good lord. if you still need some pain medicine, best buzzer beaters of the decade is wholesome and heartwarming, too.

“pantomime” roy orbison
laughing when i feel like crying, crying when i feel like dying
you're not mine so i waste my time in pantomime
THIS SONG IS A BRUTAL MASTERPIECE. if you’re a sad bastard like me and you’re not weeping to some roy orbison at least once a day what on earth are you even doing with yourself???

donald glover interviewing donald glover
he says so many things that stunned me into contemplative silence like:
“i don’t think life is real unless some things are just for you. things that should not or cannot be shared. i think the younger generation is going to have a hard time distinguishing whether something is for them or for others, and i think it could play out as a diminished sense of self. you really have to know what you would do if no one else was watching.”
he says so many good, thoughtful things, but this answer really stuck a knife in me because i’ve been going through this thing that’s like, “what do i like? what do i want to talk about? is this thing i’m writing a thing i want to write that’s representative of what is on my mind or am i writing something because i think it will please people and no one will yell at me?” and that’s jail, it’s emotional purgatory. i have been paralyzed with fear that imaginary people are gonna hate this thing i made (a byproduct of working on a show everyone on the internet loudly hated, for sure), and my wise friend amanda said “make it for yourself!” and that is very sage advice but also…………….what do i even like? who even am i anymore??? what is the book i’d write if no one else was gonna read it, if i was writing it just to make myself laugh????? i would write 20,000 words about sad songs and maybe a long essay about how weird crushes are when you’re middle-aged, and ooh i would love to write about how much i love survivor but would also never go on survivor or honestly never even be outside if i could help it so why have i seen every episode of this show a dozen times, do i have some weird fetish for watching voluntarily-starving people with infected bug bites wrestle each other in mud? probably!
anyway donald is so interesting to me, he’s so creative and forward-thinking, and he also has a level of autonomy that is NOT afforded to most people in hollywood. i’m not an expert but, uhh, this ain’t really an industry where the people with the checkbooks are like “okay cool, here’s money, i’ll just be chilling while you do your thing, you’re a visionary and i trust you.” i love hearing his thoughts, i love that he interviewed himself, i love his show, i just love him!!!!!!!!!

my ideal florence + the machine setlist
my good bitch is going on tour in the fall and yes i have aged out of concerts but i would drag myself to the mouth of an active volcano to see florence so yes i got tickets for the detroit show the minute my presale code worked and yes it is outside and yes they are in the nosebleeds but who cares, i love her so much. at this point i can only be coaxed out of the house for someone i’m very ~passionate~ about, ie someone whose songs i can sing along to. i’ve seen florence a bunch, she is incredible live, and she is never gonna perform her niche B-sides or deep cuts and that’s fine but what if she did??????????
like yes, of course, she is gonna close with “shake it out” and she’s definitely gonna do “dog days are over,” and that’s great, people love those, but if i was in charge (i will never be in charge) all the casual fans would be pissed off and sulking while i and three other losers were standing up, swaying and sobbing to “seven devils.” i know she’s gonna do songs off her forthcoming record at this show, BUT: if she asked me (she won’t) what she and her band should play for me only (while thousands of other people watch in confusion) i made my dream playlist, which i will be performing, in my possessed hell car, every monday wednesday and friday morning as i drive my ugly dog to daycare. tickets are free but you gotta buy me a dunkin on the way there.

a handful of new yorker articles i read and actually finished because the subscription i didn’t remember signing up for auto-renewed and my bank sent me an email
david sedaris on book tour during covid pre covid, i met david when he came to kalamazoo for a book signing and when i got up to the table he said, “i know you, your book has a cat on it” and i nearly burst into tears because i love him so much
this rachel syme profile of natasha lyonne which i mostly read because i don’t feel like i really understood the first season of russian doll and i was hoping the article might explain what tf was going on to me before i try to watch the next one
naomi on we crashed, which i tried to watch but there is something so distracting about jared leto’s performance that i switched to the hulu doc instead, but i WILL eventually go back for anne hathaway
oh and also naomi on the great amanda seyfried
doreen writing about the flight attendant way back in december 2020 i started and liked the show (i think? it was so long ago but also coulda been yesterday, who knows) but didn’t finish it and now there’s another season on the way so i need to go back and rewatch the episodes i’ve seen and finish the series and why does television feel like homework so much of the time???????

ambulance
this movie is a masterpiece, babe. i mean, not me being michael bay’s whore??? but also: i cannot deny greatness when i see it in a movie theater for the first time in 2+ years!!!!!!!!! i saw this sunday at 11am (jake gyllenhaal is my church) and yes my trademarked salty popcorn/reese’s pieces (pronounced: “REESY PIECE-Y”) recipe that i cooked in the hallway outside the theater put me into a state of ecstasy before the trailers even started, but i promised this is not real butter delirium. the movie is so good!!!!!!!!! it has everything i like: shooting, vatos, yahya (my god), helicopters fighting cars, cars flipping over, romance, car crashes, more shooting, fashion, jokes, jakey-poo, and one dog. WHAT MORE COULD YOU ASK FOR.

new interpol??????????
another band i would climb out of my coffin and peel the barnacles off my body to get up and go see live, even though i’ve already seen them many, many, many times before. i have seen them do all of my jams, pretending paul was singing directly into my open heart, including both “rest my chemistry” and “public pervert.” HOW DID I GET SO LUCKY? so, technically, i can die happy. but still, if they tour and come anywhere near me i might just go.
unrelated but hilarious nonetheless: my friend ginger and i saw them at the riv years ago, and a week or two later we went back there to see lykke li. we were in the upper deck part, the section with the benches because come on now i am not standing, and there was this lady who was SOBBING HYSTERICALLY through every song, like “ma’am are you okay, should we call someone” wailing. this was in 2011, in the wounded rhymes era, and all the songs on that record are sad as FUCK with titles like “unrequited love” and “rich kids blues” and “sadness is a blessing,” so theoretically i understood the crying but it was a looooooooot. i kept looking at my homegirl like bitch should we intervene here and she kept giving me the yo it’s not our fucking problem eyes in response, and at the end of the set lykke performed “silent my song” and the crying lady let out a primal scream and booked it down to the front of the section, with only a skinny railing between her and tumbling to a broken neck on the dancefloor below. she was still crying, so fucking loud, and then she starts DOING AN INTERPRETIVE DANCE to the song (please listen to it and picture her wildly waving arms and full-body swaying) while keening like a hurt animal. i had never seen someone so free and unselfconscious (i am a prisoner of my own body) and was all wistful like “wow what must it be like to feel things so deeply and express it in front of strangers, why am i such an uptight robot” and then that bitch almost FLIPPED OVER THE FUCKING RAILING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i dropped my beer on the floor! a lady next to her (they weren’t together) caught her shirt at the last second before she went flying to her death and everybody in our section fucking lost it. then lykke did my absolute jam “let it fall” (this video has very circa-2009 audio and video quality but somehow also perfectly captures the bonkers vibe of this bitch’s shows) during the encore and the dude next to me changed the chorus to LET HER FALL and i cried laughing (but only because that lady was okay, i promise).

alison roman’s tuna salad salad
hmmm a horrible thing you might not know about me is that i loooove fish, i am a gross stinky fish person who will always order fish and will bring fish places and i stink like fish all the time and i don’t mean sushi bitch i mean FISH. i’m talking cod liver oil in the morning grits-and-sardines as a snack “who heated up fish in the microwave and ruined my day?” FISH BITCH. probably because i come from country-ass people who ate anchovies on potato chips while watching TV, but it’s who i am and it cannot be helped. my go-to fast food order is a shrimp basket from culver’s, i am not playing around here!!! real fish, tinned fish, a hot and greasy paper bag full of fried fish from a filthy hole in the wall—it does not matter, i will love it. my idea of romance is sharing a bag of fried smelts in the car in an abandoned parking lot! a couple fish things i’ve been into lately:
-jaclyn hill’s boyfriend’s salmon tutorial if you do not know who jaclyn is it’s fine (WHY NOT THO) but her man has a youtube cooking channel that is so fucking good??? i like to eat his food with my eyes because homeboy loves putting a pound of cheese in everything and i can’t eat like that, but it always looks good as hell. i think dude went to culinary school or maybe he just knows a lot, anyway he started doing these lessons and the salmon one is really good, because i don’t know much about “smoke points” and which pans heat up in what way, and he walks you through all that and yes he’s serving nouveau jon b in the comfortable swagg era energy but i don’t mind that, he seems like a nice fucking kid!!!!!
-fishwife i’ve been on the fishwife train for a while now but i just got a shipping notification that my smoked salmon with flybyjing sichuan chili crisp is on its way to me and my mouth and i am so excited!!!!!!
-how to cook fish easily without messing it up i am never deep frying fish (or chicken, tbh) at home but i will watch joshua weissman do literally anything in a kitchen, and if you watch past the frying part/extended bounty commercial the pan seared and crusted recipes look good as hell and you should make them and invite me over soon.
-russ and daughters did you know that you can get russ and daughters delivered to your home for approximately one million american dollars? the toughest thing for me about living in kalamazoo, still, after 6-7 years, is that there is no jewish deli in close proximity. yes i can drive to zingerman’s but it is an hour and thirty-six minutes away and yes i would drive that far for a tuna on rye but carving out 3+ hours in a day (in addition to spending $837 on gasoline) for some charoset and a pound of whitefish salad is not a thing i can justify (i can, but i am trying to be cool). but the occasional container of lox cream cheese and REAL BAGELS (someone here told me to go to panera for a bagel once and i murdered them in cold blood on the spot) in the mail is a really nice treat!
-y’all already know alison is my main squeeze (but did you know that i make an appearance in her frittata video??????? bc i do) and her tuna salad salad is good as hell. i understand that some of you might not trust this assertion because i have publicly admitted to fucking UP a subway tuna sandwich (their tuna is good, i am so sorry if you have wrong opinions) but i am a tuna expert and her version is very good! as are all of her recipes!!!

“fly the coop” big k.r.i.t and girl talk
THIS IS MY SONG OF THE SUMMER. fuck that, my album of the summer. wiz khalifa, big k.r.i.t., and fucking GIRL TALK?????? it’s like someone heard that i needed a new cure for my depression and this album was what they cooked up in the lab.

some books i’ve bought but have no opinions on yet so if you are not interested in them it’s not my fault i am simply providing a concierge service!
radically content jamie varon
blending memoir, sharp social insights, and unique practical tools, author jamie varon is your guide to radical contentment—a satisfied life outside the bounds of societal expectations. too many of us are waiting for our lives to begin, putting our happiness on layaway for some future version where it all lines up, when we’ve accomplished it all, when we have the perfect career, bodies, partners, and when our lives finally feel “good enough.” but what is good enough? who gets to decide? and when do we ever reach it? jamie takes a sharp, incisive look at the industries that are constantly telling us to do more, be more, and keep striving, pushing, and hustling—and shows you how to radically opt out of societal conditioning.

easy beauty chloe cooper jones
"i am in a bar in brooklyn, listening to two men, my friends, discuss whether my life is worth living." so begins chloé cooper jones's bold, revealing account of moving through the world in a body that looks different than most. born with a rare congenital condition called sacral agenesis which affects both her stature and gait, her pain is physical. but there is also the pain of being judged and pitied for her appearance, of being dismissed as "less than." the way she has been seen—or not seen—has informed her lens on the world her entire life. …after unexpectedly becoming a mother (in violation of unspoken social taboos about the disabled body), something in her shifts, and jones sets off on a journey across the globe, reclaiming the spaces she'd been denied, and denied herself.

post-traumatic chantal v johnson
for years, vivian has self-medicated with a mix of dating, dieting, dark humor and smoking weed with her BFF, jane. but after a family reunion prompts vivian to take a bold step, she finds herself alone in new and terrifying ways, without even jane to confide in, and she starts to unravel. will she find a way to repair what matters most to her? a debut from a stunning talent, post-traumatic is a new kind of survivor narrative, featuring a complex heroine who is blazingly, indelibly alive. with razor-sharp prose and mordant wit, johnson performs an extraordinary feat, delivering a psychologically astute story about the aftermath of trauma that somehow manages to brim with warmth, laughter, and hope.

thanks for waiting doree shafrir
doree shafrir spent much of her twenties and thirties feeling out of sync with her peers. she was an intern at twenty-nine and met her husband on tinder in her late thirties, after many of her friends had already gotten married, started families, and entered couples' counseling. after a long fertility struggle, she became a first-time mom at forty-one, joining mommy & me classes where most of the other moms were at least ten years younger. and while she was one of gawker's early hires and one of the first editors at buzzfeed, she didn't find professional fulfillment until she co-launched the successful self-care podcast forever35—at forty. shafrir explores the enormous pressures we feel, especially as women, to hit particular milestones at certain times and how we can redefine what it means to be a late bloomer. she writes about everything from dating to infertility, to how friendships evolve as you get older, to why being pregnant at forty-one is unexpectedly freeing—all with the goal of appreciating the lives we've lived so far and the lives we still hope to live.

the town of babylon alejandro valera
in this contemporary debut novel—an intimate portrait of queer, racial, and class identity—andrés, a gay latinx professor, returns to his suburban hometown in the wake of his husband's infidelity. there he finds himself with no excuse not to attend his twenty-year high school reunion, and hesitantly begins to reconnect with people he used to call friends. over the next few weeks, while caring for his aging parents and navigating the neighborhood where he grew up, andrés falls into old habits with friends he thought he'd left behind. before long, he unexpectedly becomes entangled with his first love and is forced to tend to past wounds.

okay i gotta write a book for real
i talked to my lovely, kind, patient editor maria yesterday and we are at the point in the process i always dread, the moment when she tells me i have turned in 3ish essays when i should have upwards of 15 (??) and the people in charge (misters random and house, naturally) are beating down her door like WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH SAM while getting my spot in the gulag ready. i wish i knew what the fuck was up with me, and why i am incapable of writing (i have absolutely no confidence, it makes me want to cry), but i have 14 days to basically write an entire book so she can present a manuscript to the team and i can get on the schedule for spring 2023 and they can start deciding what to call it and how to market it in a way that sounds different from all the other stuff i’ve written. (they can’t!)
so i might still write a mathis recap or two because that truly brings me joy but i probably shouldn’t, i’m trying to not be on the internet at all, ever, over the next few weeks (did she mean, like, april 29th 29th? or do you think i can maybe push it to may 1, or…) so if you’re looking at your empty inbox like GODDAMN THIS LAZY BITCH okay sure, yes, you might be right but also i will hopefully be working on a book i will harass you to purchase for the next year. see you soon unless i literally pass away trying to come up with new ways to say “i have diarrhea.” XOXO