Lately, writing has felt mostly like work. At my day job, the holidays start in September. The closer you to get to Thanksgiving/Black Friday/Christmas/Chanukah/New Year, the busier it gets. I write so many words a day, I frequently feel like I’ve run out. Like I have nothing more to say.
Well, that’s not true — I could be dead exhausted and still write a bangin’ Instagram caption about my SNL crush, Michael Longfellow.
But I’m here now. I’m rested and ready to have some fun. I’m dogsitting for my parents and eating all of the cookies in their pantry. I’m currently watching The Great British Baking Show and drinking my second cup of coffee. It’s Sunday, and boy do I have a lot of fun links for you!
Speaking of coffee, my parents have the worst Keurig in the world. It’s old, it takes forever to heat up and it only makes coffee pods. MOM DON’T READ THIS PART — I’ve decided that I’ll be upgrading their old ass Keurig to an Instant Pot Dual Pod Plus. This kitchen gadget makes coffee AND espresso. Plus, it’s compatible with K-Cup pods, the reusable coffee pods my mom likes that you can also put tea in and Nespresso capsules.
My friend Mijal’s sister wrote a book, and now it’s a TV show about their lives. No, really. It’s called El Fin Del Amor and it’s streaming on Amazon Prime now.
It’s finally chili weather! This is my favorite chili recipe. I recommend topping it with sliced avocado and some shredded cheddar.
When my sister and I were teens, we swore that when we grew up, we’d have exclusively Anthropologie dishes and drinkware. Well we’re adults now…so why not? I think fancy cups/plates/dining accoutrements make an excellent holiday present ;)))) (Hiiii to my sister if she is reading this!!). I mean how gorgeous are these dessert plates?
I am BEYOND hyped for Fleishman Is In Trouble. It’s so nice to see Jesse Eisenberg in something again!! The rest of the cast is incredible. Lizzy Caplan? Claire Danes? Adam Brody?? HELLO!!! Did you read the book? It’s also really good. (Wow this is a book heavy link pack.)
Update: I DID get the Dae monsoon moisture mask. It is every bit as good as I had hoped it would be!! If you have thick, dry hair — get this. It also smells incredible.
My bed doesn’t have a headboard…and now I want one. I don’t know when the bouclé trend will end but I hope it’s never. As a person with mild sensory issues, the nubby feeling is extremely good for me.
If you’re watching TheWhite Lotus then you are legally obligated to talk with me about this truly unhinged show.
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!!!
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My dad hates this show and yet he is still watching it. He told me he didn’t appreciate seeing Steve Zahn’s (fake?) balls. He thought Jennifer Coolidge’s boat scene with her mom’s ashes was too long. He likes Armond (Murray Bartlett). He does NOT like Alexandra Daddario.
And now that you have a 60-year-old man’s opinions on this new HBO show, let me give you mine!
While this show is doing a lot of interesting things (chief among them: white affluent families, all the worst parts about a long vacation and analingus), this show is mostly dragging our living generations.
Show me a better depiction of a rich white Millennial than former Obvious Child white boy of the month, Jake Lacy.
I’m starting with Millennials because I am one.
What is the Boomer buzzword for Millennials? ENTITLED. His character Shane Patton believes he deserves everything. If he’s ever thwarted in his search for lazy self pleasure, he can always call his mom to do it for him. Why does he get away with it? Well he’s white…he’s rich….he is semi-nice looking. If I didn’t appreciate Jake Lacy’s range so much I would HATE Shane. He’s such a little asshole. I’m pretty sure in one scene I clocked him wearing Chubbies.
And then we have Rachel. She doesn’t come from money, she’s hustled her entire life only to get to a career of creating fluffy content for listicle-based sites (please believe me when I tell you I am crying) and now she’s “made it” by marrying rich. She’s having a hard time letting go of her “identity” a.k.a a white girl in debt. Rachel isn’t the other end of the Millennial spectrum. If she were, she wouldn’t be on vacation in Hawaii with her new rich husband.
She’s a vehicle to express this generation’s malcontent with everything despite achieving what GenX/Boomers see as a dream….I think? Idk. She is worried that her identity is going to be sucked up into her husband if she doesn’t keep working, but she also doesn’t seem to find any value in what she does. If they wrote this like 5 years ago she would work at Buzzfeed.
Then we have Gen Z. The three Gen Z-ers are Olivia (Sydney Sweeney), Paula (Brittany O’Grady) and Quinn (Fred Hechinger). When Connie Britton says something like you’d hear from the mouth of Gwyneth Paltrow (isn’t CB’s character’s company called something similar to GOOP? Like GOOF? GOOL?), Olivia and Paula are quick to explain to the audience why it’s problematic in the snarkiest of ways. I think that’s due to a combination of Gen X/Boomers fearing but respecting Gen Z’s ability to publicly acknowledge social justice issues.
HOWEVERRRRRRR White Lotus writers have gone the Euphoria/Gossip Girl reboot route and decided that today’s teens are all fucking and on drugs.
Is this true? I am not a teen. Even when I was one, I am pretty sure I took nothing harder than an Advil PM and stared at a poster of Nick Jonas.
A moment that sticks out for me is when Paula, the only main-cast person of color besides Belinda (Natasha Rothwell), is cuddled up in bed after excusing herself from dinner. Olivia is with her and Olivia apologizes for her family. “I’m not like them. I’m your friend,” she tells her. Obviously, this bitch is lying. She is trying to steal Paula’s crush and this is AFTER she promised she wouldn’t take a guy from her again. AGAIN?? Olivia is a bad friend! And she is just like her wack ass family! Thank you White Lotus writers for that heavily loaded line.
Also, when is Euphoria coming back? I miss that show.
All I will say about Quinn is that I think he is supposed to be the neutral good. His only crime is jerking off on the beach and being obsessed with his phone. But who amongst us has/is not!
My first exposure to Connie Britton was Friday Night Lights. Now, I believe she should have a starring role in everything. Connie Britton supremacy!! Also, please god never let my love for this strawberry blonde woman to come back and bite me in the ass.
Connie’s character Nicole Mossbacher is a total Gen X girl boss (if that’s a thing). She always has meetings!! She is rearranging the room for feng shui! She is usually holding a glass of wine or slathering lotion on her arms. She loves Hillary Clinton! She believes it’s hard out there for young, straight white men! She would be a male Boomer’s wet dream if she wasn’t so empowered/refused to have sex with her husband.
Speaking of her husb, he cheated on her. Now she gets to wear $75,000 bracelets. Of course, she seems rich enough to get those on her own…but whatever. Also, why did we have to sit through Steve Zahn talking about his constant boner for her. We get it. Connie Britton is gorgeous!!!
Also is this what Gen X straight men worry about? Their sexual attraction to their wives fading so they have to resist the urge to gag when they have sex with them? They also seem to have gay panic when they discover their ultra-macho dads loved fucking men instead of feeling angry/sad that they grew up in a culture that forced people to hide an important part of themselves. Even when it seems like he’s sad that his dad had to hide, it’s still in the context of so that MARK never knew him. Not that his poor dad couldn’t be himself around his son.
TBH everything out of Mark Mossbacher’s mouth is trash. I was more invested in the idea that he might have cancer/am more invested in MarkMond (Mark and Armond shippers hello!) than I could ever be in his relationship with his wife/son/dad/self.
That’s it for my generational dragging discourse.
Dear, Mike White and Natasha Rothwell (White Lotus writers/ Rothwell plays Belinda) you’re doing an amazing job.
I would also write something about Jennifer Coolidge but her “box” is crazy rich white lady (not in the way that Connie Britton’s character is) and that is less “conditioned generational stereotype” and more of an essence of spirit that has permeated the ether since the dawn of time.
Armond as well, transcends time and space.
Also if this show doesn’t end with Belinda somehow obtaining the funds to start her own wellness space and saying BYEEEEE to the psychopaths at this hotel, I will throw my TV off the balcony. I see the “Black woman healer” role her character is trapped in and it is depressing AF. She deserves much better than caring for crazy ass Jennifer Coolidge and horny Armond.
Also, I apologize for using people’s character names and real names interchangeably. I won’t go back and fix it.
I hope next week we see more of Lukas Gage’s butt. That was a treat. Also what the fuck ever happened to Lani (Jolene Purdy) ?
Sometimes after scrolling through Netflix for twenty minutes while gobbling up all of our TV snacks, we stumble upon a documentary that is just so perplexing we have to click on it.
Frequently, it’s about a murder or a missing person or even a missing murderer but this time it was about something far less sinister but nevertheless equally as titillating.
Catwalk: Tales From The Cat Show Circuit does not have a Rotten Tomatoes score yet, but when it does I hope it receives a sold 100% because that is what it deserves.
I am not a cat person despite my sister owning a cat since I was about nine. She is away at college and the cat still lives here and he has IBS and I have to clean up his barf and poop and I don’t even like this cat, much less love it. Having him around has really influenced my feelings on cats. However, this film has profoundly changed how I feel about cat documentaries!**
**I had never seen a cat documentary until now so really I had nothing to compare it too anyway and therefore held no opinion on the matter other than probably “yuck, cats”
The film takes place in Canada at various cat shows and mainly follows two competing cat owners, married cat show judges, and a handful of cat admirers.
Right away you discover that Kim, the owner of Bobby the white cat who always gets second place has it out for Shirley, the owner of the forever first place winner, a red fluffy cat named Oh La La. Bobby has never bested Oh La La (pronounced oo la la ?) who looks like she has had her face smashed against a door but is admittedly–very fluffy and beautiful.
Kim and the judges extoll the virtues of Bobby who seems great but looks pretty much like a regular cat that you would see sitting in a window.
Kim is kind of the villain of this story. There are other contestants and cat breeders that you see, who genuinely love their cats and don’t care–especially this woman with a cat named Maestro who she says she doesn’t care if he wins or loses because he is “the most beautiful thing in the world.” But Kim is not this way. Kim is a pageant mom.
Cat shows are not like dog shows. The cats don’t run in a circle or jump or whatever it is that they do during dog shows idk. It really seems to be all about how the cat looks. Again, Bobby looks fine but Bobby is no match for Oh La La and her feather duster/dust bunny looks. Kim seems to take this incredibly personally. “If you’re not number one, you’re the first loser!” she says in one part….to her cat or to herself? Who can say.
I’m pretty sure Kim also makes reference to Shirley (who just seems like a nice older lady with a hobby) and Shirley’s cat receiving bodily harm at some point? Kim is horribly bitter that Bobby has NEVER won!!! NEVER!! And like all villains, the root moment that inspired her towards vengeance is revealed in the documentary. And let me tell you, it does not disappoint. I will not ruin the film. All I will say is, if you’re a sympathetic puker….fast forward. It was not a good look for Bobby lol.
Yes, there are some adorable kittens. Yes, all of the women have cat hair clinging to every stitch of their clothing. We learn that not only is Kim desperate for Bobby to win, Kim is also insanely passionate about scuba diving, teaches scuba classes, and wants to retire to Mexico! We stan a queen with a full life! One of the judges also loves to garden. These women have lives beyond their 6 cats!
Overall, the doc is super comforting. It’s just about cats chillin’ while their human owners pet them.
I’m not going to say it made me like cats, but I will say it made me want to hold a baby kitten the entire time I was watching this show. It also made me want to encourage Kim to pursue her scuba dreams because they seem to honestly make her feel more free than the cat show world ever could!
Anyway, this documentary is magic. It’s on Netflix. I recommend watching it under a big blanket, preferably with a glass of wine. Or I guess, with a cat.
Though it’s been a while since we’ve seen or heard anything about Ms. Bynes, she’s taking over the internet once again. But instead of the usual shit post about her appearance or her mental health, Bynes is taking over her own narrative by gracing the cover of Paper Magazine and let me tell you, she looks and sounds fucking GOOD.
The talented actress turned fashion student looks nothing short of glam in her plaid blazer, silk shirt, and acid washed jeans? Are those? We spy an intense Western wear-inspired belt buckle too which we LOVVVEEE. Also look at the hair! The face! The makeup! Honey, we have come such a long way from 2013!
What we learned from the Paper Mag piece is that Bynes is into Post Malone (same), HBO’s Insecure (wow, also same), basically started Channing Tatum’s acting career, dreams of having her own fashion line (and has already designed some original pieces!!), wants to re-enter showbiz, and that she is genuinely excited for the future and feeling good–which is honestly the only thing that matters.
What really made us tear up was this part righttttt here:
Sometimes society confuses agreeableness or niceness with blandness or, even worse, weakness — especially when it’s a trait exhibited by a young woman — but make no mistake: Bynes is neither bland nor weak. She’s a woman who still possesses that same expressive sense of humor that first won over producers for All That as well as a type of thoughtfulness and self-awareness that comes with age — and gets amplified when you’ve had to navigate some dark waters.
That’s our fucking, gIRL RIGHT THERE!!!
We can’t wait to see everything Amanda will do in 2019. If you don’t plan on celebrating her return, leave! Good vibes only! BYE!
Lately 