Coffee, black.
Two things:
First, did you know that having a three-year-old is basically the same thing as living with a tiny, adorable sociopath who’s trying out their newest behavioral tricks on you to see what sticks? I can almost imagine him with a notebook and pen every night in bed, throwing ideas at the wall and imagining what will be the most enraging thing for me to encounter. Pulling his sister across the house by her sleeve? Check. Refusing to get dressed without a knock-down-drag-out, one of which ended with me straddling him to put his pants on on the floor? Check. Nearly hitting his sister in the cranium by accident with a broom. handle, being told to put it away, and calmly responding, “I will never do that.”? Check.
Of course, there are moments of pure bliss and sweetness in between all of those crazy times, but this was a week wherein I openly wept in my closet floor in front of both kids. And then I Uber Eats-d a McDonald’s biscuit. I’m not sorry, y’all. It’s survival.
Secondly, I watched Promising Young Woman this week and I can’t shake it off. It’s not the best movie I’ve ever seen, but it is really powerful and arresting in a lot of ways. The basic premise is: Cassie is a girl whose best friend Nina is sexually assaulted (and not believed) in medical school, which caused them both to drop out. She’s on a warpath to get revenge, pretending to be drunk in bars, then allowing men to take her home and attempt to take advantage of her, only to meet their fate at her hands. I was ready for kind of the Charlie’s Angels of revenge comedy, but it was much darker and more poignant than I expected. The art direction, costuming, and soundtrack are all intensely feminine, setting the gritty subject matter against a backdrop of cotton candy. It also features some of television’s favorite men in the villain role: Seth Cohen, Schmidt from New Girl, Richard Splett from Veep. If you’re of my generation, this does more than disappoint you when they all turn out to be dirtbags - it makes you examine the biases you have in mentally trying to excuse their behavior because you like them (which is, of course, exactly the point). Some images you won’t be able to forget, but it’s a movie worth seeing and seeing with someone so you can talk about it after, because that’s all you’ll want to do.
Cafe au lait.
First order of joy is that I’m operating on LEVEL 10 GRATITUDE for the basic reality of having heat inside my home. Our heater gave up the ghost on Thursday of last week, and Asheville had not one, but TWO snowstorms in the 5 days it took to get our heater fixed. We’re very fortunate to have my parents in town whose house we could escape to when needed, but there were lots of very inconvenient and very cold stretches of time in our house. I nearly Frenched the guys yesterday who came to install the new heater. They pulled up in their truck ten minutes early, probably wanting to finish their coffee…until they saw me, masked, the hood of my coat up, practically smashing my face against the glass of their windows like the murderer I am. I SWEAR I’M NOT CRAZY.
Even though we’re living in a time where we filter, Facetune, edit, and polish things before they go online, there is also this counter-movement happening of body positivity and acceptance of one’s physical appearance. When I was growing up, it was perfectly normal for blogs and magazines to rip a woman’s physical appearance (“She shouldn’t be wearing that!” “She doesn’t have the thighs for that dress.” “Too fat!” “Nose is too big!” “Greasy hair, gross!”) - and now, those very institutions have turned on a dime to celebrate women instead of criticizing them. Surely, on some level, this is Lizzo’s doing (all good things seem to eventually lead back to Lizzo). But it’s so encouraging to me the more I think about the world my daughter (and son!) will grow up in - that knocking on the way someone looks is just profoundly out of the zeitgeist as an acceptable form of media chatter. I hadn’t really thought about it until it hit me last week, and I felt a deep sense of peace. Thanks, Queen Lizzo.
Pop culture corner.
So much dadgum GOSSIP surrounding the A Rod/J Lo/Madison from Southern Charm debacle. 👀 Not touching that with a ten foot pole, but wowowowowow put some respect on J Lo’s name, please.
Book recommendations! I’m currently (and very slowly) chipping away at Barack Obama’s newest book, A Promised Land, which is super interesting and VERY easy to read. He does a great job of walking you through major political moments in a way that is not totally inside baseball; you can be at virtually any level of awareness and stay with it. I also have been picking up and putting down The Vanishing Half. Heard recently that it wasn’t worth finishing, so we’ll see. Considering re-reading Amy Poehler’s memoir Yes, Please - just feels like the time is right.
The long-awaited Britney Spears documentary from the New York Times, “Framing Britney Spears,” is coming out on Hulu today. We are huge #teamBritney fans over here, so I’m curious (and preparing myself to be depressed) about her current status to lead and govern her own life. Whatever else, it’s heartbreaking to think about someone being ripped apart by the media like she was for so many years. You can watch a little blurb about it here. As Danny Pellegrino said, “She’s given us so much.”
My two follow recommendations for the week:
The first comes to you from Twitter.com, featuring the one and only Chris Jones. Chris was a writer for Esquire and ESPN, and is an incredibly kind and hilarious storyteller. Start with this incredible story about athlete Ricky Jones and click around his Twitter feed for more inspiration. Delightful.
The second is also a Twitter link (but really TikTok) where this girl, Mary Elizabeth Kelly, is doing incredible impressions that blew my mind!! It will make you happy, too.
Happy weekend, friends. Make it count!