3. a healthy serving of features and videos
Because you deserve to consume only the best of the best.
As life has starting picking back up and my move is now in the beginning stages of being a real thing, I haven’t had time (or at least give myself the time) to decompress and process anything. However, I did have the time to distract myself from reality with all of these fun things:
It wouldn’t be a volume of my newsletter/oversharing-explosion without a link to The New Yorker, and this one is a doozy. One of my new favorite articles to bring up not-so-casually into conversation: Dude, Where’s My Couch? brought to me via this newsletter I subscribed to (and you should to!). It’s a piece that made me LOL and believe in humanity again. Here’s the gist:
When more than two hundred buyers of luxe sofas from ABC Carpet got a group e-mail about a delivery delay, the result was anger, frustration, commiseration, bad jokes, and matchmaking.
Get. Into. It.
I like to flow from one form of media to the next and go around in a vicious circle of consumption and entertainment fatigue. I will listen to music for a month straight, get sick of hearing the same songs over and over, switch to podcasts, run out of episodes, binge a Netflix show, read all of the information about the cast and crew, rewatch Youtube videos I’ve seen at least 14 times for comfort’s sake, rinse and repeat.
I’m currently in the Youtube phase of my cycle (gross analogy, but it works) and one of my favorite new finds is the Architectural Digest video series, Open Door: Inside Celebrity Homes. The first one I watched was the L.A. home of Hamilton stars Daveed Diggs & Emmy Raver-Lampman. Another installment was released today of Troye Sivan’s home in Melbourne and it was so pleasant to watch. I could actually listen to Troye Sivan talk literally all day.Re: my Youtube rabbit holes, another video series I’ve been enjoying is the Vanity Fair lie detector tests, namely this one with Colin Jost and Michael Che, this one with Pete Davidson and Machine Gun Kelly, this one with the cast of Queer Eye, and this one with Aubrey Plaza and Brian Tyree Henry. If you only have the time (or energy) to watch one, please watch the Colin Jost and Michael Che one. It’s most definitely worth it.
The zillenial (yes, autocorrect, that is a word now) in me is coming out in the form of my obsession with Olivia Rodrigo, and, no, this isn’t about “driver’s license”. This is, however, about her song “deja vu”. As a Lorde stan with a four-year-long-cavity growing each day and an over-nourished Swiftie, Olivia is the sweet little love child between the two. Don’t be alarmed by the overplayed (yet completely deserving) radio presence of her first single. Her follow-up is genuinely amazing, and proves she isn’t a one-hit-wonder.
My mom practically raised me on the album Songs about Jane by Maroon 5. I’ve been revisiting it lately and I highly recommend blasting “Sunday Morning” while on a drive during sunset.
After watching one of my favorite documentaries (May It Last: A Portrait of The Avett Brothers), I finally decided to listen to their podcast episode of Armchair Expert. I just love them so much.
Speaking of podcasts, I completely binged Your Own Backyard. It’s been quite awhile since I’ve listened to a podcast as a whole and have been completely entranced the entire time. Episode 3 made me audibly gasp and, if you need a reason other than my opinion to listen, there are continuing updates being made in the case thanks to the podcast!
Speaking of Pete Davidson, after watching The King of Staten Island, he has a soft spot in my heart. Plus, I will basically watch any film Judd Apatow puts out. The film was surprisingly heartwarming and hilarious. (P.S. if you have HBOMax, watch the “making of” extra clip!).
After letting this particular edition of my newsletter sit in drafts for a number of weeks, I just now read Roxane Gay’s most recent newsletter about control and the pandemic and our bodies and damn, I breathed a heavy sigh after finishing it.