recommendation

nuun hydration tablets
(no one more surprised than me)

how to get the blues on a thursday night

1. go out to dinner with former colleague, try to go to alpine for pizza night from possibly religious, spelt-positive bakery, don’t think to call to confirm, it’s closed for vacation, so go instead to la casita, pay $20 for mediocre cheese enchiladas and hear about how the music festival you created is/was terrible, everyone on the board hates it, wants it to end — do your best to not take it personally but

2. get back to marfa at 9pm and go to jett’s for glass of wine with colleague, sit at bar, but only seats at bar are next to nice acquaintances who talk to us for the full 30 minutes we are there.

3. drop off colleague, go to lost horse to see ross play, everyone in town is there, anxiety central, try to hide in back and pretend i can just see a show, like, just simply SEE A SHOW, but so many people, so much (nice) small talk, everyone wants to say hi, so nice, but can’t deal, leave after 1.5 hours, head home, wonder how people do it in marfa, because it really works for lots of people, why doesn’t it work for me, am i anti-community??????????

4. go home, watch the hockey game while doing a crossword, doze off, wake up at 2am cuz ross still not home. text him to see if he needs a ride. no reply. start gently worrying, very gently. at 2:45am he comes in with our house guests, dogs go crazy barking, heart pounding. feel angry but more like sad, like a stupid square for being in bed when married to rocker partier, why wasn’t i partying, too? (A: work in the morning, social anxiety, marfa exhaustion, too much small talk from hour 1), go down sad rabbit hole where i wonder if we should even be married, cuz what does a rocker partier need? probably another rocker partier, right. or at least someone who thrives on small communities.

5. stay up till 4:3-am, worrying, listening to my rain rain app

THE END

other stuff

• watched the 1934 screwball comedy my man godfrey the other night, let me be real, carole lombard is NOT good in it, despite what ebert says. the whole movie is a bit meh, even though it has cool politics and william powell is pretty wonderful (note i keep trying to type my main man godfrey)
• also watched always be my maybe, it’s NOT good (but not as bad as i imagine wine country is)
• i hated the book the goldfinch, just saw there is a movie coming out of it — HARD PASS
• even thinking about that book makes me annoyed
• full disclosure: did not read whole thing, read 2/3 and simply could not keep going
• this sweet story about retiring mailman floyd martin got me

emma thompson’s feelings about vegas

from emma thompson’s interview in the times:

Thompson had scheduled our interview between her first ever trip to Las Vegas, which she found “eye-watering,”…

lolz yes exactly

In Vegas, Thompson had an 11-hour break between presentations, during which time she gambled, napped, ate and drank. By the end of the day, she felt like she had been there for 50 years, wondered if that was what everybody in Vegas felt, and was seized by the need to escape lest she suffocate and die.

heh heh

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bx3eFQxAOzF/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

wiiiiiickkkkk

for some reason i just love this

round-up

latest things:

• “night shift” by lucy dacus
• hanif abdurraqib’s essay about “night shift” and more
• fleabag, oh my whoa, what everyone says is true, so compelling, first season crushed me, second season so romantic, i can’t stop thinking about either one or phoebe waller-bridge or boo or THAT PRIEST, i mean that priest
• super bad day at work, v. cool, immediately worrying about being fired, bankrupting the company, etc. etc.
• still thinking about the yellow and orange wildflowers on the way to austin two weeks ago
• also thinking about coloring my hair, enh, but the gray is kind of taking over and making me look even more like an olden crone (a cool olden crone)
• ross and i ate part of a weed gummie the other night, i took a mere quarter, but immediately we were both so dumb, like keanu reeves and william hurt in i love you to death (kevin kline ughhhhhhh)

nostalgia/agony

me, 1988, 14 years old, braces, vest, fluffy hair, mad style

john dug up some old home videos of us from college and high school and oh it was intense viewing. good memories, but also kind of traumatizing. i’d kind of built up my own mythology about those days — “i was square but happy,” “nerdy but actually cool” — which is…eh…true, but also doesn’t account for all the searching, awkwardness, trying to figure out who to be, HOW to be, during the ages of 12-23. i had the most amazing friends, but i was such a late bloomer, and basically you could see all that melodramatic seeking in the videos. was painful to witness; i was so relieved to be past it. to have figured it out (relatively) (still struggle with a different kind of seeking) (though i’m trying to frame my searching as curiosity) (life is not about flatlining, right?). the moral of the story is that some kids get out of adolescence easy; some DO NOT. (or does anyone really get out easy? maybe it’s all a question of hard or harder or hardest.)

recommended

Artemisia Gentileschi, 1614-1618

good chuckles in Lyta Gold & Brianna Rennix’s “RANKED: 10 Paintings of Judith Beheading Holofernes”

smoke and lovers

Frank Stewart, “Smoke and Lovers,” Memphis, Tenn. 1992. Featured in “Kamoinge’s Half-Century of African-American Photography.” Via The New York Times.