Listen, don't make me say it...
A newsletter in which I am in a good mood for once!
I’m sitting here in Brooklyn, NY, drinking an $11 iced strawberry matcha latte, and feeling alive. I, of course, added a 15% tip on top of the $11 - partly because it was shoved down my throat by the tiny iPad pay screen, but mostly because the barista with the pageboy haircut complimented my jacket. The perfect morning, in so many ways.
Except…$12+ for a nutritionally negligible beverage? It’s moments like these that I want to march on over to Wall Street and approach a man in a Patagonia vest just to say “ummm, excuse me, sir - probably named Jeremy or Matt - why can’t we just print more money?!”
(I know why. Please don’t tell me it will give me headache.)
I do love being mansplained to sometimes. Unironically, it gives me a little thrill. Yes, guy! Educate me on topics such as golf and protein and currency. Teach me your ways, so that one day the tables will turn. So that one day, I will have so much knowledge on these things that I can mansplain them right back to a different man named Jeremy or even, Matt!
That’s when a portal will appear, leading directly into Barbieland. And I won’t even walk through it! Because looking at all those bright colors for so long would give me a headache.
Okay, this matcha is hitting. And now Iris by The Goo Goo Dolls is playing in this matcha shop. Am I in heaven? It really is the perfect morning!
If all this so far has read as some sort of manic episode, don’t fret. It’s simply the New York effect.
A few days ago I re-read Joan Didion’s essay Goodbye to All That. It’s her love letter to New York City - about the circumstances of being young, and from somewhere else, and knowing your time in New York is temporary, and how there is so much magic to be experienced thereunder.
“I still believed in possibilities then, still had the sense, so peculiar to New York, that something extraordinary would happen any minute, any day, any month.”
I really can feel that when I come back. It’s unlike any other place, in that way. You are compelled to choose your own adventure. And even when I’m feeling unadventurous, somehow the energy here forces me up and out anyway.
Last night, I walked from the Lower East Side to Times Square, bought some gummy candy at heaven-on-earth aka BonBon the Swedish candy shop, and then went to see a stupid funny genius play all by myself.
I sat next to a mother and her teenage daughter, in from Canada. They were so sincere and positive that it made me want to cry? Like, their reactions to everything I said made my life seem exciting and hopeful in a way that genuinely moved me! On the way home I was like - woah, okay, yeah, why do I spend any time at all being anything but in love with life?
Unfortunately, it’s called the luteal phase, babe.
But maybe I should move to Canada?? Is everyone there like that? They were so lovely, god bless. Jill and Gemma. They asked me to recommend a place to eat near Columbus Circle and I couldn’t even pretend to know anything about that at all. I wish them a perfect trip. I hope they don’t see any rats in the subway.
The play I saw was called Oh, Mary!, written by and starring one of my favorite social media comedy personalities, Cole Escola. It’s Mary Todd Lincoln as you’ve never known her before - a woman who’s two defining qualities are raging alcoholism and a furtive desire to be a cabaret star. I laughed pretty much non-stop and was enraptured for the full hour and a half, despite the fact that I had the worst seat in the entire theater and could not see the front half of the stage. So worth it. I would go see it again in a heartbeat.
When I got back to Brooklyn via a gloriously rat free subway ride, I ordered my favorite Chinese takeout and watched The English Teacher on Hulu - starring my other favorite social media comedian, Brian Jordan Alvarez!
I am so happy to see my favorite internet funny people thriving. Nothing makes me laugh quite like a comedian on instagram doing a character that speaks utter nonsense. I quote both of their videos with abandon.
Listen, don’t make me say it, I’m in Brooklyn! That’s taken from my favorite BJA character, meditation Marnie. I made it the caption of an instagram story with a picture of Intermezzo and Slouching Toward Bethlehem on a coffee table. I don’t think anyone got it, and I am so okay with that.
When the Canadians asked me where I used to live in New York, I wanted to quote my favorite Cole Escola video and tell them uh, I kinda lived by the mall. They would not have gotten it at all. I wish I had done it!
Today I woke up with so much energy! I feel like I took The Substance! Haven’t seen the movie, although I have consumed multiple podcasts on the topic and am chronically online so I feel like I have seen it.
It’s starring Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley and …Dennis Quaid? Even after listening to all those podcasts, it’s unclear to me whether people liked the film or not. Maybe I should see it. I did recently have a dream that my face was extremely wrinkly that has been haunting me, and thus I think I need to be taught a lesson about the futility of trying to hold onto your youth. Apparently the last fifteen minutes of this film are so gross that people have been walking out. I don’t love the idea of that. “Body Horror” is one of the least appealing types of horror to me. The most appealing being “Rocky Horror Picture Show”, obviously.
Two other movies that I don’t want to see are Megalopolis and the Lady Gaga Joker sequel. I know that in the former, Aubrey Plaza plays a character named Wow Platinum. I know that in the latter, Rob from Industry plays Harvey Dent. And that is really all I care to know!
I did watch all of Nobody Wants This, the new Netflix show created by Erin Foster, in two days. I would recommend it to anyone who is fine just letting warm and fuzzy feelings wash over them. Watching this show is sort of like chatting with a nice mother daughter duo that are in town from Canada!
The show itself is a Los Angeles fantasy. Imagine - you start a podcast with your sister, your cool agent slash best friend hosts a dinner party at her house in the hills, and you meet a man who looks like Adam Brody who doesn’t care that you are extremely annoying and borderline insufferable. That is a love story that I can get behind, and I am being so sincere! Plus, Adam Brody plays grown up Seth Cohen as a hot rabbi, which is just genius casting.
I really did enjoy the show, which is well-written and well-acted and could never be accused of not being filmed on location in Los Angeles. I’d take many more seasons, happily.
It’s honestly the sort of rom-com I would like to write - cute, likable, specific, and zeitgeisty.
Watch this space! Because someone recently read a script of mine and said “you should have as decent a shot as anybody of getting some forward momentum on a career.” I’m hearing ringing praise. Hollywood, is that you calling?!
New York or nowhere! I have chosen nowhere for some reason I can’t recall? I’m on a New York high right now. I need at least one rat sighting to bring me back down to earth.
When people ask me if I want to move back here, I tell them my dream is to be bi-coastal. And that is true. More specifically, I guess my dream is to be so financially secure and untethered to corporate schedules that I can just go wherever I want, whenever I want.
Ummm - wait, I know how I could achieve that! Hard work, you say?!
No, silly! Printing more money :)