Am I a hermit or is it Shonda Rhimes' fault?
[Alt text: The trash chute on my floor, labeled "RUBBISH."]
Last Friday, I had every intention of leaving this apartment and going to a show and saying hi to some people I hadn’t seen in a long time. Then I turned on Inventing Anna, and – goddammit, Shonda Rhimes – there went the rest of my weekend. The whole thing was very well done, with lots of familiar faces (Stewy from Succession!!), complicated characters, great acting, that bananas accent. But for those of us with too much free time and too little self-restraint, it would be nice if Netflix could be the parent figure. Like, make it so I can only watch one episode a day, two max but only if I’ve spent at least 45 minutes on the elliptical. They could customize it according to user profiles! “You may watch one hour of a Shonda Rhimes series only after you send that email you’ve been dreading / clean your bathroom / call your mother / sort that pile of papers that’s been sitting on your table for two months.”
I’m worried I've spent too much time at home alone, or walking new-to-me Rock Creek Park trails by myself. Part of it is decompressing after several months of utter fucking chaos. Part of it is loving my new apartment and wanting to make it perfect. And too big a part of it is this weird reluctance to engage with other people, for fear I won’t remember how, or that it will deplete my already low energy reserves.
Sometimes letting Shonda take the reins is a lot easier than making my own decisions.
But this coming weekend I’m ripping that band-aid off, hard. Shows Friday and Saturday (when someone offers you a guest list spot, saying no without a good excuse is just rude), and visiting one of my oldest friends Sunday at her new house. It helps knowing I have a nice quiet place to come back to and sit in silence afterwards.
Links
What pundits don’t understand about the San Francisco recall. Clara Jeffery’s explainer is really helpful and I wish more journalists would write like this. (Mother Jones)
Growing up, Yenching Palace was my family’s go-to for Chinese food. I must have been so focused on my egg rolls that I never paid any attention to the actual building, which is awesome. Apparently the restaurant closed, and then it was a Walgreen’s, and now it’s empty again. When I told my dad about it, he said it was famous because Kissinger had some big Cold War meetings there. I looked it up, and… not quite, but close. (Wikipedia)
Someone sent me a link to Hello Lucille, Are You a Lesbian? by T. Valentine (YouTube) and I’m fascinated by something that is at once so homophobic and unintentionally (?) hilarious. Ten minutes of internet research (Chicago Reader) tells me this is from Chicago, in 1985, written after his wife left him. There is no Wikipedia entry for this guy and it seems like there really should be. I want to read about his ex-wife, and hear what songs she wrote about him.
Damon Young now has a Washington Post column, and I’m happy to see they are not editing out or toning down his voice/style. The second best thing about getting doxed by white supremacists is pretty funny. (WaPo)
There’s an auction house here called Weschler’s. I went to look at some midcentury things that ended up going for way too much money, but it was there that I saw this Tomoo Inagaki print. Where is the museum exhibit of this person’s stuff?? I want to see rooms and room of these prints. And buy all the postcards from the gift shop. (Weschler’s)
A UK company wants to take your CDs and… turn them into furniture? I can’t decide if this is really clever or just stupid. Maybe it depends on your music collection. (Tunetables)
New IKEA table. (Twitter)
Faux reader comments on a NYT recipe. (Medium)
Mesmerizing photos of symmetry in nature. The mushroom near the end is nuts. (Demilked)
Tired: Selfies. Wired: Anti-selfies. (Sad and Useless)