Table of Contents
Hi friends!
I planned on finishing half of my narrative today after gym x yoga and now that I’m home, I don’t want to. Instead, I’m going to share ten thoughts.
Ten thoughts
Is there a sport more evil than American football? Obviously the NFL as an organization sucks but football is the most insidious sport. The players are the dumbest of the sports, which is amplified by the CTE. Maybe this is also just my daddy issues talking and the freedom I felt from football once I 1. moved out of football town USA 2. stopped speaking to the side of my family that builds their lives around watching it. The screaming and anger from football you hear from the men in your life that either don’t know how to express their anger or want to prove to their species that they’re alphas…I think the only sport parallel is soccer in Europe. My personal afflictions aside, do you know a more evil sport?
I was in a very crowded Williamsburg bar this weekend called Maracuja and was talking loudly at my table just like everyone else in this packed spot. The woman next to me had the audacity to turn to me and tell me You’re being too loud. I thought I gave her a deadpan Thanks before my friends and I left, but it probably looked more golden retriever-y than that. What gives you the right to lord over the sound? My friends said they saw the table of women looking at me and whispering beforehand. They all looked at least five years older than me, and if they needed to be in such a quiet place, they could have been in a much quieter bar. Sorry that I know how to project. On the other hand, how loud must I have been to elicit chastising? Hire me to be your next megaphone.
The closest I feel to not being in the city when I’m in the city is going to a normal grocery store that isn’t Trader Joe’s or a non-chain market. To see recognizable brand names, harshly colored packaging (did you know they have Angel Reese’s Puffs?), and endless shelves of stuff makes me feel like I’m coming home after being away at college or camp. I could spend forever walking around and marveling in the grocery splendor.
My brother is one of those people who decries rideshare and food delivery apps as cruel to workers. I’m not ordering delivery every day like my neighbor across the hall, but I definitely use these services and just try to tip and make sure to treat workers like the humans they are. The closest I’ve gotten to switching over to Ben’s side was last night after ordering Wingstop for the Super Bowl. Eventually, my dasher messaged me asking to cancel the order because the place was mobbed and he had no idea when I’d get my order. The picture he sent of the sea of helmets overflowing the store was appalling and horrifying. Since I ordered through Wingstop’s site, I had no option to cancel the order and neither did he, aside from calling the specific location (obviously not possible). I called Doordash support and they figured out how to cancel it, which was super clutch, but what a hellscape for him to be helpless in the sea long enough to miss out on orders he could actually be making.
Aimee always plays music during her yin yoga classes, but they’re these ambient songs almost made for yoga. During tonight’s class while I bailed on sitting on my toes and stretching them (genuinely impossible and so painful — how do people do it?) I thought Wow, I’d love to do yoga to the Great Fairy Fountain theme from Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. It’s one of those calming, magical, nostalgic songs like many I know from my favorite childhood video games. Then I thought…what if someone taught a yoga class and just played calming video game music the whole time? I think it would make a lot of people cry but feel really good. I went home to tell Meera my idea, and she had a better one that I know Aimee will read here because she’s a star subscriber: yoga classes set to themed music. Meera wants to do a class to the synthwave beats guy. Imagine doing a yoga class in 2017 to Jhene Aiko songs. Spin can’t be the only workout to capitalize on themed soundtracks!
I’m deeming 2025 the year of wingmanning. There’s this guy I keep seeing at the gym that I can just tell would be perfect for a friend of mine. I sniped a picture of him, and she approved. The next time I see him, I’m going to go up to him and try to set him up. Freak behavior at the gym, but we need to live more like the right parts of Sex and the City.
I did the stairmaster for the first time this week and did it again today. I think I tried once in New Hampshire but got too scared. I didn’t realize that it’s okay to go slow because the freaks at my gym are zipping. My friend Anthony this weekend said he and his friends competed in a makeshift Survivor and one of the challenges was running as fast as you could up as many stairs as possible in some building. He said he eventually got to the point that his legs refused to move. Outright refusal!
Do you ever love something you’re consuming so much that you’re already worried about how to find anything that can come close to measuring up to its greatness? I’m 200 pages away from being done with The Power Broker and am feeling that there. Similarly, my cardio show has been the latest season of Bridgerton, which is my OG cardio show. I don’t usually like shows like it, but this is just perfect and perfect for exercise. So many hot people. So many little dumb plotlines. Silly names like Cresseida Cowper and Lord Kilmartin. You can pay attention but not too much. I saw a sex scene this week and it really felt like I was watching porn on the elliptical. Anyway, it’s the perfect silly show to lock you in, and I’m not sure how to find anything else gripping but not requiring too much attention. I need to be able to zone out or look away for a bit.
One of the Balena Bagels employees made a huge bagel-shaped disco ball that’s now hanging in the shop. I keep thinking about it because it’s just so cool. She just made it on her own without anyone asking her to do so. @balenabagels on Instagram obviously!
Something about being white and talking SO loudly on the phone while walking around feels SO Gentrifier Olympics. I am a perpetrator here.
This week’s photo is from my 2-year anniversary of living in thee New York City. I’m holding a strange cocktail, reading The Power Broker, and millennial derping.
Current fixations I want to mention
Food & Drink
Thursday was my 2-year anniversary of living in New York. It was kind of a crappy day because the water went out in my building while I was doing laundry and chaos ensued. I had a plan after my Spanish class to go to this bar I’ve wanted to try for a long time called the Sunken Harbor Club. It’s an upscale tiki bar attached to the only incredible restaurant in Downtown Brooklyn, Gage and Tollner (prove me wrong!). I wanted to go to the bar alone and read Power Broker for an idyllic night to cap off a weird day. When I got there, a solo drinker at 8 p.m. on a Thursday, the wait was 45 minutes. I was so pissed. In searching for the next best thing, I happened upon Grand Army, a neighborhood bar beloved by Brooklyn Redditors. The Redditors are right. It was super cozy and played mellow pre-2020 hits (many a Frank Ocean song). The menu is astrology themed, including cocktails named after each sign and monthly horoscopes that I didn’t read. I chose the Gemini, which was advertised as a frozen, souped-up espresso martini. I’m not sure if the drink I got was a Gemini because nothing was frozen, but it was delicious. There was a layer of this sweet, cold cream (not frozen) sitting atop hot coffee-ish liquid. For food, I ordered their short rib sandwich special because why not. Now oddly enough, a few bites in the middle were nearly frozen. Maybe that’s where the Gemini’s freeze was supposed to be. I still enjoyed it and the globs of BBQ sauce. I sat and red, sipping the “Gemini” and two heavy pours of sparkling wine from a bartender that asked me How’s ol’ Robert doing? after I sat there for a while. I obviously had to rant about the Long Island Expressway. I read a lot and had a great night. A constant New York lesson: the thing you want can very easily not work out, but there’s always a great alternative around the corner you haven’t thought of yet.
Music
This wasn’t a very musical week, and I felt quite stuck for the first few days of it. It’s that post-host depression I get after throwing a party. I’m so podcast oriented now that I am having trouble seeking out new music or even wanting to. I’ve had “Made Your Mama Cry” by Nana Lourdes on my playlist for a year and a half, and it’s one of those songs I have to be in the right mood in to listen properly. It’s a great song for when you’re feeling stuck and are frustratedly trying to unstick yourself. I think it’s about yelling at your in laws and embarrassing yourself, but I choose to look at the chorus (which talks about living in a fishbowl and feeling exposed) as an expression of indignation. Of course, the best lyrics are in the bridge, a question I ask myself constantly: And as the heads of her enemies tumbled to the floor / She began to wonder / Is it better to be right or to be loved?
Internet & Pop Culture
This video is from 2019, and I’m not sure if the original exists anymore. Bravo overlord Andy Cohen had a baby shower and invited all of the Real Housewives from every franchise. It was like an all-stars summit. Former polarizing Beverly Hills Housewife Lisa Rinna somehow gets control of the mic and screams at all the housewives to get on a table and dance for Andy NOWWWW! She is screaming for so long and gets progressively louder, which never fails to make me laugh. This is a comfort video for me. It’s great to see how the housewives react, especially when they’re individually called out. My favorite is Sonja Tremont Morgan getting up as soon as the command commences. You don’t have to tell her twice. So much has changed since this video, including a pandemic.
Television & Maybe Movies
I went to the AMC Village 7 and sat in the second row of a theater with a deep enough seat incline that my seat choice actually slapped while viewing One of Them Days, which you may know as the Keke Palmer x SZA buddy comedy produced (or directed? Idk) by Issa Rae. You come for the names, and it’s great because it feels like you’re just watching them even though they are playing characters. Keke is effortlessly witty and silly, SZA plays a hippie-ish artist, and LA looks fractured but communal in the way Issa portrayed it in in Insecure. The movie is all about the girls trying to get enough money for rent by the end of the day. It’s surprisingly anxiety-inducing but laugh-out-loud funny. It’s around 90 minutes, and the assumption that it will all work out in the end keeps you going. I didn’t really love how the movie was also a really long ad for Church’s Chicken but that’s my only complaint. Everyone is hot and there are tons of cameos. Great for a light watch. I’m happy I saw it in theaters but this will also be great on your best friend’s couch.
Journalism & Literature
New York Mag’s cover story this week is on the mass of New Yorkers secretly being funded by their parents, and I want to read it so bad I could scream. But I don’t want to read it bad enough to cross the digital picket line as their union advocates for fair wages. I’ll read it once it comes to my house and probably have something to say about it next week. For now, I enjoyed listening to another Code Switch episode: “Hip Hop is ‘fight the power’ but also advertises for the power.” It was released pre-Super Bowl and talks about how rap — which usually is meant to subvert — can be used for capitalist, imperialist, and even white supremacist means. Lotta ists! The interviews are really interesting because they talk to a hip hop professor at UVA and the U.S. State Department’s hip hop ambassador, if you can believe that both of those are jobs.
Something I Saw in the Wild
I was walking to the gym the other day and saw a driver’s ed school bus for people learning how to drive school buses. Have you ever thought of those before? Where do they go? Why haven’t I seen more of them? Where do people do commercial truck driver’s ed? This bus was going down Flushing at that intersection with Irving and a bunch of other streets. Where is safe enough for a driver’s ed bus driver to go?