I have been waiting all year to use this image [#78]
Finally, it's Christmastime again! Is this not the best reindeer sweater ever!?!?
Here in LA, it RAINED. Twas the first significant rain since we moved to this sunny spot. The kids all had to use umbrellas at school drop-off and even the parents were confused about how to open and operate them. It was rather cute, even if it did really slow down the drop-off lane.
I have really taken to California living — I went to my first Hollywood movie premiere, now drink my green juice from a hay straw (that's right, a straw that is a straw of hay) and the other day BRADLEY COOPER was sitting in my office lobby, about 20 feet away, for a good while, just waiting to go into a studio. No one walked up to him. I was creeping around but never got up the nerve to say anything. #regret
Reading
The 2018 Book Concierge is here! Dollar stores feed more Americans than Whole Foods. The significance of the latest Cohen guilty plea. (Earlier, Adam Davidson on the end stage of the Trump presidency.) How the Mueller indictments compare with previous special investigations into presidents. A compelling Q/A on how boomers ruined America. The coming generational reckoning among Democrats is about cultural currency. The horrifying sex pyramid scheme of a Trump cabinet member. How to talk with grieving friends. Divorce week. Men and women describe entirely different marriages. A strategy for picking restaurants. "How he became famous for staring out a window, we will never know." Should Sheryl Sandberg be held to a tougher line? The white male gaze of photographers informs our "truth." Why some people get the meat sweats (ht Friend Blake). A controversial take: In favor of an 8:45pm bedtime.
The 52 Weeks, 52 Books Update
I'm picking up the pace after my book reading really slowed in the fall. I'll do a year-in-review on my blog but if you're looking for something while on winter break, try Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday (this is the "novel" about a 24 year old who has an affair with a writer forty years her senior *cough* Philip Roth), Severance by Ling Ma (a layered and darkly funny apocalypse tale), and for a not-so-dense beachy romance, you can read The Proposal by Jasmine Guillory in an afternoon.
Listen/Watch
Ellen Pompeo's master class on how to be an ally, in two minutes
Radiolab's three-part series on consent was fantastic and a must-listen. (h/t Friend Pamela)
Longform podcast's interview with Pultizer Prize-winner Eli Saslow, on the process of reporting deeply and how a white supremacist flipped and became woke instead
OK that's it for me... I want to know what cool shit you're buying your loved ones (if you are participating in the consumerism that is the holidays) because I need ideas beyond "hey I got you tickets to see Morrissey, again."
You would even say it glows,
E
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