Emchap's Shit from the Internet 5/13/18 🍠
I am two more workdays from a weeklong vacation, and I am so excited I can feel it in my teeth. But! That's next week. This week, I want to talk about the Bhagavad Gita animatronics museum.
The Bhagavad Gita animatronics museum (website here, and I 100% recommend checking out the videos) is located on the west side of LA, which I am not cool enough to live in. I was reminded of this as I descended from the train platform into what I might call a nest? of Bird scooters, which I had never before seen in real life. (Bird scooters, for those who are also unfamiliar, are motorized razor scooters tied to an app, which you can just sort of leave wherever when you're done with them.) I debated trying to ride one before I decided that I was entirely too scared of dying in the most embarrassing possible way, and hoofed it the half a mile to the Hare Krishna temple.
The temple houses the museum, which consists of several (11, I think?) large-sized dioramas full of clay figurines accompanied by mirrors and lights and narration illustrating the Bhagavad Gita. It is completely, immersively bananapants in the way that any experience might be if it was illustrated via LARGE dioramas that turn out automatically as you tour. (Doubly so for religious texts, which are always kind of weird to see illustrated literally.)
I love small, weird museums and I genuinely think puppets are really fascinating as an art form (I'm very cool) so this was at the sweet spot of my interests. The last two dioramas in particular—one of which featured a probably 10-foot long prone figurine of Krishna with a lotus growing out of his belly and just like 400 other sculptures and mirrors and footage of space—were legitimately awesome in terms of scale and skill. Plus, at the end, the tour guide dude gave us all really good homemade snickerdoodle cookies, which was unexpected and delightful.
I did bail on the second part of the tour I'd signed up for (didn't have it in me to nod politely while touring the ashram before lunch) and so decamped for Santa Monica, where I ate a delicious sandwich on the beach. But I'm glad I saw the museum, and I'm 100% dragging my family to it if they ever come visit. More weird puppets and puppet-adjacent things in 2018!
Shit to read
The second half of this article—which moves from a review of a mediocre book to a meditation on the concept of spinsterhood—made me cry and I recommend it very much.
My plan tonight includes watching The Tale, a film about a child's sexual abuse by an adult she trusts when she's 13, which has sparked some really fantastic writing. Even if you don't plan to watch the film, check out this piece on Slate, this one on the Cut, and this one on Buzzfeed.
Jared Kushner has a horrifying combover, which is not the most important thing to take away from this very good piece on him, but is certainly a fact I learned.
A syllabus on well-represented consent in film which calls out Magic Mike XL, my favorite gentle roadtrip buddy comedy. (It also brings up Sleeping With Other People, a film I was unaware of despite it appearing to be designed for me.)
Ask Polly has been cutting me to the bone lately, and this week's (on trying to escape the person you are by making big life changes and assuming that This Will Solve My Core Unhappiness) was obviously great and gutting.
I did not know that sewing patterns didn't use to come with multiple sizes!
I finally read Mort (a Discworld novel about Death and his apprentice) and it made me cry! It was very good, and Pratchett does so well with the idea of what humans want from Death, and what the responsibility of Death is to the dead, and of what justice looks like in an indifferent universe, and with the fact that Death is at the end of the day a very lonely job to have.
This is a hilariously mean review of the concept of Keurigs by Wirecutter.
Shit to eat
Find a breakfast bread. (Sourdough, biscuit, croissant, you do you.)
Cut it in half and pop it in the toaster.
In a non-stick pan, drop some olive oil over medium-high heat.
Add in dried thyme and rosemary, salt and pepper, and red pepper flakes.
Stir things until your house smells nice.
Crack an egg into it.
When the whites start to bubble and pop at you, flip the egg over.
Take whatever you were toasting, and put it in the other half of the pan to brown the flat parts. (Unless you're using normal bread toast, in which case, eh.)
After a minute or so, pop half your bread out and cover it with mayo.
Egg on top of that, followed by second bread half.
Take this sandwich and a napkin, and eat it on whatever porch is most available to you, and feel very clever about your tasty egg.
Shit to watch
Finally watched (and very much enjoyed) I, Tonya; I recommend it. Same with Tabloid, a Netflix-available documentary about a sexual assault case viewed through the lens of (as you might imagine) tabloids. It takes a HARD pivot in the third act to something unrelated and great and weird.
I had never seen Gigi the Christmas Snake, and it is a gift.
A friend posted this video of a song called Girls @ on Facebook today, and it's great in part because it belongs to my favorite genre of song ("horny lists"). Plus "Where the mid-sized girls/You bad!" made me laugh out loud.
Shit to buy
I'm genuinely delighted by the number of women who've messaged me to tell me they bought caftans after my recommendation last week.
My friend makes beautiful art and you should buy some (my print got here yesterday and it's great!).