Emchap’s Shit from the Internet 8/15/18 🍠
I have unintentionally scheduled a Big City Week this week. I normally aim to Go Out And Do Things at least a few nights a week, but through a combination of poor planning and external factors, I managed to do almost nothing last week. I've overcorrected by doing All The Things this week.
We started off strong, with a Monday night comedy show in a stranger's house, which was on the fun end of what that sentence might describe, rather than the murdery one. I was there mostly to see a comedy friend's presentation on Juggalo drama within Wikipedia, because I have but one precious life.
The comedy show took an unexpected turn for the eventful when someone attempting to cook taco meat caused it to catch lightly on fire, leading to a house full of smoke and startled comedians, as well as all of the many fire alarms in the apartment going off in asynchronous shrieks. It was in the middle of the smoke/shriek situation that I realized that Maria Bamford was apparently attending the show, lending a confusing layer of surreality to the proceedings. She laughed very loudly at everyone's jokes, and the comedians were great, and I survived making terribly fumbled smalltalk with some women sitting next to me, and it was overall a really nice time that I 100% Irish Goodbyed on afterwards because I am a coward.
(I realized later that I think I started reading the comedy friend's blog—which I was aware of for years and years before I met him after moving here—right around the same time my high school best friend showed me the Maria Bamford show on YouTube, and there is something great and strange about having somehow constructed a life surrounded by the people who made things that I really enjoyed when I was 16 years old.)
Last night, I took a bus out to 85 Degrees, a cafe that I have been obsessed with ever since a friend took me to the San Diego location. It is one of the tremendous joys of living here that most food things I liked about San Diego (of which there are many) are replicated in LA: the fancy robot revolving sushi place has several outposts, as does this bakery, including one a 20 minute single bus ride from my house. Camping out there I heard a woman describing her Reductress clips to a date, and got to be very glad that I abandoned freelance writing as a money-making scheme when I was in college. (Plus, I had sea salt jasmine iced tea, which was great.)
From there I headed out to the Hammer Museum, a giant and beautiful and free contemporary art museum apparently named after a relative of Armie Hammer's, which is still 100% funnier to me than it should be. They host a rotating and excellent set of free film screenings in addition to the art (I went there to see Kirikou and the Sorceress a few weeks ago) and have been running a series focused on Black aesthetics.
They were showing Touki Bouki, which I had never heard of but which showcases 1970s Dakar (where I studied abroad). The film was great, and I would never in a million years have looked for it myself, and the whole evening was a reminder that there is infinite interesting free and cheap culture available to me while I'm here. (And probably anywhere I live! I'm sure there were things in Atlanta that I never bothered to explore.)
Which brings me to tonight, where—after I take a nap—I am headed out to see Jeff Goldblum play jazz, a mile and a half from my house, because LA. It's an experience that sounds like it was just put together by a mad lib, and I am excited to see what it holds.
Shit to read
Two things about Touki Bouki: one about Jay-Z and Beyoncé's use of its imagery, and a New Yorker review that highlights some more of what it's about (and suggests that there's a better set of subtitles than the ones we had; I am also wildly curious who did the English subtitles for a film conducted mostly in Wolof)
Go watch Mad Fat Diary; I finished it this week and enjoyed it
The economics of nonprofit spaces are fascinating to me, as someone who deeply doesn't want to run one but has spent a lot of time in weird basement venues
If you haven't seen Scaachi's piece on weight loss for her wedding and expectations, it is phenomenal
I'm so glad I never tried to go blonde
Fuck man can we go back to Tumblr if it means I don't have to learn how Mastadon works? (Don't explain it to me, please, it is a joke I stg)
Open floor plans are bad
The foster care system is often just a shitty state weapon against poor people that deprioritizes the needs of children with horrifying consequences; this interview is worth reading
Shit to eat
Heat oven to 400 degrees; while doing so put some glugs of vegetable oil in a cast iron pan and pop it in there
Mix up 1 1/2 cup cornmeal (not just for frying fish!), 1/2 cup flour, 3 tablespoons sugar (4 if you like sweet cornbread but if you do can we please talk about how the world has REAL DESSERTS FOR YOU), a teaspoon of salt, 4 teaspoons of baking powder in a big bowl.
Add 2 eggs, a cup of milk, and 1/4 cup of oil.
Stir it up.
If you are making this in LA in the summer, you will be passed out from sweating at this point, so hoist yourself over to wherever your fan is pointing in order to avoid death.
When the preheating is done, dump the mix into your hot, oil-filled skillet.
The outside of the batter will cook as you do this, making you feel sort of smug. The cooking is already happening!
Keep it in the oven for half an hour if your oven runs hot, and for 45 minutes if it doesn't. Basically you just want it to look golden on the top.
If you're eating it right away and have strong arteries, flip the cornbread out of the skillet, cut it in half hamburger bun style, and butter it before reassembling it and cutting into pie wedges.
If you're me, eat it with sweetened margarine that night, and pinto beans and Pace the rest of the week. Mash it up and eat it with syrup or honey if you're me as a child/now. Go wild.
Shit to listen to
Short Haired Woman Blues, which does some fun stuff with the House of the Rising Sun melody.
Shit to buy
Don't buy this, but I was sent a photo of this, the most toxic masculinity product in the WORLD, yesterday. (Gun-themed lube for men, designed by marines apparently using gun oil to masturbate instead of, like, lotion? MEN ARE WILD.) Yes, obviously they have an aggressively gendered line for women.
I want to buy pajamas for an upcoming trip/since my current ones are all sort of sad, and in an attempt to stave off buying Lunya I got these pajamas (as well as in a pale green that no longer appears to exist?)