Emchap's Shit from the Internet 8/30/17
The theme for this upcoming month is Find a Gym, Punch Stress in the Face With Literal Punching. To that end, I signed up for a free all-levels boxing class at a gym new work this week. Punching things in a basement! What fun! My friend Kate does boxing and likes it!
This was a Bad Idea.
The class began with a man who had previously been silently in the corner yelling at us to run up several flights of stairs, hook a left, run around the block a few times, and then back down for... punching? What came next was unclear.
Startled by sudden movement and loud noise, as is my prey-animal way, I hoofed it up the stairs. And then, as I prepared to round the corner, I had a brief moment of "no. I do not want to do this."
(Reader, I was still holding boxing gloves. I had not put them on. I work in the Financial District, it was very busy.)
And I sat with that and wondered if the issue was that I was embarrassed (of course I was! I'm in terrible shape! I was out of doors!) because sometimes embarrassment is a useful thing to lean into and learn from. And then I realized that I have made an ass of myself on stage approximately 100 times, decided that it was more that I just didn't want to do the thing, and gave a hearty mid-20s New York "fuck it."
I and my boxing gloves went back down the stairs and bailed. I went home and drank a La Croix.
(A friend pointed out that this would have been more cinematic if I'd dumped the boxing gloves in a trash can and gotten on the train, but like my purse was downstairs, I needed to go back anyway, not everything is a movie.)
Tonight I'm touring a gym whose broad theme seems to be unicorns, so, we'll see how it goes.
Shit to read
I attended a party on Sunday where I made everyone watch the new Taylor Swift video once it dropped. (I wasn't even drunk, I'm just an enthusiastic consumer of often-terrible things.) So, I recommend this thinkpiece about the new video as the art we deserve in this our present moment, this piece on TSwift and white female victimhood, this piece on how she literally cannot let subtext be subtext, and this Esquire piece on the "Swish Swish" music video.
I go back and forth on Jennifer Wright's work (though I have briefly met her in person and she was both gracious and kind), but this piece on her marriage made me legitimately tear up; it's very sweet.
Did you read the Premium Mediocre thing? It is bonkers.
This comic is sweet and vaguely upsetting.
Shit to eat
Buy two zucchini, a small onion, and some sour cream (get the small one, you know you don't eat at home often enough to use the big one before it goes bad).
Food process the fuck out of the zucchini and the onion to shred it (shredding disk goes up, not the slicing one, don't overthink it).
Toss some salt in there and wait 15 minutes.
Pour everything out into your cleanest dishtowel that you don't mind staining.
Squeeze squeeze squeeze.
Toss in a beaten egg, half cup flour, and half a teaspoon of baking flour.
Shape into little patties and fry them in olive oil.
Serve three to a plate with a fried egg and some sour cream on top and feel very vaguely virtuous.
Shit to listen to
I spent a whole very-in-love summer listening to "Parachute" on loop; it is still one of my favorite songs about trying to have some modicum of chill.
Shit to buy
I posted about this shot glass on Twitter and horrified a colleague; obviously I love it entirely because I am a gross child.
That's literally it, that item is the single item that I want right now. I bought a vegan brownie sundae last night; it was really good.