Emchap's Shit from the Internet 07/14/21 🍠
I turned 30 earlier this year, and was in a vague sense ready for an influx of people in my social circles starting to have kids. What I was not prepared for was this also being the year that all my friends’ family members start to die.
As I think most readers of the newsletter know, I was 22 when my mom died, which is not unheard of but is of course unusual. I was lucky—in part because I had some older friends from improv and some unlucky same-age friends from the rest of my life—to have other people in my life who’d gone through the same awful experience, which did not cushion the blow in any way but did at least allow for me to have access to some folks who were better-equipped to be helpful as I navigated the one-two dead mom/starting adult life combo punch. I remember fondly the dead Mom brunch that some of us had on mother’s day one year.
Membership in the world’s shittiest social club—best case scenario, everyone eventually joins—means that I’ve had a few friends reach out to me in the aftermath of a loved one’s death this year. Though I am always so glad to help people, it remains just profoundly fucked that I am getting to the point that I have a mental script for what my suggestions look like. We’re only getting older, and at some point I will wind up formalizing that shit into a dead parent google doc because so very much of what you have to do at the most brain-dead point in your life is logistical in a way that seems very unfair. It’s tremendously weird to be good at providing guidance based on knowledge that you wish you didn’t have, you know?
There’s something sort of freeing about grief in that the lose condition has already happened. You can be the best at grieving in the entire world and your mom will still be dead; you can absolutely fuck it up and be a hot mess and your mom will still be exactly as dead. In the larger sense of your psychic wounds, what you do fully doesn’t fucking matter. You can only hope your loved one didn’t do something fucked up with their financial accounts and that they filed a will with info on what they wanted done with their body, and if they didn’t, well, there’s nothing you can do.
Shit to read
I just loved this Jason Sudeikis interview.
New Anthony Bourdain doc, with a good accompanying review.
This article about the folks who died during the Portland heatwave fucked me entirely up.
I have read the book referenced in this piece on inconsistencies in the Manson family case and it is genuinely very compelling. LA in the 60s and 70s was super fucked up even by LA standards.
A lovely and complex piece from a trans person on their feelings about their bottom surgery.
And an article with some beautiful photos of various interesting trans folks fully rejecting the before/after framing of their transition.
No particular reason I was reading this it’s fine we’re fine cool cool cool.
Niche Survivor content from my favorite former contestant.
To riff on early 2000s fandom, Lord of the Rings is very, very gay.
Shit to eat
Chop up three bell peppers. Colors are dealer’s choice.
Add in half a container of crumbled feta.
Do you have pre-sliced swiss cheese from a party tray? Toss that shit on in after you cube it up.
Boil whatever short noodles you’ve got half a box of in the pantry in very salty water until they’re cooked.
Drain and rinse and toss in with the rest of everything.
In a jar, put half and half olive oil and red wine vinegar, and add salt and pepper and Penzey’s frozen pizza spice.
Shake shake shake.
Once it’s emulsified, drop it on the rest of everything.
Toss it up, and enjoy the only summer dish you know how to make.
Shit to watch
I enjoy this man’s mildly chaotic food choices.
Shit to buy
God, nothing, I’m in the middle of packing and it SUCKS.