Friday Faves: The Barbenheimer Paradox

Welcome to The Enthusiast, the newsletter that's all yum, no yuck! This is the first edition of subscriber-only Friday Faves, where I share five(ish) things I'm loving, from the latest in pop culture to seemingly random esoteric ephemera–all personally vetted and highly recommended by yours truly. If you're not a subscriber yet, sign up here to read the full post!

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

A new modern classic

Have you ever read a book that was so good that you fly through the first three-quarters of it and then realize you don’t want it to end so try to slow your roll but you literally can’t stop yourself because the story is so good and the characters are so compelling and the writing is so gorgeous and you get to the end and you feel great because the book was so amazing but you’re also sad because it’s over and you wish it could just keep going? No, just me?

Anyway, Barbara Kingsolver’s latest, gorgeous novel Demon Copperhead is sweeping up many well-deserved awards and is a truly fantastic, accessible, and lyrical novel regardless of whether you’ve read David Copperfield, the Dickens novel it reimagines in Appalachian America in the 80’s and 90’s. (*cough*ihavent*cough*) Her signature slightly-fantastical slice-of-life approach brings our teenage hero to life without playing into stereotypes of teenage boys or of rural mountain life. Kingsolver’s lyrical prose is never forced or wasted, the perfect balance between introspective and propulsive. It's a true masterpiece, as far as I'm concerned, that should replace Dickens's original in school curriculum. Yes, I said it.

Tori Amos, From the Choir Girl Hotel (1998)

Late to the party, but right on time for me.

We went to see iconic alt-piano queen Tori Amos in concert this week, and I realized I haven’t kept up with her oeuvre for the last 20 years as well as I should have. She’s been releasing meticulously crafted songs and sonically rich albums that defy categorization on the regular, but my favorite remains her 1998 genre-defying From the Choirgirl Hotel (a controversial choice among die-hard Tori stans, I know). I came late to the party for a lot of artists in the 90’s, and Choirgirl was actually my first Tori CD—I didn’t get Little Earthquakes until years later. I went back and listened to it several times and it still hits, not just on its own merits but on its ability to conjure up the very specific summer of 1998, when I was in that weird adolescent limbo between middle and high school.

A departure from her earlier contemplative voice-and-piano albums, Choirgirl spans the spectrum of fierce piano pop, swaggering rock, throbbing dance beats (complete with orgasmic vocalization), even venturing into trip-hop and electronica—all with a distinctly and defiantly feminine perspective. And even a full twenty-five years later, my fave tracks haven’t wavered: “Black Dove” expands on her slightly creepy, crescendoing confessionals, and “Jackie’s Strength” reinforces her ability to remember the past with clarity instead of fuzzy nostalgia. “Raspberry Swirl” is a legit, sexy dance party banger and “She’s Your Cocaine” is is an unrelenting smart-ass cock-rock send-up. These tracks showcase Amos’s brilliant range with her instruments: the piano is more percussive on some tracks than melodic and her vocal range from sly murmuring to aggressive wailing is in full effect.

I was more of a Jewel girl (it was middle school, okay?!) before I finally discovered Tori and her storytelling, her lush and emotive world-building. I went into The Choirgirl Hotel—Amos’s own metaphor for her songs existing as individuals with agency sharing space for a limited time—a naïf barely cognizant of my own potential depths, but I checked out with my eyes & mind opened. You can check out any time you like, sure, but why would you ever want to leave?

The Bear, Season 2

Yes, chef!

If you’ve never worked in a restaurant, I could see how you might either be ambivalent about The Bear or find it an overwrought, histrionic at times. But if you HAVE worked in a restaurant of any sort, you recognize the vibes immediately, for better or worse, and you can’t pull yourself away. It’s an intense, emotional show that eschews and celebrates the inherent modern absurdity of food culture while recognizing its potential for creativity and connection.

Season two of The Bear takes us more into the lives of the individual kitchen crew before building to a crescendo with the launch of a new fine-dining establishment where the humble Beef once stood. At first, this season feels slow and meandering—it’s lovely to see OG Tina starting culinary school and pastry chef Marcus off on his own little Eat Pray Love solo trip to Denmark. And then episode six drops you into the manic stress fever dream of a Berzatto family Christmas years ago, and the pace of the season picks up with speed and clarity.

Add to this an insane cast of guest stars, including Jamie Lee Curtis and Bob Odenkirk doing the absolute MOST in the best way imaginable, Cousin Ritchie’s physical and emotional transformation (“Yeah, I wear suits now.”) into the BAMF we know he can be, and our boy Carmy FINALLY getting to use those eyes on somebody for realsies, and you have a sophomore season that continues to build on the momentum from season 1 and flesh out of more of the characters and their intricate, nuanced relationships. I can’t wait for season 3.

Everything That's Not Gray

This is NOT my beautiful house.

My spouse and I started noticing a disturbing trend last fall when we initially started dabbling in house-hunting: everything is now gray. Specifically, you can tell which homes are a flip because of the deeply uninteresting, bland, flat color scheme that comes with these “recent remodels.” I understand trying to streamline an empty space to appeal to modern tastes, but one can only consume so many barn doors and faux granite before it feels like less of a house and more like one of those sterile fake “rooms” you can use as faux backgrounds on video calls.

I’m not the only one who’s become acutely aware of this phenomenon, but my question is: how do we get it to stop? With the algorithmification of all aspects of our lives, is it really all that surprising that even our dwellings have come to be flattened to the most common denominator and drained of all color?

I am very tired of our current house, but I am so glad that the first thing we did was paint the living area lime green and the upstairs office space a vibrant teal. I grew up hating beige, and now I’ve come to loathe gray just as much if not more. I’m not much for decorating in general beyond screenprint show posters, but I have always appreciated colorful things around me: art, tchotchkes, books, furniture, bedding, towels—make them something other than a “neutral,” for your own sanity if not for the greater generational good. I’ll even take the formerly despised Millennial Pink over this gloomy, blank Millennial Gray any old day.

Barbenheimer is Nigh

A meme for all movies, all seasons

Too often in this world, we are made to select along an extremely narrow either/or binary. These barriers have been eroding slowly over the years, but there is still work to be done. Initially we thought that we could only choose between hot pink party time or deadly serious historical drama, but oh, how we were wrong. The Barbenheimer Paradox has brought me nothing but anticipatory joy as we tired masses proclaim, “POR QUE NO LE DOS?!”

I am not technically doing the full Official Opening Weekend Barbenheimer, because I am opting to see Barbie first with my mom & sister and I can’t fucking wait. I’ve also wanted to see Oppenheimer from the start, too, and I’m planning to see it the following weekend in all its 180-minute IMAX glory; now some of my girlfriends have proposed an all-day Barbenheimer, and I’m fully on board. I hate boring forced faux dichotomies: I will go see and (hopefully) enjoy both, as is my goddamn right. Plus I bought two Barbie shirts, so now I have a reason to wear both!

That's all for this Friday Faves edition of The Enthusiast! Thank you for reading and if you enjoy this newsletter, forward it along to a friend and spread the love!

Subscribers get access to all previous posts AND the 2022 Enthusiast Archive, a complete index of everything I loved in 2022, organized by category along with the upcoming H1 2023 Archive!

Stay tuned for Sunday Reads coming up to close out the weekend, but until then, try embracing your hot pink, high-femme inner destroyer of worlds for a change!

Millennially Yours,
LKH

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