Friday Faves: Potpourri

Welcome to The Enthusiast, the newsletter that's all yum, no yuck! Every week 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.

I'm all over the place these days, and thus, so are this week's Friday Faves–let's get random, babes!

Paul Reubens as Pee-Wee Herman

"Paging Mr. Herman..."

I feel like there is a very specific subset of us Millenniolds still coming to terms with Paul Rubens’ recent death from cancer at the age of 70. First of all: he was 70?! Second: he was ONLY 70?!

Pee-Wee was always ageless, a weird adolescent kid in the body of a strange little man, but somehow I never saw him as anything but just Pee-Wee. Thinking back on it now, he was probably one of first queer characters I ever encountered. He was weird and loud and emotional and creative and scattered, he laughed maniacally at his own jokes, and he found joy and fun in even the most mundane things—all of which made it okay for the rest of us to be the same way. And if Pee-Wee wasn’t explicitly coded as queer, beautiful green drag queen genie Jambi most definitely was.

Much as I love Big Adventure (now, as an adult—the evil ambulance clowns fueled my coulrophobia for decades), Pee-Wee’s Playhouse was the real formative influence for me. Rewatching it now in memoriam, I never realized how absurd it was, but also still sweet and genuine without ever becoming preachy or sacrificing its silliness. The aesthetic is iconic and it probably helped cultivate my love of bright colors, loud prints, high (and low) camp, and creations so loud and ugly that they force you to see them as beautiful.

It’s also eerily prescient for being almost 40 years old—Pee-Wee has a Magic Screen for connect the dots and virtual spaces, a video telephone (that apparently all his friends have too), and a hideous pair of glasses that plays videos for him. Did Pee-Wee Herman influence the entire millennial generation to experience life in both virtual and physical reality? I don’t know if anyone can say for sure, but I know it was Saturday-morning appointment TV for me and the positive impact it had on me are more evident than ever.

The Marigold Tarot

by Amrit Brar

I’ve been reading and analyzing tarot cards for the last eight years or so, and there a lot of “rules” around the practice, including never reading for yourself (what?) and never purchasing your own decks. Suffice to say I follow neither, and I don’t think it’s harmed me too terribly. While I have five or six decks in regular rotation, I always return to artist Amrit Brar’s Marigold Tarot, a lushly illustrated deck (with no weird extra cards thx) that beautifully reflects my own soft-goth aesthetic leanings in black and white threaded with gold.

I’m pretty sure I encountered Brar’s work first on Tumblr in the late Aughts, and stumbled on the tarot deck almost by mistake. I ordered it instantly and it’s been a trusty resource to read me to absolute filth but in the most insightful way every time I use it. We just shifted over into Virgo season, and this deck really resonates with me as an end-of-summer introspection guide before Libra season explodes into all its vibrant glory. Brar beautifully weaves traditional Indian and Hindu mythology and symbolism in with with the westernized Rider-Waite-Smith card imagery that brings new angles, perspective, and interpretations to the cards for deeper analysis. Check out all of Brar's designs and products, and if you felt like getting the blank Sun / Moon / Star notebooks for me for my birthday or something, I would not be mad at all.

The Big Lebowski, 1998

That's just, like, your opinion, man.

I kind of can’t believe this movie is 25 years old, because it has long felt eternally relevant and timeless to me since I first watched it on DVD in the late 2000’s. It was and is one of my all-time favorite movies, and not just because I grew up in Louisville, home of the original Lebowski Fest (RIP), an event I always yearned to experience but never got a chance to. I did have a Lebowski party for my 30th bday, however, and that came pretty close.

Maybe it’s the throwback goofy gumshoe vibes or the Busby Berkeley dream sequences that give it a vintage feel, but then the soundtrack is filled with scruffy late 60’s/early 70’s tracks, and it takes place in the early 1990s. Whatever it is, it should have been a bigger hit back then, but it has well deserved its status as an the ultimate big-budget Cult Classic. It never fails to entertain me and bring me joy every time I watch it—simple as that.

Matcha Green Tea

It's green, it's grassy, it's great!

Matcha green tea has become one of the more ubiquitous ingredients in all sorts of wellness foods and while I’m glad it’s easier to find in stores now, I hate the reputation it has gotten on cooking and baking shows as somehow "gross" or "off-putting" in its “earthy” and “grassy" flavors. It is both of these, yes, but that’s why it’s so tasty and goes so well with so many other flavors and ingredients. I personally love nothing more than a big wide-mouth mug with a heap of ceremonial-grade matcha whipped up into a paste and slowly blended into a frothy, bright-green potion tantamount to mainlining caffeine without the nuisance of track marks. If you're trying to cut back on coffee but still crave caffeine, I'd highly recommend it.

One of the biggest issues I have with how we use matcha in the west, however, is that we usually mix it with so much sugar you can barely taste its unique, deceptively complex flavor. Don’t use a Starbucks Matcha Latte as your sole matcha experience if you can help it—they’ve never offered a version that isn’t sweetened within an inch of its life. If you have a Japanese bakery anywhere in your area (Greater Cinci fam, get your asses to Chako Bakery Cafe in Covington, or TSAO-CHA up near Sharonville STAT), treat yo’self to a delicate matcha roll instead or a pastry horn filled with smooth, lightly sweet matcha creme. Basically, I think everyone should at least give matcha a try at some point in life–I’m pretty sure you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

The George Harrison Mural

Near Benton, Illinois

I had a work event in southwest Illinois last month and on the drive in we encountered a bizarre and beautifully painted standalone mural of my personal favorite Beatle George Harrison, complete with ecstatic fans. This monument appears out of nowhere along Highway 57, with no real explanation or purpose: just a bright, photorealistic 3D mural popping up from seemingly endless fields of soy and corn.

A quick search informed us that the mural was created in 2017 by outdoor artist John Cerney, who has painted dozens of larger-than-life outdoor celebrity tributes in small-town America (lots of James Dean-adjacent locations) in tribute to Harrison’s 1963 vacation to visit his sister in Benton—a year before the Beatles hit it big in the United States. Smithsonian Magazine has an intensely in-depth rundown of his visit, including buying a Rickenbacker 425 for $400 in nearby Mount Vernon, and being interviewed for the local high school newspaper. It’s a cute, sweet story of a shy British guy on vacation in rural America one summer, the influences it had on his career, and his influence on the people there who had no idea just who this guy was about to become.

That does it for this edition of The Enthusiast! Thank you, as always, for reading and if you're not a subscriber, you should sign up (it's free!). Be sure to confirm via email to get each issue directly in your Inbox.

Next up, Sunday Reads are coming your way soon, but until then, don't forget to scream real loud when you hear the secret word!

I know you are but what am I?
LKH

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