Let the Sun Shine In

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 extremely specific nostalgia to outlandish esoteric ephemera–all personally vetted and highly recommended by yours truly. It's a bit of a potpourri this weekend, dear readers, so let’s dive right on in and get random:

The Price Is Right on PlutoTV

Get that childhood sick day experience anytime you want

There’s a LOT of streaming video apps out there, but the one I’ve been watching the most is PlutoTV, a massive Paramount-owned repository of genres, formats, and eras all smushed into one ginormous and extremely user-unfriendly DVR-ish interface. Specifically, I’ve been watching their Price is Right channel, which is nothing but late-70’s and early-80’s episodes of “The Barker Years” and it is such a fascinating cultural artifact. Beyond the outfits, hairstyles, Bob Barker’s suits and creepy/ condescending comments, it’s fascinating to see what big-ticket items like a full bedroom suite or a new car cost or what passed as mass-consumed “luxury” cost back then. An old-timey globe that opens up to reveal a bar! A set of tan kitchen appliances from a company that probably hasn't existed since 1990! A set of kids' snowsuits! The sheer randomness of these old episodes is truly half the fun.

Barker himself is still alive at 99 years old (which I did not realize!!), and part of the novelty of watching these old episodes is seeing him as a "young" man. I haven’t watched it live in a while (apparently Barker hates Drew Carey, which I find hilarious) but it's so comforting and nostalgic that it’s nice to put on when you’re out of new episodes of all your current shows and need background noise while you do other stuff, which is definitely not a thing I do at all…

Springing Forward

It's not that I like I Daylight Savings, per se, I just really like sunlight

Unpopular opinion, I know, and I also know that moving the clocks forwards and backwards makes no sense anymore and it apparently messing with all of our biorhythms, and everyone complains about losing an hour of sleep, but hear me out: more daylight. That’s it, that’s the benefit, and the one I need to feel like I’m not actually a depressed hibernating lady bear every single year. I’m firmly on board with getting rid of the whole thing—it’s a dumb holdover from before the Industrial Revolution, as is school being out for the summer (sorry, kids, y’all should go year ‘round)—so let’s lose this antiquated practice and just revel the light we have all year long, okay?

SG Lewis, AudioLust and HigherLove

When homage goes extemely right

Do you miss Daft Punk? I sure as hell do. There have been a few glimmers of homage in some songs lately, but producer and performer SG Lewis really said fuck it and just made a whole-ass Daft Punk tribute album and guess what: it’s great! I’m not even mad at Lewis for being so blatantly derivative, because he’s done the seemingly impossible in creating a decent facsimile to the robot-shaped hole in my soul that remained when those mysterious Frenchmen said adieu. AudioLust is a straight listen for me, no skips, and I think almost best consumed in one sitting. The singles are fun and glossy and unremarkable, sure, but there’s a warmth and cohesion to the album as a whole that seems more and more rare these days. Pop on some noise-canceling headphones, and don’t even try to resist the urge to dance.

Liquid Splenda

Or just generic liquid sucralose, I'm not picky

WTF happened to liquid Splenda/sucralose? It’s our sweetener of choice and instead of buying the usual grocery store brand, we've had to scour and stock up because it’s just vanished from those shelves. We can't even find store-brand versions anymore, either, and Liquid Splenda has had a Keto-rebrand for some reason? Currently we can only find it at Meijer, and it’s often shoved far back on the very top shelf behind liquid stevia and monkfruit and the other plant sweeteners that leave a wretched aftertaste (for me, anyway). You can still get brand-name and store-brand sucralose powder, sure, but that shit doesn’t dissolve in cold drinks!

I missed the memo; are we as a collective culture mad at Liquid Splenda? I know erithrytol was getting a bad rap recently, but as far as I can tell, sucralose is still not as bad for you as aspartame is (but you will pry that original Diet Coke from my cold dead hands–I truly just like how it tastes!). I know we’re all supposed to be using plant-based sweeteners that aren’t actual sugar now, but for me, none of those are as good as one that’s actually made from sugar. Call me old-fashioned, I guess?

Oscar Villains

If Tar and EEAAO don't win it all, we riot

I secretly love actively rooting against certain Oscar nominees. This article makes a solid case against Elvis, The Whale, and Andrea Riseborough, though I haven’t seen any of those movies and am only mildly interested in Elvis. My villains this year are Avatar and Top Gun (yep, you heard me–it's military propaganda watered down so it could still get that Chinese market money and John Hamm was the best part) because of their absolute, abject basicness. There is nothing remotely artful in either of these movies, with the exception of Avatar's SFX and those are all CGI anyway. They're cynical, cash-grabby sequels within pre-existing intellectual properties–if either win Best Picture, it's gonna be generic superhero sequels and Disney live-action remakes written-by-committee winning from here on out.

What's tearing me apart is Cate Blanchett vs. Michelle Yeoh for Best Actress. I'm leaning Yeoh because Blanchett already has two Oscars, but both are phenomenal in their respective roles. Same with Jamie Lee Curtis and Stephanie Hsu both nominated for Everything Everywhere All At Once, but I will not be mad if Angela Bassett wins, either, even though it would be for an aforementioned generic superhero sequel. Essentially, I’m gunning for a complete sweep by both EEAAO and Tàr, and every other nominee is their nemesis. And yes, I will fight anyone or anything who stands in their way.

Time to Get Radically Romantic

• 💚 Fever Ray dropped a long-overdue new album yesterday, and I can’t wait to be sucked into Karin Dreijer’s rich, slightly foreboding, and extremely necessary electronic weirdness. Think Björk, but deeper, queerer, and yes, scarier. Bonus: Radical Romantics was inspired by bell hooks’ All About Love!
• 🫠 Everyone’s new favorite "MIrAcLe dRuG" is constantly in the news, now, and everyone has a hot take, but the only one you need is Swole Woman Casey Johnston’s "The Yassification of Ozempic."
• 🚨 Teen girls are in crisis, if you weren't already aware. I don't personally know any teen girls at the moment, but as a former one, I can guaran-damn-tee you I probably would not have survived high school if social media and smart phones had been around. Something’s gotta give, y’all, and relying on more apps and technology to solve the problems they created ain’t it.
• 🦧 As someone conditioned to be productive at all times, and has been actively trying to stop being that way, I gotta agree with this article: do-nothing days rule.
• 👀 YES, WE SHOULD ABSOLUTELY BRING RSS READERS BACK!!

That's all for this edition of The Enthusiast! Consider subscribing (it's free!) if you haven't already. Be sure you click the confirmation email link to start getting new posts directly in your Inbox. If you're enjoying the newsletter, send 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 Q1 2023 Archive!

Until next time, try not to let DST kill your vibe, peep this year's shortlist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, have fun interpreting meaning into dumb Gen Z t-shirts (even they don’t know what they mean), and marvel at Abbott Elementary's Quinta Brunson living her best life on every single red carpet she’s stepped on of late.

Yours in Love and Sunshine,
LKH