Loving for Libra Season

Welcome to The Enthusiast, a newsletter thats all yum, no yuck! Every weekend, I'm sharing five things I'm loving right now. The challenge for me is keeping it to just five...

One weird thing about me: I have a bizarre fascination with finding out which celebrities have the same birthdays as me or my friends and loved ones.

I’m not sure when or how this particular curiosity developed, but I honestly don’t remember a time when I didn’t know that Desmond Tutu (RIP) and I have the same birthday. And now with, y’know, the Internet, it’s easier than ever to look up the birth dates of the famous (and infamous), so I love almost playing it like a party game, especially if it is in fact someone’s birthday. Maybe it’s a “this day in history” type thing, where it’s interesting to think about cycles of time and major worldwide events that occurred on the same date decades or centuries ago. But I don't know if can truly get that deep about it.

One less weird (or not) thing about me: I love being a Libra. I’ve been reading my horoscope since I was a little kid, not out of any desire to know my future or inform my actions, but just because I thought it was interesting that this ancient practice is still part of the daily newspaper (RIP). As an adult, I’ve delved deeper into astrology, but I love how astrologer Chani Nicholas explains it: as a tool for self-reflection. Best believe if I meet someone and find out they’re also a Libra, I immediately want to be friends with them.

And so it is with famous Libras, something gives me that sense of astrological kinship, a celestial affinity that transcends time, age, race, gender, and all the other modern boxes we find ourselves in, whether we like it or not. I don’t love the tendency we humans have to blame things on the stars or fate or Mercury in retrograde, but that’s humans for you.

ANYWAY, all this to say that this Libra season, I’ll be sharing a few of my favorite famous fellow Libras, along with the other goodies I’m loving right now.

Libras to Love for 9/25

9/22 Joan Jett - Yes, we all love “I Love Rock n’ Roll” and those of us in the know get down with The Runaways back catalogue, “Do You Wanna Touch Me” and “Bad Reputation,” but have you ever heard Joan Jett’s cover of “Crimson and Clover”?! It is the absolute best version of song, and no one will ever convince me otherwise. The not-so-subtle bisexual longing there in her wistful delivery hits right at the hopeless romantic at the core of every Libra, and that soft, breathiness just snuggles right up to the big guitar and bold backing vocals just perfectly.

9/23 The Boss (aka Bruce Springsteen) - Speaking of wistful longing on top of big ol' rock n' roll, our man Bruce encapsulates the hopeful joy of it all better than just about any other American musical artist or songwriter to date. While I do enjoy a deep cut or two, is there any song that more perfectly embodies the wildness of being In Love than "Born to Run"? The answer is of course not. It always sounds timeless and eternal, every time I hear it: the wall of sound that envelopes you from the opening note, the ebb and flow of the crescendo that carries you all to the end where it's all you can do to throw your head back and "Whoa-oh-whoa" with Bruce and gang at the top of your lungs. September Libras are made of sterner stuff than us October babies, but they're just as soft and sweet and gooey deep down as the rest of us.

9/24 Jim Henson - I am still sad about Jim Henson dying. I was in kindergarten when he died, but I'd been watching Sesame Street for as long as I could remember and while I'm sure didn't fully understand it all, I do remember feeling a sense that there would never be someone else like him again. He would have been 86 this year, but he was only 53 when he died abruptly from streptococcal toxic shock, and I truly don't think we have seen such a gentle but intensely creative force like his ever since. I can't find the date or source for this quote, but it rings true for me now more than ever:

"I've always tried to present a positive view of the world in my work. It's so much easier to be negative and cynical and predict doom for the world than it is to try and figure out how to make things better. We have an obligation to do the latter."

Also Loving...

First Day of Fall / Autumnal Equinox / Mabon

This has been the first year in a hot minute where the change of the season felt pretty dramatic. We peaked at 93° in the Ohio River Valley on Wednesday, but on Thursday morning, the air had cooled and fog had rolled in that lifted in the clear bright sunlight that lasted all day without scorching. I’ve always loved switching from shorts to jeans, throwing on a light jacket in the mornings, but still being warm enough to wear sandals for a few more days.

And listen, I know it’s A Thing now to be of the Spooky Persuasion. Cable channels and streaming platforms roll out  special programming to rival Shark Week and  second only to Official Holiday content in its engagement potential and extreme niche appeal. The candy and cheap decor start showing up in stores early in September (only to be unceremoniously shoved aside for Holiday shit on or even before November 1), and I’ve been getting into my scary movie season early so I don’t have to just stick to one month to indulge, but the Official Unofficial Start of Spooky Szn for me is undoubtedly on the Autumnal Equinox.

I’m also a bad Spooky Soul because while I’ve loved Halloween my whole life and still do, as an adult, I don’t have the wherewithal to decorate or dress up as extravagantly as I’d like to (or more accurately, at all). I do enjoy fun skeleton decor and all-pumpkin everything (no spice for me, please), and the overall sense of convivial bonhomie Spooky Season brings before we all drown in the forced cheer of The Real Holidays. I relish all things creepy, spooky, funny, and yes, even scary all year long. Spooky isn’t really a season at all, my babes, it’s truly a way of life.

RELATED: Los Espookys S2

At last, the most delightfully weird show on television has returned to us. It’s hard to explain Los Espookys, a show helmed by delightful weirdos and co-stars Ana Fabrega and Julio Torres along with Fred Arimsen, but it’s a little bit Scooby Doo, a little bit friend-group sitcom, a little bit supernatural and yes, spooky, but also deeply bizarre and surreal and crafty and cute with a healthy homage to t. The dialogue is mostly in Spanish with subtitles, and when it’s in English, there are Spanish subtitles, so it’s a deliberately and unapologetically bilingual show, and I personally wouldn’t want it any other way. The second season just started streaming on HBOmax and already we’ve seen a gorgeous ghost of a maimed beauty queen, a bitchy queer graveyard proprietor, an attempted brainwashing session, and a hideous Shakira sculpture. It’s so so so weird and in the absolute best and funniest way.

Balance It Out

🔥 Work/Life: Here's an interview with one of my favorite burnout experts Amelia Nagoski, discusssing how wretched the phrase “quiet quitting” is but how necessary the revelations that result can be.

🕯 Home Goods: Grace Jones has a candle that smells like “the musk of Jamaica after the rain,” aka black pepper bergamot, ambergris, freesia, water lily, Turkish rose absolute, cedar woods, salted musks, and water stone accord. It’s $46 for a small one and I have no intention of ever paying that much for a candle, but Grace Jones is cool and she does cool shit.

💖💜💙 Awareness: Last week was Bisexuality Awareness Week and Friday was Bisexual Visibility Day! In case you weren’t aware: you can be in a monogamous heterosexual relationship and still be bi! You can be in a homosexual relationship and still be bi! You can be in no relationship or never been in a relationship and still be bi! Bisexuality exists and it’s not a phase! The bi pride flag is objectively the best pride flag!

😴 Sleep: Attention all my inveterate fan/white-noise needing sleepers: Apple iOS now has background and nature sounds built in! Apparently this came out with the last iOS and was literally never promoted to anyone, but now you don’t need a separate app or an 8-hr streaming video to get background noise when you need to sleep somewhere without  a good fan or a white noise machine. I’ve only recently learned that “brown noise” is my sweet spot noise, which Apple very tastefully refers to as “dark noise,” which is absolutely the name of my post-punk soft-goth synth band.

That wraps it up for the weekend of September 24th! Thank you for reading The Enthusiast – if you're not already a subscriber, you can sign up here (it's free!). Enjoy the reduced humidity, buy all the pumpkin things your spooky heart desires, and tell a Libra they look cute today. They'll appreciate it, I promise!

Lots of Libra love,
LKH