A Magenta Kind of Love

Hello and thank you for reading The Enthusiast, the newsletter that's all yum, no yuck! We're halfway through the last month of 2022, so this week we're looking at winter sports iconoclasts, brand-mandated trends, 80's Christmas kitsch, and more! Let's skate on into it...

Surya Bonaly, Reine de Glaces

I'm not super into popular sports, but I LOVE the Olympics. I've watched every one since before I could remember (except Sochi) and like every other Basic B, the "pretty" sports–gymnastics and figure skating–are among my favorites. She's  recently starting to be acknowledged as a groundbreaking talent, but yesterday was French skater Surya Bonaly's birthday and she deserves all her flowers right here and now.

If you didn't watch much Olympics in the '90s, Bonaly was one of the most athletic, powerful figure skaters as she came up through international competition–starting in 1992 at Albertville, wearing bright, gorgeous costumes designed by Christian Lacroix. She was the first woman to ever attempt a quadruple toe loop in competition, a feat only accomplished in Beijing earlier this year (possibly a result of PEDs). Her routines included extremely difficult jump combinations, but because she didn't fit the "traditional" image of a figure skater (dainty, delicate, and yes, white), she often received lower scores, frequently placing just outside medal contention.

At her final Olympics at Nagano in 1998, after injuring an Achilles tendon and knowing she couldn't medal, she performed the first and only backflip landing on one skate in Olympic history, much to the judges' shock and the audience's delight. (She'd already done it four years earlier in exhibition at Lillehammer–twice). The image of Surya in beautiful turquoise and gold, gliding on the ice as the arema around her blurs, landing a forbidden move with an injury and beaming as the audience claps along is seared into my memory. And the loud booing as her scores were announced are just as telling. (There's a great episode of Netflix's Losers that breaks it all down.)

Bonaly is now an American citizen and skating coach, and there are many parallels to her experience in the challenges Black women athletes still face (see also: Simone Biles, Serena Williams). Treat yourself to Bonaly's TED Talk on her experiences, then watch her other routines to see just how pioneering and skilled she was and how she opened doors for women to be more than just pretty and delicate in athletic competition.

Viva Magenta, Baby

Pantone's 2023 Color of the Year is a "nuanced crimson red tone that presents a balance between warm and cool," –more succintly, Viva Magenta. Last year's "Veri Peri" was a bit of a letdown, as was a lot of 2022, and 2021's color was the disjointed duo of "Ultimate Gray" and bright yellow "Illuminating," so I'm glad we're at least hoping to be a bit more vibrant and vivid in the year ahead. Nothing will ever top 2018's brilliant "Ultraviolet" for me, but I love the level of depth/potential bullshittery that goes into selecting each color every year, and whoever writes their copy is an absolute master:

"Viva Magenta is brave and fearless, a pulsating color whose exuberance promotes a joyous and optimistic celebration, writing a new narrative."

I want to be best friends with Viva Magenta now!

"It is assertive, but not aggressive, a carmine red that does not boldly dominate but instead takes a 'fist in a velvet glove' approach."

Or maybe I have a weird crush on Viva Magenta?! You can at least learn a few interesting tidbits about the history and cultural importance of color as part of nonverbal human communication and start planning your wardobe aesthetic.

Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers' A Christmas to Remember 1984 TV Christmas Special

Imagine, if you will, a VHS tape with a dozen or so TV Christmas specials from about 1984 or so. There's Charlie Brown (naturally), Rudolph (of course), The Grinch (duh), and Frosty the Snowman, but there are also some oddballs: the artful and frequently creepy A Claymation Christmas, the totally random Ziggy's Gift, and the mostly silent The Snowman (hosted by David Bowie?!), to name a few. There's only one live-action special on this well-worn VHS tape, and it's Dolly & Kenny: A Christmas to Remember, inspired by their best-selling 1984 Christmas album.

Now picture a child who loves that special so much she watches it even in the summertime. And then that child grown into a Geriatric Millennial with Seasonal Affective Disorder and holiday dillusionment continuing to watch that same special every year to this day. If it's not obvious, that child is me, and I can't help but wonder if that year-round Christmas special obsession somehow contributed to my adult holiday malaise.

Regardless, the album is great (certified double-Platinum in the US) and the TV special is pure 80s magic, right down to Dolly's increasingly insane nails and wigs. If Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings' Holiday Soul Party is my favorite Christmas album of the last 20 years, Once Upon a Christmas is my favorite of the last 40. It has the usual standards, all well done, but for me the standouts are Parton originals: "I Believe in Santa Claus" is cute and sweet without being treacly; "Christmas Without You" SLAPS and that's that on that; and "A Christmas to Remember" is fun and flirty, filmed in a bizarre soundstage populated by mannequins for the special. The special crescendoes when Parton & Rogers join a church choir for the extremely festive "With Bells On" and the chill-inducing title track, complete with an intense liturgical dance that ends with Mary and Joseph inexplicably genuflecting as Dolly & Kenny gaze down somberly from the pulpit.

I don't have a VHS player, and don't know where the tape actually is (hopefully at my parents' house? 😰), I watch it via YouTube, and whoever uploaded the special is a hero, both to me and the many commenters who also grew up loving the special. It's a must-see for any Dolly or Kenny fan, whether you watch at seasonally-appropiate times or in the summertime like a weirdo Millennial child.

Get Into It: Pizza and Diet Coke

It's a tired "obesity crisis" trope to mock someone for eating pizza while drinking a diet soda, but guess what: IT'S REALLY GOOD. I rarely drink soda at all anymore, but there's something about regular-degular, aspartame-riddled Diet Coke that goes so well with a cheesy slice or a fast-casual taco trio or a juicy cheeseburger. All of these foods are considered "junk" by most of society, and they also happen to pair really well with a tall, cold beer – and yet we don't explicitly mock people for drink beer with these foods.

Maybe it's because beer is (still) coded as masculine, as are most greasy, cheesy, savory "junk" foods, and it's still more acceptable for men to consume "unhealthy" foods as women are shoved towards a just-as-restrictive "wellness" mindset that's (surprise!) still diet culture? Maybe it's the cognitive dissonance of allowing someone to enjoy what they like, even if one has "Diet" in its name and the other is a paradigm of the Greatest Global Health Threat Today (and not, y'know, climate change, food and water access, etc.)?

Whatever it is, I will continue to sing the praises and deeply enjoy the sensory pleasures of a cold, fizzy Diet Coke washing down a satisfying slice (or even two!!) of  pizza–when I'm not enjoying a beer with it instead.

Links Gonna Link

📚 Writers Be Reading: I love The Millions' Year in Reading, where writers share books they loved this year, with Alexander Chee, Edan Lepucki, Jennifer Egan, and many more listing out their faves. Like all year-end roundups, it's fun to see Maud Newton (whose book Ancestor Trouble is waiting on my TBR side table) also liked Lauren Groff's Arcadia, and also find new books to add to my ever-expanding TBR stacks.

📝 Writers Be Writing: In addition to reading AND writing books, writers also be writing about their writing practice and writing inspirations, as writers do. Jesmyn Ward contributed a lovely ode to the current celebration of Octavia Butler, and Moriel Rothman-Zecher broke down his early-morning writing practice, something that increasingly looks like a strategy I need to adopt, but am resisting with many fibers of my being.

🗣 Ari BEEN Astering: I am but one of many rabid Ari Aster fans, and the first poster for his next movie, Beau is Afraid, dropped this week. He claims it's not a horror movie, describing it as "four-hour nightmare comedy", so start training your bladders now, babes. The cast is stacked, and Aster has stated that head trauma will always have a place in his films, so we have that to look forward to no matter what creepy discomfort lurks behind that uncanny-valley Joaquin Phoenix tween-face.

🫣 And 2023 is Already...Something: I'm also a fan of year-ahead trend predictions, and Vice's breakdown of upcoming 2023 fashion trends is serving absurdity with 80s re-redux, folklore grandmas, ubiquitous sleaze and the latest in slobwear. I mostly agree that "trends" as we know them are not this predicable with TikTok aesthetics evolving and expanding overnight, fed by fast-fashion single-use clothes that will pollute the planet for centuries. Whether I attempt to adopt "2000s normcore" – since I experienced it firsthand – still remains to be seen...

And that's all for this edition of The Enthusiast! Thank you, as always, for reading and subscribing. Whether you received this newsletter from a friend or stumbled across it online, subscriptions are free! Subscribers can comment on every post, and will get access along with new goodies coming up in 2023. And did I mention it's free?!

Until next week, don't stress too much about gifts still in transit and regretting skipping faster shipping (nope, not me 😅), try not to despair over Google’s a-little-too-expansive 2022 US search trends, and maybe don’t pay to upload your selfies to an AI that will steal your soul and your face data? Just a suggestion.

Magenta-ly yours,
LKH