May is for Millennials

Welcome to The Enthusiast, the newsletter that's all yum, no yuck! Every issue, 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. This week, it's Millennials, movies, mug cakes and more... Let's get right to it!

Beef

The feel-bad (in the best possible way) Millennial series of the spring

Fellow Millennials, if you haven’t yet caught this fantastic show on Netflix, you are missing out on one of the most painfully accurate depictions of our generation I’ve ever seen. Stephen Yeun and Ali Wong are absolutely amazing as late thirty-somethings seething just below the surface who find a semblance of solace in tormenting each other in increasingly horrific ways.

You’ll get no spoilers from me here, except to say that the show is both incredibly dark and deeply compelling. It’s about not living up to expectations, feeling as though everything you’ve worked for could fall apart in a split second through no real fault of your own, trying to keep up appearances when everything is falling apart around you.

Despite the controversy surrounding one of the co-stars (who apparently just plays himself), it’s worth a watch not only to feel better about your own life decisions, but to feel a little more seen in a culture that thinks we’re entitled and obsessed with avocado toast. Beef goes much deeper than the tired tropes and succeeds where so many other depictions of our generation have failed.

Socially-Acceptable Mug Cakes

Coming out of the shadows to a microwave near you

I discovered the cursed snack of desperation that is the Mug Cake more than a decade ago while punishing myself with the paleo diet before my wedding (it worked…until I ate a piece of bread). They are an objectively weird concoction of the Microwave Era that still sounds like a legit baked good in terms of ingredients —flour, sugar, salt, soda, oil, water, milk. Of course, during our little paleo nightmare, it was almond flour and like, some agave bullshit or something, so it always tasted weird and never truly satiated my ravenous cravings for actual chocolate cake.

I’m pleased to report, however, that mug cakes are now a mainstream thing in that you can buy little prepackaged cups in the baking mix aisle at the grocery, and somehow this makes them feel more legitimate? My favorites are from niche whole grain baking-mix purveyor Kodiak Cakes: they have a “flapjack” version and a “muffin” version (I truly can’t tell the difference) that only require 1/4 cup of water and a minute in the microwave and you have a pretty tasty, fluffy self-contained snack that can satisfy even the angriest sweet tooth without feeling too terrible about it because of the whole whole grains and boost of protein. The blueberry muffin one is my favorite to have for a quick breakfast, and I like the more chocolatey ones to have as an afternoon or even late snack when the sweet tooth absolutely demands to be satiated.

Something In the Dirt

Just two bros unlocking interdimensional conspiracies, nbd

I don’t recall ever watching a movie then feeling immediately compelled to watch it again and then actually watching it again within the next 48 hours, but I guess there really is a first time for everything. Something in the Dirt is the latest effort from scrappy writing/acting/directing/pro partners Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, whose trippy time-space UFO death cult exploration The Endless was one of my favorite films of 2017. Something is their fifth feature film together, born out of COVID lockdowns and dedicated “To Making Movies With Your Friends.”

It’s a simple premise: two weird guys (one a drifter spearfisher and the other a doomsday Evangelical math teacher) meet and bond over a smoke on the apartment patio, and when strange things occur in one’s apartment, they are determined to document the phenomena and make their fortune. But the film itself is a documentary about a documentary, the main points told in flashback talking-head interviews, which turns what could have been a standard “sci-fi comedy horror” indie by two Millennial white guys into something more interesting, and far more sinister. Is any of what we have seen actually real, or was it all part of their re-enactments, (in which they also happen to play themselves)?

The most salient angle of the movie centers on just how easy it is to “discover” eerie coincidences, if that’s what you’re truly searching for. Much of the movie is the two uneasy friends having wild, rambling conversations that spiral out into multi-dimensional theories that seem plausible. They grasp so hard at straws to find alleged connections to the bigger conspiracy that threatens to consume them whole in their manic desperation to be men of importance and ingenuity, and not two broke losers who can’t hack it in LA but can’t bring themselves to leave. It's weird, disorienting, creepy, and yes, worth watching twice.

Having My Own Office Desk Again

Because working 100% from home OR the office doesn't work for everybody

I got a new job! I’m back to B2B client-side again, this time in manufacturing. And my favorite part at the moment is having my own desk again. It sounds so lame, I know, but I already wrote about this at length, and it has made a big difference for me in just the last month. My new employer has a loosely-enforced 2 days in office hybrid policy, but I find that I stay more focused and get more done by having my own little spot to land and not worrying about whether I’ll find an open desk with a good monitor or have to use a spot with a broken chair that won’t adjust.

Don’t get it twisted: I am absolutely NOT a proponent of back to office full-time 9-5, and I think forcing people to return to how things were 3+ years ago before the entire world changed is exceptionally dumb and a great way to lose tons of talent. It’s the flexibility for me, the acknowledgement that most work does not need to be done in an office where your manager can keep tabs on you because they have nothing better to do.

And right now, it feels like a crucial element of starting a completely new job in a different industry—I like seeing my coworkers and having in-person conversations. I like having a separate space for my work that allows me to stay focused AND disconnect more easily outside of business hours. It’s so simple and has been so helpful with my brain space occupied by the deluge of new people, information, projects, and problems to solve that come with a brand new job with lots to learn and adapt to in a short amount of time. Everyone should not be required to come into the office, but for those of us want to, making the office more bearable is a step in the right direction.

My Old Kentucky Home: The Astonishing Life and Reckoning of an Iconic American Song, by Emily Bingham (2022)

Everything you thought you knew is wrong–which is precisely by design.

I had been meaning to read this cultural history of the Commonwealth’s state song since it came out last year, and I think it should be taught in all Kentucky schools because the bald-faced lies and white supremacist fantasies the songs represents are absolutely infuriating. Let’s get some facts squared away right off the bat:  Stephen Foster was a reprobate drunk from Pittsburgh who didn’t write “folk tunes,” he wrote actual minstrel songs for blackface performances, much to the shame of his family. The original lyrics to "My Old Kentucky Home" are about an enslaved person being sold downriver and away from his family to a sugar plantation where he will eventually die. The first verse and chorus are the only parts sung in public for this very reason.

Personally, I was stunned at how much cultural cache the song has held beyond our own state borders throughout its history and how intensely it had been sanitized for the comfort of white people to continue shedding a tear at the swelling chorus. I’ve been that person: already several juleps in on Derby Day, misting up as I swayed and sang along at top volume. I knew that one word had been changed over the years, but that was all I knew, and in my ignorance I thought that was acceptable.

And that acceptable ignorance is the hallmark of white supremacy, dear readers: if we continue to believe the abject lie that the chattel slavery that built our nation “wasn’t that bad,” we are perpetrating the same falsehoods white folks have told ourselves for generations to absolve any notion that we benefited from it and continue to do so to this day. It’s not quaint, it’s not sweet, it’s not nostalgic. It is worth working to end, and yes, weeping at the horror of it, no matter how much Mr. Foster begs us not to.

Link Me, Baby

• 🥹 I'm about as far from a Swiftie as you can get–it's not that I actively dislike Tay-Tay and her stans, I just don't understand the hype. What I am hyped for, however, is the rise of the Swiftie Dad, in all their precious dad-ness.
• 🙇🏼 With a new job comes new physical/mental exertion for my weird little brain and my out-of-shape body that maybe was never actually in shape, and it's good to know I'm not the only one.
• 🦣 Y'all, I would have given at least a digit, maybe two, to experience my birthday twin Yo-Yo Ma's performance with the Louisville Orchestra in MAMMOTH EFFING CAVE.
• 🧛🏻 The Boulet Brothers have cracked the code on bringing spooky drag to the masses, and it has been a joy to behold. If you haven't watched Dragula and you consider yourself a drag fan, get on it–season five is now in pre-production!

And that about does it for this edition of The Enthusiast! Thank you for reading and if you're not already subscribed, you should sign up (it's free!). Be sure click the link in your email to confirm and receive every issue directly to your Inbox. If you're already a fan, forward this newsletter 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!

This is the first full weekend at home we've had in more than a month, so you best believe I've been taking it easy, watching the trailer for Killers of the Flower Moon multiple times, and trying so hard not to finish this newly-minted Pulitzer winner for the sole reason that it is SO good and I don't want it to end.

Yours in misguided rage and new workspaces,
LKH