Q1: On Repeat
some monthly favorites, because I could only hold out from the listicle format for so long.
I did not want this newsletter to be based on listicles, as much as the millennial monster inside me has a soft spot for them. But hopefully we can all indulge in a recommendations list once a quarter. These are the things - music, movies, tv shows, food - that have been on repeat for me throughout the start of a very strange year, in no particular order.
This one was a recommendation that
of The Lizard Review made months ago, but I finally really listened to the EP in January and have kept going back ever since. When I went to start this Substack in earnest, in part it was because I was seeking out writing about fandom and music by women, because I’d read and hear too many reviews about the ascension of 2024’s pop music girlies by panels of middle age men, and Madeline’s podcasts were one of the few I found really started to fill the void. Sunday (1994)’s hazy, beautifully written EP has been one of my favorite discoveries in the last few months. “The Loneliness of The Long Flight Home” sounds just like the melancholy of staring out a plane window, pretending you’re in an indie movie feels like. I’m going to see them live in a few months, I’m so excited.Severance
I hadn’t watched Severance until January, when the marketing for its second season started. I was a huge fan of Parks and Recreation when it was on television - some of my first regular articles on the internet were recaps of episodes of the last few seasons for a website that no longer exists and never paid me. Obviously, Adam Scott starring in a workplace psychological drama that deconstructs our societal, deteriorating relationship with work was incredibly appealing to me, personally. I binged the first season and have been anxiously awaiting every new episode. Scott’s performance gives me strong Bryan Cranston vibes, an actor I grew up watching play for laughs on Malcolm in the Middle turned drama television’s finest antihero in Breaking Bad. There is something so cutting about the breezy incisiveness that actors like Cranston and Scott can bring to Serious Drama that an actor without a background in comedy just can’t. The series, and especially the second season, has been full of so much intricate, weird storytelling, we love to see it.
Recurring donations to causes that matter to me
The news is bad!! I find the constant barrage of bad news extremely overwhelming, in ways where it affects my everyday life while everyone else seems to just be able to tune out or act normal while my brain feels like it’s on fire all the time. I know that’s just my perception, but I am trying to channel my outrage, frustration, and general dismay into positive action - which is hard when the news I care most deeply about is an ocean away from me, so opportunities to volunteer or protest in person are not really available to me.
That said, I have set up regular donations to nonprofits and organizations that make a difference on issues I deeply care about. They aren’t large donations, but setting up recurring donations can make a huge difference for smaller organizations specifically because it is predictable income they can plan around, rather than a lump sum donation in response to a specific crisis. I am not talking about big, national organizations, which often get a large amount of donations that very rarely make it to people affected by the causes they support - which is not to say those larger groups don’t have a purpose, but it is to say your money will go farther being directly given to a local organization. Instead of Planned Parenthood, give to an abortion fund local to you. Instead of Feeding America, give money (or food!) to your local food bank.
Meera Sodha’s Dinner
Food has been… hard, lately. I love to cook and bake, the act of creating something nourishing and shareable with my hands has always brought me a lot of calm. However, the last few years I’ve been in a series of shared accommodations for reasons that aren’t worth going into here. Big Cooking Projects are very hard to do without a lot of forethought when you share a kitchen with people you don’t really know. I’ve been defaulting to the same handful of quick, simple meals that I’m now absolutely sick of, or just straight up eating entire packages of M&Ms or Starbursts for lunch. In the last few years I’ve also started regularly exercising for the first time in my life, and figuring out how to feed yourself as you go from mostly sedentary to a much more active life is difficult, and something I’ve never seen anyone talk about much.
In a bid to desperately re-inspire myself in the kitchen, I picked up Meera Sodha’s cookbook in February and have been devouring her recipes. It’s been a refreshing project to start to work through new recipes, buying pantry staples I normally wouldn’t, and allowing homemade food to be fun again. When I named this newsletter, my intention was to write about music and food, but that’s been too difficult lately, but I hope it’s possible in the future.
Taskmaster
It’s taken nearly 4 years, but I’ve finally fallen down the rabbit hole of this UK comedy classic television show. For anyone unaware, Taskmaster is a show where each season features five different (usually UK-based) comedians who compete for points awarded by Greg Davies, the Taskmaster, for completing tasks - think, keep this basketball on the treadmill when it starts, but you may not touch the basketball - set by Alex Horne, the Taskmaster’s assistant.
I think the house where they film it is what I would imagine as the exact opposite of a haunted house. The show is so creative, and every task is such a rorschach test that reveals something new about the comedians and their approaches to life and problem-solving. This genuinely has become my comfort show, I’ve been making my way through the series completely out of order for months.
Girlfriend Collective
I was still wearing very old (not-GC) leggings that I had stolen from my sister during the lockdowns in 2020 until earlier this year. Leggings with worn out elastic and seams coming apart from overuse that I threw on for my work from home days when I barely see another sole outside of my laptop screen. I hate buying new clothes, mostly because I hate trying things on and inevitably returning things I’ve bought online in the wrong size. In 2022, I bought some Girlfriend Collective leggings and sports bras when I started to exercise regularly for the first time in my life to supplement my stolen 2020 goods. Earlier this year I finally bought more so that I could finally get rid of my shittier ones, and I can tell you that:
Girlfriend Collective allows you to choose a length for leggings, so my fellow shorties can rest assured you don’t have to suffer with bunched up material at your ankles with them.
For my fellow - ahem - girlies with A Lot Going On Up There, these are the only unwire bras that have ever felt comfortable for me to wear. Granted, I would use something more heavy-duty supportive for an intensive cardio workout, but for work from home days or a pilates class, they have been unbeatable.
They are durable! The pairs I bought in 2022 show almost no signs of wear, I’ve never had a problem with them and expect I’ll keep them, and the new ones I’ve just added to the wardrobe, for years to come.
I so extremely do not want to make these just a list of Things To Buy, so I hope you know that the things that are for sale on this list are things that have served me this quarter, but might not serve you! Please do not feel like you need to or should be buying all the things you see online, especially not here.
The Traitors (US)
I am through and through a TV girlie, what can I say. I cannot believe I’d never heard of this show before I was in a pilates class and everyone was gabbing about it. I went home and immediately caught up. It’s exactly what I wanted lately: petty, deliciously fun, escapist drama. Alan Cumming is an incredible host, and my only reference for his career otherwise is Spy Kids, which I know is wrong but I find hilarious. I know there’s also a UK version, I just haven’t gotten to it yet but I know it is probably just as enchanting.
My ergonomic memory foam pillow
Look, this isn’t fun or glamorous, and a red flag to signify that I’m solidly in my 30s. I woke up in January in the middle of the night in horrific neck pain for no discernable reason, and I had to change some things! I spent weeks laying on ice packs and homemade heating pads, downing ibuprofen like candy. I bought an annoyingly expensive pillow that has genuinely helped, even as I find its appearance annoyingly medical.
We can’t run around festivals or dance at concerts if we can’t turn our own heads. This isn’t even a specific recommendation, I’m sure there are better pillows out there than the one I ordered in a panic, but it is a plea that if you’ve been avoiding a basic purchase that could improve your physical health: suck it up and take care of it so that it doesn’t become an emergency. Your body will thank you.
Maggie Roger’s Don’t Forget Me
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It’s nearly a year later and I am still obsessed with Maggie’s 2024 album. It is what I keep reaching for when I need some background noise, and want something familiar and comforting. From the moment of it’s release, the album felt so lived-in and it reminded me of how my parent’s worn cassette tapes of Johnny Cash music felt on long roadtrips when I was a kid. My favorites are “So Sick of Dreaming” and “On & On & On,” but there are absolutely no skips imo.
Let me know what you’ve had on repeat at the beginning of what is going to be, I fear, a very long year.