things to boost your mood in the face of the collapse of the american empire

this is simply the week we are having...the lifetime we're having, if you will

If you’re not Dorinda Medley right now, first of all: How? Second of all: I certainly am. This morning I woke up at 4 a.m. smelling smoke and thinking “Is my building on fire?” and then, when that possibility was ruled out, “Am I having a stroke?” and then after that was ruled out (would not be the first time I stood in front of a mirror and practiced smiling and raising my arms), opened my phone to see that there’s smoke from both a literal forest fire in Prospect Park and a fire in New Jersey wafting over Manhattan right now. Great! Cool and normal thing to happen at the end of a cool and normal week!!!

For the past three days, I’ve mostly just scrolled non-stop and ate junk foods I haven’t eaten in like two decades and lowkey drank too much and smoked one (1) ultra light cigarette and went outside without sunscreen “because what’s the point??? all this effort and work to set myself up for a long, healthy, gorgeous gorgeous life??? when the realistic/bright side is that maybe I’ll die in a catastrophic extreme weather event or water war sometime before the next four years are up??? I didn’t ask to be born when I was born!!! I resent the world my generation has inherited and I can’t believe we’re getting fucked from both ends by boomers AND zoomers!!!¹ I hate it here!!!!!!”

Maybe you’re also somewhere on that wavelength. Or maybe you’re not as disgruntled but, like, still a little bit gruntled. Never thought I’d have to bring back the “things to boost your mood in the face of a global pandemic”-style dispatches of yore, but here you have it: another chaotic list of things that have pulled me away from complete despair, giving me some semblance of joy, or at least just some distraction. Take what you need and pass it on. (And get involved in your community and mutual aid networks and check on your vulnerable friends and stock up on KN95 masks because I don’t know how to tell you this but you cannot reject fascism if you can’t reject eugenics first and masking—being like “No, actually, I care about my health and the health of others, and I don’t think we should just accept that the weakest among us will die since we’re all going to get reinfected over and over again with an organ destroying virus we’ve all decided to think is just the flu despite all evidence pointing to the contrary”—is the first step in that! And also bird flu is absolutely here and the girls about to be in charge of the CDC [RFK Jr and his brain worm] are going to let another pandemic rip. Look, I didn’t ASK to have such strong pattern recognition skills but I do! So listen to me!!!)

okay felt good to say all that. thanks sorry love u mean it bye,
carrie

Maggie Rogers bringing Joan Baez and Mavis Staples out during the just-wrapped leg of her latest tour proving that she’s the only pop (adjacent) girly doing it right (befriending her iconic heroes and introducing them to younger generations in a reverential, respectful way and not the gross patronizing “please welcome to the stage!” 1989 tour way)
Her trajectory as a musician has yet to disappoint me, and her most recent album, Don’t Forget Me, is a real high of the year. If you have a car and have yet to play this with the windows down while cruising on a backroad, what are you even doing!?!?!? Get to it! It’s still 65º out so you can!!!

The new(ish) MJ Lenderman album, Manning Fireworks
I’ve been taking solace in the lowlifes and losers Lenderman sings about in his witty (“I’ve got a houseboat docked at the Himbo Dome” is holding strong as my #1 lyric of the year) and rip-roaring songs since it came out in September, but it’s hitting even more now. If I can’t have a time machine at least I can have my generation’s best Neil Young/Warren Zevon/Loudon Wainwright/Randy Newman. (For further reading, I highly recommend the great Sam Sodomsky’s review.)

New Haley Heynderickx album! New Haley Heynderickx album! 

Going on a dazed walk while playing Bikini Kill as loudly in your headphones as your ears can handle
Again: What am I protecting my hearing for at this point?

That said: My annual fall playlist just dropped.
Pretend it’s actually cold outside.

Or, maybe you need my lobotomy vibes playlist.
This will put you straight in an empty-headed, smooth brain state. Have you ever stimmed to “Hawaiian Roller Coaster Ride” from the original soundtrack for the major motion picture Lilo and Stitch? Oh, you are in for a TREAT. 

Janet Planet on HBO
Wrote about my favorite movie of 2024 so far (I haven’t seen Anora yet so everyone shut up) a few installments back when it was in theaters but now it’s finally streaming. The most tender energy you could possibly have right now, I think. An incredibly special portal to August (conceptually and also literally). A movie I wish I could crawl inside and live within forever :’)

They All Laughed on HBO
My favorite Peter Bogdanovich film (and easily in my top 5 favorite films ever) is finally streaming. (Not that that should keep you from buying an old DVD of it because who knows how long Zazlav will keep it up.) If only I could crawl inside this 1981 screwball with Audrey Hepburn, John Ritter, Dorothy Stratten, and my beloved Ben Gazarra (WHY DON'T MEN LOOK OR SOUND LIKE BEN GAZZARA ANYMORE!!!!!!!!) and live there forever. I love this movie so much I could cry just thinking about how much I love it and I promise you, it’s impossible to watch it and not feel your spirits lift.

My Old Ass on Prime
REALLY don’t want to give Besos any more money at this point but it is a nice little hug of a movie I think many of you would like. 

His Three Daughters on Netflix
One of my favorite genres of anything—movies, books, plays—is “I’m always mad at my one sister” (bonus if there are three sisters in question—the perfect dramatic setup) and for years and years I have been begging for another good entry, particularly one set in fall in New York so I don’t have to feel so bad about continuing to watch Hannah and Her Sisters. (Look, it’s my one holdout, I can’t wait to see that fucker die, it’s wonderful in spite of him/because it’s the most “films are made by many people, auteur theory is bullshit” of his batch, Wiest!, etc. etc.) Azazel Jacobs really said “here u go my sweet” with this one and I said “thank u so much.”

The Barnes and Noble 50% off Criterion sale
Not to feed the economy now but buy physical media before entire digital libraries are decimated in the coming years! A few recommendations: Love Streams; Paper Moon, which I  know they are finally releasing this month to get me, personally, to shut up after years of begging; All That Jazz (my emotional support film about death); Tootsie (!!!); The Lady Eve (how do I Don’t Worry Darling myself into this movie for the rest of my life); Days of Heaven; After Hours (which if you ask me is a parable about restorative justice and the ways in which your community keeps you safe, not the police); Broadcast News (for my fellow “no, it’s awful” girls); Holiday; His Girl Friday; Charade; the Qatsi trilogy (no but for real, get stoned and watch Koyaanisqatsi and you’ll be like “whoa you mean the world has always been this fucked up” while watching a version of society and technology that seems quaint compare to today).......I could go ON. 

The PBS Passport app
I’m not even kidding. Did you know you could have every Ken Burns doc at your fingertips!?!? Please do not ask me how many times I have watched Baseball by now, but few things can bring my heart rate down like it. Country Music!? The Roosevelts!?!?

(Okay maybe skip The Roosevelts for now)

The Dick Cavett Show clips on YouTube
I swear one of these days I’m going to write a deranged substack about how Dick Cavett deserves a renaissance of millennial thirst in the way we’ve given Peter Falk his flowers. Dick Cavett was hot and smart and I have a crush on him!!!

The video of the French children’s choir paying tribute to Serge Gainsbourg in mini Serge Gainsbourg drag while the older Serge chain smokes and weeps
This was one of my Halloween costumes this year and despite it recently popping off again online, I had to explain one of the funniest, surreal, moving, and brilliantly insane videos to ever exist to many who are not as chronically online as I am.

Three of the only four episodes made of Sofia Coppola and Zoe Cassavetes’s short lived 1995 Comedy Central variety show Hi Octane are on YouTube in full
You have no idea how many times Hi Octane has come up in recent conversations with friends. The children (millennials) yearn for the early digital age when technology was perhaps at its platonic ideal and pop culture was irreverent and nepo babies were less nepo baby more “idk being an artist is just the family business” and used their clout to get their weird shit made rather than idk ride their name recognition as a way to sell makeup and we could log off if we wanted to!!!!!!!!!! 

Nerds Gummy Clusters
I don’t think the human body was meant to consume as many as I have this week but they’re holy. They’re healing. They’re carmine-colored happiness. You could never make me hate them.

Soup? Soup.
No trad wife but I’m gonna make my first Roberto (as always, I like to modify it: no meat, double onions, double beans, add carrots) of the season and freeze some of it and maybe that will fix things. Or at least give me something to stockpile for when more of our food supply is riddled with listeria. :) 

Sloane Crosley’s Grief is for People
I’m admittedly almost a year late to reading it even though I bought it when it came out but turns out it fits the vibe right now perfectly. 

Robert Caro’s The Power Broker
YES, I’m still chipping away at it, leave me alone! Or better yet, leave me alone and pick it up yourself if you haven’t read it! There quite literally could not be a better time.

This.

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i wrote a book about elaine may that just came out and if u buy it i’ll give u a little forehead kiss :’)

okay that's it that's the end thanks sorry love u bye

1. Obviously, if you’re a boomer or zoomer subscribed to this, you’re likely an exception to this blanket resentment and I’m not talking about you!