Here’s what’s making us happy this week.
We’ve a lot of little offerings today, happy-hunters. This week, we gave our ears to scathing gossips and baritone outlaws. Like Warren Zevon, we enjoyed every sandwich, snacking heartily from coast to coast. We applauded spectacles and big swings, and some of us even celebrated personal milestones. It was a good, big week at Lit Hub.
Calvin Kasulke enjoyed an audiobook—Gore Vidal’s second memoir, Point to Point Navigation. Vidal narrated the book himself, and “does so many impressions…including an uncanny Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, and Eudora Welty.” The famous wit adds a lot to a story that’s partly an earnest tango with grief, and partly an act of gossip. Vidal’s determined to “get the last word in on the friends and rivals he’s outlived.”
Molly Odintz’s nice thing of the week is also auditory. She’s geeking out about a new podcast charting the brief and wondrous life of Chalino Sanchez, famous Mexican-American crooner. Ídolo, from Futuro Media, explores Sanchez’s origins, rise, and violent end. “I’ve been listening to it in English and Spanish and also listening to a lot of Chalino’s most iconic corridos. His life was so fucking epic.”
And in other charismatic frontman news, Jonny Diamond calls out the latest Cameron Winter record. This perfect “early fall soundtrack” from the Geese frontman “is like if David Berman, Nick Cave, and Vic Chesnutt got trapped in a bar during a blizzard.” (I cosign Winter’s ways; listen up!)
Oliver Scialdone has a complex relationship with this Poison Ivy series. The first week of the month brings fresh editions of our community editor’s “favorite psychedelic superhero body horror comic”—though recent issues have been disappointing.
Alas, the thing about being a true fan is, no quitters allowed. As Oliver says, “if I stop reading I won’t know what happens next!!!”
Drew Broussard saw some “truly spectacular” theatre last weekend. John Proctor is the Villain, a new Broadway show, “is one of the best plays” our podcasts editor has ever seen. This heart-forward look at a cusp-#MeToo moment playing out in a Southern high school is soon to close on the Great White Way, but is hopefully coming to a regional theatre near you. “I encourage everybody to just go see it,” says Drew. “It’s an important play, but also a GOOD play.”
Drew also saw the Shakespeare in the Park production of Twelfth Night, “which was more or less exactly what a Park production ought to be: fleet, fun, lavish, joyful, and occasionally even profound (but mostly just fun).”
I, Brittany Allen, also cheered goodness. This week I took heart in an act of collective whimsy, and a whimsical leader’s call to collective action. News of this city-wide scavenger hunt that took San Francisco by storm had me grinning all yesterday. And all week I’ve been inspired and moved by Ms. Rachel’s speaking out on the genocide in Gaza.
The children’s performer and earworm factory behind your local toddler has been following in Fred Rogers footsteps when it comes to true child advocacy, and that’s cause for a kind of uplift. She speaks the truth plainly, and as it should be: “Deep care for children doesn’t stop at any border.”
McKayla Coyle visited their little brother in Portland this week, and went to many great restaurants. A favorite was Top Burmese. “I’ve never had Burmese food before, but the chicken curry was maybe one of the best meals I’ve ever had,” says our favorite publishing coordinator. “We sat outside, but apparently if you sit inside at the restaurant they have a little robot who brings you your food! Would go back to Portland just to order more curry from that robot.”
And to those of you who’ve been waiting breathlessly for updates of James Folta’s cheese quest, brace for more bracing. Because our staffer was “thwarted by a lack of kitchen time this weekend,” last week’s promised quesadilla must stay “TBB (to be baked) for now!”
Happily, James had some killer pre-prepared sandwiches at Benny’s Brown Bag in Peekskill. “Only downside was that the wasps liked our Thai fried chicken sandwich as much as we did, so we had to flee down the hill. But I’ve been riding that memory of the meal all week. Snacking on a good sandwich feels like having a little magic video game pendant equipped: ‘James has stamina and resistance to horrors from ‘Ate A Good Sandwich Somewhat Recently.'”
But Olivia Rutigliano took the happiness cake. She got married last weekend, in a beautiful Dumbo celebration. She and her longtime partner John Buffalo Mailer partied with friends and family, and enjoyed Italian goodies “from a place in Queens (Durso’s) that is [her] childhood favorite place.” If you see her in the wild, pass on the love!
In the meantime? Wishing you a weekend of crunchy listens and unexpected delights.
