Combat boots & hot sauce [Like You Know Whatever]

Hi friends!

Oh good, you made it! Welcome to Like You Know Whatever, my new old email newsletter! It’s different but the same, like a Red Hot Chili Peppers song! And just like a Red Hot Chili Peppers song, I’m in a codependent relationship with Southern California.

Isn’t it lovely in here? I want to shout out the incredible artist Grace Miceli who created my banner art! Isn’t it fabulous? I just love her art so much (we have these two pieces + one more in our home), and I feel super lucky that she was open to collaborating with me. Hire your favorite artists, people! It feels great!

Random reading note: if you’re reading this in your email and prefer to read light text on a dark background, just click the title above, and you can read this on Substack instead.

Okay, so, how are you?? I am doing quite well! Actually, I have been having an excellent two weeks! My in-laws visited, I met up with a really nice group of writers I hadn’t met before, and my neighbors with the 12-foot tall Home Depot skeleton continue to make great choices regarding its efficacy as year-round decor. Oh, yeah, and one other thing… I GOT A NEW JOB!!!

I wish I could gush all about it to you, but seeing as I haven’t actually started yet and been able to read their social media policy, I am going to err on the side of STFUing. I will tell you that it is a content programming role at a comedy production company, one that I have admired for many years. The role actually sounds pretty similar to what I was doing at CollegeHumor, which I’m stoked about, as I loved that job and I think I was pretty good at it.

One thing that’s awesome about this new job is that they don’t have a limit or accrual policy on vacation time. That really screwed me over in my last job – I had been working there for a year as a contractor before they officially “hired” me, but then after I became an employee, I started with zero vacation days. Even worse, their accrual policy had me accruing one day of vacation time every six weeks. That means it would take six months to accrue a week! A year to accrue your full two weeks! With this new job, I’ve already been able to clear some time off so I can go visit a dear friend in Portland I haven’t seen since 2019 for his birthday, and go back to the east coast in the summer for another friend’s wedding & family time. I am so, so grateful for that. Friends are like family to me, and for better or worse, I have a lot of friends who live in other cities and states. Getting to spend time with them is so important to me.

Oh yeah, and I also got almost a 20% raise in salary, and good healthcare that will put several hundred dollars per month back in our pockets (I’ve been on my husband’s healthcare this whole time because my old job’s was… well. Technically it was healthcare?). 💁‍♀️ NBD.

I will miss my old team, though. I had some really wonderful, supportive coworkers, and my boss was great. That makes such a difference. Everyone there was always so kind to me, especially when they were first training me and I had no idea what the fuck I was doing. It’s kind of bittersweet to leave them, but I’m excited about my new team and all the possibilities of this new role, too.

Here are some Reviews:

- Hi, so, I loved Turning Red! Apparently, it has been criticized by more conservative/prudish people for mentioning periods?! In a kids movie? I must admit that I haven’t actually seen this specific criticism in the wild, but I have seen a tremendous backlash to the backlash, so it’s kind of one of those situations where you’re like, did someone actually object to this, or are you all fighting the ghost of a strawman? Y’know? Anyway, I learned about periods in 4th grade and would’ve been a lot better off if I’d learned about them even sooner. The thing about Turning Red, too, is that nobody even actually has their period in it! I was expecting some kind of Big Mouth-esque body horror, but no. Periods and period products are simply mentioned. Quelle horreur!

All that said, I read a thread from Odera Igbokwe on Twitter about the representation (or lack thereof) of Black people and Black culture in the movie that I thought was really interesting, and a topic I really can’t speak to. What did you all think of the movie?

- I’d like to take this opportunity to once again plug my Spring 2022 playlist of new music. It starts off very high-energy, and there are no skips, guaranteed!* Let’s take a look at some of the tracks now in what I’d like to call Liner Notes:

• “fleabag” by YUNGBLUD. I first heard this song on the actual radio! (KROQ, to be exact.) I adore it! It smacks very heavily of Nirvana to me, which you know is like catnip to me. I’ve listened to some of YUNGBLUD’s other music, and without trying to sound like your embarrassing liberal aunt, it is really cool to see this new generation of artists who can really openly embrace their sexualities in their lyrics in a way that artists couldn’t just 10 years ago. I loved these lines from his song “parents:”

My daddy put a gun to my head, said if you kiss a boy I'm gonna shoot you dead

So I tied him up with gaffer tape

And I locked him in a shed

Then I went out to the garden

And I fucked my best friend

I mean. Ice cold reclamation, right?

• “Naked in Manhattan” by Chappell Roan. Speaking of embracing your sexuality, Chappell Roan’s song is all about a girl being in like with another girl for the first time. “Like that one sex scene that’s in Mulholland Drive/I want to know, baby, what is it like?” is just such a funny and heartfelt way to use a cultural reference. Plus, it’s a fucking banger. I have danced around my kitchen to this song… more than once.
  

• “King” by Florence + The Machine. When I was Music Editor at BUST Magazine, my boss and I went to a very chichi preview party for Florence Welch’s album How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful at the Gramercy Park Hotel. We had to check our phones at the door because god forbid we somehow record the album they were playing that everyone was talking over anyway. We ate all the passed apps and drank all the champagne, and listened to Florence’s manager spew all over the place about how brilliant she is and what a triumph the album was. (I thought it was fine, he just seemed so slimy & phony.) At one point my boss and I were talking about Nirvana and she was like, “You know I was, like, friends with those guys, right?” and my head almost exploded, but I tried to keep the fangirling to a minimum and just vibrated quietly in my seat. Anyway, I think the lyrics, “I am no mother, I am no bride, I am king” are fucking badass, so maybe I’m a Florence fan after all?
  

• “a long december” by girlhouse. I think the best covers make you see the original song differently, and this is no exception. It really makes me reconsider the restrained pacing the Counting Crows utilized in the original. Also, the line “there’s reason to believe/maybe this year will be better than the last” is making me misty these days. Don’t we all just so badly want that to be true?
  

• “Wet Dream” by Wet Leg. I am not exaggerating, I love every single song that Wet Leg has put out so far. They’re most known for their song “Chaise Longue,” but my husband and I have really been into “Wet Dream” lately. He pointed out that it sounds like a song that could’ve been popular when we were in college (the mid-to-late aughts). It’s giving me big Dandy Warhols vibes, with a little CSS thrown in, and I’m all about it.

*Not guaranteed. Music is subjective. Don’t be insane.

- I really enjoyed this week’s Gold-Plated Girls newsletter on fake meats! As someone who did not eat meat from about 2001 to 2011, seeing how meat alternatives have evolved in recent years has really blown my damn mind. Back when I was a vegetarian (sure Grandma let’s get you to bed), your options were either a Boca hockey puck or worse, some weird mushy patty made out of beans and unidentifiable vegetables that fell apart the second you bit into it. There are so many more options now, and much better ones, too! I actually just had an Impossible Burger last night at a vegan place with a bunch of non-vegan friends.

That said, there are some things that food science has yet to recreate to my liking: bacon, pepperoni, hot dogs, and shellfish. Those are what ultimately led to my downfall in eating meat again. I know that alternatives for all of those exist, I’ve tried them, but the ones I’ve tried lack the smokey fattiness of real bacon and pep, the juiciness of a good hot dog, and the tenderness and taste of the sea in seafood. I once ate at a very expensive vegan restaurant in L.A. that tried to pass mushrooms off as oysters. That’s simply asking too much of a mushroom. Anyway, subscribe to Gold-Plated Girls, it’s free and always entertaining!

- I am really debating whether or not to share this next thing, because it originated from Barstool, and they are the WORST, but fuck it, I enjoyed it. American drinking culture is complicated, but I really liked comedian Bert Kreischer’s pump-up speech about drinking on TikTok. I try to be pretty conscientious about drinking these days, but booze can also be a part of the most joyful celebrations of our lives, and I think that’s what I come back to about it: the joy. Also: I do bottomless mimosas like once a year and it really is the most fun. The second half of your day after bottomless brunch is always a wild card, and I love that journey for me.

- Are you still playing Wordle? I am, and I’m also playing Heardle, which is for guessing songs, and Globle, which is for guessing countries. Heardle is either ridiculously easy (know the song) or impossibly hard (don’t know the song), except for that day when the song was “Redbone.” We don’t talk about that day. And Globle is incredibly difficult for me, someone whose geography skills are honestly at about a first grade level. I wonder if that’s at all related to my spatial awareness issues? I constantly get lost, even when I’ve been somewhere multiple times before. I swear, I worked at CollegeHumor for three years, and every single day that I drove in to work, I would plug it into my Google Maps for directions. The office was only 20 minutes away! (Okay, to be fair, Google Maps took me on varying routes due to traffic, but still. Bitch has got no sense of direction.) I blame it on being an air sign (I’m a Libra).

- The ModCloth x Marisol Muro capsule collection. I’ve been a big fan of Marisol Muro’s art for a while (I’m looking at this print on my office wall right now), and I keep coming back to ModCloth even though I fear I’m aging out of their demographic. Sometimes it just feels like their clothes are mostly for cute twee teenagers and quirky kindergarten teachers, you know? Anyway, regardless, I’m obsessed with the green cat flower print in the collection and snapped up this shirt because “I need new clothes for my new job.”

- When we were in South Lake Tahoe a few weeks ago, one of the women in our group had the cutest combat boots. Meanwhile, I was trudging through the snow in my Converse All-Stars, because after living in Los Angeles for six years, I do not own a single pair of moisture-appropriate shoes. (Look, after living in New York, it’s one of my great joys to be able to wear suede and canvas shoes without immediately destroying them in an errant puddle of mystery liquid. Sue me.) This was a wake-up call for me, and I decided that I needed some cute combat boots immediately. I can’t wear Doc Martens because they make my size 10 feet look even enormous-er, so I Googled and found these Dr. Scholl's boots that are allegedly 70% off (I feel like the original price is inflated, but the bottom line is they’re $45)! They’re also super comfy because they’re Dr. Scholl’s and come with an insert. Combat boots go with everything you’re brave enough to wear them with as far as I’m concerned, so I say, buy a pair now, when they’re on sale, and wear them with some girly spring dresses. I know I will!

- Euphoria. My husband and I just finished season one of this HBO show which honestly feels like a psychological weapon designed to shock and terrorize older people who don’t know anything about Gen Z. Things I like about it: the make-up, the costumes, the actors (all terrific and just happen to be the most beautiful people in the world), the lighting, the diversity which doesn’t feel forced or token-y, the incredibly familiar yet new villain which is Nate Jacobs. Things I don’t like about it: it’s got a big-time male gaze on very young women that sometimes skeeves me out, the music is sometimes a little too focus-pulling for me, the nudity is either “teenage” girl characters or the least sexy male frontals you’ve ever seen, but mostly it’s just. SO. Dark. I can’t watch more than two episodes in a row, there are so many upsetting things that happen every episode.

The make-up and fashion are quickly becoming a cultural moment in the way that Pat Field’s creations for Sex and the City were, and, I think, deservedly so. That aspect is really exciting to me. That said, there are so many times while watching this show that I say, “I never would’ve been allowed to leave the house like that.” And I wasn’t Little Miss Molly Hollister in high school, either, I wore fishnets and bondage pants and dog collars sometimes, but these teens are in straight-up latex and heavy fetish gear going to Algebra II. I mean the amount of skin they show is just… it’s different, man! I don’t know if that’s good or bad!

Anyway, I will keep watching and keep hoping for Nate Jacobs’ epic downfall!! (And don’t get me started on his disgusting father!)

- And finally, a request: do you have any favorite taco recipes and/or hot sauce recs? I’m looking to expand my collections of both. For hot sauce, I have your basics, you know, your Cholula, Tapatio, Frank’s, Sriracha, but I’d love to expand into more niche areas. When we went grocery shopping in Lake Tahoe I found this super delicious habanero-based Double Black Diamond sauce that’s local to the area. That’s the kind of thing I’m looking for right now. And as far as taco recipes, I’ve pretty much mastered the crispy fish taco, but I want to keep up our Taco Tuesday tradition by trying new things. Classic, fusion, vegetarian, I am down for all of it, so please send them my way!

Okay, that’s enough for now! I will write you again in two weeks, after I’ve taken a couple days down in Joshua Tree as a solo writing retreat. Let’s hope I get some pages down! And don’t forget to like, comment, and share this newsletter if you enjoyed it—use the links below or at the top!

Until next time—don’t push it, mushrooms.

Love,

Liz

XOXO