- These astronomy photos are so cool and trippy. (Colossal)
- And this piece, in which the author describes being 33 and perpetually single, is so funny and good. (Elle)
- Not unrelatedly, here’s a piece on one couple’s open marriage that really knocked me out. (Paris Review)
- This week’s episode of Everything is Fine is a repeat of our hugely popular chat with author Julie Lythcott Haims. It’s the bit of inspiratrion you might be needing right now, so if you haven’t tuned in, please do not delay. (Apple Podcasts)
- Amusing: The Woowoo Agents of Real Estate. (Curbed)
- Marc Maron on the most awkward and cathartic moments of his WTF podcast. (Vulture)
- This was pretty darkly hilarious. (New Yorker)
- A delightfully unguarded interview with the great Angelica Huston (Vogue UK)
- I’m always up for a well-researched, (seemingly) richly deserved takedown. (Eater)
- Ten women on having abortions in the end days of Roe. (The Cut)
- The best Jane Austen film and TV adaptations. (Town & Country)
Thank you for another broad ranging eclectic group of links, Kim! Have a great weekend everyone. Stay safe.
Thank you for reminding me to add Anjelica’s memoir to my list of books to read. I’m sure it’s very dishy. Also, I just love Marc Maron. He just always seems like he’d make an excellent guy friend.
Danielle Henderson, my all-time favorite EIF guest, used to live next to Marc Maron in NYC and has very strong feelings about him (according to her excellent podcast “I Saw What You Did” which I highly recommend if you like movies). She did not elaborate except to say that he always tops her yearly list of terrible people, so I think she should come back on the podcast to dish!
In other news, I am reading the new Anna Wintour biography and I am having horrific second-hand anxiety thinking about how Kim had to function in that world of Conde monsters. Holy shit.
Danielle is also my all-time fave EIF guest! I’m also a fan of “I Saw What You Did.”
All the new mom in the open marriage essay wants, needs, longs for, is a nap and somehow this turns into an open marriage that sees her hiring her husband’s sex partner’s friend as a nanny so she has time to date sketchy guys that her husband finds for her on the apps and that she has to get high to sleep with? Seems like it would have been less chaotic to ask her husband to watch the kid so she could take a nap.
Elizabeth, you are my new best friend.
The open marriage piece was fascinating, but maybe for the wrong reasons. I actually read it through twice, to make sure my original assessment was correct: this was a piece about a woman who talked herself into an arrangement with which she wasn’t entirely comfortable, because she feels guilty about being a normal new mom who temporarily can’t be completely emotionally and physically available to her husband, who apparently cannot wait a few months for her to physically recover and adjust to life as a parent. He pushes her to sleep with strangers because it alleviates any lingering speck of guilt he has for being a manipulative piece of crap.
Yah, Hubs is a total shitball.
The Jean Garnett essay about her open marriage was amazing, thanks, Kim! What a good writer she is. Some of those images will really stick with me. I googled and found another of her essays in the Yale Review, this one about being a twin.
I feel like the concept of open marriages are being repackaged and sold again as something Liberated Women Should Consider. A lot of noise about this lately, but I’m not sure where it’s coming from, exactly, as all accounts I’ve read so far seem to benefit these men-children the most. Hard pass.
What you said. Also, what with the hookup culture and the lack of sex people are reported to be having, and then the surprise throttlings that are reportedly happening on some of the rare occasions, I do seriously wonder about our media culture – and by extension, all of us really – letting down younger people. Can’t we do better than this for them? How come they don’t know any better? I forget which wave we are supposed to be on, but, I think we have work to do.
While it’s a crap show worldwide, thank you, Kim France, for a safe cyberspace of beauty, culture, and solidarity. So, for some quick distraction, I’ve got a brush-with-celebrity story on the gorgeously unearthly Angelica Huston.
My husband & I have been longtime fans of professional Japanese Sumo. (That’s a longish story and the short of it is the cultural pageantry, but there are, as with every sport, dark sides. There are 6 tournaments annually and here’s the organization’s website, https://www.sumo.or.jp/EnTicket/year_schedule/. When a tournament begins, you can always find a YouTube channel live-streaming them, but it’s late at night our time and totally worth it.)
So, luckily our 10th Wedding Anniversary coincided with a once-in-a-lifetime U.S. exhibition of Japanese Sumo Wrestlers (Rikishi) at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena (https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91313651). I know, how romantic! Anyway, I made my way through the wonderfully diverse crowd of Sumo fans to the women’s bathroom, which looked more like a Title IX facility violation. And, there she was . . . Angelica Huston finishing a quick look in the mirror, while seemingly unnoticed by other attendees.
I like to think our eyes met, but in that moment I must have thought I was hallucinating, as she walked right by me. I hope I casually turned to watch her leave and that my mouth wasn’t wide open. She joined her distinguished husband Sculptor Robert Graham waiting for her outside and they disappeared into the crowd. I was just giddy knowing that Angelica Huston likes Sumo too.
Okay, back to the crap show (sigh), but looking forward to next week’s interesting links by Kim. Here’s to a decent weekend everybody!
good one.
thanks for the break from the crap show. 🙂
Fantastic roundup. The essay by Morgan Parker in Elle is stupendous. I just re-read Persuasion for the umpteenth time in preparation for the Netflix adaptation and I love having all the various Austen films and series in one linked list. The plight of single women is also stupendously dealt with by Austen so not unrelated! Have a steamy and safe summer weekend all.
Great astronomy photos! Thank you. … … … Sorry, I am not “open” to some married guy taking emotional advantage of his wife and of lots of young women. (Of course they are younger.) Just no. I think it is either made up or they’re going to eventually divorce. What else can happen with people who behave this way? Or is it all just fiction? … … … I know we are not supposed to be “judge-y,” but what is one to do when people publish things like this? I am not having it. I call b.s.! I do feel bad though if I am being rude to Kim.
oh also, thanks for the link the piece about Austen films, I forgot about the Beckinsale one.
Having been dealing with plumbing drama, I realized I couldn’t read the “open” marriage account in interest of rage management. (Doesn’t seem like an actual open marriage so much as a deliberately closed off-from-reality manipulation by a flim-flam operator from y’all’s descriptions…) Though enough plumbing repair has transpired that I was just able to enjoy some Bathclin bath salts procured from the site recommended by the excellent Gleaming the Cube, Jinen Store. (Ms. the Cube always seems so cool in her various pursuits and interests.) Meanwhile, I feel vindicated reading the Dan Barber/Blue Hill takedown. When I saw him on Chef’s Table, I thought he came across as a classic Emotionally Damaged 1950s Dad, the kind that alternates between emotionally distant and harshly perfectionistic, all the while being forgiven for such because he’s a so-called genius. Mr. Rogers managed to revolutionize children’s broadcasting with a kind voice and considerate behavior: that’s genius, if you ask me. Kim France’s links, as always, are right on the collective pulse.
I am glad the plumbing is working out!! I am a bath person too, when I get the chance. And I agree, the Jinen store was amazing. The wastebaskets were so gorgeous, I filed the name away for the holidays. There is something pretty excellent about a wastebasket that’s so beautiful it makes you think twice – about so *many* things. So I agree with you about Gleaming, for sure. And, I’m going to try to be more like Mr. Rogers.
Julie Lythcott Haims!!!!!!!!!