Hey there!
After spending the full month of April in quarantine, I've definitely hit social distancing bingo. I've pickled carrots, brewed kombucha, baked cakes, planted tomatoes and cucumbers, and Zoomed in almost every configuration imaginable. (A fun thing to try during a boring meeting is to pin someone's video who is not the active speaker and just watch them react to what's being said.)
As we move into May, I'm finding my sense of time is weirdly distorted. It seems like everyone is experiencing that. Sometimes the days feel endless. Other times, I can't believe how fast time is moving without any events outside my house to break it up.
Here are some things I've enjoyed this week that you might enjoy too. Also, let this email serve as a reminder that today is Saturday and the year is 2020. At least, I think that's right...
Upcoming Events
LIVESTREAMS:
- TODAY Saturday, May 2nd at 2 p.m. PT / 5 p.m. ET
COME ON DOWN, YOU'RE ALREADY HERE! I'm hosting another edition of my Zoom game show where audience members from around the internet compete for prizes with celebrity guests. Today's show features returning audience favorites Myq Kaplan and Ashley Brooke Roberts along with a bunch of surprises. Link
This week’s list
GREAT:
The crispy rice on the bottom of the pot goes by many names. In many cuisines, it's the most important and prized part of the whole pot. A few years back, Mollie and I got really into Korean nurungji candy, which captures that crispy, toasted flavor. It's not always easy to find nurungji though, so we'd hunt through the aisles of H-Mart until we found the buried treasure. Lynn Jones Johnston wrote a beautiful piece this week about her own hunt for the perfect crispy rice and how it connects her with her mom during this pandemic. Plus, she includes a recipe for how to get the perfect crispy rice bottom yourself that I'm excited to experiment with. A Mother, A Pandemic, and Scorched Rice
FUNNY:
Kyle Ayers is one of the most creative comedians I know. He's always coming up with new, hilarious ideas. He hosts a podcast where comedians rewrite famous movies that they've never watched, he created a live compliment competition, and I recently saw him do a standup set on Zoom where he sold airtime to a local pizzeria and read ads in between each joke. This set of his on Conan is NSFW, but it makes me laugh a lot and I think the bit at the end is truly brilliant. Kyle Ayers
INTERESTING:
Billy Collins is the poet that first got me into poetry. Before reading him, I'd always associated it with either impenetrable pretension or annoying rhymes. But Billy Collins' poems are funny, they're approachable, and they're often so beautiful that they stick in my head for years afterwards. The Library Foundation of Los Angeles posted a short interview with the former poet laureate where he talks about running into a Chase bank to scribble down a verse and why it's okay to write poems even if you're not overcome with malaise. Billy Collins (And here are some of my favorite poems of his: The Art of Drowning, The Best Cigarette, and Picnic, Lightning)
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I hope you're all staying safe, sane, and fully fermented,
Chris