10 ways to beat the Cali rain blues ☔️ & a minotaur romance review

Hi friends,

How’s it going? As I begin to write this, we are on our third straight day of rain in Los Angeles and I’m feeling a little stir-crazy. Yes, I know, we Southern Californians are incredibly soft, big babies; “I need my sun-sun and my 75 degwees, waahhhh!!” But that’s why we live here and pay exorbitant rent for apartments that don’t even come with refrigerators. That’s why we put up with year-round road work and mediocre pizza and LAPD helicopters and failure after failure of local politicians. That’s why we’re all in therapy and addicted to edibles and we get acupuncture and buy crystals and candles for good luck, because we mentally, physically, spiritually cannot handle any kind of minor hardship or pain in life.

Yesterday I felt kind of depressed, so I Googled what to do if you’re feeling depressed, and all the advice was like, “Go for a walk! Get outside! Get some sun!” I wanted to yell back at them, “I CAN’T right now! It’s pouring and I got an alert from the mayor to stay inside and besides, I don’t even own an umbrella!”

Then I saw this meme which so perfectly describes my self-care routine, it’s a bit scary:

The problem is that a lot of my feeling-low coping tactics, like, “order a bunch of pineapple fried rice and crab rangoon” or “spend $40 at Target” cost money that I don’t have right now.

Here are some other things I do when I’m feeling shitty:

1. Pet my cat

2. Make a big meal with lots of veggies (need those vitamins)

3. Read an easy book (like a romance novel, not, like, Hop on Pop. Although, now that I’m thinking about it, that could also be the title of a romance novel)

4. Do my nails

5. Change my clothes

6. Play The Sims 4 and money cheat my character to insane wealth and build the house of my dreams (this one is a little sad)

7. Call my parents

8. Watch a dark drama about people whose lives are so much more depressing &  complicated than mine (lately it’s been The Bear and True Detective: Night Country)

9. Make plans with a friend for later in the week

10. Write a list of 3-5 things I’m grateful for or excited about

What do you do when you’re feeling blue? Bonus points if you can do it indoors on a rainy day!

This job search is starting to make me feel a little insane. I just feel like it shouldn’t be this hard for someone with 15 years of work experience to find something. I was texting with a friend about this and she said, “You’re not the problem, honey.” Deep down, I knew that, but it was still very healing to hear. I know that so much of L.A. is still reeling from the strikes, and thousands of people are still un- and underemployed, and the work is not picking up fast enough, and companies are laying people off instead of investing in new hires. I know that. But sometimes it feels like I have no value, nothing to offer, and am never going to work again.

And I know I’m very fortunate to be married to someone with a stable income; Ross works in insurance (commercial property, nothing evil) and has nothing to do with this godforsaken industry. I have health insurance and a roof over my head (even if our neighbors drive us insane and we want to move as soon as I get a new job). But I want to make my own money and contribute to our bills, too! And not just our bills, I want to be able to buy myself dumb shit if I want to! The other day I almost started crying because Nooworks had a new jumpsuit in a limited edition print that I really wanted, but I can’t justify spending almost $200 on a jumpsuit right now. I know, I know, boohoo bitch, that’s totally a want, not a need, but not having your own money suuuuucks.

So many of you asked for the dirt on that red flag-heavy job interview I wrote about in last week’s email, so I might as well dish. I guess it was kind of a dick move to hint at it and not tell you the full story, anyway. It was for an email marketing team lead position. I haven’t done email marketing per se, but I have done a lot of copywriting, managing and editing other writers, and I do happen to have 10 years of experience writing a certain email newsletter with an extremely high regular open rate of 50% or higher.

Well, the HR person I talked to basically told me in so many words that their entire copywriting team had recently quit because they were all overworked and underpaid, so they were now going to outsource all their copywriting to the Philippines, and I would be managing THAT new writing team and editing their writing. YIKES, right?? I can’t imagine what they were paying those people. They also had very high and frankly, unrealistic goals for this role, like a 60% open rate across the board (the average open rate for email marketing is around 20%). It also paid less than what I made at my last job, but I justified it to myself because they had a four day work week.

The best part? I got rejected the next day, LOL. The worst part? I didn’t immediately run screaming from the interview and withdraw my application because, well, the fact of the matter is I still really need a job.

Le sigh.

Well, I hope you’re having a better week than I am! Let’s get into some things:

- Last time I mentioned that my husband had bought me a NSFW minotaur romance novel, it was by far the most clicked link of the whole newsletter, you little perverts! So I thought I would give you my review. He half got it for me as a joke, and I half read it as a joke, but the author did not write it as a joke. It’s, like, an actual story? With character development and stuff? I mean, look, the concept is absolutely disgusting, and if you can’t handle bodily fluids, steer clear. I guess what I found most fascinating about the book is how the author justified there being a world where humans and minotaurs co-exist. She created this charming little town filled with mythical creatures and even colored in some of the challenges of interspecies dating (like an elf living in a house built for orcs and unable to reach their top cabinets, for example). Parts of it like that were cute, but mostly it was disgusting. I don’t think I will be dipping my toe back into the mythical creature romance pool anytime soon.

- Is there anything more upsetting than when a social media platform suggests people to follow based on your contacts? I don’t know about you, but my contacts are a mess of old weed dealers, improv classmates from a decade ago, Airbnb hosts, a guy who worked on our car once, a coworker from five jobs ago who I couldn’t stand, my dead grandmothers’ numbers, my old super from Brooklyn, a Greek restaurant in my old neighborhood that no longer exists, the manager of an apartment we didn’t end up renting, a cat sitter we used one time, an HR rep from a job I never got, and it goes on and on. I don’t want to follow any of them on TikTok, thanks!!

- Last Friday night, we hosted our dear friend and neighbor for grilled cheeses and tomato basil soup, a meal we’ve been trying to have together since last winter but for whatever reason never worked out. I used the Barefoot Contessa’s recipe for the tomato soup, with a few tweaks: I omitted the orzo and the saffron (really, saffron? What the hell do I look like, a spice millionaire?!), blended the soup with my immersion blender, then added a handful of chopped fresh basil. Our friend said it was “the good kind of tomato soup, like Panera’s,” which I will choose to take as high praise! For the grilled cheese, I used hearty sourdough bread with gruyere and sharp yellow cheddar. My secret is to butter the pan AND the outside of the bread. It’s very indulgent, but honestly, if you want a “healthy” grilled cheese, you don’t come to my house. It’s just that simple.

We drank too much wine and caught up on gossip and realized that our friend’s black and red checkered shirt matched our tablecloth, so Ross did an Instagram poll to see who wore it better. Our friend won, but to be fair to the table, he was campaigning pretty hard. Our table has no Instagram following to rally.

- RuPaul’s Drag Race, season 16 (MTV, for purchase on Prime Video, other places). Oof, I don’t know how I feel about this season so far. It feels like there is so much manufactured drama and cattiness (no disrespect to cats). I don’t know what the heck that’s about. Maybe not enough people were watching Untucked? And I am seeing a real divide between the queens who have money (Dawn) and everyone else who is scraping together DIY looks. 

My thoughts on some of the queens: Amanda Tori Meating has the best name and the worst makeup, Q and Sapphira are in a different league than everyone else, and Nymphia Wind has had me in a death grip from the moment she walked in and said “bananas.” I watched the second episode while I was staying with my friend in Brooklyn who is a wonderful pop culture writer and editor, and she noted that Plasma is a very strange name for a queen who does vintage, old-timey Hollywood diva looks. I totally agree! It sounds like the name of a spooky queen, or at least an edgier one. (Although, is there anything spookier than a drag queen with a BFA in musical theater? God help us when they do a Rusical.) I will probably keep watching, but I’m not really feeling it so far. What do you think of this season?

- The other day I saw this picture of a young Nathan Fielder and it kind of blew my mind:

Did someone take all the yearbook photos of the dudes I hung out with in high school and feed them through some kind of AI to create this image? I am deeply disturbed. My eyes don’t quite know where to land with this photo, it really is uncanny how much he looks like half my friends’ boyfriends from high school. I just… wowowow. He could’ve been my prom date. I guess we would have been friends?? Wild.

- This is neither here nor there, but one time, when I was in the office at Funny Or Die, we started talking about comedy we loved as a kid, and I mentioned that I loved The Simpsons. My much younger coworkers were like, “oh, really, you like that show? It’s like Family Guy, right?” 💀 My friends. We are now at the point where Millennials are the last generation to remember when The Simpsons was actually good, no, GREAT, with the best writers, and not at ALL corny or comparable to Family Guy, oh my GODDD!! I’m terribly upset all over again just thinking about this interaction. But also, I get it! I was talking about the first 10 seasons of the show, which may well have aired before they were born, or at least long before they were watching adult animation.

I also recently realized that today’s college freshmen were being born while I was a freshman in college, writing bad plays and putting together hodge-podged thrift store outfits and dancing to Justice and The Knife. But, you know what? The other day I did one of those old age filters on TikTok that shows a side-by-side of you with tons of wrinkles vs. your real face, and instead of fearing the aging process and how I’m totally going to turn into my Grandma Sophie, I just kept staring at my “real” face and thinking, “oh my god, I’m so young and beautiful!!” So, maybe go do that if you’re feeling old. Yeah.

- Feud: Capote vs. The Swans (FX, Hulu). This show has EVERYTHING: scandals & gossip! Rich, pill-popping socialites! A famous writer on a booze-fueled nosedive! DEMI FREAKIN’ MOORE!

I didn’t watch the last season of Feud, which I now realize was a massive mistake that I have to correct immediately. What I love most about this latest season is how it utilizes so many brilliant middle-aged actresses: Diane Lane, Molly Ringwald, Naomi Watts. I mean, even Calista Flockhart came out of retirement for it! (And she is so good as Lee Radziwill, Jackie Kennedy’s younger sister and, more importantly, former Real Housewife of New York City Carole Radziwill’s mother-in-law). Gus Van Sant directed the first two episodes, for Christ’s sake. If any of this appeals to you, you gotta check it out.

I think what strikes me the most about Truman Capote in this show is how boring and predictable all writers are in their most self-destructive habits: whining about writer’s block, feeling simultaneously defined and trapped by youthful achievements, and unable to keep good gossip to themselves. He had such a good thing going as high society’s favorite party guest, but he just couldn’t stop himself from blowing it all up. There’s something so boring about that story, but the “swans” keep it from being stale. It all just makes me want to write something immediately with about 15 juicy middle-aged female characters so that we can keep all these legends working with the roles they deserve. Sure, let’s throw that one on my pile of works in progress, why not?

Alright, that’s about it for now!

Until next time—rain, rain, get the fuck outta here!

Love,

Liz

XOXO