Modern art 🎨 & children in Sephora

Hello dear and darling friends!

How are you?? I’m doing well! As I begin to write this, I just got back from six days in New York City and New Jersey, what a whirlwind trip! Today (the day I’m writing this, not the day this goes out), it is actually cooler in L.A. than it was in N.Y.C., and of course, drier. New York was so steamy and swampy with humidity, I was sweating my metaphorical balls off the whole time. Gross!

The main purpose of the trip was to attend my dear, dear friend’s baby shower at her new house in Jersey City, which was somehow totally put-together and lovely even though she only moved there in April. I still can’t believe, after I’ve worked so hard all my life to get the fuck out of New Jersey, that now my friends are moving there. Life is hilarious. I got to reconnect with a bunch of college buds who I haven’t seen in ages, drink sparkling wine, and chase around a tuxedo cat named Stinky: all my favorite things! My friend is one of those lucky women who looks like some kind of fucking glowing goddess when she’s pregnant, that bitch. But seriously, I’m so happy for her and her husband, this is something she’s wanted as long as I’ve known her. Can’t wait to meet the little spawn!

At the baby shower, I ran into a friend of the mom-to-be who told me she was a longtime reader of this newsletter, which was thrilling!! (Hiii!) I kept saying, “God bless you” to her as though she’s been performing grueling charity work??? I just feel like all of you who have put up with my ramblings for years are actual saints who deserve the world. I also met a woman who was wearing a “She’s Startin’” hat and we all talked about Bravo for quite some time, so suffice it to say, these were my kind of people.

Other things I did on this trip: went to the MoMa to visit old art friends (more on that later)! Got a delicious habanero-spiked cocktail at a fancy speakeasy in Harlem! Caught up with a couple old pals from Brooklyn! (But not enough, never enough.) Ate pizza, Chinese food, Italian food, gelato, and bagels! Had a big family lunch with my parents and my brother and his husband in south Jersey! Played Scrabble with my parents and lost to my mom by only two points (quite the achievement)! Went to the Sephora in Soho for the A/C and was horrified by all the preteens there (more on that later, too)! Took my friend’s dog to brunch (my friend came, too, I guess)! Wore a hot pink sundress to drinks in Brooklyn and then realized I stood out like a Cali sore thumb on the L train amongst everyone in their black clothing! Whoopsie!

Anyway, now I’m back at home in Los Angeles with my husband Ross and our cat and the rest of the boxes we still have to unpack from moving a month ago, lol. The new apartment is looking much better, but we still have nothing up on the walls, which is not my vibe. I’m a big decorator. The trouble is, we have so much art that putting it all up involves making a million tiny decisions, which is categorically exhausting. I wish I had pictures of it all so I could just design our gallery walls in Canva. Maybe we will get some of it done this weekend. Then again, I said the same thing last weekend. Ha!

Let’s get into some things:

- Inside Out 2 (in theaters). Ross and I went to see this movie on Saturday to sync up with a friend who was seeing a different movie at the same time at the same theater so that we could all meet up for dinner afterwards. I thought it was solid and a good time, but not as strong as the original. I actually watched the first Inside Out on the plane ride to Los Angeles when we first moved from Brooklyn, which I realized in retrospect was a huge mistake. That movie is all about a girl moving away from all her friends and her big hard emotions about it, and it was a little too on-the-nose. I was crying an unhinged amount for a plane ride, although damn if Pixar won’t do it to me every time!!!

Inside Out 2 is about that same girl, now 13 years old, and her changing emotions during puberty and some stressful life stuff that I won’t spoil for you. Try as the filmmakers might, the stakes just don’t feel as high as in the original, and I left feeling like they could have done so much more with the setting of a teenage girl’s emotional center. Anxiety was a great new character, but the rest of the newbies didn’t have enough to do, in my opinion. My favorite parts were the cutaways to the parents’ emotional centers, which were hilarious. At any rate, it was a very solid hour 30 at the AMC.

- Bad Sisters (Apple TV+). I completely missed this award-winning series, which is like an Irish Big Little Lies, when it premiered in 2022. Luckily, the friend I was staying with in NYC suggested it and was willing to rewatch it with me. It is SO good! The story revolves around five sisters in Dublin, one of whom is married to a total prick, and her sisters’ efforts to remove “The Prick” from their lives. Literally. It’s darkly funny, with great writing and performances and lots of twists and turns, and was co-created by and starring Sharon Hogan, who you might remember from Catastrophe.

My only complaint is that The Prick character is such a one-dimensional villain! I keep waiting for them to give him some kind of redeeming quality, but nope, not yet. My friend thinks that works given the sisters’ sinister plotting against him, but I’m not so sure. Either way, check this out if you liked Big Little Lies or White Lotus, it hits a very similar tone. (Also: I had never heard the name “Blanaid” before this show, and quite frankly, I do not wish to ever again. Not your best work, Ireland!)

- Pretty Little Liars: Summer School (Max). I really enjoyed this teen horror series and sequel to Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin! I actually think it’s even better than the first season–it’s lighter, the girls’ friendships are stronger, and it plays on some good old-fashioned summer slasher tropes. I just love the way this PLL reboot honors the history of horror through the lens of its Gen Z characters. There’s something highly postmodern about it, too, with its mishmash of movie references and retro nostalgia. I also love how this season shifted to center Tabby, a Black teen filmmaker, as the ultimate “Final Girl.” Honestly, I think all on-going horror franchises should pay attention to what this show is doing. It feels fresh without trying to reinvent the wheel.

Something that absolutely tickles me about this show is the off-brand names they come up with to avoid being sued. Their version of Creepypasta is a site called Spooky Spaghetti, their Chuck E. Cheese is called Ricky Ricotta’s. I’m obsessed!! Give whichever writer or writer’s assistant is in charge of coming up with these names a raise!

- Children in Sephora. I have not been in a physical Sephora store in quite some time, choosing instead to shop online, so when I recently ducked into the Soho location for some A/C and to do some swatching, I was pretty horrified by all the preteens there. I had heard this was a thing, but it was quite different to experience it firsthand. 

If you’ll allow me to be a cranky old Millennial for a moment: children should not be buying high-end makeup and skincare!!! Drugstore? Sure! ColourPop? Knock yourself out! I’ll even make an exception for discounted stock at TJ Maxx and Marshall’s. But middle schoolers do not need to be paying full price for high-performing, expensive, top-of-the-line beauty products!

I guess I can break down my crankiness into three parts:

1. Kids these days are growing up too fast!

2. Damn these spoiled brats for being able to buy nicer products than me!

3. Is this why the sample products are looking all beat to hell?

I’m trying to think if I did anything age-inappropriate like that when I was a kid. I did have a penchant for reading Redbook if I was ever at a doctor’s waiting room and there was one on the coffee table. I’m not sure why, I was just fascinated by their demographic of mature women balancing children, marriages, and careers, even though I had none of the above at the time. I also loved when my Grandma Sophie would come visit and leave her latest Ladies Home Journal around, because I was really into their column “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” A classic for nosy people! R.I.P. to both of those print publications. (And R.I.P. to my grandma, too, now that I think of it.)

- Cooking! It’s been so nice to get home and get back into the kitchen after not cooking for a week straight. Ross requested “that chicken and garlic thing you make,” a/k/a Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic, and that recipe is so simple, I was more than happy to oblige. I served it with crusty French bread for sauce-mopping and a salad of arugula, dried apricots, walnuts, and pecorino, with a simple lemon vinaigrette. I used to be Ms. Bagged Salad of Highland Park, but I’ve been really into making my own salads from scratch lately. It allows me to be a little more creative, and for us to have more variety.

Then, for an epic Sunday lunch, I made Smitten Kitchen’s simple eggplant parmesan, which is basically like a low-carb eggplant parm where the eggplant is roasted instead of fried, and then baked with tomato sauce and cheese on top. I only like eggplant when it’s cooked until it’s completely annihilated and almost falling apart, otherwise, it has a squeaky, sponge-like texture I don’t like, and this recipe fulfills that requirement. It was very tasty! My only gripe is that for as many steps were involved in that recipe, it didn’t make a ton of leftovers. I served it with homemade garlic bread, which I highly recommend. The secret to my garlic bread is that I spread the bread with butter and then drizzle it with an olive oil-minced garlic mixture, so you get both flavors. Two fats is better than one, after all, n’est-ce pas?

- The Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY). I had a couple of free hours in the city on a Tuesday before meeting a friend for dinner, and decided it had been way too long since I’d last visited my beloved MoMA. I don’t know about you, but for me, there are museums that I like to visit because their exhibitions are always changing and they’re constantly challenging me and introducing me to new artists (The Brooklyn Museum, The Whitney), and then there are museums that I like to visit because I know what to expect and I get to revisit my old favorites (The Met). The MoMA falls into the latter category for me. I love that when I go, I know I’m going to see some pop art and some Picasso.

I think that going to see art in person is so important. One major reason is that you get a sense of scale that you simply can’t get from viewing pictures of art online or in a book. For instance, at the MoMA, Monet’s Water Lilies is enormous and takes up a whole room, while Dalí’s The Persistence of Memory is barely larger than a sheet of printer paper. I remember being shocked the first time I saw it and realized how tiny Dalí’s brush strokes had to be to create the little ant thingies on the stopwatch.

One unfortunate thing about seeing art nowadays is that everyone just wants to take selfies with the most famous piece at the museum. It makes it really difficult to engage deeply with those pieces. One thing that disappointed me when I went to the Louvre back in 2018 was that the Mona Lisa was roped off from several feet away and behind glass. I totally get why that is, we need to preserve it so everyone can enjoy it, but the glare from the glass and the distance makes it impossible to see any kind of detail in the painting, which is not exactly huge to begin with.

At the MoMA, the piece that gets mobbed is Van Gogh’s The Starry Night. It’s a beautiful painting, of course, but this time, I found myself more drawn to Van Gogh’s Portrait of Joseph Roulin, which I could spend more time with. I just love his use of color to create the impression of light falling on Roulin’s face and beard. His skin is painted with all these sickly greens and yellows, but somehow, in context, he doesn’t look like he has a cast on him. The green floral background is also calling to mind Kehinde Wiley’s Obama portrait for me, although I don’t think there’s any reference. Look, I’m no art history scholar, clearly. I just like to go look at art every once in a while to feed my reality TV-rotted brain.

So, who are my guys at the MoMA? I adore Andrew Wyeth’s Christina’s World, it just devastates me every time I see it, even though they kind of shoved it into an exit hallway and no one ever stops to look at it. I love anything by Rene Magritte, Henri Matisse, or Frida Kahlo, and Alberto Giacometti’s creepy-ass sculptures. I think Jackson Pollock’s work is surprisingly dynamic in person. Same with Mark Rothko, his colors almost hum to me. And the older I get, the more I find I appreciate Georgia O’Keefe’s work. This visit, I spent a long time taking in the rainbow beauty of Lake George, Coat and Red.

If you’ve been to the MoMA, who are your guys?

Alright buds, that’s it for me this week!

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Until next time—see you at Ricky Ricotta’s!!

Love,

Liz

XOXO