Serial killers & serial daters 💕 [Like You Know Whatever]

Hi friends!

Happy June, and happy Pride to all who celebrate! How are you?? I’m doing pretty well! I’ve been looking a lot to the future lately. My husband Ross and I have been making a lot of plans this week for later in the year, buying tickets for comedy shows, concerts, and travel (more on that one later). I love having things to look forward to, I think that’s so important in life. I would say that half of the joy of traveling for me is in the planning and anticipation of it.

Something exciting that’s happened since we last spoke is that my screenplay Hey Hun, a dark comedy about a young wife and mother who gets sucked into an MLM, is a quarterfinalist in the ScreenCraft Comedy Competition for 2023! Woo! I’ll find out in a few weeks if it places any higher than that when they announce the semifinalists, but I’m super pumped that this story is resonating with people! This is the third competition it’s placed in this year. With the WGA strike in full swing, it is definitely a weird time to be a writer in Los Angeles. I can’t leverage any of these competition placements into anything until after the strike resolves (your girl ain’t no scab). But I am so, so grateful to the strikers for fighting for better treatment for writers, and if I could be out there picketing with them, I would!

Ross and I have been keeping it pretty low-key over here after a crazy weekend when we had a friend staying with us, a wedding in San Diego, and a wedding in L.A. the next day. Our friend is from Portland and has been exploring some work opportunities in L.A., so of course we wanted to show him how awesome our neighborhood is by going bar-hopping in Highland Park on the Thursday night that he was here (on both York AND Fig). That was maybe not the best idea, because it kicked off four straight days of drinking and partying.

Both weddings were beautiful, of course, and very different from each other! The one in San Diego had a full Catholic mass for the ceremony. As someone who was raised Catholic but now considers myself agnostic, I try to participate in mass as little as I possibly can without being disrespectful. The thing about a Catholic wedding mass is that they do all of the usual things they do at a regular mass, and then they do the wedding stuff on top of it, so it’s actually longer than a regular mass, which is already an hour long. Our friends are from big Irish and Italian American families, so I know that it was very meaningful to them, and I’m happy they had the kind of wedding they wanted. Plus, the ceremony was held in the oldest mission in California, which was pretty cool (founded in 1769!) (nice). And they actually played “Here Comes the Bride” on the organ when our friend walked down the aisle! I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen that at a wedding in real life before!

I was raised going to church every Sunday morning, but I’ve been out of that game since I was a teenager. My goodness, there’s a lot more up and down during mass than I remember! And kneeling, too! One of the last times I was at a Catholic mass was for my grandma’s funeral, where my Jewish husband took Communion because he didn’t know the rules, which I found hilarious. Although, honestly, shouldn’t everyone get to take Communion if they want to? Because we all know that Jesus was totally about excluding people. Gimme a break.

But I digress! The coolest thing about the wedding in San Diego was that the bride and groom made their grand entrance into the reception on a jet ski! The bride had on a short veil and was holding her bouquet up in the air with one hand, which I thought was quite impressive! They also had a taco bar at the after party, which was very SoCal.

That Sunday morning after the wedding, we sadly had to miss the goodbye brunch and book it back to Los Angeles to attend a different wedding that evening, which was luckily at a venue we could (and did!) walk to from our apartment. That one had more of a modern Jewish ceremony, and featured the best man walking the couple’s dog down the aisle in her special flower-adorned collar, which was adorable. I also like when couples write their own vows. Unless you’re one of those people who is always writing sappy IG captions about their partner, we so rarely get to hear our friends and family publicly declare their love for each other. I like it! I think it’s nice! The only rough patch in that wedding was when the groom fell out of his chair during the hora (but he got back on!).

Well, after four nights of partying in a row, we were pooped, and barely left the house the following week. We also ended up watching three movies about serial killers the next weekend?? But more on that later.

Let’s get into some things:

- Give me all your recs for Japan!!! Ross and I have been throwing around the idea of going somewhere in Asia for a while now, talking about everywhere from Vietnam and Cambodia to Thailand to South Korea, but when we finally sat down and looked at flights, we found out that we actually have enough miles to travel to Tokyo via Delta’s Comfort Plus entirely with miles! That saves us like $2000, which can go a long way toward other travel costs. So, Japan it is! Plus, that’s a much more manageable flight from L.A. than some of the other locales (about 12 hours nonstop, virtually the same it took us to fly to Paris in 2018). Also, Japan happens to be at the tippity-top of my travel bucket list, not that I would’ve minded going to any of the other options we were discussing–I want to go to all of them eventually!

We are truly at the beginning of our research phase in planning our trip, so I would appreciate as much or as little advice as you’re willing to share! I know it will be 10 days in early December and I know we’ll be in Tokyo for at least a couple of days, but other than that, we’re still figuring it out. Hakone and the onsen baths sound really cool to me, and it’s hard to imagine not hitting up Kyoto and/or Osaka, but who knows? I think the hardest part is going to be narrowing down all the things we want to do into what we can actually accomplish in 10 days. Please share any tips in the comments or hit reply to email me directly!

- On that note, if you have any tips on learning Japanese, I have about six months to get myself acquainted with the language. Ross and I have been competing against each other in DuoLingo, of course, but those lessons are so easy breezy and gamified, like playing Candy Crush, I wonder if that’s really the best way to learn a language. Japanese also involves learning an entirely new alphabet (or actually three, if you’re really going for it), which is a total mindfuck, but in a great way. See, this is what I love about travel, it expands your mind in ways you can’t even anticipate. So far I know how to say “good morning” because it sounds just like “Ohio,” and how to say “where is the cat cafe?” because: priorities. I would like to at least be able to read some basic street signs and menu items and interact with service people in a polite way. Any advice?

- This day-in-the-life video of a 28 year-old man with a self-described “normal” job recently went viral for being “depressing,” and I find it really interesting how different people view his experiences. Some see this video as an example of actually a pretty decent, chill lifestyle, and others find it an incredibly bleak example of our modern American society. I think that what I find a bit melancholy about the video is that at no point does he laugh or smile or, more importantly, interact directly with another human being. Look, I’m an introvert who prefers to work from home with my cat in my lap, so I get it, but I at least have my husband to hang out with every day. Then again, some people are perfectly happy being single and living alone. On the other hand, that tiny frozen flatbread he ate is no one’s idea of a joyful dinner. I don’t know, y’all! What did you think of the video?

- Cooking. The last thing I cooked was my attempt at recreating the bucatini dish Ross loves from the Hippo, my favorite neighborhood restaurant, but I would definitely tweak it if I made it again. I used fresh grape tomatoes to make the sauce, when I think canned ones would’ve been better, and I substituted sausage for the guanciale. Next time I’ll try bacon or pancetta instead. I wish I could find guanciale in my neighborhood. The last place I even saw it for sale was at the cheese shop where I worked in Brooklyn one million years ago. Anyway, Ross liked the dish I made even though it wasn’t the most accurate recreation of the Hippo one. 

I also baked recently, which is very unusual for me. I’m not a big sweets person, and I prefer the flexibility of cooking versus baking. You all know how I love to put my own spin on a recipe, but with baking, you have to measure everything out and be precise, otherwise you could end up with something completely inedible. When I was out in New Jersey, the local farm was offering strawberry picking, and it got the idea of doing something with lots of strawberries into my head. I ended up making this strawberry cake from smitten kitchen. It was pretty easy to make, but the result wasn’t my favorite. It took forever to set, and then once it finally did, it came out so dry! WTF? Plus, I was a little disgusted with how much sugar is in it. I’m not a sugarphobe or anything (just ask the bag of Haribo that Ross and I just housed), but measuring out over a cup of the white granulated stuff gives me pause. Like, what are we doing here? Then again, I don’t know why that makes me stop and reconsider, when I’ll happily pour salt and cholesterol and alcohol into my body without a second thought. Oh, well.

- Serial killer movies! Ross and I were on quite a streak last weekend. It started off with us rewatching Silence of the Lambs, which is just so damn good. This time around, I noticed how often we see the weight of the male gaze on Clarice. Every time she leaves the house, men are staring at her, turning their heads. Very well done. Then, we watched Zodiac (new to Ross and old to me), because Ross has been keeping up with the Doughboys podcast’s exploration of David Fincher lately. I remember finding that movie a little slow and the ending unsatisfying when I first watched it, but on this rewatch, I enjoyed it a lot more. It’s much more about the journalists following Zodiac and what that pursuit does to their lives than about the killer himself. Man, the Zodiac killer was such a fucking coward. I said this to Ross and he asked me which serial killers aren’t cowards, and I couldn’t think of any. They all prey on the vulnerable, the defenseless, those smaller and weaker than them. Monsters, all of them.

We finally ended our streak by watching Se7en, which Ross had never seen and I haven’t seen since high school, maybe? Man, that shit is DARK. I can’t say I recommend watching it, as it’s bleak as hell. But at least it’s all fictional. Right?

- Jewish Matchmaking (Netflix). I have to say, I like this show much better than Indian Matchmaking, and it all comes down to the fact that the matchmaker, Aleeza, seems much more likable AND COMPETENT at her job. One thing that’s cool about the show is that it highlights how many different levels of observance there are within the Jewish faith, even within communities you would think are more homogenous, like the Orthodox. Although Aleeza herself is Orthodox, she works with Jewish people of all different levels of observance and tries to match them to other people who share similar beliefs.

I watched this show with Ross, who is Jewish, but is also an atheist, and he kept cracking me up, because everytime Aleeza would say, “There’s a concept in the Jewish faith called blahblahblah,” Ross would go, “I’ve literally never heard of that before.” I also enjoyed some of Aleeza’s snappy sayings like, “Date ‘em ‘til you hate ‘em” and “when in doubt, go out.” As far as the cast goes, I’m obsessed with walking Free People ad Harmonie, detest way-out-of-his-league Ori, love liberal, quirky Stuart, and am yikes-facing Nakysha’s deal breakers of motorcycle riding and gun ownership (also deal breakers for me, but the opposite way). And overall, Aleeza was much more successful at making matches than Seema Auntie.

- The Ultimatum: Queer Love (Netflix). No spoilers, please!!! I am only a few episodes into this show, a spin-off of the original Netflix reality show The Ultimatum. The basic concept is that several couples enter, they try dating other people and living with them for three weeks, and at the end, they either get engaged (to their original partners or the new ones), or break up. It’s wild!!! Gender-wise, this season is a little confusing to me because I’m not sure of everyone’s pronouns. On the show, they all refer to each other with she/her, and they all appear to be AFAB (assigned female at birth), but when I was discussing this show with some other people, they told me that some of the cast might be nonbinary and use she/they pronouns. It just seems like it would’ve been extremely easy to pop people’s pronouns up on the screen when introducing them, but what do I know, I don’t get paid the big Netflix bucks.

Anyway. The reason why this season is so much better than the first season is that everyone can date everyone else. I’m not too far into the show, but there have already been some extremely messy situations where one woman was interested in dating both people in another couple (separately, not as a throuple, although that was discussed too), leading to much drama. Can you imagine?? Another shocking thing about the show is that there’s a really pretty 24 year-old blonde woman with enormous boobs who is actually the most grounded and has-her-shit-together person in the whole cast. Big fan of Lexi!! I also like Mal, who has incredible energy. Maybe I’ll update you when I finish the show, I hear it gets very wild!

Alright, folks, that’s about it for now!

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Until next time—猫カフェはどこですか? 🐱☕️

Love,

Liz

XOXO