Hi friends,

How are you?? I hope you’ve been well. I’m sorry for the month+ gap in my newsletter publishing schedule, longtime readers know that is not typical for me. I have just been at capacity lately. Work has been particularly crazy, and then a couple weeks ago, I found out that a friend of mine had passed away very suddenly in an awful, random, freak accident, and of course I didn’t feel much like writing about the funny web series I’ve been watching and the new chicken dish I’d made after that brush with tragedy and mortality.

I wrote a whole thing about Will, my friend who passed away, but then I felt weird about it and didn’t send it. You can read the obituary his family wrote here. There is also a fundraiser for his three year-old son’s college fund, but as of writing this, it may be paused. He was a kind, creative, and hardworking person who was funny both intentionally and unintentionally, and he adored his wife and child. He will be very missed.

There’s been a lot to process lately. One thing that feels big in theory but that I’ve barely thought about is that my parents recently sold my childhood home. I feel like I should feel a type of way about it, but I don’t. Mostly, I just feel happy for them, and a bit relieved, because I never thought they’d get out of there. They’ve been retired for a while and have been talking about downsizing for years, but always had some excuse about some project or other they needed to do first. Anyway, they finally decided on a new home in a retirement community the next town over, and the house sold quite quickly.

It was pretty weird to see the place where I grew up on Zillow. My old bedroom has been a guest room for years now, the walls repainted, my Nirvana posters gone, the boy band stickers from Twist Magazine scraped off my closet door. Still, the tiny, ‘70s-style kitchen with the ugly brown linoleum is still there, the pine trees I used to climb and read books in as a kid, the backyard where we saw deer and bunnies and chipmunks. The wallpaper in the half bath that I ripped and lied about (in my defense, I was five). That fucking driveway that we shoveled so many times every winter. I’m not overly fond of the town I grew up in, but I can appreciate what my parents were giving us by moving there. I grew up on a suburban cul-de-sac, running around with the neighborhood kids, playing in the woods behind our houses. I don’t know if kids really get to do that anymore, have that level of independence, or get to rely so much on their own imaginations.

Lately, I’ve been getting into some old things, and some new things. Let’s talk about the old things first:

- Gothic literature. I recently read two classic books written by women for the first time, Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. I wanted to read both before I saw their recent movie adaptations. Wuthering Heights was bonkers, and I can’t wait to see Emerald Fennell’s version. For some reason, I went in thinking it was going to be a romantic comedy akin to a Jane Austen novel, but it was so much darker and weirder than that, and I was delighted! I love how pretty much the whole story is told by the housekeeper to the short-term tenant of the house she’s managing, like you’re getting some late night gossip from your Airbnb host. “Gurrrllll, you would not believe this fucked up family I work for, let me tell you all about it.” I definitely could have used a family tree in the first pages of the book, though.

While I enjoyed Wuthering Heights (as I do all Brontë unhingedness), I have to say, Frankenstein is a masterpiece, a true work of female genius. I’ve always heard that it’s a great book, but I definitely didn’t realize how philosophical it would be, how much depth and nuance it contains. It’s a true meditation on the human condition, and a far cry from the green dude with the bolts in his neck grunting and staggering around that we all know, with no disrespect intended to Mr. Boris Karloff.

After I finished the book, I watched the recent movie adaptation directed by Guillermo del Toro, and I was pretty underwhelmed. They made a number of changes to the story that I didn’t really get, took away a lot of the nuance of the source material, and it felt like they were really spelling things out for the viewer in some of the dialogue. I wonder if it would even be possible to do a faithful adaptation of the novel today. At any rate, the book is fantastic, it’s under 300 pages, and I believe you can find copies of it online to read for free, so you truly have no excuse! I recommend reading the 1818 text, which is the original, before Shelley edited it in response to some moralistic backlash.

- Dead Eyes. This three-season podcast hosted by actor and improviser Connor Ratliff humorously investigates an incident when, as a young actor just starting out, he was fired by Tom Hanks from a small speaking role in the 2001 miniseries Band of Brothers. Hanks was producing the series, and directing the episode Connor was cast to be in. The reason Connor was told he was fired? He had “dead eyes.” It’s a hilarious small stakes mystery, but also a surprisingly emotional exploration of rejection, failure, and resilience, particularly in the entertainment industry.

I remember seeing Connor perform improv at the UCB during my days in New York, he was (is?) a member of the beloved teams The Stepfathers and Stone Cold Fox, and is a very talented performer. He was also a fixture on The Chris Gethard Show. Dead Eyes ran from 2020-2022, but I somehow never got into it until now. Connor gets amazing guests on the show: Jon Hamm, Seth Rogen, Nicole Byer, Aparna Nancherla, Aimee Mann, and many people involved with the making of Band of Brothers. I absolutely tore through it, and it was like a balm to my soul. And yes, without giving away the ending, there is a satisfying conclusion.

- Waiting for Impact: A Dave Holmes Passion Project. I started listening to this podcast after finishing Dead Eyes because I read that it was similar, about a low-stakes pop culture mystery. I’m dating myself here, but I’ve been a fan of Dave Holmes since he was a VJ on MTV, and I remember seeing him at the iO West bar in Hollywood on occasion when I was on a sketch team there several years ago. I believe he even makes a reference to iO West getting shut down in one of the first episodes. Anyway, Waiting for Impact is about a pop culture obsession that Holmes has been pondering since 1991: whatever happened to Sudden Impact, the R&B boy band who were introduced on the world stage in the famous Boyz II Men “MotownPhilly” music video, then never heard from again?

Of course, the podcast goes much deeper than that. Similar to Dead Eyes, it’s semi-autobiographical, about Holmes, how the music industry changed in the ‘90s, being a young person pursuing a dream, false starts, and what constitutes success. He also gets amazing guests: Yvette Nicole Brown, Karen Kilgariff, and many more. In a particularly heartbreaking episode, he talks to Hayden, a singer who was part of the East Coast Family (a group of musical acts managed by Michael Bivins of New Edition), but who never got to release his album. Mathew Knowles is involved in that story, and he does NOT come off looking well. Which, I guess is not shocking, given all we know about him now, but still devastating. The funny thing is, the episode after that, Dave talks to Joey McIntyre, who saw immense fame and success during this period in New Kids On The Block, but there was a similar sadness to parts of his story, of the party all being over by the time he was 21. As my father would say, “Nobody gets out of this life unscathed.” (He’s a real ray of sunshine!!)

I feel like I have had so many false starts in my career. A big one was when I was up for a sketch writing job in the branded department at CollegeHumor/Dropout, where I was working at the time in content programming. Previous writers who had held that job went on to be CH cast members and write for Watch What Happens Live. I had made it through three rounds of the hiring process before it was paused indefinitely when our parent company, IAC, announced it was selling the company, and then we all got laid off. I don’t know if I would have gotten that job anyway, or if I did, if it would have led to all the things I was hoping it would lead to, but not getting to find out fucked with my head for a while. Funnily enough, I primarily work on branded content now, although in a much different capacity.

- Detroiters (Netflix, Paramount+). Ross and I recently flew through this half-hour comedy co-created by and starring real-life best friends Tim Robinson and Sam Richardson, and I’m devastated that there are only two seasons, a mere 20 episodes! It’s got the absurdity of Robinson’s other shows like I Think You Should Leave and The Chair Company, but with Richardson’s goofy sweetness and a more accessible structure. Tim and Sam play the owners of a small-time ad agency in Detroit, and the series is a comedic love letter to their hometown and the weird local commercials they grew up watching. There are apparently tons of Detroit references that flew right over my head, but I really enjoyed it anyway. I love that they actually shot it in Detroit and used local talent, and made the city feel quirky and charming. As a former New Jerseyan, I can certainly relate to the experience of growing up somewhere that has a lot of negative stereotypes around it. You can really feel the love they have for the city. If you want a silly, light watch, this is a good one.

- The Dark Web (YouTube). Speaking of local commercials: I’ve recently really been enjoying The Dark Web, a YouTube show hosted by Rob Huebel and Paul Scheer, in which they watch and react to weird video clips. They also usually play a game and give each other silly gifts. It should have way more subscribers! It’s a celebration of online rabbit holes and niche content creators, like the Juggalo who belly flops onto microwaves in his backyard, or the family-run auto mart that produced their own variety show (of questionable quality). This is one of two shows that had Ross coming into my office to see what I was laughing so hard at. The other one is:

- Make Some Noise (Dropout). Full disclosure: as mentioned earlier, I worked at Dropout from 2017-2020. Make Some Noise is a spin-off from the indie streaming platform’s popular game show Game Changer, both hosted by president and overall mensch Sam Reich, and it’s a short-form improv comedy show, basically like a modern version of Whose Line Is It Anyway? Three performers are given prompts that they use to improvise short scenes over three rounds. The performers they cast are different every episode, but they’re all so unbelievably good at improv, it’s incredible. I laugh until I cry at this show. Luckily for all of us, there are four seasons up on Dropout. The show started out as more of a competition to see who could perform the best sound effects and impressions, but I’m so glad it’s evolved to what it is now, with full scenes. It also has a banger Instagram, which features this legendary pep talk from Jacob Wysocki.

- Cooking. I have to apologize in advance, because I know many of you are vegetarians, and it’s not that I haven’t been eating my vegetables (we eat a salad with just about every dinner I cook), but the NEW recipes I’ve been cooking all seem to be pretty meat-based. First, I made this chicken with creamy sundried tomato sauce, which I made using chicken breasts. If you’ve been following the online recipe scene over the past few years, you know that “Marry Me” sauce (usually a creamy pan sauce with sundried tomatoes) has become an epidemic. Recipe developers are putting that shit on anything and everything! Even beans! I finally had enough and decided to see what the big deal was, and honestly? It was really tasty! A little rich, but you don’t need much of that sauce for a lot of flavor. I served the chicken over penne, which was delish. And while it didn’t cause my husband to spontaneously propose again, he did really like it!

Then, I decided I wanted to make pulled pork in my slow cooker, but when my Instacart order came, the pork shoulder was a whopping eight pounds! Y’all, I had that hunk of meat in the slow cooker for 14 hours! 😱 I had to set it before I went to bed on a Saturday night so that it would be ready in time for dinner on Sunday! That is my personal record for the longest I’ve ever had something in the slow cooker. At the end of the 14 hours, the slow cooker beeped dramatically and then shut off by itself. She was DONE with my bullshit. Anyway, the pork was pretty good, I used this recipe and served it on Hawaiian buns with homemade pickled red onions and a quick slaw. I don’t even remember what we had as a side, maybe sweet potato fries?

Next, I gave these honey garlic chicken thighs a try, which were easy and good, but a little more soy sauce-forward than I was craving. Ross really liked them, though. I served them with one of those Far East rice pilafs and roasted broccoli. One of my favorite recipes is these easy honey garlic pork chops, which were an honorable mention in my Best Recipes of 2024. I should have just used the sauce from that recipe and subbed in chicken thighs. Sometimes I feel like I need a specific recipe every time I want to make something, and in truth, I need to trust my skills as a home cook a little more.

I also made these pork chops with rosemary and dried cherries, which had a sublime savory yet cherry-infused sauce that was sooo good! I would definitely make those again, they felt fancy but were not that hard to make. I served them with these loaded baked potatoes with crispy broccoli and bacon, although, honestly, I think that was a misstep. That sauce was so good, I should have served it with bread or mashed potatoes or something that could soak it up. I just feel like every time I make mashed potatoes, I end up with tons of leftovers that inevitably just end up going in the trash, because mashed potatoes don’t reheat well. I guess I need to just… make smaller portions of mashed potatoes? lol

FINALLYYY… after watching Tim eat hot dogs in new and disturbing ways on Detroiters and experiencing summery 90+-degree heat all week here in L.A., I was in the mood for hot dogs. So, I made some, and I made a German potato salad to go with them. One thing about me is that I do not really like most mayo-based “salads.” I think they tend to get soggy and/or goopy, and often lack flavor. Plus, they’re usually served in hot weather, and the idea of something with that much mayo sitting around in the heat grosses me out. When it comes to potato salad especially, I tend to prefer a vinegar-based one, so that’s what I did. It turned out super good, I’d highly recommend that recipe if you want to try out German potato salad for yourself! You could always sub or leave out the bacon if you want to make it vegetarian or pork-free.

Okay folks, that’s plenty out of me for now!

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Until next time—keep ya chin up, bud.

Love,

Liz

XOXO