Blood Harmony Vol. 55: And I Can't Live Without It
Hello Blood Harmonists!
I come to you from deep into my goblin week. I’m alone in my house, I’m eating popcorn for dinner, I’ve spread a sewing project across most of my living space and I’m watching not one but two modern soap operas set during the Gilded Age.1 It’s so hot that it feels like the giant hair dryer from Spaceballs is being aimed at me at all times.2 I have always loved Daphne Zuniga’s line reading here.
I will let
take the wheel in describing my geopolitical feelings this week via her great newsletter Airplane Mode.
And then, because this is as much a Diego Luna appreciation newsletter as it is anything else, I refer you to his powerful opening monologue as guest host on Kimmel this week.3
One of Diego’s guests was his Andor co-star Adria Arjona4 (whose grandmother immigrated to the U.S. from Guatemala) and that was powerful too! She, Diego and Guillermo were so sweet together.
Music
Haim collective rise up! The new album is out and it is good! I will be seeing my three favorite foxy sisters in Nashville on this tour.5 Lots of interesting influences in this album—U2, Tom Petty, Lou Reed, 90s era grunge production, Lucinda Williams. I dig this slinky number.
Here’s a recent NTS show that I love called Reimaging Country: Yodels and laments, Zulu blues, and dual slide guitars harmonizing with fiddles and mandolins. An all-music episode featuring new gems from Matsuli Music’s stunning Zulu Blues reissue, replays from Olvido Records’ upcoming African Steel, and offcuts uncovered while working on the forthcoming Alick Nkhata collection from Mississippi.
Movies
I made it to see both 28 Years Later and Materialists! 28 Years Later was stunning. It was gross and terrifying but it was also unexpectedly moving and beautiful. The acting was superb. I’m so glad that I saw it. I was quite confused by the ending but I now understand that it’s meant to be one of a trilogy so it makes more sense.6
Materialists. Huh. Positives: New York looks great, excellent soundtrack, lovely costuming and Chris Evans was wonderful.7 Negatives: I have like a hundred nitpicks plot-wise8, there were some strange tonal shifts and Dakota Johnson is maybe just not a good actor. There were some interesting ideas in here about aesthetic presentation as an urban professional woman in your 20s/30s: clothing as armor and class mobility via consumerist signaling.
In at-home viewing news, I’m taking a class currently called “Social Justice: Narratives of Inequity” as part of my Narrative Medicine program. Our homework involves watching movies, reading books and doing close reading analysis of both. This past week, we watched Unrest and Safe.9
Unrest is a documentary made by and about Jennifer Brea, a Harvard PhD student who mysteriously fell ill and documented her experience with her eventual diagnosis of myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME). It is beautifully made, thought-provoking and heart-breaking. I cannot recommend it more particularly if you have someone in your life with ME, long COVID, chronic Lyme or any other similarly poorly-understood condition. It’s available on YouTube.
Todd Haynes’ film Safe (1995), which stars Julianne Moore as a wealthy 80s housewife who starts experiencing mysterious symptoms, is a much weirder and more ambiguous piece of art. Loved it.
And Just Like That…
OMG this fucking show. Has anyone involved in the show ever been to Virginia? Aidan supposedly lives 20 minutes from Norfolk but Target is an hour away??? HOW? Norfolk is by the ocean! Why is their farm there? What are they farming? Why does Carrie go buy a bunch of tradwife dresses she’ll never wear again? How does Carrie know how to drive an ATV?10 Does Amazon not exist in the world of the show? Carrie came up in New York in the 90s!11 Drugs were everywhere! Why does she think that she has to hide a legally prescribed drug in her bra? UGH.
Crafts
I went to an indigo dyeing class on the Summer Solstice with River Takada. It was rad.
Books
I just finished listening to this audiobook and it was mind-bending.12
Here’s the summary: Since the Mayflower sidled up to Plymouth Rock, cult ideology has been ingrained in the DNA of the United States. In this eye-opening book, journalist Jane Borden argues that Puritan doomsday belief never went away; it went secular and became American culture. From our fascination with cowboys and superheroes to our allegiance to influencers and self-help, susceptibility to advertising, and undying devotion to the self-made man, Americans remain particularly vulnerable to a specific brand of cult-like thinking.
I learned a ton about various cults (my favorite might have been The Oneida Community) but more importantly I learned so much about how we got to this particular political moment. Recommend!
Cartoons
People, I have achieved a dream and drawn a bookmark! DM me if you’d like one because you have to order them in bulk and I’m happy to share.
Food
My friend Reina shared some of these crumpets with me and they were outrageously delicious. I’ve got to hunt down some of those rings.
Links
I really appreciated this piece by
on summer boredom.
I love
’s newsletter . Gorgeous.
This article about AI use in the perfume industry by
writer Annabelle Sicardi is fascinating.Power Broker Audiobook Update: No progress as I was busy listening to Cults Like Us!13
Thank you for reading! You’re the best!
But only one starring Blair Waldorf!
Relevant again due to the impending sequel!
Thanks to my sister-in-law Brett for sending this to me. She gets it!
The most beautiful woman alive?
I was talking to a friend about Haim yesterday and she said, “Are they somehow getting hotter?”
I had one of the funnier “people around you in the theater” experiences at this one. To my left were two older Spanish-speaking gentlemen who did some light interpreting for each throughout the film. One of the men’s phone rang in the middle of the movie at full volume and he briefly took the call which was a bold move. On my right was a single young man who kept up some quiet commentary throughout (“Oh no!”, “Whhhhhhhhhhy?” and “Ugh”). We all had a nice chat at the end of the movie. The duo seemed moderately enthused and the younger guy though it was awesome. I agreed. Then we all nodded and bid each other well.
I heard more of his native accent in Materialists than I have since What’s Your Number?
Her salary is $80k and she’s in that apartment? No fucking way. How did she pay for her plastic surgery? Is she maybe a worse investment than Chris Evans since she’s got to be like $200k in debt? Dakota Johnson can not credibly play a person of limited means. The side plot with her client was…not great. Why did she sneak around in a trench coat like Inspector Gadget? What kind of a stupid drink order is a beer and a Coke? Does she mix them together? I don’t believe that Dakota Johnson has ever had a full sugar soda. AND WHO IN GOD’S NAME SAYS “DOING POT”?
It was QUITE a double-header especially since I ran out-of-time and had to watch them back-to-back.
Thanks to Katherine for pointing this out!
Why have we never seen Carrie do coke? Is she weirdly anti-drug except for booze and cigarettes? Take note Materialists! This is a drug that you “do”!
Yes, I do appear to be in my cult era.
I never thought a 11 hour audiobook would seem like NBD.
I keep hearing that Dakota Johnson wants to play Patti Smith in a Just Kids movie. So much of that book is about how Patti came from a working class New Jersey family and was broke in NYC, and I can’t imagine Dakota would know how to play any of that.