Final File_10+11

October and November in Review.

I meant to get this out earlier but it was already late and then the election happened and I didn’t feel like posting about October when I was already living in a bleaker future. I decided to combine both October and November into one very-long Final File, which is already usually too long for email but now even more so. With that said, I’ll keep this short. Onto the post!

NOTES FROM OCTOBER

• Two weeks after our wedding we headed to Portugal to celebrate our friends Madison and Lex getting married. They hosted it at Barrocal, located in Portugese wine country about two and a half hours outside of Lisbon. The only way to describe it is remote and idyllic. The air is crisp and it feels as if your lungs can expand just a little more. There are horses and sheep and cows everywhere. Madison and Lex always nail group curation and it was like being amongst family. I loved every minute of it. It was three days of nonstop grilled meats, good music, and beautiful people. Naturally we wept through all the sentimental parts because there’s something very moving about watching one of your closest friends commit to their person.

• With very little light pollution, Monsaraz gets super dark at night, which I was excited about because super-dark often means lots of stars. My instinct was correct because when I went outside and looked up I was rewarded with a blanket of pinpoint lights. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen more stars in my life. I later found out that Monsaraz is a UNESCO-protected stargazing site and I felt very lucky to have been there

  

• Dinner with the Virgo crew, which is exactly as it sounds. A bunch of Virgos in a room looking at each other and gushing about being a gang of earth signs. The vibes are unmatched, I promise.

• I got COVID right after Portugal and spent two weeks feeling out of it.

• Family group chats with your elders are one of the most insane spaces we have. Mine is 17 people deep and includes my grandma, great aunt, second cousins, aunties, dad, and a few of my first cousins (there are lots more people so it’s a wonder how we arrived at this specific number with this particular group of folks). I only have four people’s numbers, but thankfully the older ones announce themselves every time they chime in. My best friend Lacey and I have been sending the contents of our respective chats to each other and cackling about it.

• The New York Liberty won the championships which I was thrilled about because I remember the hush of the stadium when we lost to the Aces the season prior in a devastating defeat. I’m happy to see the fandom grow but as a lifelong women’s basketball fan (shoutout to my dad, a bonafide girl dad, who always took us to Mystics games) I’m a little salty to see it happening. I met a sports agent at a friend’s birthday happy hour last year and he said if I had 10 million dollars right now, I’m putting it all on the W and I agreed, but I forgot that with that comes…more people supporting it. Just like the people shaking a fist at the Substack sky, I’m outside of Barclays tapping my foot at the newcomers and reminiscing on the days when they used to give out WNBA tickets for free. TLDR; I’m happy for y’all but damn!

• I bought a new laptop at the end of October after using the same one since 2017 and I have notes. Firstly, the letters are so much bigger now. And they went back to this weird slightly rounded square shape from an earlier generation of MacBook Pro. The material is also different and the keys are clickier which I don’t like. I also like having a touch bar and they phased that out completely after 2022 which I also think sucks. Then it’s 14-inches instead of 13, nominal but felt in the way it fits in the hand. Apple also mimicked the iPhone by making the screen bigger and putting the camera right in the center (whatever!) All that to say I’m loving it, and finally have a machine that’s powerful enough to smoothly run Sims.

• I’m back to playing The Sims 4. I started from scratch with new custom content which meant I spent eight hours downloading stuff before I even got into the game. But I’m happy to report that my Sim Family is thriving. Amiyah and Shannon recently welcomed their second child and first daughter, Lila into the family. She can’t sit up yet but is very cute.

  

• I’ve decided to never get braids again. My edges are too fragile and after my hair was coming out in literal clumps. I’ll be sticking to childish ponytails and low buns for the foreseeable future. If and when y’all see me change my mind, likely in time for summer, forget I said this.

NOTES FROM NOVEMBER

• Coming off the high of two weddings and a cursed election I finally returned to baseline which also meant re-engaging with everything I’ve held sort of suspended since Q2. Needless to say I’ve rediscovered crying.

• Noor turned 30 and we spent two weekends celebrating her. We met freshman year of college and I remember her breezing through our dorm hallway in ribbed silver leggings looking like the coolest girl in the world. Nearly 10 years later it continues to be true.

• Made lasagna for a friend because he asked. I don’t cook often and there is a limit to my chef abilities but that’s the one thing I can make and it tasted pretty good.

• C (my wife!) is watching The Office and it’s been really adorable hearing her giggle at random intervals throughout the day.

• Joseline Sundays.

• Finally painted my ceiling. It was absolutely the right move. Still needs another coat but things are moving in the right direction.

• Double dates with three (!) couples at Barbuto, Casa Enrique and Ainslie, respectively.

• Celebrated Shay’s birthday at Miss Barb’s, a very cute bar in Brooklyn. The vibes were immaculate and the birthday girl was beautiful. We also ended up watching the Jake Paul and Tyson fight (diabolical) and I can now say I get boxing.

• I made progress on the novel! Not 20K words but still. I sent pages of said novel around for my friends to read and grilled them for detailed feedback. They all agreed the sex scene was giving.

• I’ve rediscovered my love for pants. I’ve been loving a trouser or cargo pant and sweatshirt lately. A departure from a summer of dresses.

  

  Riffs on the essentially the same outfit

• Plotted world domination with two of the smartest people I know.

• Had a biscuit pop-up at Yowie in Philadelphia.

  

• I did more tax things that felt scary but in reality took 10 minutes. Please clap!

• Went home for Thanksgiving which also happened to fall on my grandmother’s birthday. This happens once in a blue moon and I love when it does. I also went to a “drinksgiving” the night before with my high school classmates and saw people I haven’t laid eyes on since we graduated. Fun!

• I bought a Christmas gift for a new friend which feels like an investment in our friend future. I love gift giving and gifting something for Christmas feels like a signal that she’s one of my people now, which she very much is.

• Did my annual wrapping paper run. I color coordinate wrapping paper for our annual Friends Christmas and assign different wrapping paper to each gift giver. I’m very excited about this year’s lineup.

• I saw a lot of beautiful sunsets and for that I’m grateful.

  

  

• Went on a fun book date, more on that very soon!

Things I’ve been thinking about

• Writing tics (I’m always writing that I’m curious about or interested in something. I also overuse the word “which”), the craft of writing a novel, the election and American exceptionalism, Twitter psychics, white social codes (Nobody Wants This made it clear that I am very far outside white people’s business), my wife’s birthday, the fact that I have a wife, Palestine (enduringly), Kamala Harris and her glock, office chairs, The Sims 4, sims tumblr, references and context, the sublime, screen time, “if you give a hotep a book deal”, jealousy as a mirror, Charli XCX ruining Storm King, certainty and tightropes (both psychic and real).

Questions I’ve been asking (pls answer)

• Is it better to be early or on time?

• What’s your relationship to certainty?

• Say I love you without saying I love you

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What I Read in October

Colored Television by Danzy Senna

In Colored Television a mixed-race writer and professor goes on sabbatical and commits to finish her unwieldy decades-spanning novel that her husband calls the “mulatto War and Peace.” Things don’t go as planned and she ends up trying to dip her toe into tv writing in the hopes of finally securing stability for her family. I didn’t end up liking this one and as of writing this I can’t really remember why.

Sky Full of Elephants by Cebo Campbell

The premise of this novel is compelling: what would happen if all the white people suddenly walked into the sea? It’s a question with many possible answers but ultimately I found Campbell’s unsatisfying. It’s well-written, though, and made me think about the bigger trend of speculative, literary novels about all-black spaces. I’m still noodling but there’s concepts of an essay. More to come.

What I Read in November

The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

I finished one book in November and I enjoyed it! The God of the Woods opens with the disappearance of a camper who happens to be the camp’s owner's kid. This happens nearly a decade after her brother disappeared in the same woods, dredging up old rivalries and shaking long held secrets loose. While the book is definitely about the mystery, it’s also about class and friendship and power. The best way to describe this read was cinematic. The chapters are short, like scene cuts, and it reads like an HBO miniseries (complementary). All in all I enjoyed it and would recommend if you read and liked The Bee Sting.

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Things I Watched in October

Catfishing documentaries, old SVU, the Diplomat, and more.

• Nobody Wants This (Netflix) - I couldn’t get through this show that everyone kept saying was good but was not. What was most off-putting to me were the weird comments made by the voice of Gossip Girl, who seemed to not know things about Jewish culture that I’m pretty sure were covered and discussed in our elementary school classrooms. Kristen Bell’s character also acts like a maniac and is the kind of girl who has friends with zero expectations of her because she disappears into her relationships until they break up and suddenly texts everyone saying, “I miss you guys soooo much.”

• I watched two documentaries about catfishing: Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara (Hulu), and Sweet Bobby (Netflix). Fanatical is an interesting look into stan culture more generally and the queer subculture that emerged out of the Tegan and Sara fandom. I was never into Tegan and Sara but it seems that their music was a signal for queer women and helped people to find community. Then there was Sweet Bobby, which was about an internet romance gone wrong. What made Sweet Bobby wild was that the profile Kirat was engaging with was a real person in her community but run by someone else. I felt bad for Kirat because she had every reason to believe that this person was legitimate, even though there were some glaring red flags in the end. I find it interesting that there’s a resurgence in documentary media about this kind of intimate con, especially in a post Catfish world. If anything it’s only become more sophisticated, which is very spooky stuff.

• I’m Not A Monster (Max) - Before going on a murder spree in 2018, Lois Reiss was a grandma in Minnesota, albeit one with a gambling problem and a history of fraud. This one was particularly interesting because I couldn’t have guessed that she would’ve resorted to murder, but once she killed the second time it was clear she may have had it in her all along.

• Law and Order SVU (Peacock/Hulu)— I watched season 8-11 over the past few weeks and I started to notice a trend. White storylines are about the gray area/nuance—result in creative sentencing or no sentencing, the black ones often result in long prison sentences even if there’s clear nuance/extenuating circumstances. In one, a white man gets away with killing three first gen kids because he claims to be brainwashed because he’s “activated” by a racist man. He’s later killed by a white progressive that’s the son of a Klansman after he gets him off with that bullshit defense. At the end it’s a good example of utilizing Blackness and otherness as an approximation for the American liberal value system, because racism is wrong but putting a Black woman in jail for killing her abuser or leaving a Black man in jail after you find out he’s innocent is “just how the system works”

• It’s What Inside (Netflix) - I really enjoyed this body swap movie, which is about a group of friends who get together the night before a wedding. Old beefs remerge, former flings reconnect, and everyone is testing each other’s boundaries and limits. It is spiritually similar to Tell Me Lies, so fans of that will definitely like this. What I liked most about this was that there is a clear point of no return that raises the stakes of the film and presents a new set of problems for the characters to solve. It gave me genuine anxiety, and I love a movie that makes me feel.

• Disclaimer (Apple TV) - You ever wanted to watch a group of insane people link? Watch Disclaimer. I love me some Cate Blanchett so I didn’t need to know anything about this to lock in. It’s about an acclaimed journalist (with an absolutely stunning house) who has hit the point in her career where she is well-respected, well-paid and most of her dramas are internal and domestic. It seems she has it all figured out, and her next step is to resign to the life she’s built, which to anyone is quite nice. Everything changes though when a novel shows up on her doorstep. One about her life. I’ll say nothing else.

• Escape at Dannemora (Netflix) - As a Prison Break (seasons 1-3) fan, I loved Escape at Dannemora, a fictionalization of a real-life prison break. I vaguely remember this case but enjoyed the mini-series retelling which centers on Tilly Mitchell, an employee at the jail who helped the inmates escape. I loved the way they portrayed the social dynamics within the jail and incorporated the jail’s role in the town’s economy. I also really enjoyed all of the actor’s performances. Benicio del Toro, who plays Richard Matt, is very compelling and I’m a longtime fan of Patricia Arquette.

• Muscles & Mayhem: An Unauthorized Story of American Gladiators (Netflix) - American Gladiators was a show in the mid-to-late eighties where body builders—the gladiators—faced off against regular people. It came out a half decade before I was born but apparently it was a smash hit that swept the nation and at one point had a larger viewership than football. The documentary is about the gladiators who, despite their fame, were ultimately mistreated and exploited by the network. It charts the rise of the show and the eventual fall and has some dishy bits about life behind the scenes (sex, drugs, and lots of steroids). Even though the show is no longer on the air, parts of it clearly live on in spiritual spinoffs like Wipe Out and American Ninja Warrior.

• 90 Day Fiancé (Hulu) - I watch 90 Day Fiancé intermittently but was convinced to tune in this season after seeing clips of Niles and Matilda on TikTok. This show is as insane as ever but certain couples, like N+M, have me hooked. It helps that one of my friends is also watching because it gives us lots to discuss. I have a feeling that we’ll be seeing a lot more 90 Day The Other Way storylines as our country slips into deeper decline.

• The Diplomat (Netflix) - Inject this show into my veins! I loved it so much. I’m obsessed with the chemistry between Hal and Kate, the behind-the-scenes plots that could threaten the stability of the free world, the tension between Kate and quite literally everyone. It follows a diplomat whose gearing up for another stint in Kabul but is rerouted to London because she’s being looked at for the vice presidency—though she doesn’t know it. Orchestrating all of this is her power-hungry and whip-smart husband Hal, who is brash and charming and manipulative. There’s something very The Incredibles 2 about their dynamic (the woman is being put to the front, genderbending the behind every great man thing) and I’m obsessed. I could watch six seasons of it.

What I Watched in November

Season twos of shows I adore, another darksided Tyler Perry project, and lots of thrillers.

• Rhythm and Flow (Netflix) - I think Rhythm and Flow is the best competition show on TV and I stand by that. Season one was incredible and season two is shaping up to be interesting too. The finalists are reflective of where rap is right now—there’s a mumble rapper reminiscent of Lil’ Baby and the like—and lots of women, which feels right. Women are taking over hip hop and putting out the most compelling work—see: Doechii, Latto, Rapsody, etc—so I think it’s only right that Rhythm and Flow follows suit.

• Cross (Amazon Prime) - I did not like Cross. I’m in the minority on this because most everyone I talked to really enjoyed it. I just thought it was a little ridiculous. I did like the DC representation though. A lot. More of this please!

• Dune: Prophecy (HBO) - I really like Dune and felt eh about Dune 2. I was curious about Dune: Prophecy though, which follows the Bene Gesserit, a secretive group of women who act as advisors to the monarchy. I love the premise of this show (secret school! ritual! power struggles!) but I’m struggling to connect with the character’s performances. I just don’t care. We’ll see if episode three moves me in a different direction.

• The Madness (Netflix) - This show managed to make me feel lukewarm toward Colman Domingo which is a feat considering I’m a fan. It’s about a pundit whose framed for the murder of a white nationalist and then goes through increasingly insane circumstances to clear his name. I didn’t like this because Muncie Daniels (Colman) is constantly being stalked by white supremacists who want to intimidate him and pop up everywhere. The police are also deeply unhelpful and I couldn’t tell if it felt uncanny valley because I was staring into a dystopian future or because it was bad. I’m betting it’s the latter. The one bright spot was Gabrielle Graham, who plays his daughter Kallie. She’s Canadian but I found her Philly accent believable (Philly people, confirm?) and I was relieved every time she was on screen. Their dynamic was most interesting to me and I would’ve much rather watched a show about a complicated father-daughter relationship. I’d like to see her in more stuff, preferably a lesbian romcom.

• The Day of the Jackal (Peacock) - This show is filling the Diplomat-sized hole in my tv diet. It has everything I like in a show—espionage, costumes, creative crimes, expensive houses. It’s a closer comp to Lupin season one, which I loved real bad. One of my favorite elements of this show is watching the main detective navigate adversity at work and home. There’s pushback for her commitment to her job and everyone doubts her, even internally, until she pulls things off. The show also isn’t shy about actions having real consequences, which makes it more compelling for me.

• Silo (Apple TV) - I loved Silo season one so much I bought the book. It’s about a society of people that live underground in a silo because the Earth is uninhabitable. They’ve been down there for generations—things like birds are foreign to them—and despite being a functional society where residents seem to be sort of happy, citizens have questions that could send the entire project tumbling down. Season two expands on the world of season one, giving us more insight into the post-apocalyptic world and raising the stakes. I’m loving it.

• Sex Lives of College Girls (Max) - My friend Yaminah (she writes Material Conditions on here!) posted about SLCG season three and it reminded me to tap back in and catch up. I really loved season one, which was a bit soapy and had a lot of heart. I’m not as obsessed with season two—maybe it’s not the right time for it—but I’m willing to stick it out.

• Beauty In Black (Netflix) - I got roped into this because my friend Jade convinced me to watch it. I left it convinced that Tyler Perry Studios is a psy-op because out of everything he’s made, this is by far the most diabolical. The show itself makes zero sense, there’s no character development, the acting is subpar and the wigs are terrible. The parking lot was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Somehow he always manages to subvert my expectations while also leading the story down a darker path.

• I watched two alien documentaries this month—The Manhattan Alien Abduction and Investigation Alien. One was about a popular alien abduction story in the 80s that’s likely an elaborate hoax and the other is about proving alien life by running through the most famous sightings and visiting places in the world with UFO activity. Then, Congress apparently confirmed that aliens do exist. All of this matters very little to me because it doesn’t look like the aliens are going to intervene in our current issues anytime soon.

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Best Bites

An insane breakfast spread at Barrocal

• Half chicken at Daphne’s

• Soft serve at Marvel’s Creamery

• Crab legs at The Monster Crab

• C’s chicken quesadillas

• Everything at Madison’s wedding, still thinking about the saffron rice with raisins

• Yeast rolls at Thanksgiving

• Pork dumplings in chili oil at Hupo (honestly everything at Hupo)

• Fried fish from Hip Hop Fish & Chicken

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On my wishlist

I felt so brave leaving this at the store

• Lands End sheets (debating between crisp white and ivory)

• Harlem Renaissance magnets

• A small stool for the bathroom. Considering this and this.

• Some new bowls for the cats

• Tickets to The Blood Quilt

• Shelves for the bathroom. Interested in these and this – maybe both

• A quilted coat from Baxter Wood

• A red Stalogy notebook

• This storage bed, which I’m convinced has a sort of brutalist vibe (specifically in black)

• These metal storage containers

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Expense Report

• Too much money to the IRS

• $25 to my little brother because the “cafeteria was closed”

• Lots of books, including:

  • Lazarus Man by Richard Price (currently reading)

  • Office Politics by Wilfred Shed

  • The World She Edited by Amy Reading

  • The Black Utopians by Aaron Robertson

  • Dear Life by Alice Munro

  • By the Sea by Abdulrazak Gurnah

  • The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk

  • Annihilation by Michel Houellebecq

  • Season of the Swamp by Yuri Herrera

  • The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington

  • Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon

  • Nat Turner Black Prophet by Anthony E. Kaye

• Peach raspberry Celsius (the best flavor)

• A Canon printer

• 100 KN95 masks

• Sk*ms underwear and pajama pants (the sheer modal fabric really does something to me and I hate to admit it)

• A coat from H&M I saw on Mya Gelber and had to have

• A bottle of Sienna Naturals H.A.P.I. shampoo (My holy grail, I subscribe to it)

• Wrapping paper and ornaments from Target

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What the fuck was I talking about