Friday Smiles
One of my favorite parts of my favorite podcast, Pop Culture Happy Hour (PCHH), is when hosts Linda, Glen, Stephen, Aisha, and the rotating panel members give recommendations for listeners. They aptly call these recommendations, “What’s Making Us Happy This Week.” By the way, if you haven’t yet discovered PCHH, hop on over to Spotify and give it a listen. The hosts and guests are fantastic and well-versed in music, comic books, movies, TV, books—pretty much anything in the current culture zeitgeist.
In a similar vein, I enjoy receiving Austin Kleon’s weekly newsletter. He details ten things that he thinks are worth sharing. While I am never interested in every single thing he links to or talks about, I usually learn something new from at least one of the ten.
In the vein of PCHH and Austin Kleon, I offer you a few alternatives to popping into your local big-box store for a shopping fix this weekend. Some are to buy or consume; some are personal. There is no thread that ties them together. Simply, these are things and events that have brought a smile to my face this week.
1. Ordering my daughter’s senior pictures on Shutterfly. Being a high school student is hard. Being a high school student during COVID is awful. But being a high school senior during COVID is a special kind of hell.
Senior pranks, Homecoming, senior days—they’ve all been canceled this year. It’s for the best, but it still sucks. Senior pictures were a non-event. The school-sanctioned photos barely captured my daughter’s essence.
Enter my friend Julie, who has a gifted eye and a great camera. She set up a photo shoot for my daughter and sent me the most gorgeous pictures. Her personality leaps off the screen.
Today, we finally sat down to order a few pictures from the hundreds. Finally. This Friday is full of color and light.
2. Ratatouille the Musical on TikTok. I don’t have a TikTok account, but apparently I don’t need one. I’ve been enjoying the earworm, “Remy the Ratatouille, the rat of all my dreams” all week long. Thanks to TikTok’s duet feature and the time and talents of thousands of creatives who currently have few outlets for their talents, Remy, the plucky rat of Disney fame, once again takes center stage. There hasn’t been this much online collaboration for a theatrical production since the Internet masses collectively insisted that Be More Chill be revived. That show ultimately went to Broadway (and if you haven’t heard George Salazar tear into “Michael in the Bathroom,” you need to listen).
A Playbill mock-up for Ratatouille the Musical
3. One to Watch by Kate-Stayman London. I just finished reading Shrill (2016) by Lindy West. I’m late to the Lindy West party. I watched the show with Aidy Bryant but as with most things, the book was so much better. Not that I’m throwing shade to Aidy Bryant or the series. Both are good. But the book is so, so much more.
Anyway, One to Watch is a body-positive novel about a plus-size female journalist who rails one day against a fictional franchise that is like The Bachelorette. Her post gets a ton of hits; the producers come knocking and ask her to be the center of the newest season. She wavers and ultimately decides to go for it. It’s an easy read that I absolutely adored. When I read Shrill, I was reminded of how much I loved this novel. It doesn’t matter what size jeans we wear. We all deserve love.
Image by Sarah Baumann at Signetsealed.com
4. All the art by Sarah Baumann at Signet Sealed. Her 2021 Good News calendar looks like just the thing I might need to put 2020 behind me. I love her city-focused artwork. Her coloring pages make me smile. (Friends! Schitt’s Creek! Gilmore Girls!) If you want to shop small, consider swinging a few bucks her way. If nothing else, follow her on Instagram. She makes bingo cards for all the things.
That’s all I’ve got today. Hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving.