January '26 Roundup #3

Here we go again

Hello and happy Monday! Thank you endlessly if you’ve recently become a paid subscriber; I do genuinely appreciate it. If you have a few more bucks to spare, I encourage you to poke around the Stand with Minnesota site and find a place to donate. Without further ado:

Monday 1/12

On my morning walk I listened to Blackout, Britney’s masterpiece. Perfect for when you really need to wake the fuck up and get moving.

When I got to work a cookbook I put on hold last week had arrived - Nights and Weekends by Alexis De Boschnek. I had some downtime in the afternoon and jotted down a few easy weeknight recipes I’d like to make soon (tomato sauce with pancetta, white beans and rosemary, halloumi fattoush, and red coconut curry with tofu).

Scent: Narciso Rodriguez Ambrée. This is the most tropical offering from the entire Narciso line. It smells like frangipani, ylang-ylang and musk.

Tuesday 1/13

I listened to an old episode of the Swindled podcast on my walk: The Verrückt (Schlitterbahn), from April 2022. Swindled’s a good podcast about white collar crime, con artists, and corporate greed. The Verrückt (German for “crazy” or “insane”) was a water slide at the Schlitterbahn water park in Kansas City that became the world’s tallest when it opened in 2014. The design and construction were complete shitshows, without professional engineers involved. It didn’t take long for a child to get decapitated on the ride as a result.

I listened to the new Father John Misty single The Old Law, an upbeat Beatles-y song with some Christianity-inflected lyrics that I don’t really understand. I like it a lot anyway.

I cracked open A Wedding in Hell, the Charles Simic book I bought on eBay a few months back. I haven’t read a ton of Simic but I’m loving this 1994 collection so far. It’s bleak, funny, and surreal. Here’s a sample for you:

Before bed Spencer and I watched the new episode of Interior Motives. Funny as usual.

Scent: Prada Candy Gloss. This smells like powdery, sweet, cherry-scented makeup. A longtime favorite.

Wednesday 1/14

Before work I cracked up listening to the new episode of How Long Gone featuring Sarah Sherman. Her standup isn’t really to my liking but I think she’s hilarious whenever she guests on a show and this was no exception.

In the evening I got bored on the reference desk at work, was bad, and did some unnecessary shopping. I got a Tyler McGillivary tee and the new Robby Müller L.A. Polaroids book.

I started reading Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels, and Crooks by Patrick Radden Keefe, a collection of his New Yorker pieces. As of this writing, I’m halfway through it. The best piece so far is A Loaded Gun (paywall-free link). It’s about Amy Bishop, a woman who shot six of her colleagues, killing three of them, after failing to achieve tenure at her university. His piece isn’t about the mass shooting at all, really - it’s about how she “accidentally” shot her brother to death as a teenager and didn’t face any consequences, and how that total lack of accountability played out over time. It’s also very much about her twisted relationship with her parents. Great stuff.

Scent: BDK Impadia. I’ve written about this one on substack before, but as a refresher, it’s a rose-pear scent with woody accords. It’s quite strong and several people complimented me on it.

Thursday 1/15

On my morning walk I listened to Expense Account, a newish, laid-back food podcast. The guest was Pete Wells, the NYT’s restaurant critic from 2011-2024. I found him very charming. As I walked past Danzig’s abandoned home on Franklin Ave. - a local landmark - I noticed two coyotes hanging out on the lawn. I took a quick video:

I forgot to put on any perfume and then had a long, chaotic day at work. So many people called out with the flu or various life crises that I ended up working an 11-hour day. When I got home I doused myself with Britney Spears Hidden Fantasy (the orange-y, clove-y flanker), hopped into bed, and ordered two pairs of vintage track pants on Depop before passing out.

Friday 1/16

We were short-staffed again so I ended up doing more overtime in the morning and early afternoon on what was supposed to be my day off. Somebody stole my debit card information and spent $300 on DraftKings, so I had to deal with that. In the evening Spencer and I got bánh mìs and watched Thursday’s episode of Office Hours. Daniel Lopatin did a fun guest appearance via Zoom.

Scent: I felt like wearing something silly so I chose Coach Poppy. It smells like the mall 20 years ago.

Saturday 1/17

I started Amputation by Bruce Wagner before work and managed to finish it by the end of the day. It’s Wagner’s demented, rapidly written take on the devastating L.A. fires of early 2025. Chapters skip through time and from perspective to perspective; we peek inside the minds of Timothée Chalamet’s himbo stunt double, discombobulated mayor Karen Bass, a tree-pinned Stephen Colbert, and more. I was also surprised to discover a particularly cutting subplot about Jewish responses to Gaza. As in all Wagner, there’s a spiritual ugliness on display. Nearly every character is scummy somehow, if not downright rotten. But the writing has many flashes of unexpected, off-kilter beauty, like when he says a kiss tastes like “cardamom, sapphires and brine.” Recommended.

Scent: I forgot to put something on before work, but I had a decant of Liquides Imaginaires Blanche Bete in my bag so I put that on mid-morning. This is a divisive scent - to some people it inexplicably gives “diaper” - but I love it. I’d just never shell out the $300 or whatever for a full bottle.

Sunday 1/18

Before I went to the gym I read the first 100 pages or so of Andrea Dworkin’s Right Wing Women (#1 Jim fan Moira Donegan wrote the intro to the reissue!). This is my first time reading Dworkin and even though she sounds nuts I more or less agree with her about…everything?! For example: “Right-wing women…know that men do not have principles or political agendas not congruent with the sex they want. They know that abortion on strictly self-actualizing terms for women is an abomination to men - left wing men and right wing men and gray men and green men. They know that every woman has to make the best deal she can.”

Spencer has been eyeing the tropical fruit section at Gelson’s all week so today we splurged on a pink elephant mango from Vietnam and a Colada Royale pineapple. They’re still ripening, but I’ll let you know how they turn out.

Scent: Nostos Teen. I mentioned picking this one up last week. Still loving it. I want to buy Shiver, their metallic scent, for Spencer.

That’s all for now. I hope you have a happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and a wonderful rest of your week!