feels so goodt being badt
OMG we made it to Friday. On Wednesday morning, my vibes were telling me I HAD to go to the Union Square Greenmarket first thing in the morning. I trusted them, and ended up seeing LORDE!!!!!!!
She’s been seen around the city recently, and the rumor is she’s working with Dev Hynes (Blood Orange) on her new album. I was obviously in a panic and kinda regret not saying anything to her. Should I have said something??? I literally listen to “Ribs” once a day.
If I see her again lmk what I should say or if I should just let her be. If someone like myself came up to me on the street I would be super stressed out.
I bought a bundle of lilacs and was stopped multiple times on the walk home with people saying, “Excuse me ma’am, those are beautiful lilacs!! :)” “Ma’am! Beautiful flowers!”
🎾 Challengers (2024) directed by Luca Guidagnino - OMG what a blaaaassstttt!!!!! I’ll be honest; I wasn’t really looking forward to this one. A tennis movie set in MODERN TIMES…. I thought I was good on allat… and thank GOD I was wrong!!! We went for the opening night last night, and the theater was jam-packed. I usually would have been annoyed about all the noise everyone was making throughout (specifically the person sitting next to me that kept shaking their box of candy aggresively into their mouth the entire movie… WHO EATS CANDY LIKE THAT!!!!), but it only added to the stress and uneasiness of it all. Normally, I think during movies I love, “Damn, I don’t want this movie to end.” but that wasn’t the case with Challengers. But, I also wasn’t waiting for it to end. Challengers felt like Luca’s most focused and fine-tuned movie to date, with a perfect 130-minute runtime.
I could tell a quarter of the audience didn’t get Luca Guidagnino. People who came in maybe because of Zendaya or Rhianna’s “S&M” being the song in the trailer?? Idk but hearing vocalized annoyance made me love it that much more. But afterward, I also heard people talk about how this was their first time seeing one of his movies, and now they feel like they need to watch Bones and All (I should have warned them it’s mid and that they don’t need it) and Call Me by Your Name. Challengers felt risky and a needed departure from Luca’s past films. There were a couple of nods to his older movies, and with that, he stayed locked tf in with his worldbuilding. I love Luca’s attention to detail with set and costume decisions, and the Augustinus Bader Soothing Cream Zendaya was using in one scene really made me want to stop at Sephora on the way home and get a tub of it.
Luca Guidagnino is also truly the queen of collabs, and with Challengers, he added to his repertoire. In the past, he’s collabed with some of my favorite people from Raf Simons for I Am Love (2009), Sufjan Stevens for Call Me by Your Name (2017), Thom Yorke for Suspiria (2018), and Dev Hynes for We Are Who We Are (2020). With Challengers, Guidagnino added to his collection of titans with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross and it really, REALLY, worked. The contrast between Luca’s soft, sensual, and romantic vibes that are common themes throughout his filmography, mixed with the jarring beats from Trent and Atticus, just really did something to me.
Watching it really felt like watching a really intense sports game. Like when you see those reaction videos of people screaming and cheering at a tv (which the audience my theater had did for most of the movie). I’m not being dramatic when I say this was my LITERAL reaction during almost every scene in the movie:
It was just one of those movies where you really need a cigarette afterward. I don’t smoke, so the next best thing was stopping at Veniero’s in the East Village and getting a strawberry millefoglie.
🍗 Allison Roman’s Anchovy-Butter Chicken - On Saturday night, I made Allison Roman’s latest chicken recipe from her newsletter. I was somehow out of butter and subbed it with olive oil, but it all still came out dank. I mixed some blanched green beans and arugula with a Caesar-ish dressing (blended anchovies, egg yolk, olive oil, and lemon juice) and ended up stuffing and frying half of the morels with ricotta, shallots, garlic, and parm. Everything with a squirt of lemon on top… mmmmmmmm.
🌱🍄 Ramp and morel frittata - Nothing feels more Springtime than ramps and morels especially together. We ate the remainder of the morels for breakfast the following morning in a frittata with ramps and Yukon golds. Mmmmm, with a side of lemon aioli and a slice of olive loaf… mmmmmmmm. This looks like a really big slice, but it’s just a really small plate.
🪑 House of Roro - This is a fun and somewhat affordable furniture brand that I just discovered. They have a bunch of stuff I don’t need but I love window shopping. This Cat Vase is cool, and I wish we had a reason to buy this Book Tower. I don’t love the look of flat-pack furniture, but maybe this is the brand that makes me change my mind.
🥙 Au Za'atar in the East Village - On Monday night, we went for a walk through Tompkins and ended up stopping at Au Za’atar for dinner. We always pass by and see people eating trays of meat and fries, so it was inevitable we would eventually go. We got a ton of food but the starters are what really hit it out of the park. We got the sumac fries, the babaganoush, halloum mekli (fried holumi drizzled in honey and lemon), and one of them came with sauces and pickled veg. It was all just really good.
🎞 Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria - On Sunday, we went to The Museum of the Moving Image. They have a ton of old tv/movie memorabilia, a Jim Henson/ The Muppets exhibit, and they even do screenings of old movies. It was a fun Sunday afternoon activity because the weather was really good, and there were just way too many people outside downtown. Here’s one of the divas from the Jim Henson exhibit who really ate me, and everyone else tf up:
There are a bunch of chain restaurants on the strip where the museum is and we ended up going to Chili’s afterward. Not until we were on the train platform going home and I said, “I can’t believe we just went to Chili’s,” did I learn that we had actually just eaten at Applebee’s when Alex corrected me. Mmmmm, it was so goodt!!!!
🍔 Breakfast now on the menu at Superiority Burger - Superiority Burger recently started opening their doors for breakfast and no shit it’s bomb. I got “The Tray” that came with cinnamon sugar focaccia, a spiced fruit parfait, grits, braised cabbage, some sort of tofu scramble that tasted like Thanksgiving and a crispy something that I don’t remember what was in it. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that I think the breakfast options are better than the dinner options. Alex got the waffle that was also special but their menu isn’t online so I can’t tell you what was in it. We need to go back during the week, when their fries, which were just named some of the best fries in the city, are only available during the weekday lunch.
🛖 And finally, here’s the cabin’s Airbnb listing - I have a lot of beef with the property management company regarding how they’ve handled communication, them not updating things properly (there are errors in the listing but they are the only ones who have access to edit it), and I HATE how the pictures turned out (they are NOT my vibe of pictures I’m sorry if I’m being a brat!!!), but it’s finally listed! Yay! :)
We want to add a porch to the side of the house before the summertime so maybe we’ll schedule another photoshoot with a different photographer… Maybe Miles can take some when him and Karina come up in June for the Fleet Foxes concert. We’ll see.
We’re seeing Oneohtrix Point Never tonight and I can’t wait! On Saturday my hair salon is having an 8-year anniversary black-tie happy hour thing and then on Sunday we’re driving to the middle of Pennsylvania to go to Knoebels for Alex’s birthday.
What are you doing this weekend? My rec is you eat an edible and go see Challengers, and then call me immediately afterward while you’re still sweating and your heart is racing.
Alright,
Thank you for reading, and I appreciate your support.
Bye!