Inputs
Lies and Weddings by Kevin Kwan: These books are like an enormous frozen cocktail with ridiculous garnishes, and even though there are starting to be some familiar plot devices I am going to read every single one.
Wives Like Us by Plum Sykes: Pairs perfectly with another book about petty rich people! In LaW every new character is introduced with a parenthetical note about the schools they attended. WLU uses a similar device, except the salient facts are the character’s actual age, the age they appear, and any interventions or environmental factors that explain the difference. I’d never read any of PS’s other novels so I am excited to have a big fluffy pit of frivolity to dive into!
Outputs
What is the opposite of a backhanded compliment? A fronthanded insult? Secondhand humblebrags? Below is a selection of things people have said to me that were not intended as compliments, but that I received as such:
“I can tell you’re American because you’ve had your teeth fixed” (I haven’t!)
“You’re going to have problems with your squat because your legs are so long in proportion to your body”
“You act all nice on the outside but you’re actually stealthily caustic”
“You have always made me a bit nervous but now will be doubly so”
“Ah yes…your handshake was very…yes I see” (after telling the Ukrainian mover I was Finnish, Finnish women known for having- actually just see below)
“You shake hands like someone with something to prove” (and one more)
“It felt like you were trying to rip my arm off”
Tell me your favorite anticompliment!
Condiment Corner
A few weeks ago we met up in Hudson with a friend (of the Wozz!) roadtripping with her family to Montreal. I suggested Mel the Bakery because it is on all the lists, assuming that a place that bougie would surely make something gluten free. They didn’t (I got a yogurt) but I counted the experience of visiting a fancy bakery in the Hudson Valley on a Sunday morning during peak wedding season as a success from an anthropological perspective. Man alive, the quantity and variety of Status Canvas Totes! So many people in that line looked like they were in the depths of post-wedding-attendance existential Main Character moments. That, or the older exhausted versions of those people now accompanied by their young families, peering balefully at the trappings of their past lives through the fog of the mundane. Anyway, MtB also had a bunch of Instagrammy foodstuffs, and this $7 can of chickpeas felt just at the outer edges of splurgy but not insulting. I did not have it in me to buy a $12 can of sardines. They are good! Nice weekday lunch over rice with some slumping leftover greens.