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I laughed a lot this month, let’s talk about it!
 I was really, really excited about John Mulaney’s new Netflix special Kid Gorgeous at Radio City and that’s usually a bad omen for me because being excited about something often leads me to having accidentally high expectations and I do not handle having expectations well at all. But Mulaney totally delivered and I laughed a lot a lot and was just generally delighted. It also has the most beautiful stage setup I have ever seen for a stand-up set and I’d kind of just like to stare at it a lot forever which is sort of weird, but great.
🖤
  Crystal and I caught up on Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Speechless this month and they’re just such good, funny, smart, charming shows that I kind of get overwhelmed by them both. It’s nice to watch sitcoms that are consistently funny and don’t waste their time or energy on jokes that punch down. I’m also super glad that both are coming back next year!
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 Ali Wong’s new special Hard Knock Wife is so so so soooooo funny. Her jokes are great and really well-paced, but what really sets her apart is her delivery. She says things in ways that I never expect and she commits 1000% to everything she does and it all made me laugh so hard that my stomach hurt afterward. I also love that no matter how outlandish or “gross” her jokes might get, they never feel like she’s trying to be ~edgy or outrageous; it feels like she’s talking to you the way she’d joke around with her friends and that makes the show feel really special.
And three to look forward to…
  
All I did this month was listen to music! Let’s talk about some!
 The universe conspired this month and “Spell It Out” from You Me At Six’s Night People ended up on one of Crystal’s Spotify Daily Mixes and I just happened to be with her in the car while she was listening to it and it was absolute instant obsession — I think I listened to it at least a half-dozen times immediately — and the rest of the album is also pretty good. This is another band that comes up in Rock Sound’s Guess the Band and I know they’ve been around forever and apparently I should have like, looked them up sooner. Tracks to Check: “Spell It Out” & “Night People” & “Make Your Move”
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 I had heard about Waterparks kind of a lot earlier this year, but had never felt particularly compelled to check them out until the video for “Blonde” ended up crossing my YouTube recommendations and it was fun enough to be intriguing. I like this album because even though it’s pretty cohesive, you also kind of don’t know what’s coming next track-to-track and I always love bands who are willing to just write the songs they want to write and go with it. Tracks to Check: “Blonde” & “Tantrum” & “Crybaby”
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 You know, I’ve spent a lot of time in my life yelling wildly yelling about ~The Algorithm~ but the more I use Spotify, the more I believe it’s the only technology that truly understands me because it keeps jamming incredible songs from bands I’ve never heard of into my Discover Weekly playlist and if it did not, I would have never heard of Bear Ghost and a portion of the Ludo-shaped hole in my heart would not be filled. Blasterpiece is sooooooooooo goooooooooooood and exactly the perfect mix of fun and weird that I needed in my life. Tracks to Check: “Necromancin Dancin” & “Funkle Phil” & “All at Once”
And three to look forward to…
  
 It is extremely hard to not love an album that starts with an homage to/sample of Baz Lurman’s Romeo + Juliet soundtrack and thankfully the rest of Dead!’s The Golden Age of Not Even Trying doesn’t disappoint. This is a hell of an album with some great guitar work and really… unexpected? vocals. Also! A great album for people who are missing My Chemical Romance. Tracks to Check: “Enough Enough Enough” & “Off White Paint” & “Any Port”
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 Crystal and I sat on the couch on the first Saturday of February and watched all 10 episodes of Big Mouth and laughed hysterically and also kept going, “Hmmm kids maybe shouldn’t watch this, but man, kids should really watch this.” It’s funny and gross and really, aggressively true to some of the idiotically stupid feelings you have to experience at that age. Super fun and funny.
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 Not to be dramatic, but I’m pretty sure Don Broco is my new favorite band? Technology is GOOD. Really, really end-to-end excellent. There is a sort of sonic magic happening that I don’t have the musical knowledge to articulate, but it’s… incredibly special and somehow reminiscent of a lot of things I’ve loved before (They remind me a lot of CKY: my favorite band from late 2003-2007) and also not exactly like anything I’ve ever heard before. It fucking rules. Also, I wouldn’t have found them without Rock Sound’s very delightful Guess the Band YouTube series. Tracks to Check: “T-Shirt Song” & “Come Out to LA” & “Blood in the Water”
And one three to look forward to…
  
Crystal and I have spent like, the last three holiday seasons, watching a whole bunch of those made-for-tv(ish) holiday romantic comedy/dramedy movies available on various streaming services because the holidays are a time for ignoring your problems and watching laughably bad movies made on shoestring budgets, so here are five of my favorites in no particular order!
 The Spirit of Christmas mostly gets points because it has, by far, the best looking male lead in a sea of mediocre white guys. Also, he’s a ghost and kind of rude and stand-offish in a way that’s both infuriating and kind of hot. Jen Lilley is also enjoyable, even if her character is a little too tv Christmas movie trope-y for my extremely refined tastes. Their chemistry is good and the movement from antagonistic to romantic is extremely enjoyable. Also, this is the only movie on this list that I paid actual money to watch and I didn’t even feel ripped off!
 A Snow Globe Christmas is great because they took Alicia Witt and let her be kind of caustic and then paired her with a cheerful, patient (and handsome!) Donald Faison and then actually let them kind of play and push at each other instead of just making them walk a standard romcom line. This one is kind of a weird ride though, let me tell you. And it’s one of the first that had an ending I couldn’t exactly predict!
 Naughty & Nice or Christmas Mix (How much do I love that so many of these movies have multiple names? SO MUCH.) is one we put off watching for a long time because we’d been avoiding all the Haylie Duff movies (I have an aversion.) but had to finally give in because we were running out of other options. She is actually very charming here and Tilky Jones is probably the second handsomest mediocre white dude I’ve seen in these movies. Also, he used to be in a boy band. This one’s got good chemistry which helps tolerating the unnecessary complications of the third act easier. Also Marsha Brady’s a badass, mountain-y mom in this, which was a delightful surprise.
 Married by Christmas or The Engagement Clause is our most recent watch and possibly my very favorite? Jes Macallan is great; pretty and pretty normal and super funny, especially while playing drunk, and Coby Ryan McLaughlin is handsome and extremely charming even while being a dick. This one was mildly frustrating because the lead is blamed for things she shouldn’t be, but it makes up for it by actually featuring a gay character (!! I still absolutely cannot believe Hallmark isn’t churning out at least one gay/lesbian version of these movies every year. Honestly. What a waste.) and also being intentionally funnier and missing the typical unnecessarily complicated third act! Also, shout out to the world’s ugliest wedding dress.
 A Holiday Engagement has an okay-ish dude the the very charming Bonnie Somerville who is way better served by this script than she ever was on Friends and Jordan Bridges is pretty good-looking. (I know where my priorities are, thank you.) I loooooooooooove a good fake relationship story and this one is very dumb and very cute. The real winner in this though is the kooky family element and all of the Christmas-y fun that develops from it. Also, Shelley Long is a DELIGHT.
Honorable Mentions
How Sarah Got Her Wings | Window Wonderland | Christmas Crush or Holiday High School Reunion
If you need even more recommendations for holiday viewing this season, I also have a Totally Top 5: Christmas Movies edition. 🎄🎅🏿
I saw an extremely good tweet the other day that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about because I really needed to see it and thought that maybe you might need to see it too.
We are living in a technological future that pretty much no one could have predicted. The speed and scope with which we are presented with information is almost unfathomable for us even though we are alive right now, living through it. We hear about natural disasters and acts of violence and terrorism near-instantly. We see human suffering constantly, in real-time. There is information coming at you all the time, from every angle, in absolutely every space you inhabit, virtually or physically (When’s the last time you were in a waiting room without a TV tuned to some kind of news?) and it is emotionally and mentally exhausting.
And you should step away from it when you can, when you need to.
It’s a privilege to be able to disengage from the news and you shouldn’t do it, like, permanently, but if you can stop the constant stream of information for a little while, you probably should.
Whatever that disconnection looks like for you is FINE. Maybe you like nature, maybe you like mindless comedies from the 80s, maybe you want to read a YA novel while you curl up in bed, maybe you want to listen to Enya and take a bath, maybe you want to take a nap. Whatever lets you feel a little bit detached from the information stream is going to help you feel less overwhelmed.
You deserve to feel a little less bad. You deserve to feel a tiny bit of peace. You deserve to chill out for five minutes. You deserve more than that, but again, I’m trying to be realistic here. Don’t let yourself feel guilty for disconnecting. Also, don’t let yourself disconnect forever. Life’s a balancing act and you deserve to find the closest thing to balance that you can.
Take care of yourself! You’re wonderful. 💖
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