Friendmendations 1.20.20
I don't think you're ready for this jelly, I don't think you're ready for this - my body's got friendmendations for ya, babe
Hey, what’s up? I have seen the sexy, terrifying Oklahoma! revival on Broadway and am a changed woman, a woman who appreciates Rodgers and Hammerstein. I have listened to the cast recording approximately ten thousand times in the three days since I saw the show, which is a heartening development, as I had the upsetting thought during Cats that maybe theatre was actually bad as an art form in general. It’s going to tour and you should absolutely punch anyone who gets in the way of you seeing it.
Anyway! Enough about me. Let’s get down to brass tacks. You know how sometimes these posts have a theme? Not this week! Very random mix.
A thing to read that will make you feel smart
This Smithsonian Magazine piece is called “How Tuberculosis Shaped Victorian Fashion,” and it’s great if you like to laugh at the past. My favorite Extremely Victorian quote in it is the recommendation that men go clean-shaven because “There is no way of computing the number of bacteria and noxious germs that may lurk in the Amazonian jungles of a well-whiskered face.” Go comment that on your #mcm’s Instagram next Movember!
A thing to read that will not make you feel smart, but it will entertain you
I enjoyed Gabriella Paiella’s profile of professional dirtbag Diplo for GQ. It’s filled with descriptors that are just as entertaining as the anti-mustache Victorian man quoted above.
For instance, I learned that Diplo has a “collection of tattoos that could fill an illegal aquarium run out of an aboveground pool in the Florida Keys—a crawfish, a shark, a manatee holding a machine gun, a turtle with a yin-yang shell smoking a blunt.” I can picture it now! I don’t really want to! His life sounds very exhausting, and so does his personality, but it makes for a fun read.
This made me laugh
This is a video of Nick Kroll inventing voices on the spot for imagined characters. I am so fascinated by videos of actors switching in and out of different voices, and I’m always a sucker for Nick Kroll doing improv, so this one is a real double whammy for me. His talent is obviously impressive, but I’m also so drawn to his attention to detail! The best moment is when he notices a gold tooth on one of these fake characters and completely changes his interpretation based on that alone.
This is so GOOFY
A post shared by 🌴🍉 80s Aesthetics🌴🍉 (@neontalk)
Why were the 80s like this?! You really could just get away with having a Hawaiian shirt for a personality back then. Real Dave Coulier shit.
Here are some song options for you
If you want a heartbreak song that sounds like the weird rock of the 90s….
If you want a sadgirl song that sounds like the pop R&B of the late 90s…
If you want an angsty song from the perspective of a miner’s wife from a concept album about a South Dakota mining town that is now the site of an international study in neutrino experimentation…
Or if you want a softer cover of the same song but where the mining feels more like a metaphor…
I think that covers every possible taste in music, right? If you want something else, consult the playlist.
Okay! That’s it for recs this week!
Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day here in America. I’d like to link to my favorite speech of his, “All Labor Has Dignity,” but it’s not available in full online, so here’s an excerpt, and here’s my favorite quote from it:
So often we overlook the work and the significance of those who are not in professional jobs, of those who are not in the so-called big jobs. But let me say to you tonight, that whenever you are engaged in work that serves humanity and is for the building of humanity, it has dignity, and it has worth. One day our society must come to see this. One day our society will come to respect the sanitation worker if it is to survive, for the person who picks up our garbage, in the final analysis, is as significant as the physician, for if he doesn’t do his job, diseases are rampant. All labor has dignity.
All labor has dignity, people!! Think about it!!
And, while we’re at it, here’s a tumblr of tacky club flyers advertising MLK Day Weekend throwdowns.