free friday
binging tv, moisturizer talk and my mom's apartment
Been feeling somewhat in a dark place these days and also since work has been slow right now I have made watching TV my job, clocking in every morning while my coffee is still letting off steam. I think I made a comment recently in one of my friday letters that I enjoy the return of releasing a one new episode each week, but as I am a bit Depressed I actually take that back and need every episode of everything released right now and on my desk.
I’m also b e g g i n g these shows to have more than ten episodes a season. I am desperate to let a show take over my watch schedule for longer than a week. This last Sunday I got drinks with a friend who mentioned the show Tell Me Lies, which I did watch the first season over two years ago when it first came out and liked it at the time. But then too much time passed in between the 2nd and 3rd seasons and it felt like homework to catch up so I always just tabled this show for another time. But with a little nudging from my friend and an entire week of nothing on my calendar I decided to dive back in. It is a dark show, both in tone and lighting. I watched it all at a rate that doesn’t feel natural, like I somehow packed in all those episodes within a time frame that doesn’t calculate after doing the math. But anyway now I have a new enemy (that entire friend group) (minus Wrigley and Alex) and my Heated Rivalry algorithm has now passed the torch to a Tell Me Lies algorithm. So if you are also held hostage by this show of incredibly toxic people that just raises your blood pressure every week, my dm’s are open for all memes, TikToks and ways to nuke Stephen off this planet.
things i ate, drank, watched and loved that you might too:
Along with endless TV, I feel like I have made an appropriate dent in Oscar nominated movies for this year. I have loved everything I’ve watched except… Bugonia. Maybe my next substack will be a little rundown of all my thoughts on all the films but idk- I just expected more from that one in particular!
I’ve posted about my Dieux eye masks before and even dropped a note on here a few days ago about how much I still love them after all these years (also trying my best to use that function on here more, I miss tweeting). I will be heralding their name even louder now after their recent posts calling out this administration and saying a nice fuck you to ICE. They even donated all of their profits from 1/27 to organizations helping Minnesotans affected by ICE operations. After seeing that post I made sure to re-up on some of their moisturizers and they truly are just so good.
My Trader Joe’s rec of the week is this surprisingly good Cherry Cola probiotic soda. I can’t drink too many of these kinds of drinks because I will sh*t my pants but I was shocked how good this one was.
Speaking of Trader Joe’s, I grabbed this body butter after seeing it go viral online. When I smelled it in the store I was immediately transported to my days as a Victoria’s Secret associate. I worked there for over 5 years and even became one of the managers in my latter years. This scent smells exactly like a scent we sold during that time and it is absolutely destroying me to try to remember exactly which one. The closest I’ve come to maybe getting it is the Warm and Cozy PINK line of body butter but I still have some doubts. So if you were also a VS associate around 2007-2012 I urgently am requesting your assistance to crack this nostalgic scent mystery.
I am so utterly desperate for baseball to come back. I think thats actually the thing that will make my head finally perk up from this bout of depression. In the meantime though, I unfortunately do see myself becoming overly obsessed with the Winter Olympics over the next few weeks because at the end of the day I simply love to watch a sport. It does feel a little gross this time around to hold any patriotism for the US so I simply am excited to just see anyone do anything from anywhere.
And a little anecdote to leave you with: while searching for a pic of my dad for my last newsletter, I came across this picture of my mom’s old apartment in Miami. She took this to send to her dad to thank him for buying some of its furniture but it stopped me dead in my tracks to how similar it is to my current apartment’s vibe. I know a lot of this newsletter is about my adoption which in turn discusses extensively the subject of nature vs nurture and this just seems like another big W for the nurture category.
screenshots from this week:
one last thing:
Last week I released a newsletter about my immigrant community growing up in South Florida if you missed it. Per the poll on my last friday letter, the people have spoken and I will be releasing more long form content about anything. I’m going to keep this free for one more month and then will be turning back to a paid model for anything that isn’t a free friday letter. Thank you for all your support I actually cannot believe I have been running this substack for almost 6 years!