Friday Five: January 7, 2022

Easy... Dutch Baby

Welcome to the Friday Five, your weekly roundup of joyful and comforting content! I tried to write an upfront about how strange the New Year can feel, then I read Alicia Kennedy’s brilliant newsletter and she summed up my feelings quite perfectly:

Let’s get on with things (and adjust accordingly)…

Song: “Just Like Heaven” is one of the loveliest of love songs. An all-time favorite! There are 49 seconds of glorious instrumentals before the vocals hit, starting with drums and bass, then the guitar and synth come in and you feel like you’re soaring. This song feels like a fairytale (‘just like a dream’) and infinite possibility. At a time when reality feels very far from that, I choose to indulge myself in this musical dream over and over again.

Game: Wordle is a daily word puzzle, where you have six tries to guess a five letter word, and after each guess, the letter tiles change color to show how close your guess was to the word. It will take up a few minutes of your day and it has brought me lots of joy lately. A super smart and sweet software engineer, Josh Wardle, created the game for his partner to enjoy, and this New York Times piece on the game endeared me to it even more. After you finish the game, you can share an emoji read out of how you did that won’t spoil the answers for anyone else… so play, and send me yours. 🟩 🟩 🟩 🟩 🟩 🟩 !

Video: The Golden Girls was a golden show that I spent far too many hours watching as a child. Betty White completely improvised this scene with impeccable timing, making Bea Arthur and Rue MacLanahan break into laughter, without breaking character for a second. What a woman. RIP.

Small Practical Object: Disclaimer — Since starting this series, I felt conflicted about including ‘things’ in the newsletter, because there are an infinite number of songs, poems, books, recipes, works of art, etc. that can bring you joy without spending money. If I occasionally include a product here, it’s because I genuinely use it and believe it’s worthwhile. These will mostly be super pragmatic! This rec is so nerdy I could die! Okay. Oral-B Glide Floss turned me into a consistent flosser. I started buying it in bulk at Costco after stealing a pack from my Dad’s supply, and it really, truly lives up to its name. It glides so easily between teeth! I went to the Dentist recently and they could not stop complimenting me on the cleanliness of my teeth, which has never ever happened to me. The appointment ended with a “Keep doing what you’re doing, ‘cause it’s working” (swoon) — you deserve this kind of dental praise at least once in your life.

Joyful Internet Content:

Sharjil Rasool @sharjilrasool

dolly parton funding new masks called worKN95

adam @adam_notsandler

you know a movie is gonna slap if it’s just you and like five senior citizens in the theater

Ron Iver @ronnui_

FYI if you see that I have incognito tabs open it's not nsfw it's because I don't want people knowing I'm searching something like "is it dangerous to microwave la croix"

Kash Sinn @KvshSinn

Voldemort beefing with a 12 year old is very funny to me

Amy @lolennui

thinking about how scared the founding fathers would be if they saw a Furby

Sarah J. Hass @tacko_belle

credit card chip machines are like: - DO NOT remove your card - DO NOT - hey look at me - DO NOT remove your card - take out your card immediately or I’m burning this place to the ground

slate @PleaseBeGneiss

cdc 2020: boil your hands cdc now: what if we kissed inside the chuck e. cheese ball pit

Ron Iver @ronnui_

I'll never understand people who are like "I can trace my lineage back to King Henry VIII" when I learned that my grandma had a mom I was like ok I can't keep track of this

Just like a dream,

Roya