CAKE FOR BREAKFAST: happy anniversary, babe
It's officially been just over a year since we've been together, here, in the confines your inbox. The traditional one-year anniversary gift for newsletters is "no paper" because we're gathering digitally and print is dying. (lol haha I have book coming out next year lol and furthermore ha ha.) As a gift to me, if there's someone you think would enjoy this newsletter (either genuinely or sarcastically—clicks are clicks, baby!!!), forward it to them, please and thank you. As a gift to you, I will hide one (1) allusion to a song by The Lonely Island and you will have to just figure out where it is. (Hint: it's at the end.)
SOMETHING I ATE WITH MY MOUTH
Gonna be honest with you, I don't have any noteworthy meals coming to mind at the moment. I thought about making mac and cheese but the mac is cauliflower, but I didn't do that. You know what I honestly, truly have been eating religiously? String mothafukken cheese. I love the stuff. Can't get enough of it. I made a poll about the correct way to eat string cheese a year ago. Would subsist on it alone if it weren't for my definitely lactose sensitivity. (I just spelled "lactose" so incorrectly, autocorrect thought I meant "Lacoste" which, tbh, I do have a sensitivity to that as well.)
SOMETHING I ATE WITH MY EYES
My sister Ana and I binged most of A&E's "Born This Way" when she was in town a couple weeks ago. It's a show following a group of adults in California who have Down Syndrome. It's funny. It's emotional. It is, most importantly, the reality TV trash I crave. It also does all of this without being the infantilizing, diminutive, put-the-disabled-person-on-a-problematic-pedestal inspiration porn you often see in media featuring people with disabilities. (Writer David M. Perry wrote a really wonderful piece about the idea of people with disabilities as inspiration porn if you aren't familiar with the phrase.) I'm obsessed. Megan is That Bitch™. Sean is the cheeky, smiling emoji personified. Cristina is all lips and opinions. Cristina's dad is—and I don't say this lightly—Hot Dad Energy embodied. I don't understand how John and Elena don't have their own talk show. Rachel is like if Sadness from Inside Out was actually “Serotonin.” And I feel like Steven on "Born This Way" is Steven from "Laguna Beach" and, unfortunately, I am probably the lone dot at the center of that viewership Venn diagram.
SOMETHING I ATE WITH MY EARS
If you aren't on Instagram or don't seek constant affirmation of your taste from the people you know, you might have missed that Spotify released its 2019 wrapped playlists. They show which artists you discovered, which songs you loved, and how much of your time was spent listening to "Hot Girl" by Megan Thee Stallion. I learned that I am exactly the pop and pop-rap trash you believe me to be. I wrote about how to see your Spotify 2019 Wrapped playlist for Bustle if you like SEO content.
Because I like to fuck up my algorithms early, here are the songs I currently intend to have on repeat for most of 2020:
Always Be My Baby by Brasstracks (IT'S A FUCKEN INSTRUMENTAL HORN COVER! ARE YOU KIDDING ME???)
All of Scary Pockets' new album but particularly Darren Criss's cover of "Dancing In The Dark" (omg fuq me right up) and David Simmons Jr.'s cover of "Make You Feel My Love" (fully let me die)
"My Oh My" by Camila Cabello ft. DaBaby
SOME THINGS I ATE WITH MY BIG, BIG GALAXY BRAIN
I like wordz and I don't care who knows.
Josh Gondleman's piece for The Cut on how his wife’s enemies are now his enemies, too.
Emma Carmichael for the New York Times on these weird-ass tea ceremonies that have become a part of wealthy, mostly-white wellness circles in LA. Emma is brutal in the best, most subtle way.
Riane Konc for The New Yorker on "tragedy + time" and other equations, like "tragedy + 9 months of hiding out = Comedy Cellar” and “Tragedy + >1 year of hiding out = new Netflix special”.
My two good wives, the aforementioned Riane Konc and Elissa Bassist, talking about Riane's book, making light from darkness, and reading boners.
SOME THINGS I MADE FOR YOU TO EAT
Honestly...not a whole lot aside from some very Internet-y Bustle pieces which you can find here (https://www.bustle.com/profile/mia-mercado-1912602). If you want to honor me with your browser cookies, here's a piece I wrote for the New York Times earlier this year on what a person's body language means.
Stay Hungry Hungry Hippo vibes!!!! hahahahah I have a college degree
(used a version of that pic last week but it is the energy I'm trying to bring into 2020 so ~enjoy~)
Mia
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