This Week
The golden age of middle-aged woman on TV (via DameMagazine)
A look back at the unapologetically middle-aged women of 90s television. Women over 40 rocked the Golden Globes red carpet on Sunday night. GenX icon, Elizabeth Wurtzel, has died at age 52 from metastatic breast cancer. Seeing how peanuts grow out of the ground and how cashews grow on trees is pretty trippy. Apparently, our generation gets the least amount of sleep. Maybe it’s because our bedrooms are too hot? This oral history of the “Bohemian Rhapsody” scene in Wayne’s World is (party-time!) excellent. You won’t need the subtitles to understand the beauty in this two minute Iranian short film. Here’s a comprehensive list of organizations helping the people of Australia as they battle unprecedented brushfires and devastation. We are mourning the loss of TueNighter Nancy Falkow McBride this week, but we still have her exquisite music.
JANUARY THEME: SENDOFF
Editor's Note: We spend a lot of our younger years acquiring: jobs, friends, expertise, furniture, money. One of the sure signs we have crossed life's midline is when we find ourselves letting go. As we head into the new year, and the new DECADE, this month’s theme brings stories of what it is we are leaving behind, whether we wanted to or not.
I Said Goodbye to Bad Romance
By Heather Graham
"When we finally broke up, I was devastated. I could feel my heart labor to beat; each breath felt like a struggle, like there was a brick on my chest. I cried in my morning showers and lived in a perpetual anxiety attack. I smoked too many cigarettes and ate too little food. I analyzed every moment of the previous five years, reconstructing every fight and every cross word I’d ever said. The evidence was in: I deserved this."
Keep reading...
Obsessed: Encore! on Disney +
If you’ve been wondering what Margit and I were doing during our two weeks off, we each spent nearly 10 hours watching Encore! On Disney+ and texting each other as we cried through nearly every episode. We both loved this show so much, that when we talked about writing it up for the newsletter I actually asked, “Do I have to fight you for this?” The basic premise is Encore! brings back a group of people who performed in their high school musical 20-30ish years ago, enlists professional theater directors/choreographers to help out, and within a week, revive the show together. So you’ve got the Hackensack, NJ class of 1990 coming back to perform Grease (Rizzo is SO New Jersey), Flint, MI class of ‘92 performing The Sound of Music, and, our absolute favorite (you’ll see why!), the Snellville, GA class of ‘91 performing Oklahoma!
As a former high school musical “geek” myself, OF COURSE I was drawn in to the Rodgers and Hammerstein of it all, but it’s the personal stories of each (now adult) cast member that hooked me — where they find themselves at this stage in their lives, what they would tell their younger selves, and how brave they are for even attempting a musical redo. When Kelly — a personal chef reviving her 1984 role in Pippin — says, “It’s really hard at times to cut myself some slack and say, like, it’s okay to be where you are right now,” I felt that right in my gut.
Please watch this show and come discuss it with us in T/N Spoiler Alert! And if you have Verizon, you can get your first year of Disney + for free!
—Karen Gerwin
GET TIX! TUENIGHT LIVE, 1/28 in NYC
Join us January 28 in Manhattan: For our Winter edition of TueNight Live we're taking RISKS - telling tales of life after the leap. This edition's storytellers include Bridgett M. Davis, Carmen Rita Wong, Robin Gelfenbien and Stacy Morrison plus more to come! As always, we'll have wine, delish snacks and fabulous stories from women who have been there/ done that.
TueNight 10: Addie Tsai
Addie celebrating her recent book publication
Age: 40
Quick bio: Addie is a queer, nonbinary artist and writer who teaches creative writing, English, humanities, and dance, at Houston Community College. Her debut, queer Asian Young Adult novel Dear Twin, was published by Metonymy Press in November 2019.
Beyond the Bio: “Two weeks before I turned 40, and three months before embarking on promoting my first book, my marriage of four-plus years (seven altogether) fell disastrously apart. Forty is coming with lots of changes, both good and bad, exciting and paradigm-shifting. But I'm also excited about what the new decade might bring, too.”
1. On the nightstand: The Map of Salt and Stars, by Zeyn Joukhadar
2. Can't stop/won't stop: Roller-skating
3. Jam of the minute: “Washing Machine Heart,” Mitski
4. Thing I miss: My ex
5. 80s crush: Janet Jackson
6. Current crush: The DJ who played for Lizzo when she opened for HAIM, before anyone knew who she was
7. Will whine about: Traffic
8. Will wine about: Dating sagas
9. Best thing that happened recently: I made Autostraddle’s list of 55 of the best queer books of 2019!
10. Looking forward to: Divorce, and also the grief moving through so I can feel in charge of my body, mind, and heart again. My first book review! (But also: gulp!)
Psst! Please share us with a friend.