The TueDo List: Punk Museum + Caftan Parade + Pet Psychic
And a must-have shirt, via Cyndi Lauper
THIS WEEK
📖 READ: Lizzo covers Vanity Fair. Why She-Hulk is such a powerful symbol of female rage. Omisade Burney-Scott makes the case for changing the narrative about menopause and aging. They’re opening a 12,000-square foot punk rock museum in Vegas. What it was like to talk about abortion before Roe v. Wade. A cure for the existential crisis of married motherhood. RIP Angela Lansbury.
👀 LOOK: Proof we were really into roller skates in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Dear Aloha Caftan Society, please invite us to your next Pink Caftans on Parade event. We see your inflatable skeletons and raise you a floating Max from Stranger Things. Photos from last weekend’s Women’s March.
🎧 LISTEN: Molly Jong-Fast talks work, her famous mother, and growing up Gen-X on a new podcast called Twitterverse. Sevdaliza’s “Woman Life Freedom,” in support of women in Iran.
🤣 LOL: If Steel Magnolias was a horror movie. Carrie Bradshaw writes her column while trapped in a corn maze. How to apply “no-makeup” makeup: A guide for mature women.
🛒 ADD TO CART: The Forerunner: A Story of Pain and Perseverance in America, Cori Bush’s memoir. This Girls Just Want to Have Fundamental Rights shirt, which benefits a good cause. And, once they’re back in stock, all the Yip Yips for holding plants.
📺 WATCH
Now: Iliza Shlesinger’s new standup special, Hot Forever, looks hilarious (Netflix).
Wednesday: I Love You, You Hate Me, a documentary about all that Barney hate back in the ‘90s (Peacock).
Thursday: Jamie Lee Curtis makes her last stand in Halloween Ends (Theaters), and Naomi Watts and Bobby Cannavale star in The Watcher, based on a real story (Netflix).
Friday: Tegan and Sara’s High School, a new series “told through a backdrop of ‘90s grunge and rave culture” (Amazon Freevee).
Saturday: Megan Thee Stallion hosts and performs on SNL (NBC).
STORY: I Had a Pet Psychic on Speed Dial
By Erica Reitman
I don’t use the term “fur baby mama” non-ironically or own a collection of seasonal holiday dog sweaters. My pup doesn’t have an Instagram account or eat small-batch, home-prepared foods. But, true confessions: I’ve had my animal communicator on speed dial for the better part of ten years now.
TUENIGHT 10: Vicki Larson, Journalist and Author
Age: 65.
Basic bio: Vicki is a Bay Area journalist and author whose books include Not Too Old For That: How Women Are Changing the Story of Aging and The New I Do: Reshaping Marriage for Skeptics, Realists and Rebels. She's working on a new book on “live-apart-together” relationships (her personal preference). She is the mom of two young men who are taller than she is so she's a lot nicer to them, and dog mom to a somewhat neurotic rescue.
Beyond the bio: Like many women, I lived in fear of hitting midlife. Silly me. I have never felt more confident, interested and interesting, vibrant, comfortable in my skin and juicy, just at the time when society says I am irrelevant, invisible and asexual. Clearly, I am experiencing what anthropologist Margaret Mead called “postmenopausal zest.”
What makes you a grown-ass lady?
One of the great joys I’ve discovered about growing older is seeing each day as a gift; it sounds so cliché, but it isn’t, as we’ve learned during the pandemic. I nurture my friendships and — for the first time in decades — myself, and let my friends and children know how much I love and appreciate them.
Here’s her TueNight 10:
On the nightstand: Way too many books, a glass of water, a vibrator and a candle.
Can’t stop/won’t stop: Laughing, dancing, hiking, talking to random people, singing along to my playlists, daydreaming, speaking truth to power, busting harmful ageist/sexist narratives.
Jam of the minute: Because I’m angry about the assault on reproductive rights and our democracy, and am worried about climate change, I crank up “Beds Are Burning” by Midnight Oil.
Thing I miss: My parents. Just wish I could hang with them again.
‘80s crush: After my obsession with James Taylor and Jackson Browne, I went straight to bad boy Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin.
Current crush: I’m late to watching The Sopranos and he’s not my type at all, but the late James Gandolfini is sexy AF.
Latest fav find: My electric bike.
Last thing you lost: My cute go-to black miniskirt; I have torn my closets and drawers apart and... zilch.
Best thing that happened recently: I got cataract surgery on both eyes and I can finally see (and realized I’m a lot grayer than I thought I was!)
Looking forward to: For 10 years when my boys were little, we spent our summers on Oahu because their dad taught at the university. It’s a special place for us, filled with wonderful memories and aloha. I’m taking my now-adult sons and their partners there in November for a mini-family reunion. I can’t wait.
Have a great week, TueNighters!
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