The TueDo List: Ukraine Stories + 1980s Wordle + Vintage ❤️

Plus very obsolete tech. Hold on, that's my beeper...

THIS WEEK

Raise your hand if you still have boxes of cassette tapes, but nothing to play them on.

📖 READ: Time for some Gen-X Justice! How Ketanji Brown Jackson’s sister circle shaped her life. Charlize Theron gets weed from her mom. You might not actually need 10,000 steps a day. “If you are struggling with your mental health, love is definitely the answer” – wise words from Roland Orzabal. How Niecy Nash and Jessica Betts fell in love. We don’t care what the Kibbe body type system says; if it makes you happy, wear it.

👀 LOOK: The obsolete technologies of our childhoods. Find your pet’s look-alike in art history. Aretha Franklin's granddaughter auditioned for American Idol – and Lionel Ritchie said no!

🌻 HELP: A few ways to help: GoFundMe’s Ukraine donation hub. A roundup of places that support Ukrainian refugees. How to support trans kids in Texas. Check out the #DearQueerKid Letter Project. And why you might want to consider donating to RIP Medical Debt. 

🤣 LOL: If Wordle existed in the 1980s. A Donna Summer/Danzig mashup that sort of works? Pepsi is putting booze in Mountain Dew, as if that would make it taste better. Jaboukie Young-White’s joke about reggae. 

📺 WATCH

• Now: Season 5 of Better Things. (FX)

• Thursday: Kate McKinnon stars in Joe Vs. Carole (Peacock), Amanda Seyfried is Elizabeth Holmes in The Dropout (Hulu), and Whoopi Goldberg returns in Star Trek: Picard Season 2 (Paramount+).

• Friday: Zoë Kravitz as Catwoman in The Batman (theaters) and Amy Poehler’s documentary Lucy and Desi (Prime).

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UKRAINE: Storytellers to Follow

Photo by Vadim Ghirda

For several days we’ve been watching the heartbreaking news coming out of Ukraine, where everyday people are doing their Molotov-Cocktail-best to resist the Russian invasion. To learn what’s really happening on the ground, we’re following journalists, photographers, chefs, and everyday citizens-turned-storytellers — Ukrainians and others. 

Here are a few we’re following (though given the sketchiness of everything going on there, not necessarily endorsing):

• Nika Melkozerova — New Voice Ukraine executive editor

• Chef José Andrés — Chef, storyteller, feeder of refugees, hero

• Serhii Korovainyi — Documentary and portrait photographer from Ukraine

• Julia Ioffe — Founder of Puck News with some of the most clear-minded commentary on Ukraine

• Vadim Ghirda — AP News photographer

• Evgeniy Maloletka — Freelance photographer based in Ukraine

Who else should we add to this list? Please let us know in the comments.

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OBSESSED: Midcentury Antique Stores

Eye candy from my camera roll (or things I saw in antique stores but did not buy)

By Margaret Crandall

My love of vintage/antique stores started 30 years ago in Chicago. I blame it on the guy I was dating back then. He’d spend FOREVER digging through crates in used record stores, which was as exciting to me as watching paint dry. To kill time, I’d wander into the vintage clothing stores on the same blocks, losing myself in racks of 1960s dresses. On a good day, he’d find a rare 7” record to play on his radio show, and I’d find a great vintage skirt suit that actually fit me. (I was trying very hard to be “mod” and cool.)

Fast forward a few years, when vintage furniture became more appealing than vintage clothes, which I couldn’t wear to my 9-5 office jobs anyway. I’d spend hours in antique malls, admiring all the formica, chrome, and lucite. And bring a lot of it home with me, because in the early 90s, it was still fairly inexpensive.

Now, a few weeks shy of 50, I still love going into these stores, even when the price tags have commas. It’s less about shopping, really, than it is about escape. Antique and vintage shops are museums where you can touch the art. All that eye candy, whether it’s polka dot Pyrex, or spaghetti swag lamps, or kidney-shaped coffee tables, is a way to get out of my head and not think about the news, if only for an hour. And when I do buy something, it feels good to know that the piece has some history, and I’m supporting a small business. 

Some of my East Coast happy places include: 

• In the Washington, DC area, I love Cheeky’s Vintage because that’s where I found my new dinette table. 

• In the Delaware River Valley, A Touch of the Past in Lambertville, NJ has museum-quality midcentury furniture in the basement. Across the river in New Hope, PA, there’s a small place called Chromium that has things you’ll never see anywhere else (oh hi). 

• Heading up to the Hudson Valley, the Newburgh Vintage Emporium is actually two fun antique malls, several miles apart (I came home with one of these), and Hudson, NY’s Antique Warehouse is the biggest and most exhilarating, overwhelming vintage furniture store on the planet (in a good way). 

• Most people go to New Hampshire’s White Mountains to do outdoor sports. I go so I can visit my father and Just L (and not necessarily in that order). 

• At the other end of the eastern seaboard: Canned Ham in Sarasota, FL has a few housewares, but MY GOD the clothes. These ladies really know their sh*t and their store makes me so happy. 

• Finally, if I ever get to Ypsilanti, MI, I may need to back a large truck up to Salt City Antiques.

Your turn! Tell me about your favorite spots in the comments.

Is there something you’re obsessed with, that you’d love to share with other TueNighters? Let us know: hi@tuenight.com

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Happy Women’s History Month, TueNighters!

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