TueDo List: The Mixtape + Our Fave Bags + Pee-Wee RIP
Plus, 25 lessons learned at 50 from Carlene Bauer.
THIS WEEK
📖 READ: A great piece on Pee-wee (xo, Large Marge) and another on Frank Kozik, whose Lunachicks poster graced Margit’s office wall in the 90s. Ann Friedman on gatekeeping. Shannon Watts on entering menopause. Ticks just suck. Just a little piece on orgasms. There’s business in helping midlifers find fulfilling second acts. The Barbie movie is causing breakups. Write that will.
👀 LOOK: “I just think of you, and I start to glow.” Vixen’s Janet Gardner is now a dental hygienist. An app that gives free access to banned books. 25 game-changing hip-hop songs by women. Why Pac-Man became a big hit. Watch out for tonight’s supermoon!
🎧 LISTEN: Pink and Brandi Carlile pay tribute to Sinéad. Our latest headbanger: Corinne Bailey Rae’s “New York Transit Queen” — get tix for her tour. This cool app turns articles into a podcast. More Justine Bateman, nailing the Gen-X attitude on aging.
🛒 ADD TO CART: AirTags, on sale. And these travel goodies.
🎟️ GO: A fantastic NYC camp on Techno for girls and gender-expansive youth. This year is stacked high with 80’s fests: Here and Here and the West Coast can still catch this one, here.
😋 YUM: Zero-waste creativity. The Brazilian drink of summer. An avocado toast chocolate bar. (Really.) The future of food, hopefully does not include rocks in it (not yum).
📺 WATCH:
This week: MIXTAPE, a documentary exploring the evolution of hip-hop through the story of the mixtape (Paramount+). The River Wild, a reimagining of the classic 90s movie (Netflix).
Wednesday: Poisoned: The Dirty Truth About Your Food investigates the dark side of the food industry (Netflix); the third and (alas!) final season of Reservation Dogs (FX).
Thursday: LIVE stream Lollapalooza 2023 through Sunday, August 6 (Hulu).
Friday: Jason Statham is back to kick another megalodon shark in the face in Meg 2: The Trench (Theaters) and Sigourney Weaver is full of surprises in The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart (Prime Video).
STORY: 25 Things I Learned the Year I Turned 50
By Carlene Bauer
Our author muses on a milestone birthday. And yes, perhaps it is about love, health and buying that lip gloss.
Health is wealth. Would I immediately walk away from any listicle that kicked itself off with such a stupendously hoary cliché? Yes. In the past year, however, I lost two people I loved very much, and in the wake of those losses it seems imperative to cherish the reserves of mobility and energy I am currently lucky enough to possess. Especially with climate change limiting the number of days it’s safe enough to go outside and exercise. Actual and disgusting amounts of wealth plus this health would be the best scenario, of course, but until then….
It may be okay to say that our music is better than their music, for it may not be nostalgia talking but rather an objective truth brought to us by the advent of social media, which requires conformity to run and perpetuates the same.
I laughed at Lloyd Dobler when I was 16, and now it seems I am Lloyd Dobler…
#GENXAPPROVED: Question of the Week
After years of downsizing, TueNighter Leigh Ann is ready to ditch her purse and find new ways to carry her essentials, but she’s not entirely sold on fanny packs.
🤔 ASK YOUR OWN QUESTION! If you’re a premium subscriber, you can learn how to submit your questions here or head straight to the new section to chime in with your recommendations.
TueNighters rule…
I had to pause the podcast when Sanjay used "nonplussed" incorrectly. FFS, that's a news organization. No one fact-checked him on that? xo