The Friday Dispatch: April 25, 2025
Question for you: Is California more depressing than New York?
Hi! Remember how last week, I told you the next couple weeks of newsletters would be shorter? That is happening now.
Is California Depressing?
This is my first time back in Los Angeles, California, since the late winter of 2018, when I auditioned for Blues Clues and did not get it! I’ll write more on that subject…soon. Ahem. But anyway, I used to spend a LOT of time in LA—I lived here very briefly!—and I’m realizing that I have some California-shaped baggage.
Here’s what I was thinking about earlier. Is California depressing? And is it more depressing than New York? What about LA, and NYC,1 specifically? Being Depressed in Los Angeles is certainly a different beast than Being Depressed in New York. When you’re depressed in NYC, everyone is like, “Yeah,” and sometimes that is enough.
A lot of my favorite media that is centered around California is depressing. Here are examples!
Cassandra at the Wedding – A bleak, wrecking book that I compulsively reread esp. when the weather turns hot.
Most of Joan Didion’s writing – Even when she isn’t writing about Death (which, hey, big fan!) Didion is often writing under the spectre of death, specifically the spectre of death in “the west,” and the somewhat cartoonishly-nihilistic western sentiment which underlies even Didion’s most ardently admiring and profoundly moved writing. I wonder how much of this is Didion’s habit to John Wayneificate everything she sees, and how much of it is Didion, as a native daughter of California, trying to make New York/people from “the east” understand California. Is she just trying to speak what she believes is their dialect?
All of this, of course, in complete/perfect inversion to Eve Babitz, a person whose writing will make you say “Hmm California is depressing but I do want to spend a regrettable weekend there”
Lady Bird – Sad for a number of reasons, but chief among them how freaking lonely Sacramento feels in every frame.
Between Didion & Gerwig, we have two etches in the “The Problem Is Sacramento” column
The song “California Dreamin’” – self-explanatory!
I wrote about Being Depressed in Los Angeles at length here—that essay has a big trigger warning for, uh, a few things, chief among them eating disorders and suicidality and graphic depictions of sunburn peeling!2 It’s a sad essay, but also hopeful and reassuring, I think. Of course, my experience is in writing it and feeling hopeful and reassured (because I lived it!); your mileage may vary, please report back.
Here are the best two paragraphs:
I loved my life and I hated myself. I hated my body: no matter how much weight I lost, it was built onto bones I couldn’t fix. I hated my writing, which was always for someone else. I hated myself, broadly and specifically, and hated how ungrateful and spiteful and afraid I was. I couldn’t even hurt myself correctly. I laid on my back and waited for the sun to do it for me.
The problem with hating myself was that other people didn’t realize they shouldn’t love me, either. They loved me and just wouldn’t stop. They loved me enough to let me stay in their house while they went out of town, and they called me when I got scared walking aimlessly in the middle of the night. They had food delivered to my office so someone would watch me eat it, and they made sure ibuprofen was waiting on the bedside table when I woke up. They promised my mother they’d keep an eye on me. They sent me articles about sunburn remedies.
Travel Sizes
I’m trying some odd new things out while I travel! Or, okay, not “odd” but different for meeeeeeeeeeee.
Head & Shoulders shampoo – According to the Internet, H&S is a GREAT shampoo to use if you are trying to grow your hair out long. Which I am! I received two enormous vats of my go-to favorite Garnier Whole Blends honey shampoo & conditioner for…Christmas, I think, and they’re still going strong. But I’m excited to try this while I travel! I had an apple-scented Head & Shoulders in high school, which I really liked.
Herbal Essences Rose Hips Conditioner – This is the IDEAL travel conditioner because I use it up too fast for it to be sustainable, but it smells soooooo good that I feel confident going into every meeting/event. Gets lot of compliments even if not the most moisturizing.
La Roche Posay Cicaplast Baume – Not technically a travel size! But I’ve been using the LRP lotion as a face cream for a while, because it was less expensive/marketed as being not-so-thick as the Cicaplast Baume. But when I landed in LA, I went and bought a tube of this stuff. Travel dries out my already-crisp flesh, so I am going to sleep in a layer of this goo and report back! Also, I had a coupon.
Prepare Yourselves for My Sanrio Opinions
Last week,
left this comment on my Friday Dispatch:
Oh, Marina. Oh you sweet dove. You are clearly THE most visionary Marina working today (a competitive field!!!) because, believe it or not, I have been drafting a standalone piece about the Sanrio Character Ranking and my very, VERY strong opinions. Actually, if you are a frequent interactór with the Sanrio account on Instagram, you may have seen my unhinged comments on their posts ABOUT the character ranking. The moment I have 45 minutes to sit down and write at length about the last 15 years of Cinnamoroll, the Chococat erasure that so many Sanrio partners are complicit in, and my predictions for the expanded My Sweet Piano universe…You’re all in trouble!
Unrelated. This song came on my Spotify Weekly. I had never heard of a band called “Dispatch” and then I liked this song and then I said “Hey I’ll put it in MY dispatch hooray hurrah!” And, as you can see, that is precisely what happened.
WIDNBTW
Here’s what I did NOT buy this week!
The Native x Jarritos bath and body collection. Native stuff smells GOOD but it is DRYING! I learned from the Dylan’s Candy Bar collab.
A weird “simply baked” bag of hot and spicy Ruffles. LA, I do not need RUFFLES to be HEALTHY. Nice try.
This perfume which I didn’t even smell, or look at the fragrance notes; I saw the bottle and coveted it and then admonished myself.
This other perfume, the bottle is shaped like a BEAUTIFUL DIAMOND RING
banana machine:
Ok, that’s all for now. See you eventually! And in the meantime, please share all your Sanrio opinions in the comment section. Godspeed!
Binghamton New York has famously few sunny days, so I do feel a need to specify
SORRY, MOM!