The Friday Dispatch: June 21, 2024
So, tell me...Is there a MRS. Worldwide?
Hey! What’s up. In my imagination I am here:
It is SUMMER! I am gonna put on so much sunblock that my flesh prunes up, and then I am gonna go to the PARK and read! And am I gonna read on, say, a picnic blanket in the grass? Or perched daintily on a swing, to showcase my childlike sense of whimsy?
NO!!! I am gonna read on a BENCH!!!!!!!!!
Petition: Ubiquitize “Bench Reads”
Yeah yeah yeah beach reads, Elin Hilderbrand is retiring blah blah yadda yadda. Plenty of people before me have made the argument that reading on a beach sucks. Just Google “beach reading sucks” and you will know how dozens of readers feel in regards to this topic.
I don’t really have a thing against beach reading. But I DO have a thing FOR bench reading. And I think we should make the “bench read,” as a genre, as ubiquitous as the beach read.
Bench reading: What is it
Bench reading is reading on a bench outdoors. The activity should occur in a park, at a bus stop, or in another public location. The bus or the train or the car don’t count because those are indoors and moving.
Any seating area with back support and enough seat space for two asses can count as a bench. Sitting alongside a fountain, a staircase, or perhaps the ledge of a vestibule in an old brick building also count as “bench reading.”
The Bench must be stationary. A porch swing is not a bench. A two-person glider is not a bench, either. These all fall in the category of “leisure reading;” see also, tire swings and hammocks.
The Bench should be in a public space, or outdoors in an area where other people may interact with you. This excludes private backyards, unless your friend is staying over or you are married or something.
Again, it must be outdoors. The garden department at Home Depot counts. The benches inside a mall do not. (See: Shopping Center Bylaws, Article 3 Section 4, “Chaperones, children and reluctant family members.”)
You can read on a bench next to someone. They do not need to be reading. You can also be sitting alone but with your arm nicely stretched out.
Bench reading can happen in all four seasons, dependent on climate. But also, no, not dependent on climate! I have read poems on a bench in the freezing cold winter and that was fun.
Bench reads: What are they
Like “beach reads,” the hot sister, “bench reads,” the weird sister, have their own genre conventions.
A bench read must be small enough to travel with. This excludes most hardcovers over 400 pages. But all e-reader versions count, regardless of length.
A bench read should be funny, fun, wry, moving, or end with a surprising air of hope. A bench read is not Sad as a Sales Tactic (A Little Life, Me Before You) or Cynical Out of Convenience (some Fitzgerald, most Moshfegh, all Brett Easton Ellis). It CAN have qualities of sadness or cynicism! But that shouldn’t be the marquee messaging, y’know?
Bench reads and beach reads have overlap. But if there is a boat on the cover, or a girl in a bikini looking slyly over her sunglasses, it is not a bench read.
Trendy books that you want to be seen reading are bench reads. In
, mentions women reading All Fours, the latest Miranda July, in McCarren Park, which was “littered with copies of The Guest last summer.” See also: Good Material, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, the post-film version of Killers of the Flower Moon that has the theatrical poster on it.IMPORTANT! A bench read is anything that you can briefly put down for a conversation with a jogger. In fact, it should invite conversation with joggers, old men, babies and their supervisors.
A bench read should be compelling but not too immersive. No Cormac McCarthy is a good bench read, because it’s hard to switch back and forth between the world of his novels and the world of the world. However, Breakfast of Champions, by Kurt Vonnegut, is a PERFECT bench read, because the chapters and sections are short and there are pictures, and everyone has something to ask or say about Vonnegut.
If the book has a heavy seasonal element (several scenes during the Christmas holiday, for example) it is a bench read ONLY IF it is being read during that season.
Are the books I read this week bench reads?
I read three books this week! Well. Finished one, read two others in full. Were they bench reads?
Bucolics, Maurice Manning – Perfect example of a poetry bench read. Short sections (poems stretch two pages max). About nature and God. Easy to look up from what you’re reading and sigh at the horizon. Bench read.
Late Wife, Claudia Emerson – NOOOOOOOOO!!!! This book EARNED its Pulitzer but man I was NOT PREPARED for it. Crushing, haunting, expertly crafted. Physically painful to read, at times. But a book that deals extensively and intensively with indoor spaces (houses, rooms, bodies) and winter time. I advise reading this in three sittings, in different rooms of your house, at different times of day. NOT a bench read.
Any Person Is The Only Self, Elisa Gabbert – Well-paced essays by a well-read poet. Covers everything from Frankenstein to Point Break. I had a couple experiences this week where someone asked “What are you reading?” and I got to talk about this book in a thousand directions at once. Bench read.
Okay, enough about books.
Do You Want To Watch My Show?
Did you miss my show at UCB last week? Were you in a different state? Did I forget to tell you it was happening? WELL! Good news. The wonderful folks at Burning Clown Productions filmed and edited it, and now you can watch it on YouTube! Pro tip: Turn it to 2x speed, and you can watch it TWICE in just thirty minutes.
Reminder: More Good Work is Coming!
Tuesday, June 25, is the last Good Work of this month! It’s going to be at Bread and Butter once again, but it may be the last Good Work at this location until fall, because they seem…agnostic…on the subject of air conditioning. OR they had technical issues earlier this week, which is what I’m hoping. Ahem.
You should definitely come to this session, where I will debut my cool new phone bucket case, and the HANDMADE SIGNAGE I created! Ooh ahh! Hand-painted, artisanal printer paper! You better come see it live in person. Me? Well…I’ll be reading the whole time, with maybe a notebook on hand in case I get a poem idea. You don’t need to have a big project underway to have a great time at Good Work!
RSVP FOR FREE RIGHT HERE PLEASE I BEG: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/good-work-june-tuesday-tickets-916880563447
Unrelated Ke$ha x Chappell Roan mashup:
Eat Salad Be Lazy
It’s finally hot enough that I can say “no more protein only grasses” and eat massive quantities of scallion and cucumber and watermelon. I made a giant cabbage salad, which is, weirdly enough, apparently from the cupcake lady Melissa (you may know her as…Baked by Melissa?!) but which I know from my friend Gabby, who served it WITH CHIPS at a Super Bowl party like a genius. Thank you Sam and Gabby!
Here is the recipe. This salad is GREAT with chips. It is also great sans-chips. Put it inside a wrap. Or eat it, as I did, with a fork, directly from the mixing bowl, on the edge of the couch because you’re getting dressing everywhere. I like that she recommends cutting the vegetables into “confetti-sized” pieces. That’s cute.
On the way home from the grocery store earlier this week, laden with greens, I made small talk with a neighbor in the elevator. I told her that I had five different salad recipes to try this week, and that I was excited not to use my oven or microwave all week. She noticed that, among all my bags of fresh produce, I also had a bottle of Brianna’s Home Style Creamy Cilantro Lime Dressing.
“Why did you buy salad dressing?” she asked me, in a tone so dripping with incredulity I thought the phrase “dripping with incredulity” for the first time in my life. “You really should be making your salad dressing. You should be making it, not buying it.”
“Oh,” I said, as the elevator door opened on my floor, “I’m really lazy and don’t want to do that. Bye!”
Here is my salad hack: When you make that big cabbagey salad linked above, don’t make the dressing from scratch. We want to spite this woman together. Instead, take a bottle of your favorite dressing, get your food processor, and dump a WHOLE BAG of spinach into it. And some basil. And as much garlic as you have in the house. Dump it all in, pulse until smooth, dump it in the cabbage-cucumber-scallion mix, stir with spoon, eat with spoon/hands/chips. Tell your oven she is on vacation until September.
WIDNBTW
I had a gift card and I used it on fancy blush so if I look sunburned this summer, no I’m not, it is Danessa Myricks’s fault. Or it could also be sunburn. I…get that. A lot. But that’s what I DID buy this week. Here’s what I did NOT buy this week!
This Minion nail polish, which I do like. Unironically. The multicolored one, “Goggilicious,” is my favorite, but all the names are worth seeing – “Girls Just Wanna Have Crime”! How did they know!
A “MISOGYNY ISN’T BACK KATE NASH IS” shirt. Stream 9 Sad Symphonies now!
My passport with THIS photo. I did technically “buy” the ability to leave the US, from our good friends at the State Department. However, I am embittered that I cannot use this test photo, the best picture of me ever taken, for my official passport (After taking my passport photo, I took about a dozen photos of myself making expressions, because taking a photo with a completely blank face for my official government documents made me feel devoid of personality).
A $100+ deck of “oblique strategies” cards. I just downloaded a PDF.
Skate rink carpet socks (I want this as wallpaper)
“Tik toxic sour candy slime” that I saw in the checkout line at Duane Reade, alongside a discarded bottle of laundry detergent and a Maybelline FitMe! blush. Every photo tells a story.
A soft, iridescent white bag with a big front pocket that I touched at Nordstrom Rack, which was from a brand called HOBO and still priced at $200. This feels wrong to me! It’s bad enough that “hobo bag” is a style; I do not think you should use the name “hobo” for a brand that makes decidedly expensive bags that are not even remotely bindle-like in construction or aesthetic! Weird, disrespectful!
This truly remarkable HORSE TABLE that
showed me…check out these getaway sticks:
A Bee’s Knees Gin Cocktail, which sounds delicious. The algorithms got me with this one. The moment I find ‘em, I am buying them.
A beautiful rainbow clown cat from Jen Fowler, but…someday…someday.
Okay! Goodbye for now. I have to go remind my boyfriend that we are getting ice cream later. Oh, wait, actually, hold on. If you are NOT my boyfriend, have a great weekend and stop reading here! Love you! Bye!
Hey Myles: When you read this, it is time for ice cream. Ok love you! Bye!