good morning bitches 1/7/2020
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Welcome to the first good morning bitches of 2020! I rang in the new year wearing a men’s pinstripe suit and a corset, which made me thankful that I am living in an era that does not require women to wear corsets because dear God I’ve never wanted to take something off so badly.
My brother saw this photo on instagram and didn’t realize I was in costume; he just thought this was my ~lewk~ for the evening. Frankly, I’m flattered, except for the part where my brother thinks I was non-ironically wear a FEDORA.
By some stroke of fate our host/my friend Danny from high school had leftover holiday merch from his YouTube channel (such a 2020 sentence), so most of us snagged a sweatshirt and spent the rest of the night dressed as half-flapper-half-Greg. I then fell asleep holding a half-eaten cookie with their dog. The year is clearly off to a GREAT START
Peanut & Lily & Cookie 4evr
I simply cannot go on any longer before talking about Little Women
Within minutes of the movie starting I knew that I would be writing about it. The only words I could come up with to encapsulate it are “pure magic”. I read this book as a 13 year old the summer before my eighth grade year. It was required reading, and I was bitter about it. I am guilty of frequently judging a book by its cover, and this is the cover I judged:
I mean, can you blame me?
I remember the exact moment that I became enthralled by the book. I was laying on my stomach on the hill at Rice Pool, probably ignoring my mom’s warnings to wear sunscreen. On that hill I met Jo and Meg and Amy and Beth and LAURIE and on my bed that very night I finished the book and couldn’t yet fathom why the HELL Jo didn’t marry Laurie. Nevertheless, I loved the story and yearned for a life with three sisters.
I haven’t thought much about Little Women since I was that age. Greta Gerwig’s vision for this movie brought me back to my girlhood on that hill. It breathed more life and beauty into those girls than I ever dreamed possible. It showed their goofiness and humor and fears and loves so beautifully and perfectly. It captured love and loss in a way that had my mascara flowing down my cheeks multiple times.
There are some stories that capture human nature so well that they simply never feel outdated, no matter the year they were set. This is absolutely one of them.
While we’re on the subject of books
I listened to this audiobook over the past week or so. It has one of the best beginnings to a book that I have read in a long, long time, and for the most part it continues to deliver. My biggest complaint is that the characters lives were so mundane to the point that I found myself wondering why I even care about them anymore. But there was a healthy amount of twists without being cheesy….and because it’s set in Australia I got that good good Australian accent audiobook narrator 😎
One more book for good measure
Full disclosure: I love Rob Delaney. His show Catastrophe on Amazon Prime is one of my all-time favorites, he’s brilliantly smart and funny and just seems like an all around great guy….which is why it was so disappointing to me to find his book was utter mediocrity.
I was familiar with his story as a disastrous alcoholic before I ever picked up the book, and was disappointed to find his "memoir" is more of a disjointed collection of essays that were slapped together without much consideration for a unifying theme. I know that Delaney has plenty to say about his time in the alcoholic trenches—and he spends several chapters doing that. But this books lacks his redemption story, which is far more interesting than tale after tale of drunken stupidity.
If you're a huge Delaney fan, it's worth a read. But if you're just a regular old joe who likes comedy memoirs, I would pass. And if you're a recovering alcoholic....I would still pass. It just doesn't offer much, sadly.
(Feel free to say “okay let’s read YOUR book then, Lily” in a sneering tone to insinuate that I have no right to offer such harsh critiques as a mere consumer. I know.)
Show from 23 years ago that I’m just now getting into
If you thought Orange is the New Black was lit, might I introduce you to a show where a prisoner gets burned alive in the first episode? Or where a husband and wife are shot on their wedding day? Oz premiered in 1997, ran for 6 seasons, and was the show that shaped the way HBO makes dramas. Also you got some familiar (albeit much younger) faces like Edie Falco, Dean Winters, Lee Tergesen, and JK Simmons.
Man who is getting INVENTIVE in 2020
Yes, that is a man on the Metra who cannot be bothered neither with having a headphone wire on his chest, nor with buying actual wireless headphones. So what does he do? He binder clips his headphones to his collar, and it’s business as usual. (This ingenuity was spotted by good morning bitch Amy Tews.)
Niche facebook group of the week:
I really, really love Disney and most things that fall under its umbrella, but my God some people take their obsession too far. Here’s a selection of the (many) posts in that group this week.
Unnecessary comments like maybe… “‘oriental’ is a trash theme” or “this is blatant cultural appropriation” ?
^^ This is a lesson on how to make gender reveals even worse.
Okay I know I’m supposed to be shaming but I would DEFINITELY buy this novelty shower cap:
Yes, I looked online and unfortunately this shower cap—which retailed for $40 AUD—is sold out.
It would be off brand for me to not at least mention something about the Golden Globes, but this is all I’m giving you:
Now, I’m not going to sit here and pretend that I’m some foreign film aficionado, because I…am not. BUT as a forever subtitle devotee I love this quote so much. What do I love even MORE, you [don’t] ask???
I stan a woman who can punch up an acceptance speech on the fly!
Drugstore beauty recs of the week:
It has been a HOT minute since your girl used a tinted moisturizer, because I got it in my head many moons ago that my skin needs to be doused in foundation to be beautiful. Well that ain’t in my 2020 vision, baby! When I’m at work I really hate the feeling of having a full coverage foundation on (even though my foundation is “sheer”…I call bullshit, NARS). This product does have a subtle scent of sunscreen, but I just have to come to terms with the fact that no product will ever smell as good as the Chanel foundation, and that’s just a cruel fact of LIFE. The biggest downside is that there are only three shades, but luckily my pale ass skin fits comfortable in the “fair” category.
I am extremely particular about lip products, and this sexy little $9 number is as good if not BETTER than the $27 NARS lip pencil I’ve lived and died by for 4 years. I’m confused why Maybelline doesn’t have actual shade names, but I bought this nice bright pink called 20S310. I highly recommend and will most likely buy more shades.
Here are both of these products in action as I showed off my manicure that matches WGN’s charmingly outdated hall bathroom tile.
So this next one is not technically a beauty product but….
I’m sick as haaaale this week and these shower tablets actually relieved my congestion long enough to let me fall asleep, so they get the official GMB stamp of approval.
This week(ish) on Twitter:
I asked what your new years resolutions were…
The response was overwhelming, inspiring and, naturally, hilarious. Here are some of my favorites:
Every year there are a million thinkpieces about why resolutions are bad, and I’m not sure why there needs to be such a strong stance against it. Not into resolutions? Totally cool. Labeling them as problematic? Uhhh a bit of a stretch. People resolving to make their lives a little bit better is a nice thing, and even if they fail at it, it’s at least a step in the right direction! (The argument that resolutions often play into unhealthy diet culture is definitely valid, though not strong enough to make a sweeping statement about the entire concept of resolutions in my opinion.)
(While we’re on the topic, can I just add another parenthetical to say that it is extremely un-cool to make fun of people who make resolutions, even if they don’t keep them? Especially if it means being bitter toward the influx of people at your gym in January?)
I have never felt the need to “turn over a new leaf” quite as much as this year. It feels both sad and relieving to leave the pain and hardship of 2019 behind me. I have trouble committing to the idea of resolving to do something new or different for an entire year, but my resolution of sorts is for my actions to be motivated less by emotions and more by rational thinking. While I think I will always instinctively act from the heart more than the head, I am taking conscious steps to approach things like eating, drinking, exercise, friendships, and relationships with a clearer and slower-paced mind. That’s why I’m doing Dry January—to hopefully curb the knee-jerk reaction to pour a glass of wine when I feel stressed, or crack open a White Claw when I’m happy. Neither of those things are inherently bad, but I’m hyper aware of everything I do as I grieve because I don’t want them to develop into bad habits that make this whole process even worse. Anyway, is this too much information for a newsletter?
Alright, I’ve gone off the emotional rails here and I just want to go home and take some DayQuil.
Until next time, when I promise to be less sick and more fun,
xo,
Lily
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