I got it BAD. My NTBTSTM poster came today and Henry, supporter of all of my obsessions, tucked it preciously into its frame immediately, took a nap, woke up and made my dinner, went grocery shopping, came home and hung it in Chooch’s ex-room. I am so delighted! I can’t wait for Chooch to come home for spring break and see it LOL.

Another sign of Henry’s support: we originally had plans to see One Battle After Another at the Hollywood tomorrow night but Henry said, “OR. We can go see Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie again.” I think that’s what we’re going to do and I’m giddy about it! (Probably not tomorrow night thought because I loathe going to the Waterfront on a Friday night.)

In the meantime, I have spent most of my life these days consuming every Matt Johnson interview I can find on YouTube while gushing to Henry about how amazing I think he (Matt Johnson, not Henry) is and Henry calmly agrees with me every time.

I guess Henry’s got it bad too.

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I don’t want to be the skunk at the garden party here, so I am going to do my best to scrounge up some positive things to blog about today while news alerts bombard my phone with casualty numbers in the war that Barron Trump is “too tall” to fight in.

• We’re at the point where all the stuff is being re-hung in the bathroom after Henry dragged out a simple wall-painting project into a month-long affair. I ordered a new plate thingie for the outlet today, and last night I added paint to the old Last Supper portrait I bought years ago at a flea market*, which actually kick-started the whole religious theme in the bathroom if I remember correctly. At one of my parties, my friend Amanda (Glenn’s wife) came downstairs after using the bathroom and said that as a person who was raised Catholic, my bathroom made her feel a certain type of way lol. I was listening to the Pens game while painting this and it was stressful and also I was sitting on the floor in a hunchback position and when I went to stand up, I was immediately reminded of my age.
  • *the pictures are missing from this post and I’m too tired/sick of this piece of shit blog to care but here’s what it looked like originally and what it looks like now (ignore the dusty frame – I’m going to paint that too before it gets rehung):

• I am so tempted to go see Nirvanna: The Band The Show The Movie again  –  I am still so obsessed! I watched the web series and am (not so) patiently waiting for the TV episodes to be brought back somewhere, and I have watch Blackberry, Matt Johnson’s biopic about the creation of the Blackberry, which I used to have before I switched to iPhone and boy howdy did I feel guilty sitting there watching it with an iPhone in my lap. Basically, I only want to watch things that Matt Johnson is either in or affiliated with. He is my new favorite person, second only to G-Dragon (my forever #1). I was watching one of the episodes of the web series last week with Henry when I legit started laughing so hard that I peed a little and had to go change but first I paused it and said through tearful wheezes, “HENRY I HAVE A CONFESSION I ONLY LAUGH THIS HARD WHEN I AM READING OLD BLOG POSTS THAT I HAVE WRITTEN ABOUT YOU.” Henry frowned. Not sure if it was because of that egomaniacal admission or the fact that I openly announced that I peed my pants, or a little of both. But all of this is to say that it’s the only sliver of joy that’s been cutting through the doom and gloom of American news these days so THANK YOU Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol.
• I can’t remember if I mentioned this already but I co-signed the lease for Chooch’s new apartment. He’ll be moving in next September with two of his current roommates / friends. It’s his first non-campus residence so I’m super happy for him but depressed for me.  I also was given approx. 1 day’s notice to scramble together a $$$$ security deposit together see also: bye bye tax refund.
• Still going strong with Duolingo but I’m annoyed because this streak should be even greater and I will never ever forget losing TWO STREAKS in 2018 and 2019 when – IRONICALLY – traveling to Korea because of the DUMB TIME CHANGE. Both of those times, I had over a year streak. So if you want to get technically, and I do, my streak is probably closer to 3,000 days!!! U G H.

• Henry and I went to Duffy’s on Saturday to peruse the beers and saw Chris’s (Kara’s husband) collab with East End Brewing out in the wild so that was fun! Plus, I got two Mister Softee collabs with…I forget the brewery now. I tried one already – an IPA – and it was OK but you better believe I kept the label! Speaking of, I’ve been just slapping beer can labels that speak to me in an artistic sense into the back of a random notebook but now I’m wondering – SHOULD I GET A BLANK JOURNAL TO USE JUST FOR THIS? I mean, why not add ANOTHER journal to the mix, right?

• One of my favorite non-Kpop bands announced a rare tour and I am so stoked that, after loving The Black Queen and their amazing album Fever Daydream, I am finally going to see them live in May! Chooch said he doesn’t know a single one of their songs and I truly don’t know how that could be because he was living at home for most of my obsession with them and they provide THE SOUNDTRACK to “driving to haunted houses” every fall, so wtf, dear son?? I made Margie listen to one of their songs at work AND SHE LIKED IT. I take any win I can get these days as a washed-up trend setter, lol. Anyway, Henry is prepared for me to sob through this whole show.

• Todd asked me the other day what Henry’s last name is and then started calling me Erin Robbins. I was like, “WHOA, NO. I DID NOT TAKE HIS NAME!”  I told Todd that if I were to go through the rigmarole of legally changing my last name (and risk losing my right to vote?! no thanks), I’d change it to Appledale because years ago, and I mean years ago, we were on our way to Lakemont Park I believe and passed a sign for “Appledale Farms” and I have used that as my last name on social media ever since (even had a photography shop on Etsy called Appledale!). Todd said that at one time, that might have been a surprising insight into my life but knowing me as long as he has at this point, he’s like, “that makes sense.”
  • This made me recall a time when I won free tickets to a concert at Mr. Smalls on Instagram and when I went to the will call window, they were like, “Yeah, nice try but we don’t have an Erin Kelly on the list” and I was panicking but then when I pulled up the DM to prove that I was a winner, it occurred to me that they had me down as Erin Appledale and yes, yes they did. Crisis averted!
• Still waiting for BIGBANG to announce their comeback tour….I have NO KPOP CONCERTS lined up for 2026 and this feels so strange and unusual. I’m glad I have other concerts to look forward to but…Kpop concerts bring me so much joy and my heart feels so empty without it.

My life hasn’t felt boring at all lately until I sit down to write in this dumb thing and then I’m just like, OK all I want to do is go on and on about Nirvanna the Band the Show like I’m getting paid to endorse them, like Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol are the official sponsors of this piece of shit blog, like my blog posts have their movie trailers embedded in the middle. Another thing for people to complain about!

Well, on that note, I’m out. Henry is rehanging more stuff in the bathroom and I need to go and supervise. Penelope, grab my hardhat.

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I saw a Thread recently where someone was saying that scientists should get into the lab and find a way to harness the collective rage from women and turn it into sustainable energy.

I laughed.

I cried.

I screamed.

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This is crazy, I had no idea I read so many books last month, especially it being a short month and I didn’t have much free time! Well, here they are, it was a pretty solid month!

1. The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

Right off the bat, a 5-star read. The synopsis didn’t compel me to pick this one up, but it kept appearing on SO MANY best of the year lists that I eventually gave in. I will say- I did the audiobook for this one and it was brilliantly done. Sybil is one of my most memorable characters I have read in a good while, and what I aspire to be like when I’m old and out of fucks. This whole book is epistolary – Sybil write letters and sends email to everyone from her brother in France, her best friend/SIL, a young boy she mentors, a customer service agent at an ancestry company. Plus, unsent letters to an unknown recipient until the end. This was compelling, engaging, captivating – all the good “ing”s! I laughed and cried.

2. How to Fake a Haunting by Christa Carmen

….and then right to a 1 star read. This was absolutely abysmal. Hokey. Not scary. Confusing. I did actually laugh at loud several times, though I can promise you that wasn’t the author’s intent.

3. Notes on Infinity by Austin Taylor

So mid. Two Harvard students that I gave no shits about invent an anti-ageing drug – it was very science-y, very little action, cardboard characters. This was like a dollar store version of Tomorrow, Tomorrow, Tomorrow so just skip this and read that.

4. Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash

This was SO WEIRD in the best way. Very Kevin Wilson-esque, zany, strange, hilarious. I had no idea where this was going but had a ton of fun getting there. (The UK cover is so much better than whatever this terrible version is.)

5. My Husband’s Wife by Alice Feeney

I generally enjoy Alice Feeney, but her last book was awful – like someone else wrote it, actually. And then around this same time, Henry and I watched His & Hers on Netflix which is adapted from one of her novels that we both read and liked, but neither of us remembered a single thing from the book as we watched the series, to the point where we both had to check our phones to see if we actually read it. So, I guess we enjoy her books but they’re not memorable? I would say that this one is going in that same category. I gave it a 4, had a fun time reading it, was sufficiently tricked by the twists, but will still probably forget the plot by this time next year. I think this is where I’m leaning with thrillers in general lately though. My standards are really high.

6. Women and Children First by Alina Grabowski

I started this thinking I was going to enjoy it, but then entirely too many characters are introduced – they each get their own rambling chapter – and it just turned into a mess. No one really had their own unique voice, I was confusing teens with adults, some kid dies and that’s at the center of the whole thing but even that plot point gets lost. I just wanted this to end, also the cover is so ugly and looks like a very specific Hipstamatic filter was used on it.

7. The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre by Philip Fracassi

I have enjoyed Fracassi’s horror in the past, but this was some banal Murder, She Wrote type shit.

8. If It Makes You Happy by Julie Olivia

A cozy romance set in a small town in autumn of 1997? A little bit fish-out-of-water? New beginnings? ADORABLE DOG that adds to the story? Kids that actually weren’t annoying? I am so picky with rom-coms but this one really did it for me and I expectedly sobbed my face off at the end. This was close to perfect.

9. Discontent by Beatriz Serrano

Yes. I LOL’d so much throughout this one and I will just say if my department ever forces us to go on team-building retreats, I’m out.

10. The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Too many timelines. Not scary. Someone’s Goodread’s review is the very succinct “Strongest emotion I felt reading this was ‘Girl, that’s your uncle  😭'” – CO-FUCKING-SIGN. Also, the whole time I was reading it, I thought the cover was a hand holding an umbrella. Now I see that’s not it at all.

11. Loved One by Aisha Muharrar

I REALLY ENJOYED THIS. It’s largely about grief, but there is a whole subplot where the main character is on a mission to retrieve personal items of her recently-deceased best friend at the request of his mom, so there are some genuinely light-hearted moments to help balance out the crippling agony you feel when the flashbacks happen. (I’m crying, LOL.)

12. The Ruins by Scott Smith

Why do people like this? It was so boring, stupid fucking characters. Monotonous. I didn’t enjoy even a second of this and should have DNFd it but kept thinking it was going to get better. Did NOT have to be this long, either.

13. Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert by Bob the Drag Queen

SO UNIQUE! Historical fiction with a hilarious twist. This is set during a time when certain historical figures are back and living in present day. Harriet Tubman seeks out a hiphop producer in NYC to help her record an album, and the book is told from the producer’s POV. It was so funny but also beautiful and a very important work of fiction. The audiobook includes two tracks at the end! (My favorite character was DJ Quakes, AN ACTUAL QUAKER and his parts were so funny.)

I just wish this was a bit longer.

14. Coffin Moon by Keith Rosson

An interesting take on the vampire trope. While it didn’t become a favorite, it was still pretty entertaining. I liked that it was set in the 70s and I was really rooting for Duane Minor.

15. Coleman Hill by Kim Coleman Foote

Five stars. This was so ambitious and the author pulled it off. It’s a biomythography, my first time reading one, and it actually blows my mind when I step aside and really think about the effort and creativity that went into this. The author has essentially taken her actual family history and then embellished upon it to create a “modern myth.” It makes sense then, how these characters jumped off the pages, knowing now that they were based on actual living members of Kim Coleman Foote’s family. It’s fascinating, sad, hopeful, and inspiring to read about the two families that settle down in New Jersey in the 1910s during the Great Migration. This was extremely difficult to read at times which is why everyone SHOULD read it. Yes, it’s fiction, but there is truth and history there too, and that is the stuff that needs to be remembered.

16. Elena Knows by Claudia Piñeiro

A very difficult read as we’re following an older woman with Parkinson’s as she tries to prove that her daughter’s recent death wasn’t a suicide. We get flashbacks to their relationship, and the stress that Elena’s illness put on her daughter, who was also her primary caregiver. It’s so much more than just a mystery though, as it tackles big issues like abortion, chronic illness, motherhood, and a toxic mother-daughter relationship. Just, very grim. If you’re looking for a feel-good read, this ain’t it, Vanessa.

17. The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey

You know, I gave this 4 stars on Goodreads but it’s closer to a 5. I went into this plot unknown and was blown away. It’s set in an orphanage in England, 1979, and follows one brother of a set of triplets, and also a mystery girl named Nancy who lives in a house with her parents but something feels off. The end goal of the children in the orphanage is to “get well” (they all think they’re in there because of a Bug) and leave for a Disney-esque place called Margate. I read it in almost one day, it was so hard to put down. Vincent forever. <3 (And Mother Night! I loved Mother Night.) (OK I just changed my review to 5 stars now that I’m thinking about this one again, it was so good.)

 

 

 

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