I met a friend for lunch in late December—I love a holiday lunch with friends—at the Sunset Tower in West Hollywood.
Nearby, outside, sitting under an awning, two women in their thirties ate salads.
“I wrote a short story recently,” one said. “It’s about a boy who’s hot, who’s so hot, that the girlfriend is like, oh my god, this is fun, but it’s too much.”
“We call that ‘holla at your boy,’” the other woman said. “That should be your title. ‘Holla at your boy!’”
“That’s good,” the first woman said. “Let me write that down.”
Later in the month, a drizzly, gray afternoon, I met a different friend for a drink at The Black Cat Tavern, a historic bar. Two women, seemingly in their early twenties, were deep in conversation in a booth, with knotted brows. As I passed, one leaned out, said to the other, loudly but with resignation, “It’s super left-field of me to be loving so much basic shit.”
My wife and I attended a Christmas potluck. The table was full of food—roasted duck, a potato gratin, fresh homemade bread, lots of things. (I brought a northern Italian crostini of smoked trout.)
The hostess had prepared, among other dishes, homemade pâté. In fact, she made so much of the stuff, there were multiple pots located in different places around the house, and I complimented on her providing dueling pâté stations.
“Well that’s a rule,” she said. “It would be gauche to have just one.”
Mid December, a dinner out with another friend, a dark restaurant, a menu of expensive tiny things.
Two women, both in red wool sweaters, seemingly middle-aged, sat at a table next to ours and began by complimenting each other.
“Look at you! You look like Meryl Streep.”
“I do, I do.”
“And she’s played Jewish before.”
“I know!”
“I know what it is: it’s the guilt. It’s your inner pathos. That’s what it is.”
“Yeah, that’s probably true.”
I did a book event mid-month, signing copies of Everything Now. It was at a great new L.A. store, A Good Used Book. On such occasions I try to have a question ready, to pose when someone comes up to the table, so they feel more at ease in what’s a pretty weird exchange.
The question this time was which word will sooner exit our pop culture, ‘sick’ or ‘vibe?’ As in, the new Björk song is so sick, or, this restaurant has a nice vibe. After a couple hours, the answers were oddly consistent across generations, so I did a poll on Instagram later, and the results were nearly identical. A majority of Gen X people said “sick” was on the way out, if not dead. Millennials and Gen Z found “vibe” to be overused, probably meaningless. And three Gen Alphas all said “sick” was extremely dated, very embarrassing, one said it was similar to her mother saying “slay.”
A week later, I saw a bookseller friend at a different bookstore. We were talking about a book we both disliked, and at one point I used the word “queer” as a synonym for “gay.” (The novel’s main characters are all gay.)
My friend interrupted me. “Stop,” he said. “I am so sick of the word ‘queer.’”
“Why is that?”
“First of all, ‘queer’ really takes the cock-sucking out of ‘gay.’”
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In tomorrow’s supplement, with three-plus ideas of things to love:
That recipe for smoked trout crostini (so good)
DJ anonymous teenage DJ is back, and this time with her picks for what’s hot and what’s not in 2024. (Also, I started a meme.)
Nice ideas for newish background sounds while you work
What the what
Meditations in an Emergency is a weekly mini-essay from writer Rosecrans Baldwin about something beautiful. Paying subscribers receive a Sunday supplement with 3+ things to love, plus a monthly dispatch from the road, for some inbox wanderlust ⛰️
Rosecrans is the author of Everything Now, winner of the California Book Award. His most recent novel, The Last Kid Left, was one of NPR’s Best Books of the Year. Titles mentioned in this newsletter are stored on a Bookshop list, which pays a commission for books sold.