Reflections and Resolutions
A timeless Best of 2023 (a day late and dollar short). Plus, a bunch of grievances and 11 movies to watch.
Hey everyone,
Happy New Year! I set a new record getting all dressed up with the intention of going out, falling asleep about 45 minutes before midnight with a half-opened bottle of Champagne Lombard. For inquiring minds: Champagne Lombard is a small certified organic winery situated in the West side of the Montagne de Reims in Espernay within the Champagne region of France producing mostly Premier Cru, hence why it gets to call itself “Champagne”: it’s the real deal. It’s a little pricey for such a small bottle, but a better deal than let the other half of a larger bottle go flat or binge drink alone to avoid pouring it down the drain. The important part is that I looked cute, got 8 hours of sleep and spent about $50 for wine, cheese, and feta-stuffed lamb burgers; a true gift for 2024.
I started writing this newsletter from bed on the Hump Day before the New Year, joint in hand (a buzzy cross between Zkittles and Wedding Cake from Hepworth that I snagged at Dazed Canna in Union Square FYI) that I lit using one of my favorite not-so-new Carbon lighters from Vessel. I never realized how much a precision lighter could feel like such a luxurious upgrade to my smoking experience, but here we are: officially lit. Somehow the time slipped making this a day late and dollar short, but better late than never, amirite?
To recap: in 2023, I produced about 40 newsletters, including 11 podcasts, while picking up a Pilates teaching certification and holding down another comms job—somehow not completely losing my mind along the way. Big thanks to all of the paying subscribers keeping this dream of being a burned out writer alive!
Catching up with all of that is understandably a tall order, so here are a few favorites:
Best of Pipe Dreams by The Weed Witch 2023
Also, the time my mom’s acrylic nails lit on fire in a Pizza Hut in South Florida
A dispatch to Washington’s underrated wine and weed regions (thanks, Kia!)
Laganja Estranja coming onto the podcast for a 4/20 extravaganza
Christina Wong explaining how she chased her pipe dreams to become a weed chef
Madison Margolin’s coming of age in the Jewish psychedelic underground
25 songs about men giving it to women like they’ve never had it before
While I got to write about many cool things and people, there were also a lot of really depressing and painful moments last year, including literal fires that needed to be put out and detracting from the work I enjoy: uplifting people and things I love. Shifting to a newsletter that runs on functional chaos and intuition has been an interesting adjustment for me compared to the clockwork of print magazine editorial, but it has also been a wonderful opportunity to share dope people doing cool things without all the red tape attached.
Since the pandemic, I’ve found myself scaling back from pitching after spending months trying to get a piece commissioned that could theoretically get cut anyway and is usually compensated at a rate less than a shift at Starbucks resulting in only a handful of published stories per year at the discretion of the editor and publication. And ultimately, that work might disappear completely anyway through some bad content migration or acquisition like it never happened—a bummer since I discover cool things every day and can no longer reference a good chunk of my past work without the Wayback Machine or a PDF.
Meanwhile, life is still happening and not everything is “good.” How can I convince many people who are educated and have enough money to opt for slightly nicer wine from a sustainable grower producer as their go-to from a small woman-owned shop rather than grab a case at Costco—even when it’s better for the environment and improves local communities—when the current media “conversation” includes food writers blasting out unrealistic demands for a communist manifesto to be attached to restaurant menus or exploring the merits of Ozempic to the very same people who barely pay attention to in the first place? Talk about overestimating your audience. This is the conversation I’m supposed to join now to remain relevant, which is sometimes making less of the intended impact by getting into the weeds.
Why am I now reading about Dr. Z being a Nazi as part of a tasting description at a notable wine bar when I’m trying to have a nice night out (that I’m paying handsomely for, by the way) that makes me feel locked into a passive aggressive conversation I didn’t feel like having because I’m at the bar, not listening to NPR over a cup of coffee? Why am I feeling like this virtue-signaling public acknowledgment is so unsatisfying? Also, isn’t this a little counterintuitive and slightly hypocritical when the average glass is over $20? Should I never eat a banh mi again because of French colonialism or is the real problem the shrimp you just bought at the grocery store? And now I have to talk about Israel? Great. No wonder I never eat out anymore.
While I appreciate the young wine professionals trying to make everything more “accessible” from traditional industry gatekeeping and private bottle trade by being transparent, I’ve also been sold a shitty overpriced wine with a heartwarming story more than once while out with someone too enamored with the concept to criticize it. I recognize that it is wildly unpopular to admit this, but I’m somewhat less immediately concerned about what peoples’ ancestors did three generations ago than if they are presently terrible people and if the product good and ethically produced. If I did, I’d never drink Austrian wine, Khvanchkara, or anything in South America—and I had some really wonderful wines from all of those last year. I’m way more concerned about if the owner right now is sexually harassing their winemaker and if there are micro-plastics in my food—and they don’t need to have three generations to do that.
The major “is consuming this ethical?” issue dominating everything right now is Israel/Palestine, which I don’t really have enough space or time to address right now. But if I was going to shorthand my POV within the vague “discussion” happening as everyone publicly distances themselves, a more thoughtful approach would be to recognize both Israeli and Palestinian dignity and that the connection between winemakers and food industry is a bit more nuanced and intertwined in shared spaces than many Western writers give credit—including the criticism of occupied wineries in our own communities, that wartime impact on vintages is not a new issue nor is the controversy to define terroir (particularly for Judea and Samaria), as well as the limitations of Christian Palestinians restricted from winemaking because of Hamas and vines ripped out during centuries of Muslim rule. It’s rare you see all of these things included in the same article because that’s the amount of bias, half-effort, and oversight that goes into this process now.
I think openly choosing to ignore learning about the tradition of kosher winemaking, the opportunity to engage directly with winemakers, or taking a more holistic look at their winemaking industry because of the current conflict while simultaneously romanticizing Franciscan orders and skirting over centuries of Catholic oppression is hypocritical, borderline antisemitic, demonstrates profound ignorance, and you should probably do a little self-examination on that. I still think the most indignant and loudest voices in the food community lost an opportunity to bring people together, mostly reiterating my overall disappointment with how restaurants and writers handled this through their impulsive “activism.” These pieces aren’t going to get called out nearly as much as they should. You could always not write a thinkpiece on things you half-understand, but I know that’s wishful thinking.
In either case, winemakers and chefs want to be treated as such, not political pawns or wine-washed. Imagine if the only time people would give a shit about your winery is to be grilled on everything except the process—least interesting part of what you do that doesn’t exactly uplift your craft outside a political context (unless it actually is more interesting as a talking point than the wine being produced—wouldn’t be the first time).
Long story short: you might as well not drink any wine at all from anywhere or eat anything. Sorry, had to grab my eyeballs that dropped to the back of my skull.
Over the years, I’ve come to accept that most people just want to know where to get a sandwich that tastes good and doesn’t cost a million dollars and isn’t built on the tears of oppression murdering the planet that they don’t have to think about too much. I think that it is much more impactful to just point to the people doing that to create action. Helping people learn about sustainable viticulture and biodiverse farming happening in a cool region that also has an up-and-coming cannabis scene and a bunch of delicious restaurants to enjoy so that every part of our country isn’t destroyed by factory farming and strip malls tackles like eight issues at once and makes people feel like they’re making a positive impact with their dollar. Exposing greenwashing and explaining how to read a label and do the research is also a way to empower consumers. Sharing how people are making that happen allows others to learn from this. Why am I the only person thinking this way? I get that it’s not spicy, I just think it’s more impactful.
I may not agree with what everyone is writing about or how, but I do respect their right to express themselves—I just wish they’d be more diligent about it. As a classically trained editor, I’m a little old fashioned when it comes to upholding core journalistic tenets and ethics in that way. Editorial discretion is lacking with the dismantling of access to information that prioritizes popularity over precision, which is scary sometimes when knowledge is power wielded by bad actors. Because journalists are supposed to be busy being journalists, not competing against amateur bloggers and hobbyists to monetize their research.
Which brings me to the elephant in the room: how do I feel about continuing to host my newsletter on a platform with a Nazi problem.
Can you believe there was a time in my life where I saw myself blissfully riding out the rest of my years writing thoughtful celebrations of blue ribbon pies from state fairs across the country at Good Housekeeping or nice little recaps of cat shows and expos for Cat Fancy? Instead, I have to deal with this bullshit:
Does it, though? Because ever since October 7, the antisemitism has been out of control and I don’t know if the “dialogue” of misinformation and silence from well-meaning pacifist liberals with giant platforms ignoring blatant hate speech to nitpick with spirited debates over the nuance of ADL definitions is making anyone smarter from any of this. Then again, I guess I listened to a lot of Dead Kennedys and Bad Brains growing up, so I guess I was privileged to think that Nazis are bad.
Do I feel good about sharing a platform that allows those who weaponize hate speech and ideology? Not really! Then again, I’m also on Instagram, Threads, X, and TikTok where they basically do the same thing while shadowbanning offenses like nipples and women sharing educational weed content. There is only a finite amount of rage I can deal with every day and I guess this is the world that we live in now: where sharing air space with white nationalists is considered just another part of the great “conversation” of “free speech.” It must be so nice to look at all of this through such a removed God-like lens rather than just take a long, hard look in the mirror.
I always recognized the very real possibility of this platform folding or getting embroiled in some problematic acquisition, just like every other digital start-up where the people producing the creative labor building a company’s valuation always get the short end of the stick. And Substack does offer a lot of benefits to content producers: mainly, the ability to monetize your work more directly, but also a growing network of writers who can support each other if they choose and engage directly with their audience. It’s too bad that feel-good writerly motivation is being extended to horrible people with scary agendas.
Once again, just as in 2012, writers are expected to do it all to free ourselves from becoming little Bartlebys: becoming the programmers, publishers, editors, photographers, videographers, graphic designers, social media content creators, marketers while fronting those pricey business costs for the one-woman-show while some room full of venture capitalist dudes make multi-million dollar handshake deals we’ll never be part of. Welcome to showbiz, kid! And now, we’re doing it with the existential threat of normalizing white supremacy as free speech. Wonderful.
The fact Substack is defending its right to provide a safe platform to extremists mostly just reiterates how soulless digital publishing feels and a reflection of its unethical effects on society at-large as a result of dismantling traditional journalism that was supposed to serve as a cultural check and balance. I don’t know what the next great content migration will be—maybe everyone will just add a WordPress and MailChimp to their site or flock to Patreon and the 9 other Substack competitors. I just can’t think that far right now.
Where exactly am I supposed to boycott this anymore when all of the platforms suck and I’m writing about it from my electronics that were probably produced in an ethically challenged warehouse on another continent? On my couch, watching a terrible show on Netflix, disconnecting my brain for three-hours over a cup of coffee, when realistically I should just be cozying up with NPR, Maira Kalman, and a hopeful sense that what I’m doing still matters, of course.
Words will always find a home. We have each other’s contact information should anything arise, and I’ll see you wherever I land, whenever that is. Until then, I guess I’m on yet another Nazi apologist platform—and I hate it! Maybe they’ll change their minds. If you’re reading this Hamish, Chris and Jairaj, please reconsider hosting Nazis on your platform because it is much easier for me, personally. Thank you!
As we end another challenging year, I encourage to begin the new one by getting out of the house and offline. Find new inspiration from people and places that challenge you to think differently, freely, and optimistically. Make new friends. Shed your skin. Pick up a new skill or take a class. Offer your talents and share your knowledge. Think about how you really feel rather than how you think you’re supposed to feel or how someone else tells you that you should. With distance, time, and patience, we gain perspective on how to be better to ourselves and others. That’s all I got! I don’t care if it’s naive, I refuse to succumb entirely to cynicism. To human connection in 2024!
In the words of my Pilates mentor, “Life is full of ups and downs—I call them squats.” May the year ahead help you build strength and character for whatever life throws at you.
Love,
Carly
11 Movies I Saw in December
Because I like to end on a good note, let’s talk about movies! After the WGA/SAG-AFTRA strike, I decided to get back into the theater. Gotta love the silver screen. Somehow I discovered Alamo Drafthouse’s incredible Season Pass deal for unlimited movies for $30/month is worth it if you go to more than one movie per month, so I spent most of November and December in various dark rooms not speaking to anyone—great when you can’t stand other human beings.
The binge began with a press screening for the “The Radical Cinema of Kijū Yoshida” at Film at Lincoln Center, an invitation I periodically receive and attend for their regular cinema celebrations of obscure and dated films outside the streaming algorithm. (Note: The Films of Edward Yang will be playing until Jan. 9 followed by the New York Jewish Film Festival 2024 Jan. 10-24 and Never Look Away: Serge Daney's Radical 1970s Jan. 26-24). The movies are usually interesting, and I appreciate they have a cafe where you can have a cappuccino and talk about the film—just like in the ‘90s!
From there, I renewed my Criterion and TDF subscriptions, joined the Psychedelic Assembly, and started racking up a month’s worth of cultural exposure as though I had been malnourished. Heartbreak does feel good in a place like this! Certainly better sitting at home anxiously twiddling my thumbs on the 20,000 apps that occupy my mental space and time every day. Soon, I had racked up over a dozen movies—and most of them were good! I ate a lot of buttery popcorn and drank a lot of unremarkable Sauvignon Blanc. Most importantly: cleared my head.
Should winter actually show up, here are a few to hibernate with:
Akitsu Springs
This 1962 film was the first commercial success for Japanese filmmaker, Kijū Yoshida: an extremely dramatic adaptation of a novel from Shinya Fujiwara centering a tragic post-war romance between an innkeeper (Okada) and a tubercular man (Hiroyuki Nagato) over the course of 17 years of longing. I do not recommend watching this movie stoned as it is very involved and will make it feel longer than it should, which is already a kind of agonizing premise. The visuals are very pretty though!
Saltburn
This sexy-campy dark comedy feels like the lovechild of Cruel Intentions meets The Talented Mr. Ripley. Attractive people having kinky sex, satiric critiques of the lifestyles of rich and insufferable, scenic backdrops in luxe locations, a dash of mystery, intrigue, murder, and a bangin’ mid-aughts soundtrack—what’s not to like? Also: it’s streaming on Prime, in case you didn’t get a million targeted ads like I did.
Dream Scenario
Not one of Nic Cage’s finest works! I get it: they wanted to give him an intellectual weirdo role that we could all get behind like Adaptation with a little whimsical Malkovichian cerebral exploration of dream states, but unfortunately the plot twist was more of a social commentary on cancel culture than something deliciously surreal and existential like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Didn’t hate it, but wouldn’t rewatch or recommend.
Napoleon
Absolutely hated this one. American accent aside, Joaquin Phoenix played Bonaparte like an American playing himself rather than bring a historical character to life. Because of that—or maybe in part—it was hard to feel any palpable chemistry between Bonaparte and his first wife, Joséphine (played by British actress Vanessa Kirby), which somehow dominated the plot of the two-and-a-half hour movie—he likes to do it from behind! By the end, I understood less than when I walked in and had to Google the origins of the Napoleon pastry (they are not related). Two thumbs down.
Eileen
Ooh! Lesbian psychological thriller! Thomasin McKenzie and Anne Hathaway star in this adaptation of the eponymous 2015 novel by Ottessa Moshfegh about a disaffected and horny secretary (McKenzie) working at a juvenile correction facility in the 1960s and her toxic relationship with the new prison psychologist (Hathaway) and alcoholic father (Shea Whigham) that devolves into an unexpected plot twist I shall not spoil. Just go see it.
May/December
Saw this at IFC before I knew it was going straight to Netflix and can attest that it was much better at the theater. I don’t know the criteria for awarding Oscars, but all of them (Julianne Moore, Natalie Portman, Charles Melton) deserve one for this wild dark comedy paralleling the real-life story of child groomer and rapist Mary Kay Letourneau and her former student-turned-child husband Vili Fualaau that was somehow manages to be both disturbing and also high camp. Not an easy task, but they pulled it off! A lot of people hated the dramatic score, but I grew up watching a lot of soap operas and Lifetime movies, so I appreciated the effect. (Side note: did you know Letourneau died in 2020? Guess I missed that headline!).
The Disappearance of Shere Hite
Speaking of people I didn’t realize died in 2020: second wave feminist icon Shere Hite, whose 1976 book, ‘The Hite Report,’ remains the 30th best selling book of all time spearheading the Women’s Liberation Movement yet woefully unrecognized in whatever-wave-feminism we currently exist. It was the first time a female researcher challenged conventional norms to discuss the female orgasm—and boy oh boy did she suffer for it. Go watch this, then send it to someone young and impressionable to remind them to send money to the NNAF.
Poor Things
This one really left me with a lot to chew on because the heart of it is about the feminine existential struggle between the body and the brain, and also it was a very, very long movie. I probably wouldn’t watch this with my parents if you catch my drift. Still, beautiful and whimsical with great dancing that touches on the joys and pains of womanhood and self-determination through the power of magic realism.
The Boy and the Heron
Studio Ghibli. Is there anything else that needs to be said?
Iron Claw
Didn’t think I’d cry at a movie about wrestling, but then I remembered that’s how Mickey Rourke got his Oscar nomination in 2009. Also, somehow weirdly attracted to Zac Efron’s completely jacked body even with that Dumb and Dumber haircut? I would definitely watch this movie again, and mostly hope it inspires a Ric Flair biopic next! Fun fact: I almost applied twice to work for WWE, but ultimately decided that I did not want a hybrid commute to Stamford, Connecticut, and that wrestling MCs kind of give me headache.
Wonka
Loved this so much more than I thought I would. I’m such a Wonka purist because how could you possibly do better than Gene Wilder, but I appreciate that Paul King really injected some new life into this film in a lovely way. (Also, I do feel personally validated every time a Jew is cast as lead actor in any adaptation from noted antisemite Roald Dahl).
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