We spend a lot of our days chatting with each other about things we see online, trying to make sense of it all. This week in the Styles newsletter, Wait …, the team is sharing some things that are getting us through these times. Hope you’re hanging in there! If you want to share something that is helping you, email [email protected]. We may publish some of them in the coming weeks.
Daniel Jones: After nearly seven weeks of being isolated in my house and neighborhood, I had to take to the highway last weekend — a long trip I ordinarily dread. Instead, I soaked it up. The truckers, bridges, mountains, forests, rivers, tollbooths. It was all so reassuringly normal. Except for zero traffic. Even on the Cross Bronx Expressway.
Bernadette Dashiell: I’m using the Seek app to identify plants in the park in my neighborhood. It’s fun to do while walking the dog.
Bonnie Wertheim: A few days a week, I do this high-intensity interval training video posted by Pamela Reif, a German fitness influencer about whom I know very little. I don’t even know what her voice sounds like; she doesn’t speak at all during the workout, which is set to a generic-pop soundtrack that I now know all the lyrics to. (My partner in isolation can attest to this.) Apparently a lot of people get bored by repeating the same exercises over and over, but the predictability gives me a sense of calm and control — which, for me, adds up to contentment.
Jonah Bromwich: Because I can’t abide a quiet house and because I miss the voices of people I don’t know, I listen to the radio pretty much all day, every day. I stick mostly to WBGO and WQXR which are soothing and, because they are public radio stations, don’t really have commercials. The other day, WBGO played a really chill and only mildly deranged song by Michael Franks called “Eggplant.” (Franks was one of the progenitors of quiet storm, the smooth, jazz-inflected R&B that began to get radio play in the mid to late 1970s.)
The song made me laugh out loud the first time I heard it and now I can’t get it out of my head. It’s all about how great Franks’s partner is at cooking eggplant. (It was released in 1976, way before the emoji existed.) I think it’s stuck with me because it’s really about being grateful for small domestic comforts, and small domestic comforts are something I’m lucky to have right now. This weird song reminds me of that.
Natalie Shutler: There’s no contest for me! It’s “What We Do in the Shadows” — the 2014 movie and the current TV show, both mockumentary-style comedies created by Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi about the roommate dynamics of bored, undead beings. Nothing cheers me like watching these sweetly inoffensive bloodsuckers squabble over dirty dishes or bail each other out of asinine scrapes — e.g., getting stuck in the animal shelter after assuming their animal forms. The vampires are moody because they are lonely and somewhat isolated, but they are also fundamentally good-natured and cooperative, hapless but relatively happy.
Lindsey Underwood: Like many of you, I have been revisiting “The Office” during this time at home. Can’t go to the office? Maybe watch it. It’s been a joy. I don’t even care about the low moments anymore, there’s just something fun about seeing them try to make me laugh. I haven’t gone 100 percent soft: Jim and Pam’s wedding was truly bad. So much potential, but they didn’t quite stick the landing. Well consider me shocked when the cast decided to recreate the awful wedding dance scene for John Krasinski’s quarantine show: “Some Good News.” I cried! I cried. (I’m sorry. I’m both proud and embarrassed.) To do that dance once was more than anyone ever wanted. To dare to do it again, a gift.
Caity Weaver: While people may associate the Northeast with Currier and Ives wintry scenes, several of the region’s major cities are located in the same “humid subtropical” climate zone that extends over much of the South. That I’ve never lived anywhere that wasn’t unbearably muggy in the summer may explain my affinity for dry things. I love a scorching windy day. I love to dust. And I have a newly discovered love for frozen Thin Mints Girl Scout cookies.
In my own Girl Scout days, I pitied the adults who ordered miserable Thin Mints, and was relieved they had to pay up front. But since you can now order Girl Scout cookies online, I decided to buy a box of every variety for our household. (Avoid the new-this-year Lemon-Ups. A crime.) Upon receiving my bounty, I stashed a sleeve of Thin Mints in the freezer. I’d remembered savoring a frozen Thin Mint at a friend’s apartment a couple months back but, since I’d had some wine that night, I couldn’t be sure how good the snack actually was. My own research has since confirmed I just enjoy frozen Thin Mints. Ice-cold chocolate; bone dry crunch; minty aftertaste that suggests I’ve either brushed my teeth or eaten a plant. What’s not to like?
Anya Strzemien: I’ve been finding relief in surprising places — like Apple TV screen savers. The slow-motion, aerial drone shots of cities (when they were normal), sweeping natural landscapes and marine life are so meditative and transporting. And they’re obviously the only travel I can do now. (By the way, check out a package I’ve put together on Joy — and the things that are bringing us some — on Monday.)
Five things
Some other things to read on the internet about the internet this week:
Have a good week!
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