The Week In Recommendations 9.4.24

Fall TV gems, the allure of Liquid Death, car music for babies and the perfect striped tee.

This is the free edition of Rich Text, a newsletter about cultural obsessions from your Internet BFFs Emma and Claire. If you like what you see and hear, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Our latest podcast was about the “Love Is Blind UK” reunion! Rich Text is a completely reader-supported project — no ads or sponsors!

Claire has been reading… 📖

A few more chapters of “Long Island Compromise,” plus couple of reported pieces that I enjoyed:

“Why So Many People Are Going ‘No Contact’ With Their Parents,” a New Yorker piece by Anna Russell on the rise of adult children choosing to be estranged from their parents, which I found to be a very empathetic and nuanced take on a question that is often polarizing. A new parent herself, Russell doesn’t dismiss the profound pain and hopelessness felt by the parents of children who sever ties, nor does she hand-wave away the suffering of people who feel that only an estrangement can bring them peace. As a child of good parents, I know that I’m one of the fortunate ones; having lost my mom, I’m also somewhat predisposed to wonder why someone would give up that relationship voluntarily. But I know, and this piece vividly depicts, that some parents are not so good, and they’re often empowered to manipulate, abuse, and otherwise harm their kids. As a newer mom, I am also terrified at the thought of my kids one day cutting me out, after years of pouring myself and my time and love into them. (One psychologist told Russell, “The amount of grief that the parent feels is really hard to describe.”) There is value in people being able to free themselves; there is also value in the unshakeable bonds of a family. Once a family unit stops functioning well, there is rarely a perfect answer.

Also, “Of Course America Fell for Liquid Death,” an Atlantic piece by Jacob Stern on the no-product-just-vibes canned water company Liquid Death. I’m biased, because this was always my basic take on Liquid Death (it’s just water? in a cool-looking can? and people are buying this?), but I thought the piece paints an interesting portrait of a company that runs entirely on branding. Canned water has some slight benefits (a more recyclable container than plastic bottles, though it’s less environmentally friendly than tap water, and a container that looks like a beer for sober people to tote around bars), but the water itself is not notable in flavor or performance. It’s all just about the tallboy can, the cool font, the funny ads, and the vibes. And that has been enough for the company to be wildly successful.

Emma has been reading… 📖

I know Claire recommended this one last week, but I was also in the middle of Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s “Long Island Compromise.” I finished the novel — it’s long! — a few days ago and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since. “Long Island Compromise” is a masterful exploration of generational trauma and generational wealth. (And, it must be said, deeply, hilariously Jewish! References to dybbuks, nose jobs, Israel bonds and Jewish guilt abound.) Through the “extraordinarily, absurdly, kidnappably rich” Fletcher family, we see laid out how money can both ensconce people in safety and endless second-chances, and also make them deeply selfish and fundamentally uncreative. Brodesser-Ackner manages to create characters that leap off of the page, people who are at once sympathetic and repellant, and she does not hold back in either her empathy for her characters nor in skewering their follies. The final chapters of the novel, careening towards the “terrible ending” we are promised in the novel’s first pages, are particularly propulsive.

Claire has been watching… 📺

Before the full freight of last week’s reality dating content landed, I had just begun checking out season 8 of “Selling Sunset” in my screener queue. Folks… it’s gonna be juicy.

Emma has been watching… 📺

I’ve been catching up on all of the reality TV I missed while I was gone — Fantasy Suites! Men Tell All! The “LIB UK” reunion! (Sorry to Claire for abandoning her during a literal reality dating show bonanza.) I’m also nearly done with “The Perfect Couple” screeners, and have started “Selling Sunset” season 8 and the forthcoming Adam Brody/Kristin Bell rom-com show, “Nobody Wants This,” which I already have many complicated thoughts about. September is truly an embarrassment of riches for compelling television.

Photo Credit: Netflix

Claire has been listening to… 🎧

Car music for babies, specifically “You Are My Little Bird” by singer Elizabeth Mitchell. The preschooler usually operates his own entertainment on road trips now — big headphones, a tablet blasting “Rescue Bots,” a blank stare — and the baby is a great car passenger. He usually just falls asleep, or coos a little bit while gazing around wide-eyed. But when he does fuss, or needs help nodding off, I put on a little baby-friendly music to distract him. We had a near-meltdown on the way home, but her soft renditions of folk songs like “Peace Like a River” and covers like “Three Little Birds” — all threaded through with off-key but sweet harmonies from child singers — lulled him right back to sleep.

Emma has been listening to… 🎧

Spotify’s “Music for a Workday” playlist, which is genuinely great background music to write to.

Claire has been buying… 🛍️

A travel high chair that has to be used to be believed, the Inglesina Fast Table Chair. I had always distrusted the chair, which clamps on to a tabletop and dangles your baby or toddler over the floor, on the grounds that it looks like witchcraft. (Witchcraft is not real, ergo the chair will fall and send my child tumbling.) In fact, it operates using simple principles of physics and engineering, and it works very well. My brother borrowed one for the baby to use while we were visiting this summer, and I liked it so much that we got our own before our Labor Day weekend trip to the Hudson Valley. Greg prefers to put a chair underneath while the baby sits in it, for safety, but this is merely to address for our anxiety. The chair doesn’t fall, is easy to use and lug around, keeps the baby comfy, and is particularly nice for buckling him in at the counter to enjoy some sliced fruit while the adult does dinner prep.

Emma has been buying… 🛍️

I picked up the absolute cutest little espresso cups with sardine handles at a local Melides ceramics store, Vida Dura. You can buy some of their stuff online — it’s all handmade and hand painted, and it’s just so freaking pretty. I really wish I had bought a whole set of dishes.

Also, been loving this perfect GAP striped tee, which I bought just in time for the weather to get a bit cooler. (Also it seems to be on major sale??)

Claire has been making… 🧶

Vacation magic, baby!!! Grocery lists, triple batches of box-mix pancakes, entire cartons of scrambled eggs, outing schedules that account for naptimes, piles of chopped fruit. We went away for three days with two couples and their two children, for a total of six adults and four kids who needed to be fed and entertained around the clock. It doesn’t sound like much — the adults even outnumbered the kids! We came back more exhausted than ever.

But while I understand when I hear some parents say vacationing with little kids isn’t worth it, for us it is. It just required a complete shift in expectations. We don’t expect to get a moment to ourselves while we’re away, and we don’t expect to rest or relax. We go away for a change in the exact nature of our exhaustion. Instead of managing our stir-crazy kids at home for a few long summer days, then staring dead-eyed at our phones after bedtime, we stay in a big house with a few friends or family members and their kids. During the day, we run all the children ragged with exciting outings in unfamiliar scenery — museums, beaches, hikes, festivals, farms — and at night, after bedtime, the adults convene over a cluster of baby monitors and a few bottles of wine. We are all completely drained, with aches in muscles we’d previously forgotten about, but at least we’re talking to adults who aren’t our spouses. Plus, instead of making three tiny meals a day, you can divvy up the cooking schedule and make one huge meal a day. (You can use the extra free time to keep your child from smashing your friend’s child in the face with a plastic Transformer. That’s efficiency!)

Emma has been making… 🧶

Plans to return to the Alentejo region of Portugal! I visited Comporta back in March, which I wrote about in the newsletter, and absolutely fell in love with the whole area. So Adam and I decided to make the trip back during the on-season, this time to Melides, a small beach town just south of Comporta. After three nights in Melides, at the absolutely STUNNING, Christian Louboutin-designed Vermelho Hotel, I now have serious dreams of spending my summer months in Portugal. (It’s extremely normal to start rapidly googling real estate in every new place you visit, right?)

I wasn’t sure what the vibe would be like at Vermelho — it’s hard to tell sometimes if design-y properties are truly beautiful and interesting or just Instagram traps — but this place is the real fucking deal. It’s an oasis right in the middle of town, which means that you are a quick drive to the beach and a quick walk from little restaurants and shops. The 13 rooms are spacious, well-appointed, and gorgeous. The service is 10/10. There is a design moment at literally every corner of the property. And the breakfast (included!) is something I will be dreaming about for a long time. Photos truly cannot do this place justice.

Magical Melides, as experienced at Hotel Vermelho.

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