PicoBlog

As a recovering theater kid, I often think back to my time acting to see if any of the lessons learned about the crafts of stage and screen acting can be applied to my life now. As I’ve delved into the world of simulationism, one key phrase from my acting days comes back to me over and over again. That phrase is, “Acting is living truthfully within given imaginary circumstances.” Contra Nerdrotic and his crowd, acting is not simply “adult pretending.

One of the books I’m currently reading is"W.E.B. Du Bois, Biography of a Race" by David Levering Lewis, a comprehensive and detailed biography of prominent Black activist, sociologist, and historian W.B.E. Du Bois. I, in fact, recently featured it in my sister publication “Black Books, Black Minds”  In this book, Lewis provides an in-depth look into the life and times of Du Bois, including the influence of his mother, Mary Silvina Burghardt Du Bois.

I am very attached to Marvin Gaye's version of "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" and somehow managed to not even hear Gladys Knight's recording until late in life. I recognized immediately that Gladys' version is a banger, but it took me a while to relax my preconceptions and warm up to it. Norman Whitfield produced both Marvin's and Gladys' versions. He had worked on Marvin's version first, but Berry Gordy didn't think it had commercial potential, so for Gladys' recording, they took a different approach.

Hi everyone, Keeping it short and sweet for this last post of 2023, with the long-promised recipe for a tangerine pound cake that’s bound to make the last few days of your year extra-sweet. This recipe is adapted from the Franny’s cookbook Franny's: Simple, Seasonal, Italian, which was co-authored by Melissa Clark, which is how you know it’s quality stuff. I bought this book ten years ago when it first came out, when the charming pizza and pasta spot (and birthplace of the kale salad as we know it) was still open in my old neighborhood of Prospect Heights in Brooklyn.

A few weeks ago, after I finished reading Glossy: Ambition, Beauty, and the Inside Story of Emily Weiss’s Glossier by Marisa Meltzer, I placed my first and so far only order for Glossier. I bought two things: the Balm Dotcom shown above and a Cloud Paint. Reading Glossy, as someone who started getting really into beauty in 2018 (entirely coinciding with my pregnancy and new mom era), I couldn’t help but feel that I’d missed out on something special.

“It's never left the glove as far as I know,’’ retired Marlins pitcher Josh Beckett told me other day, “unless somebody else took it out and put it back.’’ We’re talking about the last out of the 2003 World Series, that weak grounder Jorge Posada hit inside the first base line where Beckett, in one running motion, scooped it with his glove and slapped the glove against Posada's waist.  It certainly wasn’t the prettiest play to end a World Series — he nearly collided with Posada — yet it put an exclamation point on the 23-year-old Beckett’s dominance that night at Yankee Stadium: On short rest, he tossed a complete-game shutout, striking out nine, never letting a batter past second base, to eliminate a Yankees team that had been heavily favored to win it all.

Hello friends, This humble caramel-flavored toffee-sauced cake is the perfect finish to a dinner party or Sunday dinner. When everyone has pushed back their chair and declared no more, this cake is irresistible. I know the title says “pudding” and for some of you that makes perfect sense, others will say that pudding is a milk-based soft dessert!! This is pudding in the British sense of the word, that is to say, a dessert.

Estratto da Cucina Povera di Giulia Scarpaleggia (Artisan Books). Copyright © 2023. Gli gnudi sono soffici polpettine di ricotta e verdure, di solito spinaci. Gnudi è un termine toscano che significa nudo, quindi pensate a questi ravioli nudi, leggere palline di ripieno senza l'involucro di pasta fresca. Nella zona di … ncG1vNJzZmihnpjCpLXNmpqoppqqubR60q6ZrKyRmLhvr86mZqlnl6PCpbWMnaBmqpmYvLXAwGacZqugnruir8g%3D

Hello! How is everyone? After the last post about aging I heard from a lot of you and what I’ve gathered is we’re all basically in our 20s in our heads. 🤣 Glad we’re such a youthful group! Substack launched a new feature called Notes. It’s kind of like Twitter, but for Substack users and without Elon Musk. Anyway, I’ll be using it to share fun travel and food related things I come across between newsletters, including some of the links I typically share here.