Friday Flames | 5.31.24

A weekly synopsis of what we figured out about college reunions, riot grrls, the Villenoeuvre, sexy grilled cheese, and a boulevard of gingham.

This weekend, as Magda and Mike travel to Magda's 30-year college reunion, she is thinking about the nature of aging and what it feels like to return to the place where you were young and full of potential. The combination of this reunion and seeing Jon Bon Jovi on the cover of AARP Magazine is making Magda feel a little old, but not exactly in a bad way. It’s just interesting to think how intensely cool JBJ was when she was a teenager, and now he's not any cooler than any other 60-year-old is.

Doug’s mind is in a similar place after one of his college friends blew through town on a work trip. They hadn’t interacted for years, yet by the time the first round of beers arrived they had started up seamlessly, like it was 1987 all over again. Only this time, they talked about kids, parents, marriage, retirement, sore backs, bum knees, and the importance for dudes our age to chat about stuff like this with other dudes.

Embers in the News

Here are some of the links that peeked through the noisy news cycle this week:

• Faisons un pique-nique! Paris covered the Champs-Élysées with a 45,000-sq-ft gingham tablecloth for a gigantic outdoor picnic.

• Watch out for Wet Bandits The Home Alone house—with two laundry rooms, a gym, a movie theater, and an indoor sports court—hit the market for $5.25 million.

• Remains of the Stone Age An Austrian man found the bones of three 30,000-year-old mammoths in his basement.

• Fat-bottomed wallets Among the many artists who have sold the publishing rights, Queen could become the first band to work a deal for over $1 billion.

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This week on the podcast

Sandwich parents often wonder if our adult kids know when to defend themselves and when to walk away. But our older parents need healthy boundaries, too, as they adapt to a modernizing world.

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Currently reading

Magda is reading Rebel Girl, the memoir of Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre. It's rough going—despite the smart, raw, immediate writing—because so many bad things happened to Hanna as a kid and young adult. But learning about the birth of the Riot Grrrl movement and the origins of Bikini Kill, as well as Hanna's struggle to find her voice, made Magda angry enough to want to start her own punk band.

Doug absolutely geeks out for slice-of-life nonfiction, especially when it’s in the hands of Gene Weingarten, winner of two Pulitzer Prizes for his features in the Washington Post. One Day: The Extraordinary Story of an Ordinary 24 Hours in America shows that even the slowest news day teems with uplifting and heartbreaking human drama.

Currently watching

After the Dune marathon, Doug realized he hasn’t seen enough of the Denis Villeneuve oeuvre. Arrival’s aliens are a little out of central casting, and you’ll recognize plot points from plenty of other naturalistic sci-fi films. But there’s a lot here to get you thinking about how we love, grieve, communicate, and perceive time.

Magda is watching Project Runway and her seedlings. That's it. 

Currently cooking

Magda made the first rhubarb custard meringue pie of the season, and it was delicious!

It still drops into the 40s here at night, so Doug upped his grilled-cheese-and-tomato-soup game by roasting tomatoes and garlic (subbing whole milk for the cream) combined with this Welsh rarebit with leeks (finishing off some crème fraîche in exchange for about half the cheese). Tonight’s Bike Party ride will help work it off.

Next on the podcast

After 18 years in Florida, Eliza Fendell and Jeff Oberg realized the state couldn’t (or wouldn’t) provide the care and education they wanted for their kids. They discuss how and where they chose to move, and how well it has worked out so far.

Thanks for reading, and keep the change, ya filthy animal.

Magda and Doug