Friday Flames | 6.7.24

A weekly synopsis of what we figured out about sipping cellos, fleeing Florida, magical thoughts, faceless cowboys, and chasing rainbows.

For Doug, this week’s What We’re Watching was a bit of a gut-punch, because he’ll never forget slumping into a chair, in a conference room piled high with legal documents, when he learned that Jim Henson had died. Most of us 50somethings didn’t really appreciate his ineffable legacy when we were 20somethings. Could we have imagined that, 34 years later, The Count would appear on everyone’s phone counting the 34 counts?

Through the lens of a parent who raised his own kids on Muppets, it’s astonishing to consider the prolific body of work Henson gave us before he died at just 53 years old. The new documentary Jim Henson Idea Man also tells us that Henson’s older brother Paul died in a car crash at 23. This made Doug think of Garry Shandling and Stephen Colbert, who also lost older brothers at a young age and developed a sense of humor mostly just to make their parents laugh through the tragedy.

When you’re 14 years old, it’s easy for a lyric like “life’s like a movie, write your own ending” to skip right past you. But at 58, it resonates like hell.

Embers in the News

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

• The winners take it all The members of ABBA received Sweden’s prestigious Order of the Vasa, which was awarded for the first time in almost 50 years

• Let the great world spin Pat Sajak’s 8,010th and final episode as host of Wheel of Fortune will air tonight.

• Welcome to doom-nodding The MouthPad sits on the roof of a user’s mouth and lets them control their screens with tongue and head movements.

• A doctor’s raisin d'être After a UK toddler suffered sinus pain and lethargy for three months, doctors found a raisin stuck deeply up her nose.

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This week on the podcast

Eliza Fendell and Jeff Oberg found Florida's restrictive politics too much and its dwindling educational resources not enough. So they moved the family 1,500 miles to give their kids the lives they needed.

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Currently reading

After two DNFs, Magda has settled in with You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian, the second in the series of queer romances set at a New York City newspaper in 1960. This one has a curmudgeonly writer and an earnest baseball player in a slump, and it's smart and thoughtful and warm.

At at time when a handful of friends have recently lost parents, Libby appropriately sent Doug The Year of Magical Thinking. Joan Didion’s journalistic take on how grief shakes you loose from your moorings is both heartbreaking and dryly funny. This and Being Mortal should be required reading for anyone languishing in the mortal weeds.

Currently watching

If you loved Muppets and Dark Crystals and The Goblin King, you will love Jim Henson Idea Man. And if you don’t, please accept Doug’s sincere pity.

Magda saw Orville Peck on Tuesday, and she reports that he's just as magnetic as ever and his voice is just delicious. Opener Debbii Dawson reminds her of a young Dolly Parton, with a sweet, clear voice and catchy storysongs about loneliness. 

Currently cooking

Magda made peony simple syrup for cocktails: Boil one cup each of water and sugar together for 2-3 minutes; add the petals from one peony and simmer for a couple of minutes; cool, strain, and keep it sealed in a jar in the refrigerator for about a month. It adds a delicious floral note to cocktails, or even just a seltzer.

In a similar hat-tip to summer, Doug is expanding on his appreciation of limoncello by brewing a rainbow of -cellos with grapefruit, orange, and lime. Mandarins and clementines will likely follow, because if you can zest it, you can -cello it.

Next on the podcast

As parents of young adult men, we see pieces like this and wonder how they’re developing emotionally—especially amid cultural sensibilities a lot different from when they were born.

Thanks for reading, and we don’t need a map to keep this show on the road.

Magda and Doug