Friday Flames | 9.22.23

A weekly synopsis of what we figured out about the end of the world, the marrow of life, and the significance of kosher Coke.

From Doug: To put rout all that is not life

My birthday is next week, and events of the past month have conspired for me to spend it in the wilderness, camping with my son in Colorado. Because how often does a parent get the chance to live deliberately, without plumbing or electricity, and wander among desert and mountain vistas with your kid in a big, purple truck?

Robert has been living this way for over a year, and ever since he wrote this piece—about, among other things, postponing college until he’s absolutely sure of the purpose it will serve—I’ve been itching to see his roofless, rootless lifestyle up close. Before COVID I used to schedule at least one follow-my-nose expedition every year, and now that I’m turning 58 it feels more urgent to carpe all the diems while I’ve still got viable diems left. (Even if you spend those diems pooping in a hole.)

Spending a week living out of a pack the size of a sea turtle also just feels right, since I’ve spent the last few months focusing intently on the things I want and aggressively purging the things I don’t. This elemental reset will help me appreciate the creature comforts I have left, while I front only the essential facts of life and see if I can learn whatever it has left to teach.

But I’ll also have my Kindle and some good bourbon. We’re not savages.

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This week on the podcast

On the Monday Check-In: How would you dispose of your ex’s dead body?

For Episode 17: If you’re fasting for Yom Kippur, now is not the time to remember how great it is that Oreos are kosher.

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Currently watching

Doug was about to watch Fleishman Is in Trouble until enough people recommended he read the book first (see below). So he and YoungerBoy are thoroughly enjoying Good Omens, the baroque, apocalyptic buddy comedy starring Michael Sheen and David Tennant. If you like Neil Gaiman and The Hitchhiker’s Guide, you will like this.

Magda and Mike finished The Final Table, a cooking competition show with professional chefs on Netflix. The challenges and elimination rounds were straightforward, so it was more about actual food and cooking and not really about game-playing. We'd watch another season or two if they made them.

Also: Does anyone want to pre-game Season 14 of GBBO? Magda was done with it after last season, but since Matt Lucas has been replaced by Alison Hammond (who appears to actually be funny), they're not doing those racist, ignorant theme weeks anymore, and they’re back to baking instead of cooking, she'll give it another chance. 

Currently reading

Magda is reading The Cape Cod Mystery by Phoebe Atwood Taylor, originally published in 1931. She found a different Atwood Taylor mystery in a Cape Cod rental house last weekend and decided to start with the first in the series. So far it's about a 50-year-old "respectable spinster" named Prudence on vacation in a Cape Cod rental house, and the inciting incident hasn't happened yet.

Doug stayed up late to finish Fleishman Is in Trouble, just to allay that pesky feeling that all wasn’t what it seemed. This treatment of middle-age malaise, quandary, and disappointment—as well as its characters’ attempts to acknowledge and overcome them—would qualify as an official companion text for the podcast. Don’t be surprised if we devote an entire episode to it.

Next on the podcast

We’re off next week, but October 4 will bring a discussion with Karen Walrond about her upcoming book, which not only rages against the dying of the light but also asserts there’s still plenty of light left to reflect outward.

Thanks for reading, and have an easy fast.

Magda and Doug