Friday Flames: The Mother (and father) and Child (and other child) Reunion

And other revelations about holiday cookies, disgruntled conservatives, elderly spies, telesthetic organs, and salutary nano-balls.

First, let’s honor a tradition and bitch about the weather! Magda is back in Michigan, where the snow is lingering amid temperatures that are below voting age. While she chugs her turmeric tea to hydrate, she’s repeating her mantra that a bundled-up Michigan winter beats the hell out of the 120 or so sweaty summer days she endures in Massachusetts each year. Vive la flannelle!

Somewhere amid her plans for the church cookie exchange, the holiday parties, the acupuncture appointment, and the dental work, we’ll find the time to sneak off for a Korean meal and rub our hands gleefully while we await the boys’ return.

That’s right! Each of the offspring has a sizeable chunk of time between gigs and semesters, respectively, and they’ve decided to 1) spend most of it with family, and 2) eat most of everything! This is a big win for us, who spend most of the year separated by at least a six hours’ drive. If we were pushpins, we could easily hold up a map of the Lower 48. There’s even a nonzero chance we’ll all be under the same roof at some point, although that feels both greedy and exhausting.

Suddenly this feels like one of those year-end family letters, where we learn that Jeffrey is getting his Master’s in speech pathology and Brenda finally agreed to marry Dennis after he landed that new job at 3M. This isn’t that, mostly because both of our sons are rightfully wary of anything we say about them on the internet. It suffices to say they’re both happy and ravenous and will likely attempt to wash all 64 pounds of their laundry in one load.

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On the podcast

Now that

Bryan McGrath

, author of

The Conservative Wahoo

, has found himself as an old-school conservative in the political wilderness, he's attempting a full-scale reassessment of where and how to spend his attention.

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Embers in the News

Here are some of the links that peeked through the noisy news cycle last month:

• Super-tiny, robot drug balls In the future, therapeutic drugs will be delivered exactly where they’re needed by tiny robotic, bubble-like nanospheres.

• Do organ transplants transfer memory? Some heart transplant patients report altered emotions, tastes, and memories that seem to belong to the donor.*

• “Move or die” A study that will surprise zero people, scientists have confirmed that the more you move, the longer you live.

• Everything from yap to pookie If your Gen Z kids are headed home for the holidays, Mashable has helpfully defined 2024’s most viral internet slang.

And ICYMI: These sliding, before-and-after photos show how the Cathédrale de Notre Dame is back in business.

* Magda would like to note that Days of Our Lives, which has featured this storyline more than once in the past ten years, was way ahead on this. As usual.

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Currently reading

Magda is trying to finish The Expat by Hansen Shi before Libby sucks it back to the e-library. It's wry and funny so far, but she’s bracing for when it’s apparently going to turn into a spy novel. This will be book 102 for 2024, and she credits HRT with restoring her powers of concentration enough to read books again.

In anticipation of the upcoming Dylan biopic, Doug picked up the source material, Elijah Wald’s Dylan Goes Electric, because Bob said so. Wald explores the underserved complications behind the reductive idea that Dylan’s 10-minute “assault” on the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 killed progressivism and broke Pete Seeger’s heart.

Currently watching

Doug watched The Mole Agent (on which Ted Danson’s new comedy, A Man on the Inside, is based). It’s a Chilean film about an 80plus-year-old hired to infiltrate a nursing home and investigate allegations of elder abuse. Watching Sergio attempt to use FaceTime sets the tone early on, and the satisfying payoff is worth all the subtitles.

Also: After seven years, The Lonely Island is back making SNL Digital Shorts. And their latest, Here I Go with Charli XCX, is an absolute banger. Here’s how they made it.

Now that Magda and Mike are almost done with all 20 (!) seasons of Project Runway (they gave up on All Stars because they couldn't take the judges), Magda has lined up Glitter and Greed: the Lisa Frank Story and What Had Happened Was…, Jamie Foxx’s comedy special about his near death in 2023 from a brain bleed and a stroke.

Currently cooking

Magda and Mike recommend this French Onion Pasta Bake, but with double the gruyère—two cups in the sauce and two more on top—and hold the gorgonzola.

Doug served up this beef, mushroom, and Guinness pie with a spinach vinaigrette salad. It takes forever to slow-cook that stew beef until it falls apart, but it’s worth it—especially with some horseradish and delicious Dick's Caribbean Dream hot sauce.

Thanks for reading, and we’re not here to glaze a failmarriage, pookie.

Magda and Doug