Webworm Set-Up on a Haunted Vacation
I like the mashing up titles. I think I'm going to keep it~
When I was in college, I was obsessed with a Japanese boyband named Arashi. When I was a fan, they had some hits but were still fairly obscure. Since then, they have become massively famous in Japan (imagine a band of 5 Justin Timberlakes) and were even starting to do overseas promotions before announcing their hiatus in 2020. The band formed in 1999 so they’ve been doing this a long time and they all grew from teens to people almost in their 40s. I still adore them, although I don’t follow news about them as closely as I used to.
Apparently, on Monday, two of them announced that they had gotten married. (Dating and marriage for Japanese celebrities is not really talked about. You’re supposed to date in secret, announce when you get married, and then not really talk about being married again. I did my Japanese speech on Japanese celebrity culture in college, it’s a whole thing.) Anyway, did you see how that sounded? Yeah, news networks didn’t, announcing all over Japan: Breaking News! Sakurai Sho and Aiba Masaki Announce Marriage. This … quickly had to be corrected.
Y’all, same sex marriage was trending in Japan. One of my friends who lives in Japan told me that one of her coworkers had assumed they’d been married and when someone pointed out same sex marriage is not yet legal in Japan, they shrugged and said ‘they’re famous enough. Laws probably don’t apply to them.’ The question, of course, is why they announced together and guys, these are two people that have been best friends since they were like 13. You know they did it for the lols. They even sent joint chocolate boxes to media outlets to announce.
I find this incredibly hilarious but equally great is how I found this out. Although it had been trending on Twitter all day, I’d been at work and then went home to stream. Later that evening, I noticed that I had an email from my college Japanese professor, an extremely nice woman who I hadn’t spoken to in several years. She had tracked down my email in order to tell me and ask me if I was doing alright. Over ten years have passed since I graduated college and my professor saw this news and immediately thought “Oh no. I must check on Molly.”
Who knows what this says about me (or, I suppose, my professor) but I send out so much love to two of those five boys that got me through a rough part of my young life and managed to troll a whole country with their marriage announcement. I also didn’t know how to tell my professor that my favorite member was the first to get married and just announced he’s having a kid. I don’t know how’d she take that for me.
Things to Read
I’ve been reading David Farrier’s newsletter Webworm for about a year now and I really enjoy it. You might know David Farrier from the amazing documentary Tickled or from the very fun Dark Tourist on Netflix (still salty there’s no series two!) and if you like his work there, definitely check out his newsletter. It’s got everything from dispatches from the Covid front in New Zealand (not so shockingly, there’s weirdo anti-vaxxers there, too!), unique q & a’s with very interesting people, and deep dives into various niche subjects. I also love how David isn’t afraid to put himself right square in the middle of the conflict, from sharing the sometimes horrible emails he gets in response to online nastiness to my current favorite issue, this bizarre q & a with Joseph Gordon Levitt on his mysterious company HitRecord. Seriously, take five minutes and read it and be blown away by the blaseness of his use of the phrase ‘Dan died years ago.’ Made me sit back and blink at my desk. I really enjoy this newsletter and it’s well worth checking out.
The Body in the Garden - Katharine Schellman
Who wants a little Regency mystery with a cool lady detective? I mean, I always do and I had heard good things about this new series so when I got the first one, I started it pretty quickly …. and finished it all in one night. Our heroine is the newly widowed Lily Adler, only married to her darling Freddy for two years before he passed unexpectedly. She’s moved back to London to figure out what she wants to do next, knowing only she doesn’t want to be a burden to Freddy’s family and she doesn’t want to get remarried. On her first night back, at her best friend’s ball, she overhears a murder that is then promptly covered up. With the help of her late husband’s best friend and a young heiress that gets roped in, she decides to investigate herself. I’m a sucker for a historical lady detective and I love this no-nonsense woman who is not here for games. For a historical novel, there’s actually main characters of color (!!) because, duh, England was never all white. Book two just came in for me on hold and I’m both stoked and sad because there are only two books out at the moment. Fingers crossed for book three soon!
The Shaadi Set-Up - Lillie Vale
This book is adorable. Rita and Milan were high school sweethearts that planned to be together forever. It ended poorly and they haven’t spoken in six years. Rita is now attempting to run her own furniture renovation business and is secretly dating a man who is a bit too close to his mother. In an attempt to game the system and find a way to tell her parents about him (their families have history), she signs them both up to a Desi matchmaker site, MyShaadi. If she can just show her parents that they’re a perfect match, they’ll get over it. Yeah, guess who turns out to be her perfect match? And has grown up to be a realtor who needs her help to stage a house that just will not sell? I’m not usually a big exes reconnect person but I love when two characters grow as people who then fit together. It’s also refreshing to read a rom com set in a completely different cultural background than mine. My best friend in college was Desi and we used to hang out with her parents who’d tell us stories about growing up in India. I miss you, Sadri Family!
People We Meet on Vacation - Emily Henry
Last newsletter, I’d just finished Emily Henry’s first book Beach Read and had just started this one. Finished it just as quickly. This one follows Alex and Poppy, two best friends from college who’ve spent their summer breaks going on vacation together for ten years. When we start, we know something happened two years ago that tore apart their friendship but a chance trip to Palm Springs for a wedding gives them a chance to reconnect. The book skips back and forth, going from the present to former trips and back so we get a full idea of their relationship. I really enjoyed the opposites attract nature of Poppy and Alex’s relationship and seeing them change as the years go by. The book is entirely from Poppy’s point of view and I think it would have been better if it switched between the two of them as it becomes very clear towards the end of the book that Alex was viewing things differently but overall, a delightful little read.
Things to Watch
Okay, so I have a pair of LuLaRoe leggings. And they are crazy comfortable. My cousin sold LuLaRoe for a bit in 2015/16 so when I saw a documentary was coming out about them, I was mildly curious. I sure hadn’t heard about them in a long time. Was there something to know? …. HOO BOY.
This four part docu-series goes all out on the meteoric rise and catastrophic fall of LuLaRoe. If you like shows about scandals, horrible families running companies, cults that aren’t cults but are kinda cults, and the like, definitely one to check out. Do I hate that I have LuLaRoe leggings now? Kinda. Am I still going to wear them because they are the comfiest things in the universe? Duh.
Ordinary Adventures Youtube Channel
I love Halloween and all things scary but the one thing I cannot do are haunted houses. I can watch horror movies (they are on the screen and cannot get me) and I can go to places that are supposedly haunted (there is no guarantee that anything is going to happen) but haunted houses for Halloween are a no go for my anxiety (there are people being paid to scare me, I just don’t know when.) Due to this moral failing on my part, I love watching people go through haunted houses on Youtube so I can experience them without actually having to go through them myself and I think I’ve finally found my go to channel for that.
Peter and Kitra are behind Ordinary Adventures, a Youtube channel dedicated to theme parks and vacations but also, around the spooky season, full of them exploring different haunted attractions. There are lots of channels that do this sort of thing and a lot of haunted house vloggers are … interesting, to put it kindly. I like Ordinary Adventures because Peter and Kitra are so likeable, the sort of people I’d be friends with and that’s what makes their videos stand up among the rest. These are the people I would actually like to go to Disneyland with and so if you, like me, want to go to Halloween Horror Nights without actually going to Halloween Horror Nights, definitely check them out!
That’s it for now, folks! I’ll see you again mid-month with a new round-up. Until then, enjoy the beginning of spooky season and I’ll see you soon!