Dingus of the week: Oops! All good things

Less than a week until book launch

Listen, the world does not feel great at the moment. Rachel Dolezal made a media comeback of sorts. Huma Abedin is dating a Soros son?  Maggots on a plane. The vibes are off.

And I know we like to have a little fun here and compare bad men to expired dairy products and the crispy husks of cicadas long since evolved. But the men will keep.

Also, as you may have heard, my book comes out next week. And in between the interviews and the social media posting and the essay writing and editing, my brain is melting out of my ears. So I’ve decided that this week’s edition of the newsletter will only feature good things and also what I am drinking, because we are celebrating.

That’s right, it’s the “Oops! All good things” edition of the dingus. 

Thanks again to Caitlin for this image.

Beyonce decided to become a Potterworld boggart and take on a form that Morgan Wallen most fears — country singer. To be clear, Beyonce has always been country. Country has it’s roots in Black culture. But the erasure of its Blackness and the whiteness of the modern iteration of the genre are deeply intertwined with the industry itself — complex and often toxic. But now Beyonce is busting through the door like a yeehaw Kool-Aid man. As Tressie McMillan Cottom wrote in the New York Times, “The country music genre has been roiled by internal battles over Black Lives Matter, gender equality and pushes for more diversity. One of the biggest artists in the world going country — a Black woman with authentic lineage in Texas — could shake up Nashville.”

I cannot even remember what I had for dinner last night, but butterflies remember being caterpillars and that is beautiful.

As someone who fantasizes about retiring with my best friends in a cabin near a large body of water — but without too much sun because my friend Kate has delicate skin — I love the conversation that Rhaina Cohen has sparked her new book, The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life With Friendship at the Center. Cohen is asking us to imagine: What if our soulmates are our best friends? What if the best sort of life we can build is centered not around romance but friendship and community? I love it. I love a radical reimagining of happiness and joy and community. 

Don’t tell RFK Jr., but the ebola vaccine works and cuts mortality rates in half. Also, if I were going to pick a dingus this week, it might have been that guy. Joe Kennedy Sr. personally needs to rise from the dead and slap that boy across the mouth. I try my best not pick dinguses who could also be responsible for deaths — ruling out many other Kennedys as well.

STINGRAY JESUS! 

Caitlin Clark destroyed the women’s NCAA scoring record and she did it in the first couple minutes of the game against Michigan FROM THE LOGO!  WE DID IT, LADIES! WE TOOK BASKETBALL! It belongs to us now.  Also, there is a Caitlin Clark effect: more girls in the area wanting to play sports. I just teared up at the image of all these buff tweens shooting from the 3. 

The St. Paul Public Library is offering library cards with laser-eyed loons on them. And I think that is beautiful.

I think people should be able to wear whatever shoes they want free of ridicule and spite. However, DeSantis is not a people and he apparently got mocked to his face for banning drag while wearing heels.

This isn't technically a good thing, but it’s very very funny: more and more (non-incarcerated) people are eschewing tradition and irony and getting married inside prisons. Hilarious. They aren’t even pretending marriage isn’t a trap anymore. If you get invited to a wedding inside a prison, please email me at menyellatme at gmail and I will send you a free copy of the book for the imprisoned couple.

Speaking of THE BOOK it was featured on the CBS Morning show and my mom’s text messages lit up from all her friends who still have TV. Thank you so much Sara Gellman, you made Ellen very proud of me. We are gonna drink so much quilt-shop liquor when I go home to Texas. The theme of the book round up was Valentine’s Day, but my book was recommended as the anti-Valentine’s Day book. Which makes me so happy.

And I did an interview with Slate about my book. It is a little spicy. But I said what I said.

I’m not saying you can’t be in love or you can’t have relationships, but I am saying those relationships should not be predicated on your misery. And I think men should know this too. If you’re in a marriage and your wife is unhappy, that’s a bad marriage. And I don’t think enough men realize that, because even the worst marriage still benefits a man in the end, because he is still getting free child care and his dinner made every night.

I am pushing my book a lot. And I will continue to push it until the end of time. Because this is my job. I am a writer. But I also share a pub date with the Leslie Jamison, who wrote a very different kind of divorce book, but one that is also full of the complexities and joys of modern love.

You can also read her marvelous essay on being on the apps.

February 23 Storyhouse Bookpub, Des Moines, 7pm. Tickets are sold out!

February 27 CSPS, Cedar Rapids, 7pm. More info.

March 6 Women and Children First Chicago 7pm. More info.

March 7 Beaverdale Books, Des Moines, 6:30pm. More info.

March 20 Magers and Quinn, Minneapolis, 7pm

April 2 Western Carolina University, 4pm, AK Hinds University Center

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What I am drinking:

Last weekend, I escaped to Florida for a tiny bit to turn off my brain and just be happy in the sun. I drank margaritas. I got tipsy. I met Lauren Groff. I cheered very loudly for the bride and the bride. I did interviews from my beautiful hotel room and texted friends gossip. I ate a pile of fried fish with friends. Ran to a cemetery with a new friend.

This is the weekend before the book launches. And I was thinking about which kind of drink would pair well with ruining the American family. And I think it’s just a small glass of good bourbon that you sip while the world burns.