Vanity Fair runs its recurring question feature, “The Proust Questionnaire,” and I just recently learned the weekly online magazine Airmail runs a questionnaire of its own, featuring an alphabetical list of prompts for featured guests. I’m putting the question set to myself, and hoping you will do it, too, so I can learn more about you. It’s fun. It’s easy. Why not?
AIRLINE: ANA (Japanese)
AIRPORT: Singapore Changyi
ALIBI: “Was asleep.”
APP: DayOne
BAG: Clare V crossbody
BEDTIME: 11pm
BIKE: Nishiki Women’s Pueblo
BIRTHDAY: Recent ones, with the costumed theme parties
BREAKFAST, WEEKDAY: Caffeine.
BREAKFAST, WEEKEND: Cafe Laurent’s french toast (made of croissant bits)
CAR: The Jeep Cherokee Sport I drove in high school
CHILDREN: Eva, Isa and Luna
COCKTAIL: Tito’s and tonic
COCKTAIL APPETIZER: Crunchy and salty
COUPLE: Jenn and Drew
DATE: April 25th, because all you need is a light jacket
DIET: Against
DINNER, WEEKDAY: Shake Shack
DINNER, WEEKEND: Sushi
DISGUISE: Giant trench coat, open newspaper
DRESS: Xirena
DRIVE: Tropical tree-lined streets in Kauai
ENEMY: Rick the Prick, the longtime security guy in the Texas Senate
FAMILY: Mine
FIT: High-rise
FOIL: Aluminum.
GIRLFRIEND: Liz Taylor
GOOD-BYE: Warm hugs
HOTEL: Fontainebleu in Miami because it’s so extra
INDULGENCE: Hair blowouts
JACKET: Smythe brand blazers
LAST MEAL: Texas BBQ brisket, garlic naan, a Culvers frozen custard concrete
MOVIE: Office Space
NEIGHBOR: Beto, because he shares his backyard guava and never calls the cops on me
NONFICTION BOOK: All About Love, Bell Hooks
PAIR OF PANTS: Lululemon drawstring pants w/pockets
PAIR OF SHOES: Flats
PEN OR PENCIL: Pen, but I love sharpening pencils
PET: My late cat, Caesar
PIECE OF ADVICE: Don’t live your life for anyone else’s gaze
PRESIDENT: Lincoln
RESTAURANT: The Galley
SAYING: What else could go right?
STREET: Congress Avenue, Austin
TELEVISION SERIES: Mad Men
TIME OF DAY: Dusk
TOAST: Lightly toasted, with butter
VACATION: Beach
WAKE-UP TIME: Weekdays? 7:00 A.M. and not a second earlier
WEEKEND BAG: With wheels
WORK OF ART: Ai Weiwei’s Snake Ceiling
I largely moved my correspondence with you to my Substack newsletter, which meant going many months without posting on HeyElise last year. But I’ll keep this blog going indefinitely because blogging is near and dear to me. It’s a practice I began on LiveJournal in The Year 2000, moved over to Xanga in college (imported many of those Xanga posts here to HeyElise), and by the time I graduated from Mizzou, I’d made Blogger my home. I called my blog 67 Degrees with a 40% Chance of Rain, a line from Waiting for Guffman. All my journalism school friends were on Blogger back then and as a result, some of my deepest friendships were built and sustained by linking out to one another’s blogs on blogrolls found on the right or left rails of our pages, allowing us to easily keep up with one another and form community.
During my Blogger period, Matt Mullenweg, who is a couple years younger than me, was dropping out of college to co-create WordPress, which is now the world’s leading blogging platform, and has been for quite some time. I wound up going through a Moveable Type era between 2006-2009 for my (sadly not archived) KVUE work blog until I finally, finally, became a WordPress blogger in 2009, which was the most consequential year of my life in many ways. I left television news, the only career I’d known, to take a risk helping found an untested digital startup (The Texas Tribune), and I got engaged. It made sense that year to move over to the far-and-away most reliable place for my musings, photo albums, catalogs of my peccadilloes, etc.
Since first randomly meeting Matt in 2011 (at some event I only attended because I heard there was free barbecue), we have shared hundreds (nay, thousands?) of links and articles and books and story ideas with one another, which have changed or expanded my thinking and as a result, who I am. We’ve bonded over meals, laughs and beverages in Austin, DC, New York, Houston, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Seattle, Costa Rica, London, Vancouver and a few times in Seoul. He is a loyal friend, popping down to Central America for my 30th, and I somehow made it to Vegas for one of his birthday’s despite having just given birth to Eva and I almost wound up pumping breastmilk in the bathroom at Tao. He is also a most generous host, and an in-kind supporter of the Flawless book tour last year, hosting me at his places in Houston and San Fran, which arguably made those stops possible. The older I get the more meaningful my old connections are to me, and it warms my heart that our friendship has endured so many of our individual eras.
Matt is the reason I journal on Day One, appreciate Japanese toilets and Yvon Chouinard, and why I’m on the board of Grist, a crew that that has come to feel like a family. He’s also the reason I wrote this blog post, because tomorrow is his birthday and in lieu of gifts he wanted us to blog. I’m delighted for this reason to post. Happy 40th, Matt! (Getting a little long in the tooth, buddy.;))
What a pleasure it is to curl up with a book, or take one with me on travels, or speed read a book because I can’t put it down. This year I began listening to audiobooks, after having so much fun narrating my own. I’m still not back up to the 52 books a year pace but managed to do a wee bit more reading this year than last. Focused on fiction in the back half of the year after many non-fiction reads earlier in 2023 and also a lot of non-fiction for work in 2022. Herewith:
1
Slutever
Karley Sciortino
2
Central Places
Delia Cai
3
Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
Oliver Burkeman
4
Plucked
Rebecca Herzig
5
Mad Honey
Jodi Picoult
6
Fat Talk
Virginia Sole Smith
7
Crying in H Mart
Michele Zauner
8
I Have Questions For You
Rebecca Makkai
9
All The Lovers in the Night
Mieko Kawakami
10
True Biz
Sara Novic
11
The Nineties
Chuck Klosterman
12
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
Gabrielle Levin
13
Advice for Living
Kevin Kelly
14
Romantic Comedy
Curtis Sittenfeld
15
Slow Days, Fast Company
Eve Babitz
16
The Emotional Lives of Teenagers
Lisa Damour
17
Happiness Falls
Angie Kim
18
Disorientation
Elaine Hsieh Chou
19
Couplets
Maggie Millner
20
Organs of Little Importance
Adrienne Chung
21
Lunar Love
Lauren Kang Jessen
22
Eyeliner: A Cultural History
Zahra Hankir
23
The Nutshell Method
Jill Chamberlain
24
Natural Beauty
Ling Ling Huang
25
The Messy Truth
Alli Webb
26
Funny You Should Ask
Elissa Sussman
27
Yellowface
RO Kwon
28
You Could Make this Place Beautiful
Maggie Smith
Highlights:
Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals is now the book I recommend to everyone, in any circumstance. As I said to the Texas Book Fest, “Ostensibly [it’s] a book about time management, it’s actually a philosophical take that argues against productivity hacks and optimization. I think about it all the time.”
Fiction Favorites: Natural Beauty is a horror that feels all too real, Happiness Falls a mystery and character study I couldn’t put down, Disorientation was absurd and engrossing, Romantic Comedy was my favorite romcom, and among paperback romance novels I loved both Funny You Should Ask and Lunar Love.
Non-fiction Favorites: Besides Four Thousand Weeks, I loved Fat Talk, Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H Mart, Maggie Smith’s divorce memoir, You Could Make This Place Beautiful, and Plucked, which seems like it’s about hair removal but is really about abuse.
“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
On book release day at CNN in New York, reacting live to host Richard Quest in a Korean jimjilbang
It was the year of Taylormania, the year of ongoing wars and displacement, the hottest year on record (and climbing), the year of Ozempic, the year artificial intelligence advances demonstrated astonishing capabilities and triggered serious concerns. Life comes at you fast. Faster than we can humanly process, I think. The AI field is apparently advancing three times faster than Moore’s Law (in other words, doubling capabilities and speed every six months). In the US, the year started with 17 excruciating ballots to elect Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House and it’s ending with him not even serving in the House anymore.
The podcasting industry (ahem, my industry) got clobbered. Companies folded. Spotify laid off hundreds and killed its in-house podcast units, and my longtime employers in public radio laid off swaths of talent. The film industry effectively went on hiatus this summer as both the unions for screenwriters and actors went on strike, which, living in Los Angeles, I saw in my backyard. I even joined in the picketing with my screenwriter partner, until the stalemate with the studios finally, finally came to an end.
My year was about giving my heart and soul to launching and touring my first book. Energy and love came back to me in surprising, rewarding, heartfelt ways. Superstars moderated book talks with me in cities across the country and most recently, in Hong Kong. People like my tax accountant, high school prom date, and my former and current bosses all showed up. I had the great honor of being invited on national broadcasts and podcasts and featured in magazines. I met and corresponded with thousands of readers directly, who shared similar desires to resist factory-issued beauty culture and stand up for bodily autonomy and liberation. Friends and readers, I cannot say thank you enough.
Best gift: Rob wrote me a song about all my paradoxes and performed it with his band at my birthday party
Favorite Film: Past Lives
Firsts: Picket line. Ketamine treatment. Book release. Book tour. Writing a film treatment. Mahjong.
Disappointments: Facebook page got hacked and they couldn’t restore years of photos and videos. Not enough newborn meetups! Have my friends all stopped having little babies?! My opinion piece for the New York Times got spiked at the last minute. I missed my BFF Sudeep’s wedding party in DC because of schedule conflicts.
New cities: Yosemite National Park, though I suppose it’s not a city. Ensenada in Baja California, famous for its blowhole. Isa observed this natural phenomenon sandwiched by Mennonites, which she didn’t even notice because she was so mesmerized by the blowhole.
Isa in Ensenada
Notable New Friend: Janet Yang, who is a force in the entertainment industry, the current head of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, and walks the walk when it comes to Asian representation and excellence. She’s opened the doors to a network of badass Asian women that I admire and feel fortified and nourished by.
With Janet at one of her mahjong parties
Fave Tennis Player: Daniil Medvedev — he’s blunt, he’s precise, he is genuine. He’s had an incredible year. He has gawky fluidity and a smothering wingspan. All I’ve ever wanted is gawky fluidity. All I have ever been is gawky.
Iced Honey Lavender Latte from Love Coffee Bar, in LA’s Mar Vista neighborhood. So creamy and so delicious. It better be, because it’s $7.50, not counting the tip.
Making Ram-Don, the instant noodle+steak combo popularized in a crucial scene in Parasite. Maangchi teaches it best.
Was in the live audience of The Masked Singer, a longtime bucket list item
Released my first book
Toured the book in 14 cities
Sold the film rights to said book(!)
Started a documentary project related to the book
Went to the pop culture event of the year: The Eras Tour
Learned how to play mahjong (poorly)
Dislocated my shoulder (again)
Appeared on 38 podcasts (including three of them I host)
Met two K-pop groups at KCON at the Staples center
Trained 24 times with my personal trainer neighbor two houses down
Got my neck and back cracked three times
Tried ketamine at a sub-anesthetic dose
Threw three big parties, including Deck the Balls, my ball-themed potluck and attended lots of book parties for Flawless and all the food was delicious
Met a member of Mac Sabbath, the McDonald’s+Black Sabbath tribute band
Saw a lot of artists perform live: Depeche Mode, Taylor Swift, Gracie Abrams, HAIM, Rain, XG, ATEEZ
Hosted a parade of friends at my house: Matt Thompson. And Bryan Tradup. And Pamela. And Lawrence and his family. And our staffer Mary. And my unstoppable actor friend Mari.
Returned to Asia for the first time in two years
Went to Washington DC five times
Read 28 books, reviewed a few of them
Attended two weddings: New York (Pamela and Jeff), DC (amy and Alli)
Flew 51,493 miles to 18 cities, five countries and spent 71 days away from home
Reunited with my brother in Hong Kong and visited my parents in Taipei
If I have to point to one daily dimension in which South Korea transformed my life, it’s wearing sunscreen. South Koreans protect their skin with a near religious fervor, and it rubbed off on me. (Hehe, pun intended.) Now I am militant about never leaving home without sunscreen on my face and am super serious about putting it on my kids, too. They are better at reapplying sunscreen than brushing and flossing 2x a day.
Asia and Europe seem to have superior sunscreen, because regulatory bodies across both continents allow for more sun protection filters in their sunscreen ingredients and formulations than the US FDA, which has not updated its sunscreen protocols since 1999. Now that Congresswoman AOC is in on the call for better American sunscreen, Vox’s excellent Today Explained podcast made it a topic of its Wednesday show, featuring The Atlantic’s Amanda Mull and me. I join during the second half to gab about South Korean skincare — and why sunscreen is so crucial as part of the Korean skincare routines.
This led some listeners to ask, what Korean sunscreens do you recommend? Well, I’m happy to share! Note: I am not sponsored by any of these brands, they are just the products I use on myself and my children. Among US products, my daughter Eva likes SuperGoop’s ubiquitous Unseen Sunscreen, but I find it too greasy.
MISSHA All Around Safe Block Waterproof Sun Milk
I wear this everyday, it’s in my purse. It goes on light and smooth. It’s white but rubs in without white residue. It never stings when you sweat or when it washes off in the shower. It’s less than $20. You’ll notice it has a PA++++ factor on the bottle, that’s because sun protection factor (SPF) is a US measurement, while Europe uses the PA followed by +’s standard. Missha is a low-cost “road shop” brand whose backstory I tell in Flawless, my book.
AHC Natural Perfection Fresh Sun Stick
I loaded up on these sun sticks before I came home from Seoul. They are perfect for kids, so they can apply without the product ever touching their hands. It’s clear and not chalky. Great to use in the summer, and on the go.
People outside South Korea seem to have really caught onto Innisfree and its focus on natural ingredients that are gentle on our skin. This is at a slightly higher price point than the Missha I use all the time, and I think it’s because it also has some moisturizing ingredients that consumers really like. If you’re okay with spending a little more, Innisfree’s sunscreen are a good bet. There’s a whole fascinating history of its parent company, Amore Pacific, and how it emerged as the Korean peninsula was being split apart by war and geopolitical factors, which I also detail in Flawless.
Monterey Park, California, USA, is the heart of the Chinese/Taiwanese/Cantonese American diaspora in Southern California. I know it because my parents know it. Because they have friends there, or friends of friends there, because first generation immigrants either settled or found community there. As The Washington Post put it:
“Here between the snow-capped San Gabriel Mountains and downtown Los Angeles is a place that decades ago made history, becoming the nation’s first Asian-majority city after years of determined emigration from Taiwan, Hong Kong and mainland China.
Now its history includes a grimmer development, one it shares with an increasing collection of American cities and suburbs.”
On Sunday we were planning to go there — my younger daughters were performing in their Mandarin language choir, as part of day two of the biggest Lunar New Year festival in the area. It was the first time Monterey Park was putting on the festival in three years, given all the COVID-related closures.
That “Monterey Park” and “massacre” are now in the same sentence, and that 20 people were shot at a ballroom dance studio where boomers were enjoying movement and community on Lunar New Year’s Eve, is absolutely gutting. It was the 33rd mass shooting in America in 2023.
The LA Times covered how we talked to our kids about it and snatched a little meaning and togetherness in a time of sorrow, as the moms who also had kids performing decided to come together and grieve together on Sunday with a play date and lunch at the park. It felt bonding, having to hold this difficult tragedy and our fears and grief about it, alongside the more mundane daily rituals of care. Today I appeared on a panel for MSNBC about what happened, with a gun control activist mom who discussed what to do now.
My youngest daughter, the five-year-old Luna, was the most sanguine about the cancelation of the festival, reminding the rest of us, “Don’t worry, there are LOTS of Lunar New Year performances, we’ll perform again!”
Another celebration, at the Buddhist temple, went on as planned
I abandoned the book-a-week pace of earlier years once the pandemic came for us. 2022 was a year I spent writing and revising, revising, revising my own book, which is now ready for preorder. I hope you will reserve a copy, and if you do, please write me a note or comment that you have done so, if only to spare you my reminders to preorder. 🙂
Much like last year, work assignments are responsible for selecting much of my 2022 reading, since author interviews comprise many of my ongoing contributions to NPR Life Kit, It’s Been a Minute, and I drop in for guest appearances on the Nerdette podcast for WBEZ.
Other recommendations from my book-devoted friends led to nourishing and surprising reading in 2022, though it was way too heavy on non-fiction. I’ll balance it out more in 2023.
My 2022 list:
The Four Agreements
Don Miguel Ruiz
Sexual Revolution
Laurie Penny
The Power of Regret
Daniel Pink
Dopamine Nation
Anna Lembke
You Sound Like A White Girl
Julissa Arce
Atlas of the Heart
Brene Brown
Imagine If: Creating A Future For Us All
Sir Ken Robinson
How to Tell A Story
The Team at The Moth
All About Love
bell hooks
Sorrow and Bliss
Meg Mason
The Lifestyle
Taylor Hahn
This America: The Case for the Nation
Jill Lepore
Out of Love
Hazel Hayes
Thinking 101
Woo-Kyoung Ahn
Good Inside
Becky Kennedy
Our Missing Hearts
Celeste Ng
Lark and Kasim Start a Revolution
Kacen Callendar
The Art of Love
Erich Fromm
Fave Nonfiction: This America: A Case for the Nation. This slim, breezy, engrossing tale of America is one that I wish I would have been taught in school. It helped root so much of the fissures and struggles we see in today’s headlines in history and an unvarnished version of America. It is realistic and hopeful, though, because I believe the difference between patriotism and nationalism is that patriotism honors love in a nation’s possibility — which means critiquing it — over simply accepting it as it is. Runner up: Laurie Penny’s Sexual Revolution is a must-read especially as bodily autonomy and abortion rights were stripped from people who can become pregnant in half of the United States.
My Fave Fiction:Sorrow and Bliss, a love story that reminded me of the Sally Rooney bestsellers which evoke such feeling from small moments and the rich inner lives of characters.
Book That Will Improve Your Life: The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward, by Daniel Pink, whose expansive study of regret led him to understand the pillars of a good life. My conversation with him about it was one of my favorite podcast episodes of the year.
— You Sound Like a White Girl author Julissa Arce, who shares a crucial message about how our worth does not come from our productivity, capitalism be damned.
This was the year the pandemic felt “over” enough that everyone I know began jet-setting again (curiously it seemed like the aforementioned “everyone” summered in Italy?). For me, as accustomed as I am to constant movement, I spent much of 2022 alone, writing from my bed. The deadline to turn in the book nearly flattened me and I wrote much of FLAWLESS in what felt like a semi-conscious state. But for the tireless researchers and interpreters and fact-checkers who kept me going, that book would not be finished.
Totally 90’s 40th Birthday
I turned 40 in the small window of time after a major Omicron wave and before Russia waged an unprovoked war on Ukraine. Friends from seven cities across the country flew in and donned costumes for my 1994-themed party, because in retrospect my 6th and 7th grade years represented points in culture that lasted with me a lifetime. (Yellow Ledbetter, anybody?!) In the final minutes of that most merry and warm celebration, the lights went out on all of Abbott Kinney, the much-frequented, boutique-filled party drag in Venice. We read it as a sign that we properly captured all the energy on the block that night. I desperately clung to that serendipity and energy through 2022, especially the night of the midterm elections which … hoo boy, what a relief.
There’s so much I wish I would have captured better, but I really spent so much of this year just participating in life as fully as I could, and trying to keep up with my children after losing my long time nanny and friend and housekeeper, whose absence is felt every moment in our house.
Firsts: Consuming an ostrich egg, encounter with a Zonkey (a zebra-donkey), Costco vacation, becoming an NFT, selling my own NFT, fight with Hot Rob, having a back house, visiting TV writers rooms, attending the big TED.
In no particular order, this year I…
Attended three weddings, in person
Swam with dolphins
Bought a house and sold a house in the same week
Ripped and replaced the insides of the house inside of a month
Made back-to-back trips to Texas and consumed so much queso and P Terrys
Talked TSA into letting me take 16oz of queso through in my carry-on
Read books with second graders every Tuesday
Took tennis lessons every week
Sprained my foot, but just at home, not from tennis
Glamped in the Santa Ynez Valley Hard launched my man/mancrush of 2+(!) years by having him play Who Said That? on NPR
Hung out with my parents a lot — they lived in the guest house for four months of the year
Saw our podcast company double its revenue
Got an electric car
Learned how to TikTok from my child
Advised two TV writers rooms
Enjoyed a lot of live music again: Leon Bridges, DEVO, Lisa Loeb, The Violent Femmes, even … Wilson Phillips(!), a real full circle moment since its greatest hits figured in that 1990s-themed birthday party, naturally
Adjusted to parenting alone after our nanny of seven years went home
Traveled 25,228 miles to three countries, 13 cities, and spent 40 days away from home Became a set mom and hung out in motorhomes on location for a week, wondering what I’m doing with my life
Read 19 books in full, but started six others
Finished writing my book, oh my god. Saw it in print, as a galley anyway
People I’ve met in LA just going about my regular life, and not because I was interviewing them:
The guy who did the movements for Lyle Lyle Crocodile The guy who did the movements for Jar Jar Binks (Different guy) Someone who runs Dua Lipa’s foundation Someone who runs Mandy Moore’s production company Someone who slept with Flo from Progressive Bruce Willis’s personal chef An editor who retouches Beyonce’s ass for her videos A music editor who curates playlists for Target One adult film star Matt Weiner Gary Busey AND Tom Hanks, in the same encounter
