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Adapting your own work for television... like fitting an old house with new copper pipes??? Plus, Chaos Packaging!

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Beloveds, sometimes I feel so SEEN by the algo!

Good Morning, Lovelies, How the hell are you?

An honest-to-God recommendation.

Oh, but the world is a loathsome dumpster fire right now—heaped ablaze with stinky old white guy diapers. Nevertheless, we hold our noses and persist!

To think that a nation rife with doofuses could collectively check the wrong box by next week and break everyone’s hearts all over again? It’s baffling how we let it get this far. And the outright yellow journalism of WaPo last week that was met by such a gloriously deft counterstrike from its humor columnist? We are indeed living in the age of The Onion.

I am working in Los Angeles today atop a pile of sand and Kleenex. I’ve been sick with a chest cold, so I feel strangely behind on everything and like I don’t belong anywhere. Los Angeles always gives me that transient sensation—of being in a sunny underwater bubble of unreality. Even when we had a house here, I felt it could all go away at any moment. Bloorp. Wait, what life was that again? The thing is, it can.

In the meantime, I am finishing an adaptation of my book for a limited series. It’s such an odd exercise of reconceiving the work because what was formerly so invisible, and bound up in complex interiority and family dynamics—suddenly has to be externalized and made instantly visual, but not in a way that’s going to wallop you about the head and neck with cliche or melodrama.

It’s a bit like redoing the plumbing on a crazy big old house. You never know what you’re going to find when you open up those horsehair plaster walls again—maybe a few great artifacts but also a load of rot.

And while we have big scenes in the show that go very, very wrong—leaving the characters all highly traumatized in equal measure—the screwball comedy of it still has to be brought back down to the small moment of poignancy otherwise it doesn’t work for TV.

Fortunately, our lead is in perimenopause. GO nature! (OR as

Alicia Dara

lovingly calls it: GO “big cunty bitch.”) It’s this very liminal state that lends so many excellent universal visual public and private indignities that seem small but convey the larger story of a woman on fire.

Still, much to do here.

Skipping Straight to The Marvelous…

The new trailer for the movie The Brutalist does two extraordinarily simple things. The first involves the way the text scrolls—it’s terribly simple, but it completely changes the dynamic of the trailer. The second thing is subtle, and I only noticed it on repeat viewings. Look at how they do the review quote…

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A Melange of Marvelous

1. This one hits a little close to home—I’ll admit. I had to prepare myself, but “Liars is a tour de force of wit and rage, telling the blistering story of a marriage as it burns to the ground, and of a woman rising inexorably from its ashes.” Manguso’s writing is so fluid and clean—you’ll be hooked from page one. Every sentence is practically a poem unto itself.

2. I have crazy, curly bird’s nest hair—so I cannot say enough about this pomade stick. You will look far less messy on your zooms and IRL.

3. Ok, this whole alpaca honey bed sock trend feels a tad silly, but I am down for it because it is an insomnia hack.

4. “You had me at Net-a-Porter!” Oh, for a Gabriela Hearst sweater dress! Her whole line is “sexy librarian” meets a glimmer of sport—what’s not to love?

5. Every woman needs a pair of red Mary Janes at least once in life—if only to get her home in a pinch.

6. One of my favorite gifts to give ever—a Year of Reading by Shakespeare and Company in Paris.

7. Hard not to adore if you are a GenX girl—these retro sneaks from back when I was in sixth grade.

8. You can never have too much tulle during the holidays. I’m serious. Get a jump on it so you don’t have to think too hard for a last-minute do.

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Joy Story…

ICYMI, straight from London, Dua Lipa sings the language of elation. So good:

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Brain Candy

The latest marketing trend in the US is “chaos packaging”, says The Wall Street Journal. You can get sunscreen in whipped cream cans, water in beer cans, and coffee in white, pharmacy-style boxes. An Italian gin called Engine comes in motor oil containers; Moschino’s Fresh Couture perfume is in a window-cleaner-style spray bottle. The theory is that items that cause some kind of “cognitive dissonance” are more likely to make customers notice the product. But it can be confusing: the founder of a company that packages tampons in an ice cream tub says some customers “accidentally place it in the freezer”.

So, that’s what I’ve got this week. Yours in chaos and Kleenex – xoxo, gotham girl

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