I often find it hard to find something on the Criterion Channel that isâŠ.maybe just a little bitâŠuplifting? This film is maybe the only piece of media that my mother and I both agree upon as superlative. Also probably a great holiday watch? When youâre not exactly in the mood for Itâs A Wonderful Life but something in the neighborhood sounds good? This is not a niche movie by any means, but if you havenât seen it, quite nice!
A streaming goldmine for cinephiles, Criterion Channel is the antidote to superhero fatigue. I may not like everything but I always learn something and very often fall in love with cinema all over again.  Some Favorites: In the Mood for Love starring the impossibly beautiful Maggie Cheung; Jean-Luc Godard on the Dick Cavett show; and Everybody Rides the Carousel, a trippy animated film by John and Faith Hubley. The film is based on the psychologist Erik Eriksonâs theories of human development from birth to death. The hand painted watercolors are a feast for the eyes. The mostly jazz score features the legends Dizzy Gilespie and Benny Carter. It has some of the best voice acting Iâve ever heard in a film. In fact, I think Iâm going to watch it again tonight. (I have to h/t my daughter Mathilda for introducing me to the film.)
Knowing I can simply waltz into a dry cleanerâs with alteration services near me and get some pants taken in at the waist emboldens me to make all sorts of questionable thrift purchases. But yet, it pays off every time. I think most people under 40 find it oddly intimidating to just go do this because theyâre not sure how much it might cost? Or because itâs weirdly intimate to talk to a stranger about how you want your clothes fit on your body? But verily I tell youâit is usually costs less than $20-30, and anyone doing that job professionally has seen all sorts of weird vanity in action and absolutely doesnât care.
I had a particularly rough Thanksgiving Day this year and processed some of that stress by making a cranberry sauce with actual fresh cranberries, a thing that is incredibly easy to make and my fave holiday food by a significant margin. I was only making it for myself so I used slightly less than half of the sugar called for in whatever recipe I found online (I wanna say it was a variation on the NYT âred wine cranberry sauceâ but I only used a tiny bit of wine and no cinnamon?) THEN at the end of the day I just put a bit of it on top of some pistachio ben and jerryâs I had leftover. It is so so good and Iâve made it twice again since then. I would also suggest fucking around with a bit of cardamom or maybe black sesame seeds?
A therevox is a recently-invented musical instrument I was first introduced to by my friend Ross Collier. I needed something for a song that would function sort of like a pedal steel but was also definitely not a pedal steel. Theyâre apparently quite rare and seem hard to play but unparalleled in creating swoopy, floaty textures that sound unplaceable but yet not alien.