Thank you for subscribing to my newsletter. (If you’re not subscribed you can do so here. and if you want someone else to subscribe please forward this to them. It is your civic duty.)
I consider you important because in order for me to actually push out a newsletter there had to be enough subscribers so that it actually made sense to write this and hit send. As someone who experiences OCD symptoms i am a big check-er, I have, like, no object permanence so I have to check everything to make sure it’s still there otherwise some unspecified horror might befall me. I check my keys, heartbeat, the outside, and yes, subscriber counts. So that means i know who you are and i love you for actually signing up when i asked you to.
A wider reason for why i’m writing this is that I’ve grown a bit wary with social media as a way to reach people.
It crystalized recently in a few ways. One, when promoting Restaurant Workers’ Community Foundation’s recent fundraiser, i made a bunch of twitter, instagram, and linkedin (cringe) posts and got maybe one person to sign up. Everyone else who i got to come i did so either through email or direct communication, and my yield was pretty good, probably above 70%. Yeah ok maybe it took more time and was less...fun? maybe? than rolling the dice on social, but it actually worked. It’s so easy to “like” something and make people feel like you actually care about something but be honest, the mindless ::scroll:: ::double tap:: ::scroll:: is a real thing—when was the last time you thoughtfully considered when to “like” something versus saving those vital, finger-moving calories for another purpose?
The second way this crystallized for me was a conversation i recently had with my uncle, a tremendously successful cornell professor with a decades-long career of publishing scholarly works that are cited widely. He was like, “I gotta get on Twitter now, huh” and I gave him this lukewarm pitch for social media about how i got certain job opportunities or got to meet certain people and connect, but mostly I was like, bro, you are wealthy and people listen to you already, social media is a massive waste of time—do not debase yourself by joining.
So anyway, i’m not trying to say that social media is inherently ‘bad’, although there are companies that provide platforms that i think are evil (Facebook), it just—to me—no longer feels like a wonderful use of my time to be on like, 4 different platforms spending hours per week trying to make a go of it and maybe getting a 5% engagement rate on my posts on an extremely good day.
And i’m not “quitting” “”social”” “””media.””” Social media is a very vague term anyway (is email social media?) I'm just trying to manage my time a little better. Sadly, I think that for someone like me, not being on at least Instagram and Twitter is a luxury few can afford.
Yes, i maybe got writing gigs out of twitter or got to flirt with famous drag queens on instagram, but I wonder if I added up all the time spent across the various platforms and instead spent that time on something else (like this stupid newsletter lol), the benefits would be noticeably greater. Who can never be sure.
I ultimately started this newsletter because it became clear to me recently that even people with whomst I considered myself “close,” had huge gaps in their knowledge of my activities and interests, which is unacceptable. This newsletter is a tool that i can use to beat those people (ie you) over the head with whatever it is I have going on, whether it’s deranged ramblings about Halsey (see below), my latest youtube video for Food52, or oblique references to my unlinked tumblr account that mostly reblogs gay porn and astronomy memes. Here we go:
Drinks Content
Presumably most people here know me as a person who makes, writes, and consumes drinks, so why don’t we start with some of that? I’m going of course share new stuff but also recycle some of my old stuff in case you are not up to date? (Although maybe you are super up to date since you are like, my first subscriber??)
Here is something that is only 4 hours old! As you might know, I am Food52’s resident drinks expert and I have a monthly recipe series called, aptly, Drink What You Want, but I was also asked to participate in SHOW OFF, and they paired me with the wonderful Hana Asbrink where we are assigned three seasonal ingredients and battle it out to see what we can come up with. Please watch it here and tell me what my Squid Game reference means because I still have not seen it.
I love writing for PUNCH because i can get verrrry inside baseball while still keeping the writing accessible to a general audience. Case in point is this ode to blue drinks i wrote a few months ago. A reward for signing up for this newsletter is some unfiltered stuff like about how I did not include in this piece that the bright blue kombucha that sparked the piece had a puzzling meth-ey aftertaste and yes, I know what meth tastes like. Sorry Dad.
Also, I was recently on Adam Robert’s Lunch Therapy Podcast and it was really cute. (And Chelsea Peretti was the guest prior to me so I felt very famous by association.) I got to talk about my extremely unglamorous eating habits along with a lot of other self-examination. You can listen to it here, or watch on youtube here.
Here are some random links of articles that I read recently that I have posted on twitter but here they are again
Halsey
Did you know that I am now totally in the bag for Halsey??? I didn’t really have strong feelings one way or the other until a friend of mine (who ironically i met on instagram) posted about their latest album, which was produced by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. One thing about me that i’m sure you’ll find fascinating is that i am secretly old and so i literally purchase songs on itunes still. So when my friend posted about it, i went over and scrubbed through the album in my silly little itunes store. This track is what did it for me, and the lead single is also amazing and I’m not even sure where to begin with the literal movie they made for themselves.
They also did pretty well on SNL considering that, for some reason the vibes for SNL’s musical performances are almost always rancid and clammy.
Ok, that’s it for my first newsletter…I can’t just drop it all in the first one lol. Thanks so much for reading and if some angel forwarded this to you and you want to sign up, the link to do so is here.
Love,
-JdB