10 Things: Laugh, Love, and Lynda

All my recommendations for what to do, watch, think about, see, interpret, cook, buy, read, and more this week.

My Long Lost Loves!

At last, spring is sprunging out my Chicago window. Today we saw the first crocuses! (How badly do you want that word to be “croci?” GUESS WHAT. BOTH ARE ACCEPTABLE, ACCORDING TO THE DICTIONARY.)

I deliver to you some seasonal-cuspy recommendations: seeds to plant, illustrated books to read, and a nice, slow romance to watch. The first three are always free! Paid subscribers get seven more.

1. PLANT: Tromboncino squash

   So, to be fair, I haven’t planted this yet. I’ve purchased my seeds and done my reading. I was intrigued by a social media video I can no longer find, but this 10 reasons from Glenna is good enough. The main reason to grow this is because YOU HAVE TO LOOK AT IT. It’s a wacky vegetable. But the other reason I was swayed was that it is both a summer squash and a winter squash — the top part is supposed to taste kind of like zucchini, and the bottom half like a butternut. It keeps a long time and is easy to harvest, because you can’t harvest it the wrong time, as you can and will with a cucumber. I’m happy to report back at the end of the season, but maybe you want to Garden Club with me? Let’s discuss our long yellow plants together, folks.

2. DRAW: Using this triangle exercise

   

   This is a nice twist on a diary comic, written by Lynda Barry, who I love so much she is tattooed on my bicep. The instructions have you drawing yourself in four triangle quadrants, then expanding one of the quadrants out to fill a whole square. If you’re afraid of drawing yourself: don’t be! Lynda says to start with the Ivan Brunetti method of person-drawing — a head, a little torso, and lines for arms and legs. That’s a great starting point. These drawings should be full-body drawings, which scare a lot of us (We are terrified of getting bodies wrong! And bodies are always right! Even when we draw them!) — a diary comic is a safe solution.

   

   Having spent about 30 minutes doing a scaled down version (I wish I had taken the time to color and darken various parts of it, but I simply don’t have it), I can tell you that there are a lot of great, mind-stretching things that this exercise does for you.

   • It asks you to think about the last 24 hours of your life and consider four moments worthy of remembering, probably for years to come. This is great, because life is a gift that deserves to be eaten up.

   • It challenges your memory to think about things you look at but don’t always see. I do not know what the paintings are on the living room wall. I vaguely believe one is kittens, one yellow daisies, one is eggs (???), and one is a pheasant. It’s amazing to know about what you think you know but you don’t know.

   • It has you slow down to consider the landscape of the world you inhabit. You are not a floating person. You are connected to all kinds of things you often take for granted.

3. LAUGH: Jane Wickline

   I loved this so much, I watched it like four times in a row and sent it to multiple people who responded “haha funny.” But, like… I think it’s SO FUNNY.

   And it made me realize that, in general, I love humor about the trolley problem and I always have. Like this New Yorker cartoon by legend

   Amy Kurzweil
   is perfect.

   

   But anyway, while we’re still talking about Jane, which we should be doing, please: I got hooked on her TikTok account a few years ago, and was thrilled when she got cast on SNL. And I know that many of you don’t have TikTok, and good for you. So here’s a nice compilation of just some of her earlier stuff, and it is so, so good.