Tag: Liz Taylor

2021 In Review: Learn To Lose

Posted on by Elise
Off to unchartered waters. The Pacific Ocean. April 2021.

We started the year in the strictest of lockdowns, as Los Angeles County faced such a wave of sickness and death that even outdoor dining (which had re-opened in fall 2020) was again shut down. We end this year with a COVID19 death toll of 800,000, a breathtaking, heartbreaking casualty number, triple-vaccinated (a miracle of science) and calculating risk as Omicron, the latest variant, spreads like a California wildfire.

Time collapsed. It seems impossible the January 6 siege on the U.S. Capitol and the Biden/Harris inauguration happened this year. It feels like so many lifetimes ago. At the same time, it seems impossible that this year is already coming to an end.

I started the year married, I will end the year divorced. Sorry to those we didn’t get to personally tell, and a reluctant thanks to the very expensive LA lawyers who got it done and took all our money. Matty and I have adjusted from husband+wife to game co-parents of the girls, whose inner lives I cannot know, but they sure seem to be shining on, expressing their sassy selves in their friendships, school and activities as the family has shapeshifted.

These past two years have presented an extended lesson in the importance of pain for living a good life. “Learn to lose,” my Jungian analyst Jonathan said to me. So accustomed I am, as a high-achieving millennial in late capitalism, to the notion of career and life only going in the direction of more, more, more … that I didn’t question it deeply. But the cascading turbulence of pandemic extremes and mid-life upheaval underscores the cheesy-yet-true play-on-words: There’s no growth in your comfort zone, there’s no comfort in your growth zone.

Put differently, we’re too conditioned to see our lives as linear stories of constant progress. That perspective makes any texture or loss in our personal or professional lives seem like failure or a sign of doom, when messiness is truly transformative, depending on how you metabolize it. Orienting ourselves to perpetual “wins” cuts off our ability to experience the fullness of the human experience; the range of the seasons and cycles. I wrote, perhaps presciently, in a 2020 new year’s intention that “maintenance is also progress.” I appreciate with so much more clarity now. I have adopted a more seasonal mindset, knowing winters come, and that we find rich wisdom in darkness.

For me, learning to lose, and rearrange, and adapt, has unlocked a version of me that’s the most whole and clear-eyed as I’ve ever felt. I was contented in my long-term relationship, I’m as contented and more individualized out of a partnership, with thanks to the cocoon of love and support of my village.

I am writing, writing, writing ALL THE TIME because I have a book to finish in the spring. It’s already pandemic-delayed by a year. It explains why I’ve had to hiatus from blogging, but I always do one of these yearly recaps, so I wasn’t about to break my streak. Herewith, the superlatives, and then a list of things…

Stories I loved telling: The history of fetishization of Asian women on stage and screen. Life inside the most COVID-stricken LA County hospital. The shipping crisis, as seen outside North America’s busiest port.

Pandemic MVPs: Store brand jugs of peach oolong iced tea from Von’s/Pavillions, or what you might know as Albertson’s, depending on your geographic region. A simple black jumpsuit from Natori, which I practically lived in. Airpods for phone calls. Liz Taylor, Pamela Boykoff and Skyler Bentsen, who I called the most from my runs and they’d reliably pick up. Joke’s on you, ladies!

Pop culture that got me through 2021: Succession. The NYT Britney documentaries (both), Minari, Ted Lasso, The Split, Sex Lives of College Girls

Fave interview: Debbie Millman

Fave TED talk: Hrishikesh Hirway: What You Discover When You Really Listen

Fave Selfie: Strawberry fields forever, with the girls

Strawberry picking with the girls, May 2021

Notable New Friends: Xiaowei Wang, who became my TED conference buddy after we met in Monterey. I love their ideas and verve and vibe so much.

And Craig Mazin! I watched his acclaimed project, Chernobyl, after our mutual friend Alec introduced us so we could beta-test a video chatting app where you have a back-and-forth asynchronous video chat in front of anyone who wants to watch. As a result, I got to joke around with Craig and get some useful writing tips from one of the great screenwriters.

Firsts: Stand-up paddleboarding. Post-COVID international trip (Mexico). Quarantine exemption (Korea). Vertigo. Divorce. Hosting a Council on Foreign Relations white paper drop, featuring a dude who inexplicably sometimes comes up in my dreams, former Treasury Secretary Jack Lew.

In no particular order, this year I…

Added dill to scallion pancakes, felt like a genius
Got the Pfizer vaccine (3x)
Got vertigo (1x)
Got a birthday song from Kato Kaelin
Bought a new car
Got my bike stolen
Reunited with my dad and mom for the first time in 1.5 years
Said goodbye to Caesar
Lost an extraordinary friend to COVID
Lost another extraordinary friend to a pulmonary embolism
Learned I have trypophobia, which unlocked a lot
Got a questionably-named BBQ sauce, We Rub You, to change its name
Sprained my foot playing tennis*
Took a yacht to all the container ships docked in the ocean
Tried injections on my face (Botox, skin botox, hydroinjections)
Reported on skincare, fast fashion, laziness and more all thanks to my NPR work
Glamped in Santa Barbara
Glamped in Napa Valley
Went to Kauai with the fam
Introduced 200+ TED talks, watched 300+
Ran 235 miles
Read 23 books, a real low, but hey, I’m writing one
Finished half the manuscript(!) of my book
Hosted a new podcast for Microsoft
Hosted a new podcast for Accenture
Sent a tip that inspired a Simpsons episode**
Made lots of podcasts with my partner Rachel, as part of our company
Attended in-person TED conferences again, in Monterey, and Palm Springs
Broke through the layers and layers and layers of bureaucracy to get into Korea, felt like a dream
Flew 22,775 miles and spent 40 nights away from home, another low year and hopefully, for climate and sanity reasons, I’m keeping things that way.

Really listen. November 2021, Palm Springs

*Friend Jenn says I look like “an octopus being electrocuted” when I play, so, this is all for the best

**Episode to come in 2022. It is already voiced. My friend Tim (longtime writer for Simpsons) wrote a script inspired by an Atlantic article I sent him and it’s going to be a MUSICAL episode. I can say no more.

Previous Years in Review

2020 |2019 | 2018 | 2017 |  2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010|2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004

Kato Brought It

Posted on by Elise

Y’all know I’m obsessed with the OJ Simpson story and trial and believe it is America in microcosm. So when Friend Liz surprised me with a personalized video message from KATO KAELIN you can bet I totally lost my mind, collapsed into a heap of laughter, tears and delight on the sidewalk, and made so much of a ruckus that my neighbor came rushing out thinking I needed an ambulance.

He even sang a song

Liz, I love you. Garrett said it best…

Eat Me

Posted on by Elise
The Elise Hu at Found Coffee, available for $11.50

I’ve arrived. An LA coffee shop is selling a new sandwich — the “Elise Hu.” So exciting!

They’re made by the local sammie startup, Wax Paper Sandwich Company, and feature radish, miso butter, preserved lemon vinaigrette and dill, on Bub and Grandma’s baguettes.

That it’s a vegetarian sandwich with radishes is clear evidence that they don’t know me at all! Comments from my friends ranged from, “You’re more like a muffaleta, something that’s more of a hodge podge of ingredients and flavor explosion!” to “You look like you’re miso butter on the outside, but you’re all roast beef dipped in au jus on the inside,” to Liz Taylor’s spot-on take:

On one hand, I’m thrilled to have a sandwich and be able to tell people to “Eat me,” because, how fun. The Elise Hu sold out today in ten minutes, I’m told.

The Wax Paper Company sandwich features radish, lemon vinaigrette, dill and miso butter.

But damn, I’d like to be a totally different sandwich. I’d like to be Texas BBQ brisket sandwiched between two scallion pancakes, you know? That would be more on point.

I was grousing about this at tennis yesterday and my friend Drew goes, “This is a Curb [Your Enthusiasm] episode.” And lo and behold, it actually is!

The season five premiere, in fact, is “The Larry David Sandwich.” To wit:

At his favorite deli, Leo’s, the owner, Leo has named a sandwich after him but Larry is disgusted by the contents: onions, capers, white fish, sable and cream cheese. He tries to get Ted Danson to switch sandwiches with him but he is unwilling to do it. 

The “Elise Hu” came out along with a chorizo-filled sandwich named the “Anthony Kuhn,” after the current NPR Seoul bureau chief, who succeeded me on the Korea/Japan patch. I wonder if Anthony and I could trade?

The Anthony Kuhn: Spanish chorizo, quince mostarda, green apple, curly parsley pesto! 🥪

Commencement

Posted on by Elise

Snapping the arena, flanked by the chancellor, a curator and the grad school dean.

Columbia, Missouri is vintage shops and cheese-laden appetizers and the state’s flagship university columns at dusk. It’s downtown streets no wider than a driveway. It’s ice cream shops with so many yarn dolls as decor that the ones that aren’t on display are “sleeping” in an extra fridge. It’s hair stylists from Utica.

I called Columbia home for only a blink of time, so few semesters that I really only remember the final one, and the summer that followed it which my tribe refers to as “the lost summer.” It was wedged in between a time of school responsibility and work responsibility. For that summer, there was neither. I never have spent a summer like that since.

You do get to go home again, and ideally it’s under the circumstances I went back this weekend, as a sage advice-giver type. The new dean, David Kurpius, asked me to be the commencement speaker for the Missouri School of Journalism’s May graduating Class of 2019.

My remarks focused on things I’ve learned in the 15 years since leaving Columbia. The main thrust of anything I talk about regarding my adult life is how accidentally lucky I’ve been; how timing and circumstance have collided to go right, without much planning at all.

Being back after so much time away meant a nostalgia tour of the things that I loved eating and doing, so, to review:

Booches ✔️
Toasted ravioli (many times) ✔️
Shakespeare’s ✔️
Lakota coffee ✔️
Tiger Stripe ice cream ✔️
Chokes ‘n cheese at Flatbranch ✔️
ΠΒΦ house ✔️
Drunkenly leaving wallet at Harpo’s ✔️

(Country Kitchen is closed, so, sadly, that couldn’t happen. Never did get drunk enough for Gumby’s Pokey Sticks, but thought about it.)

Liz and our happy place, Shakespeare’s Pizza

Friend Liz, who has a history of gamely going on random weekend trips, is also a Mizzou alum and a former Pi Phi, so she joined me in the trek to the middle of Missouri (and the arduous journey back home, which required extra nights in sad hotels and a lot of time sitting idly on tarmacs).

I can’t express how meaningful it was to be back in Missouri, and have Liz there to enjoy the old haunts together, to marvel at the newness of the student center and rec center (which is basically a five-star resort now), and to share the memories of yesteryear.

Speaking at Mizzou Arena, May 2019

I wouldn’t go back in time if you offered, because I did as I said in the speech and inhabited those moments fully when I lived them. But it’s nice to drop in on the past when you can, especially if it involves toasted ravioli.

Graduating at the Hearnes Center, May 2003

Springtime in A Coupla American Cities

Posted on by Elise

Caught Janeane Garofalo, doing some standup, in Brooklyn.

Shooooooot, if I don’t start speeding it up I’m not going to be able to keep that New Year’s Resolution about blogging a certain number of times a month. One day, the relentlessness of the North Korea beat will end, but not before it ends me, first.

I took a sojourn to the states last week (DC and then New York), which at first was awesome but now that I am back and only sleeping in three hour bursts, and only sometimes at night, my despair is rather acute. My brain feels like a bowl of soggy instant oatmeal. I took very few photos, so there’s really nothing to aid my collapsing memory of many things that happened last week.

There was plenty of patio-drinking, random run-ins in the street and lingering breakfasts. Also: trying our friend Rose’s new restaurant, reunioning, making the rounds of the think tank circuit, speaking about sexism in South Korea to young policy wonks, a comedy show where I discovered the knock-down hilarious Michelle Butreau, a board meeting for Grist and a last minute meetup with Texas friends weekending in New York thanks to Instagram.

In an embarrassment, I set up my friend Matt on a blind date and then ruined my own matchmaking by bringing him to a party the night before the date. At this party he met SOMEONE ELSE that he decided he liked so much that he canceled the date. I am awesome.

Felt a lot of highs and lows and now I’m just feeling really, really exhausted.

Fried Chicken, Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Jackson

Posted on by Elise

Michael Jackson dolls my parents sent me.

A rare confluence of circumstances led to an epic Wednesday night out: My friend Liz (Taylor, natch) was back on her feet after back surgery and really jonesing for fried chicken and doughnuts, my always-entertaining and ever-brilliant friend Michael Maness was in town after his recent month-long hiatus from work and was brimming with stories and rants and, I had nowhere to be besides eating fried chicken and drinking with two insanely fun people. We did some varsity level boozing and got home just before 1am. Consequently, I was in a daze all day, but it was worth it.

Then, my dad came in from Holland! He’s here for the spawn’s first birthday this weekend (god, time flies) and he brought me two gifts that encapsulate a.) how awesome my parents are b.) how well they know me and c.) how much they love me.

Mom sent a liter of 100 proof vodka (50% alcohol), and these amazing Michael Jackson Russian dolls. Because, Michael Jackson Russian dolls.

There’s a tie for the best thing I read all day: One, is a photoshopped image that my old pal Chris Chang created of Vladmir Putin riding his dog doppleganger, and two, is a New Yorker piece defending Jonathan Franzen’s recent anti-technology rant because a lot of it we can actually get behind.