taipei – Hey Elise

2024 in Review: Nonstop Nonsense

Posted on December 30, 2024January 1, 2025 by Elise

We all had matching flight suits, which led to some real confusion for the people of Carbondale, Illinois after we landed at a tiny airport and deplaned with giant speakers and a deejay from the Norwegian woods, playing harmonica.

It was the year of brat summer, calling things weird, and being very mindful/very demure. The Dodgers won the World Series. TikTok faces an imminent ban. Kamala Harris enjoyed a flawless campaign rollout after Joe Biden’s catastrophic debate, not that it made any difference in the election outcome. US election results marked the full realization of the cultural shift toward woman-hating, with a electoral college AND popular vote win returning Donald J Trump to office. So here we are. An entire movement based on sneering at other people and whipping up reactive resentment will soon be in charge, again. The manosphere is no longer the extremist counterculture, it is culture. What are men are capable of when the rules don’t apply to them and their actions have no consequences? We’re going to see how that works on a global scale, as the US is but one of the modern democracies turning toward plutocratic wannabe authoritarians.

And I have never felt so demoralized about traditional journalism. Institutions are losing audiences and trust, newspaper owners kiss up to Trump, and the structural problem persists: paying for the work of deep and accurate reporting is only increasingly expensive, while creating a sprawling alternative information ecosystem from influencers is cheaper, and can demonstrably shift opinions.

As we make the turn to 2025, I feel dread about the macro forces globally and confusion about what I’m supposed to do, individually. 2024 was a year marked by upheavals in politics, culture, and technology, which led me to turn toward the personal. On that front, this past year was chock full of gifts. We got a puppy. The girls are growing up strong and sassy and finding their specialties. Luna’s playing soccer seriously enough to join a club team, Isa is now dancing in the company, and Eva has become a working actor and premiered in her first regular cast member role in a show on BratTV. I love watching them blossom and delight in the magic that moves through them. For me, so many stretches of 2024 felt like I was on perma-vacation — I cosplayed as a gentlelady of leisure and went so many places and experienced so many things, thanks to generous friends who hosted us or invited us to unforgettable locales for sun, skiing, speaking and general mischief. I fell down the lucky tree and hit every branch.

Best gift: A Little Free Library for my front yard, gifted by Rob, assembled and installed by Justin, painted by me and Eva. Runner up: The kitty izakaya.

Favorite Film(s): Challengers, Anora

Favorite TED Talks: Amy Kurzweil on how she connected with her past, and Gaya Herrington on why poverty and pollution persist when the world’s getting richer.

Firsts: Solar eclipse. Acupuncture. Capybaras in real life. Getting paid as a screenwriter. Giving a TED talk. Eating water buffalo brain and spine. Ziplining over Mexican jungles. Indian Wells tennis tournament. Getting my book translated into a different language (Polish edition came out). Reselling clothes online. Snake River float trip. Meeting two-week-old puppies. Officiating a wedding.

Disappointments: The 2024 presidential election. A slow year for Reasonable Volume. Getting non-refundable tickets to Paris and canceling. Getting creamed by a speeding cyclist, while we were on foot. Spilling iced tea on the same laptop that I already spilled iced tea on last year. The collapse of the journalism industry. Saltburn.

New cities: Bozeman and Big Sky, Montana. Kathmandu and Bhaktapur, Nepal. Sedona, Arizona.

Most Absurd Incident: We caught the most majestic solar eclipse from a clear spot in the path of totality, after being flown to Carbondale, Illinois in a private plane charter. But then locals confused our group for a cult because we were all wearing matching flight suits.

Interviews That Will Stay With Me: Tressie McMillan Cottom. Glynnic MacNichol. Emily Amick on civic involvement as true self care. Lyn Slater about how expansive and fulfilling growing older is. Meaghan Keane on the bias against single people and how to reframe it.

Favorite Podcast Episodes I Went On: Vibe Check, Normal Gossip, Apple News in Conversation

Favorite Selfie(s): MONICA LEWINSKY!

Nerdiest Accomplishment: A tween (who isn’t my own) judging me as a “cool mom.”

Hu Hideaway Guests: Steve Boyle. Jean Lee. Jake Adelstein. Mari, briefly. Justin. Patrick and Carlos. Matt and Bryan.

Purchases and practices that fed me:

Just Ice Tea Peach Oolong
The cultural writing of The Atlantic’s Sophie Gilbert
This no chocolate chocolate chip cookie recipe
Hosting friends in my guest house, aka, “The Hu Hideaway”

And in no particular order, this year I…

Officiated a wedding!
Dislocated my shoulder (again, so this is the third time now)
Slept the best sleep of my life, at a resort in Santa Barbara
Caught food in my mouth at Benihana on the first try
Organized a community coat drive and collected 400 coats, thank y’all for donating!
Started hosting a new podcast, Forever35
Wrote my screenplay treatment and outline
Spoke on a panel with Donna Karan in the front row, just casually taking it all in
Endured birds flying into my house on two (2!) separate occasions, triggering me to freak out and call for friends to come over and chase them back outside
Spent countless hours on set, set-sitting for my working actor daughter
Spent countless hours on the sidelines, soccer-momming Luna
Spoke in San Francisco, Michigan, Hawaii, Boston, Nepal, New York, Atlanta, Dallas, and LA (a few times)
Saw so much live comedy: Morgan Jay. Ali Wong. Sheng Wang. Morgan Jay 2x more. The funny people who opened for them, whose names I don’t recall.
Appeared on 17 podcasts (including three of them I host)
Read 35 books (not counting kid ones), reviewed two of them and recommended a third
Attended one wedding and one bat mitzvah: Vallejo (Matt and Bryan) and San Francisco (Franny’s Bat Mitzvah)
Ran 94.2 miles (a five year low) but played a lot of tennis
Wrote 23 newsletter dispatches
Reunited with my brother and parents in Taipei to celebrate the holidays
Flew 88,799 miles to 25 cities, seven countries and spent 106 days away from home

PREVIOUS YEARS IN REVIEW

2023 | 2022|2021|2020 |2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010|2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004

So Much Taiwan. So Much Awesome.

Posted on January 6, 2014August 4, 2020 by Elise

When I was 20, I spent six months in a vortex. (Not a polar vortex.) It jumbled me up and made me see the world and relationships and food in a whole different (and more appreciative) way. That vortex was one of the world’s best food cities and just an endlessly fun, urban place — Taipei. Friendships from the vortex lasted, so any time I’m back — even if many of us have children now — we make it out to see each other, reuniting over bowls of Taiwan’s religion (beef noodle soup), partying it up in the smoke-filled clubs and lounges (no smoking ban), and wandering the gritty alleys which are naturally full of food vendors selling buns and soups and Taiwan’s second most popular religion, bubble tea. The only key Taipei activity that we didn’t do this trip was karaoke until 5am and then hit the all-you-can-eat congee bars, but I’ve done enough of that for a lifetime. And with Mandopop stars, naturally.

After five years in Holland, my parents just moved to Taipei. Mom bought a place up near Tamsui, which is a beach town with a boardwalk where women sing karaoke covers of Alanis Morrisette’s mid-nineties hits. So we spent Christmas and rang in the New Year with lots of family — many of my forty or so cousins made the trek for a big family reunion trip. Hadn’t been back since the halcyon days of 2011, before I went to NPR and the CEO quit two days after I started. (Correlation is not causation.)

Getting there and back is the worst. Let’s just get that out of the way. It’s a 14 hour flight plus another three hours after a layover in Tokyo. Or it’s broken up differently and also horrendous. The plane goes from fresh and full of promise to a filthy, lived in, farted-in trash tube. (The flight back, which included our toddler, head colds and an inhuman experience at Dulles in which the agriculture cops busted us for bringing back grapes in Eva’s food bag and not declaring it, was hands down one of my most difficult days.)

Instead of family photos, I’ll show you some of the atmospherics that make Taipei so much fun for us. Like WHITEMEN toothpaste, guardian of tooth:

Taiwanese signs are accompanied by great images. I love the bump on the armless woman:

And hey, don’t fail at speaking:

My cousin got my grandma 3D printed. She said her fake head fell off after a recent earthquake and one of her aides found the head had jumped and landed on a table. She rushed her 3D-printed self to a jeweler to get her head re-attached. You can’t even tell it was missing:

What the F. Doctor Drill ‘N Fill is the scariest toy I’ve ever seen:

This traffic warning guy had moving arms. Amazing:

Why was there a baby with a scary perm on the side of a building? These are the mysteries one encounters when one can’t read Chinese.

And I discovered a great new party game/app through my old roommate (Joe) and his buddy Mike (at right, with phone on his head). Don’t know the name of it, but it’s the electronic version of the board game Taboo or Catchphrase, where your team has to give you clues for the item shown on your forehead, without actually saying the item. Great fun. Let me know if you know what the app is called.

Y’all know how important I think Taiwanese news animations are. So naturally I set up a visit for an upcoming piece. And naturally I found a bunch of motion capture actors just sitting around in leotards, waiting for an assignment:

Thanks for the memories (again), Taiwan. I’m a huge fan.

Taipei: iPhone Photo Dump #3

Posted on February 6, 2011 by Elise