#43: Where the cream rises
Amelia Bedelia's lemon meringue pie, decorated birthday cakes, the crème de la crème, and more.
If you’re on Instagram internet or Twitter internet these days, chances are at least one of your follows, if not many more, are curating TikTok content. It’s tough to avoid at this point and the sheer magnitude of its universe can be overwhelming for even the most invested TikTok-ers, massive privacy issues notwithstanding. Amina Sow, who blessedly shares the best/funniest/wokest ‘Toks of our time via Instagram stories once a week, has just launched a newsletter Crème de la Crème to take that concept a bit further and write about “the best of the best” both on and off-line.
But Jeremy O. Harris (actor and playwright of “Daddy” and Slave Play) has been dropping “CORONAVIRUS 🦠 MIXTAPES” on the grid and they’re especially good. Remember Amelia Bedelia’s lemon meringue pie? There’s a class critique for that. The Gushers vs. grape Welch’s gummy debate? Me neither.
Amelia Bedelia illustrated by Peggy Parish
If I may venture to say it, Harris’ roundups are a little spicier and weirder: the perfect combo of what is presumably his personal Tik Tok feed (an algorithm that is famously catered to its user) interspersed with scenes from his quarantine life in London, selfies, zoom calls and fashionable photoshoots. If you don’t take my word for it, you can take Nick Kroll’s when he said on Seth Meyers that it’s “where I understand the internet better everyday.”
Whenever artists and creators like Harris take to a hellish form like Instagram that’s made to be over-edited and make it stranger, more unpolished, and good in its uncanniness, I’m on board. My friend and artist Bridget Bailey does a similar thing with the slides feature, but visually. Her posts feature variations on forms like iced birthday cakes and balloons inflated and deflated, but also serve as a visual diary capturing that which is delightfully discarded, cast aside, or colorfully crumpled.
On a walk with a new friend from graduate school, we were talking about what makes a book good (groundbreaking topic) but also what makes a book good for you. There are basic barometers we decided: Did you learn something? Do you see things differently now? We talked about a new way of measuring the value of a text: does it give you tools to see or approach life in a new way? If I were to carry this viewfinder over to social media, I’d find Jeremy and Bridget at the top of the list of those who offer such tools on a platform that tends to drag us down. The platform may not last, but their artistry sure will. Oh, and if you’re still thinking about it like I am, here’s a recipe for Amelia Bedelia’s lemon meringue pie.
piece of power
Speaking of the crème de la crème, an Instagram friend, cheese tastemaker, and Vermont-based food and drink editor Christine Clark just launched Creamline. With twice a month dispatches (one from Christine and another from beauty editor Taylore Glynn), the newsletter is “about pleasurable things that are too often dismissed as frivolous”. From indispensable beauty products to actually-doable croissant recipes, it’s worth your inbox real estate.