Hello, April

* insert a bunch of random stuff here

Sunday brunch sundress look

Can we talk about the way the last 30 days have blended together so smoothly, I have been having a hard time keeping the day of the week straight?

Seriously. 

Hi. My name is Monique, and I am not only trying to be outside more, but I have been outside doing all the things, chile. 

These are not complaints; they are observations, baby.

How y’all doing?

I keep a running list of things I want to run my mouth (fingers?) to y’all about, and that list is extra long now because I have been steadily adding things to it even though I’ve been too busy to share. You will forgive me if some of my notes are extra old. 

Because this shit right here is all about me, let’s talk a little bit about me first. 

As I said, I have been doing all the things and writing all the things. 

I went to two events at 1010 Wines, a Black woman-owned wine bar here in L.A. Technically, it’s in Inglewood, but it doesn’t matter. 

The food is excellent, the wine is excellent, and I highly recommend everyone get over there to try both the dinner menu and the Sunday brunch menu. 

Food and friends!

At one of the events, I got to meet famous L.A. foodie Esther Tseng, and I was totally fan-girling over her. 

Me and Esther!

I also got to meet and hang with Robin McBride of McBride Sisters Winery, and she is truly dope. The wine is good too, for that matter. 

I went to an adult game night with my sister and our friends, and I played the most aggressive game of Uno I’ve ever played in my life.

In between there have been a lot of laughs, a tiny bit of drama (in the grand scheme of things), and a lot of living that took place off of social media, and for a person who tends to have social media perfect attendance, I love that for me. 

This is not some huge proclamation of “I’m done with social media.” This is just me noting that sometimes it’s cool to do and experience things that aren’t “for the ‘gram.”

Anyway.

I have been reading a lot of books too. I read the entire Crenshaw Kings series by Shvonne Latrice, and I enjoyed all four books. 

I’m a sucker for a book based in L.A., and these books are, and the only thing that nags me is the author says the characters “live in Crenshaw.”

Los Angeles natives will tell you (loudly and angrily, lol) that no one lives in Crenshaw. You either live on Crenshaw or you live off of Crenshaw, but you never live in it. Crenshaw is a street. It is not a neighborhood. 

I love a good urban fiction or urban romance (what we used to call street lit back in the day), and these did not disappoint in that regard. 

After I read those, I read another book by the same author. “Applying Pressure” is an urban romance as well, but I found myself annoyed with every single person in this book for the stupid choices they kept making. I’m not going to spoil it; I’ll just say the book should be called “Apply for a restraining order and talk to the lady, sis” and leave it at that.

Next up, I took on the Hoops series by Kennedy Ryan. 

I’m a huge fan of her writing, and these books have not disappointed. The main series is three standalone novels that are interconnected. I’ve finished the first two, and I just started the third. 

These books are delicious. The first one has content trigger warnings for physical abuse/IPV and SA. The scenes as written in the book aren’t so terrible that I couldn’t get through them. They aren’t gratuitous or even graphic, so I commend the author on the care she took in including that in her work. 

There are two novellas that go along with the books, and I’ve read both of them. They just add more to the stories about the characters you’ve already read about. Think of it as an extra helping of Happily Ever After. 

Reading is by far my favorite pastime these days. 

As for writing, in the last 30 days, I’ve written about Marjorie Taylor Greene; the way a white woman remixed Sojourner Truth’s most famous speech; Candace Owens’ attempt at rebranding herself to Black people; the rampant misogynoir in the Ben Bolch commentary preceding the UCLA-LSU matchup; and, of course, Louis Vuitton Dawn Staley.

Once upon a time, my girl Brooke Obie wrote a supreme takedown of the movie “Green Book” (I actually wrote my own “Green Book” review and was personally contacted by Harry Belafonte who implored me to be nice about it lol), and I had never read a more epic film review in my life until I saw Jason England’s brilliant summation of “American Fiction.” He basically said everything that was in my head about that movie. 

We can argue about it later if you want, but read this quote first:

To that end, the villains in American Fiction vacillate between anachronistic and easy targets. Boyz n the Hood came out in 1991, for God’s sake, and Tyler Perry isn’t exactly a bold scapegoat. When the blaxploitation being satirized in the movie isn’t stuck in the 1990s, the problems are costumed as white dolts and doofuses—publishers, editors, writers, and filmmakers who are such caricatures that the white audience can laugh at them without feeling indicted. But while the movie is content to set up and then knock down its array of frail, antiquated pantomime villains, the equivalent figures and forces of our present time—the ones a braver story would've confronted head-on—go conspicuously ignored.

And while we’re here, Brooke and I also shared a brain where it came to “The Book of Clarence.”

Beyoncé gave us a new album, and I love it. It’s a little bit country. It’s a little bit rock & roll. The category is Beyoncé if we have to give it one, and I’m not even a Beyoncé stan. I just really like this album.

“Ya Ya” is an entire Anna Mae Bullock from the Ikettes days tribute. “Spaghetti” will be in heavy rotation for the next few months. I will never get over the Miley Cyrus culture vulture moment in my life, but “II Most Wanted” is an entire vibe (so is Miley’s “Flowers” for that matter), and both of these things can be true at the same time. 

Y’all already know how I feel about Dolly Parton and “Jolene” in particular, and I asked for a cover of it well before Dolly spilled the beans. I’m happy with Bey’s take on it. 

If Queen Bey goes on tour for this album, she will likely get my money. 

Yesterday, I solved Wordle in two guesses. 

OK, bye.