The Weekend List: No. 17

Images: Everyday Iran, Still from What's Your Number? via Born Unicorn, Hillary Clinton buying a burrito via David Hepworth, Don McLean. 

The links and words which have been littering my tabs bar, and sitting in my brain for the past fortnight. This weekend has been gloriously sunny. Yesterday was spent in Sheffield visiting Doc/Fest, playing with Oculus Rift and lazing in the sunshine at the Peace Gardens with beers and watching Grey Gardens. Come evening, back in Manchester; curry from Al Madina, homemade White Russians and watching Paul McCartney live in concert via a pair of cardboard virtual reality goggles and feeling excited, rather than pessimistic about technology (a reference to that Internet Hangover article linked below.)

Life

• "I think women don't really want to talk about how obsessed they are with being thin, so they abstract it by making it into a philosophical thing, because then no one will question it." Fariha Roisin talking to Ana Cecelia Alvarez as part of The Hairpin's wonderful Self-Care series, which is essential reading.

Culture

• From Frankie Goes to Hollywood's video game, to clips from British television programmes you've probably never heard of, Juliet Jacquet's In Search of The Miraculous is a great scrapbook-ish blog.
• "Non-professional bloggers feel like a dying breed, privacy is non-existent, our most essential social media platforms have grown tedious and rife with harrassment, content is branded and SEO optimized within an inch of its life. Everyone I know is "thinking about deleting Facebook."" I'm not in total agreement with Meaghan Garvey's gloomy prognosis of The Internet Hangover, but she is on-point about the mercilessness aspects of internet culture today. 
• Women in Comedy (aka Amy Schumer, Gina Rodriguez, Ellie Kemper, Tracee Ellis Ross, Lena Dunham and Kate McKinnon) chewing the fat, talking Hollywood, politics and terrible things said in auditions.
• Sheila Heti's Wikipedia page, annotated by Sheila Heti.

Food

• Two things I want in a cookbook: 1. An photograph to accompany every single recipe. 2. Prose that brings to life the sounds of a produce market, of a family around a table, or the pleasure of a summer peach in a brown paper bag. Last week I listened to The Food Programme's two-episode Jane Grigson tribute, and I now know that my latter desire is thanks to the legacy of this food writer, who died a year before I was born. A household name I knew very little about, I look forward to leafing through her books purely for pleasure, no need to cook.

Listening

• Running Up That Hill: Kate Bush Covers for Reproductive Rights
• Crying in the Chapel by Don McLean

Snacks

• Grandmothers smoking hookah whilst preparing squid, men playing chess, and kids on scooters. Everyday Iran is an Instagram account featuring everyday scenes captured by photographers living and working in Iran.
• Born Unicorn, a goldmine-ish archive of beauty products and perfumes featured in film and TV.
• David Hepburn blogs at least once a week and his posts are short and sweet without compromising substance. The Loo Read of the blog world, if you will. Also, great post titles like "Whenever I buy fast food I feel like Peter Mandelson in that chip shop" from the man who writes those indispensable radio previews for The Guide.