(Credit: Flickr Creative Commons) Did you know I still have a Substack? Me either. In my defense, today is the first day in a long, long time that I've been able to sit down for longer than a few minutes to rest, let alone make good words on computer. Yeah, I’ve still got it. Between the book tour, trolling fundies with billboards, and shamelessly self-promoting my book at every turn - oh and family and all that other life stuff - it turns out making time to regularly write on my Substack has been…elusive.

Guest post alert! Today’s issue comes from Nellie Beckett, my smart and talented friend whom you may remember from her excellent piece about Mary Poppinsin honor of Labor Day. She’s full of great ideas, so of course it didn’t take her long to offer up another guest post about a meaningful film from her youth. Speaking of all those great ideas in Nellie’s brain, she just started her own Substack called Kulturtante, which I am extremely excited to read because she’s been telling compelling stories in multiple mediums for years now.

So I have been dating my boyfriend for almost 2 years now and he is a sweetheart and we are super happy together. In fact, we just recently moved in together. BUT he is extremely close with his (very) overbearing mother. And this is beginning to become an issue for me because it's starting to affect my life now that we live together.  Some background: My boyfriend's dad passed away when he was a baby and his mother didn't remarry until he was in college, so for a long time they only had each other.

Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, written by Kate Lindsay and edited by Nick Catucci. Most weeks, we quiz a “very online” person for their essential guide to what’s good on the internet. Today we welcome Max Collins, the singer and bassist of the band Eve6, whose Twitter account he uses to post absurd and sometimes poignant commentary on late-‘90s radio rock, his life in music, politicians, and Elon Musk’s Twitter. He’s working on a book, Heart in a Blender, due later this year, and writes an advice column of the same name for Buzzfeed News.

You might have heard the rumor that a Trader Joe’s is coming to Lafayette. People keep telling me they read this online and it was from reliable sources like the clerk at such and such store or the person standing in line at the local fill-in-the-blank. I have to admit I have never been to a Trader Joe’s but due to all the raving about the store I am curious. So far these are locations I have heard about and what I have learned from those in the know in Lafayette.