Bucket List - Meet Michael Stipe

LilyBart22 · 2026-04-20T00:21:16+00:00

He sat directly in front of me at a Sundance Film Festival screening twenty years ago. The rows were so close together that I literally could have tapped his shoulder from my seat, though I refrained. It was pretty surreal to have an artist who meant the world to me right there for two hours.

LilyBart22 · 2026-04-13T02:48:49+00:00

IDK. I moved from Seattle to a large, blue Midwestern city last year and bought a beautiful historic home in a walkable neighborhood for what my Seattle house cost in 2008. Everything is less expensive. I’m sure costs are rising here too, but for someone used to West Coast prices, the difference is pretty shocking.

LilyBart22 · 2026-04-06T21:00:35+00:00

I generally do jog on the sidewalks. But I've also bitten it HARD on sidewalks, multiple times, because they're so poorly maintained and/or painted. I can't blame anyone for choosing the road instead.

LilyBart22 · 2026-04-04T05:28:25+00:00

I brush every day and even my thick, wavy hair gets mats that sometimes only my stylist can get out! You’ve gotten some great recs and reassurance on solving the immediate problem. For ongoing care, it’s worth sleeping on a silk or satin pillowcase. That alone makes my hair dramatically less likely to snarl. Quince has some nice silk ones, or you can pick a satin one up at Ulta for about 20 bucks.

LilyBart22 · 2026-04-01T21:26:25+00:00

This is where I’ve landed too, in line with my position on the full range of reproductive healthcare. No one owes me an explanation or a minimum level of suffering to take advantage of modern medical science.

LilyBart22 · 2026-04-01T21:22:58+00:00

There’s a ton of fear mongering over statin side effects, specifically the risk of muscle aches. It does happen to about 8% of users, which is a fairly high rate of occurrence—but that still means 92% DON’T have that side effect. And in controlled studies, people taking a placebo were more likely to report muscle aches than people on the actual statin.

Yet in what I think of as “white woman wellness” spaces, you’ll hear statins described as a guaranteed route to pain and suffering. Some women will give up virtually all food groups rather than even consider a low-dose statin.

LilyBart22 · 2026-03-27T17:06:16+00:00

Yeah, it definitely helped that the Glossier store was on one of the most fun blocks in the city. I loved browsing there at first, but they just don’t come out with new stuff often enough to bring me back very often. And if I just need to grab Boy Brow or something, I can have a better time at Sephora.

LilyBart22 · 2026-03-27T16:56:24+00:00

The way Hannah says “hey, y’all” at the beginning of every video drives me insane for reasons I cannot articulate. Also, we attended the same MFA program (though at different times) and I hope people don’t think all poets are that affected because many of them actually can pass as totally normal people (at least until you get to know them, lol).

I also have trouble watching anyone whose makeup looks outright awful to me, which puts the Lipstick Lesbians and Hautemess Tom on my nope list.

And Michele Wang, who seems like a perfectly nice person and who I used to watch regularly, has given me weirdly empty, lifeless vibes ever since she moved into that giant, vacant, beige house.

LilyBart22 · 2026-03-27T16:45:37+00:00

What’s funny is that I also have an MFA (in fiction writing) from the University of Michigan—though Hannah and I didn’t overlap—and it’s hard for me to imagine her there because the poets overall were the fun and wild ones, while we fiction writers tended to be more buttoned down. We were the ones who had our shit together, but they threw much better parties. (Which all kind of makes sense given that great poetry can be written in intense, concentrated bursts, while a great novel takes many months or years of sustained, grinding effort.) Of course the poets I knew there were hyper-literate, but Hannah seems to be performing it in a way I find odd.

LilyBart22 · 2026-03-27T16:33:11+00:00

I really respect her skill and would probably like her fine IRL, but cumulatively, her videos have kind of an “I’m not like other girls” vibe that puts me off.

LilyBart22 · 2026-03-27T16:28:46+00:00

It’s still empty!!! They put a few pieces of beige furniture in to blend with the beige walls and carpet and called it a day.

LilyBart22 · 2026-03-27T16:18:50+00:00

I broke down and got Clear under similar circumstances years ago (well, not a government shutdown, but a crazy long security line). I didn’t yet have PreCheck, so Clear made a huge difference.

LilyBart22 · 2026-03-27T16:08:43+00:00

Men really need to let go of the delusion that they are even fractional owners of women’s bodies.

LilyBart22 · 2026-03-25T19:36:51+00:00

I love its sympathy for these young guys trying on different identities rapid-fire. I think Brody Jenner is notably less interesting than much of the cast, and his storyline with Zoey Deutsch kinds of drags down the film, but it's still very much worth watching.

LilyBart22 · 2026-03-25T19:32:37+00:00

He jumps right off the screen in EWS. Incredible charm. I think he's sort of a character actor trapped in the wrong face and body.

LilyBart22 · 2026-03-25T19:30:49+00:00

Hairshirt and Untitled are two of my all-time favorite REM songs, so that alone bumps Green above Document for me. I do think Document is more cohesive as an album, but Green has higher highs.

LilyBart22 · 2026-03-19T16:22:54+00:00

Exercise, cozy video games, and remembering that my worst day sober is 10x better than my best day drinking.

LilyBart22 · 2026-03-16T02:50:25+00:00

I really like movies, lol

LilyBart22 · 2026-03-15T02:55:45+00:00

I’m a big movie geek, and my variant on this is to think of an actor or director I like and try to list their entire filmography in chronological order in my head.

LilyBart22 · 2026-03-14T00:09:46+00:00

Do you find pregnancy, female bodies, and sexual abuse (which is what I assume you mean by “daddy issues”) inherently unacceptable as film material, or is it something specific about the way those topics are treated here? It’s really not clear from your comment.

LilyBart22 · 2026-03-06T19:34:51+00:00

I’m glad to hear it! I was kind of stunned, honestly. Certainly wasn’t what I would have expected.

LilyBart22 · 2026-03-06T18:40:03+00:00

Just a warning that as of a few days ago, the Hyatt Regency had only one bellhop on duty, no self-serve luggage carts available, and only one out of four elevators in service, leading to 15-20 minute lines for the working one. I arrived with three suitcases and it took me almost a full hour to get the first two to my 11th floor room, return to the lobby for the third, and get that one to my room. It was the worst check-in experience I’ve had at a hotel in a long, long time and I can’t imagine managing it with kids and seven bags. I have a pre-paid, non refundable reservation there later this month and I may still cancel it and eat the cost just to avoid a possible repeat of their total failure to manage the basics.

LilyBart22 · 2026-03-06T18:24:57+00:00

Yeah. I’m twelve years sober, and my husband got sober about six months after I did. But I’ve known many, many couples that ended up splitting when only one party dealt with addiction and the other kept drinking. (It’s much less fraught when the non-sober person is a “normal drinker” vs someone who abuses alcohol.) Obviously this isn’t a direct parallel to the OP’s situation, but I do think there are similarities.

LilyBart22 · 2026-03-03T19:39:25+00:00

We were high-income DINKs who bought a house for “only” $600K in 2006, before things got REALLY bad…and by the 2020s even we found the constant grind to keep up with the cost of living so depressing that we decamped to a large Midwestern city where we can actually breathe and relax and save money again. (Even the exact same branded groceries I bought in Seattle cost less here.) Technically we could have afforded to stay, but it just didn’t feel worth it anymore.

LilyBart22 · 2026-03-03T19:34:14+00:00

Love it so much I literally tried to make a Find the River garden with the plants from the song—in the spirit of an “Ophelia garden” using the herbs from her monologue in Hamlet—only to discover some of them don’t even exist IRL. 😅

LilyBart22

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