Thanksgiving on The Pacific Coast Highway

Traveling with a 3-month old is terrifying. This was his first plane ride. The amount of preparation, equipment, and anxiety leading up to this trip cannot be overstated.

But we did it. And he did great.

We landed in California on Friday morning and yarded our car seat, travel stroller, 2 suitcases, and 2 backpacks through John Wayne airport. After bouncing, swaying, and praying for 45 minutes, we were somehow able to load everything into our minimally equipped Nissan Murano – which I later learned is Spanish for "pulls to the right and poorly accelerates." 

We jumped on the PCH and headed southbound for Laguna Beach. The palm trees and ocean felt like the start of vacation. 

That vacation feeling was short-lived. 

We checked into our Airbnb and were greeted with the fresh scent of Febreeze Ocean Air®. The decor could only be described as TJ Maxx Coastal Antique. Everything was beach-themed. Seashells and faux antiques everywhere – this lady had more thingamabobs than Ariel.

[Sidenote: In The Little Mermaid, Ariel asks Flounder if he wants a Thingmabob as she opens a box to display her collection of earthly antiques... she then states that she has "twenty" when the box CLEARLY does not contain twenty thingamabobs. This lady had way more than twenty thingamabobs.]

I began unloading our equipment. We quickly realized that despite the fresh ocean air (fe)breeze, the Airbnb had not been cleaned. It was gross.

The owner was very accommodating and encouraged us to check in to a Waldorf Astoria nearby. Going from a Febreeze drenched used Airbnb to the Waldorf Astoria was incredible. Right after checking in, we saw Kris Jenner. No shit. We took it as a sign – Kris Jenner was our patron saint of vacay. We quickly decided that despite the $700+ per night difference in price, we WERE NOT GOING back to that Airbnb. We belonged here, with Kris Jenner, at the Waldorf Astoria.

We got room service and gawked from our balcony at whatever charity event Kris was attending was in the courtyard below. It felt we were officially back on vacation.

We woke up and walked to the beach. 

There was a group of surfers out catching the early morning swell. One of them approached me and said that he had recently lost his father. 

He said that seeing me hold Sonny made him think of his Dad and reminded him how everything was connected. The whole conversation felt like a blessing.

That first morning in Laguna felt magical, but at close to $1,000 per night... we really couldn't afford to spend the week there. There was something liberating about not having a plan – traveling with a 3-month-old requires so much preparation, but now we suddenly found ourselves without a plan – it felt good.

We decided to drive up the coastline towards Los Angeles. We found a beachfront hotel in Santa Monica and booked it for the week. It was time to pack up the car again. 

We arrived in Santa Monica around 3pm on Saturday. We had a killer view of the Santa Monica pier but quickly realized after walking around a bit that this would not be a good fit for the entire week. The following day Steph somehow negotiated her way out of our hotels.com week long reservation, and we checked out.

Steph, after negotiating her way out of a hotels.com reservation.

Once again, we found ourselves without plans and without a place to stay.

We decided to head back towards Laguna Beach.

By this time I had become quite adept at packing up all of our shit. We loaded Sonny back into the car and cranked Pet Sounds as we headed south back down the Pacific Coast Highway.

After some research, we found a spot at The Ranch, a small resort tucked in a canyon about a 5-minute walk from the beach. The Ranch was the original Laguna Beach country club and it had a smaller, word-of-mouth vibe with some killer mid-century architecture. The resort had a farm-to-table restaurant that hosted live music every night at 5pm that would draw locals – an acoustic cover of The Wallflowers One Headlight was the universe telling us we were right where we were supposed to be. 

The whole experience had a Shangri-La energy to it. It felt like we were in the middle of nature vs. at a resort. There was a casual luxury to it – it wasn't trying too hard. The entire scene felt much more local than tourist. It reminded me a lot of Hotel Joaquin – another one of our favorite Laguna spots that we found does NOT allow children... 

Our Thanksgiving was spent walking the beach, swimming, and feeling very grateful for everything we had been given this past year. 

More photos from The Ranch here. 

🌎 Links

The Untold Story of Von Dutch

Behind the brand that made trucker hats hot in the early 2000s is a messy corporate origin tale, filled with sabotage and greed.

Kacey Musgraves Covers Coldplay’s “Fix You” for Chipotle Campaign
Make. It. Stop. 

.JPEGS

 

🌎 Links

The Great Irony Level Collapse
There was a time when I felt I could know what kind of music or pants a person liked and be able to fill in the rest of their interests with reasonable accuracy; at this point, there doesn’t seem to be any connection at all. In the era of espresso martinis, my whole irony zone system has become a sticky, unnavigable mess.

Why Facebook’s Metaverse Is Dead on Arrival
The Oculus is not a wearable. In fact, it’s prophylactic. No one’s going to get near you. It’s basically the fastest way to say, “I don’t date.” You’re never going to get mass adoption with an item that is clunky, makes you nauseous, and has a negative self-expressive benefit.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza Soundtrack Announced
Featuring songs by David Bowie, Nina Simone, and Paul McCartney, as well as a new track from Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood

The Puffer Coat At The End Of The World
These days, the puffer's meaning is elastic: cold-weather uniform to the everyman and the Everest set alike. Despite the mainstream appeal and increased access, it is far from a utopian object. Like most things that are bought and sold, the puffer is stratified—in some cases, to the point of marking class divide—largely as a result of branding, but materials, too. There's a taxonomic culture surrounding the puffer. Warmth is demonstrated by the jacket's loft, or ability to trap and retain body heat, and loft is measured by fill power, the space occupied by one ounce of insulation.

🎶 Taylor Swift + Phoebe Bridgers

 Taylor Swift featuring Phoebe Bridgers — Nothing New

Snail Mucin Power: Unlocking The Secret to Skincare in The Desert (part I)

"My Road Leads Into The Desert."

– Paul Atreides

– also, Don when he got a job offer in Denver, Colorado

I live in Denver. A city that is impossible to place. It's not really the Midwest, but it's definitely not the west coast. It's also not Austin. It's in between everything. A city that really doesn't know what it wants to be.

People will talk about the mountains, but in reality, they are hours away. Denver is often positioned as some sort of mountainous fantasyland. It's really not. 

Denver is actually just a desert (a desert with a good marketing team). Like most deserts, Denver is DRY AF. You are a mile above sea level which really just means you are a mile closer to the sun. [Science tells us that spending a year at altitude has the aging equivalent of 2.7 years at sea level.]

If you have ever visited Denver, you probably woke up in the middle of the night gasping for air with your eyes crusted shut as you desperately searched for water. That's not normal. That's the desert, and the desert takes the weak.

So how does one maintain a youthful glow when you're aging faster than everyone else in the country? I am here to bless you and your epidermis with a product that will harness the blinding light of the desert within your mother@#*!ing aura!

The secret is snail mucin. Huh? Specifically, COSRX Advanced Snail 96 Mucin Power Essence. Snails excrete a slime that has insane moisturizing properties. The nasty little wake of a typical garden snail contains ingredients like glycoproteins, hyaluronic acid, and glycolic acid, which effectively seal in moisture. We're talking anti-aging, molecular shit here! If it sounds mysterious, it's because it is. But aging beautifully in the desert is a mystery in itself. Glowing skin isn't a problem to solve but a reality to experience.

If you think this is the only product required in the desert??? This is just the beginning. DESERT POWER... NO! SNAIL 96 MUCIN POWER ESSENCE!

🌎 Links

Why Gen Z is plugging in wired headphones and tuning out AirPods

So why are "It" girls like Lily Rose Depp and the Olsen twins ditching wireless earbuds and opting instead to plug into their devices? “Wired is an attitude,” Shelby Hull, the 24-year-old creator of the Instagram account @wireditgirls, told Mashable. “It is the way you carry yourself and move about the world.”

Clarks Wallabees – the shoe for men who don’t want to wear shoes
Why the classic square-toe lace-up is still the coolest footwear around.

The Beach, a “Infinity-Looping Experience” from A24
The Beach is a documentary from Australian filmmaker Warwick Thornton that documents his time living on a isolated beach in order to “transform his life through the healing power of nature”. From the looks of the trailer, it’s a little bit ASMR combined with slow TV — A24 is playing the film in a continuous loop (an “infinity-looping experience”) from November 22-28 so you can just dip in and out of it during the week. More info here and here. Looks beautiful (via Kottke.org).

Dune Director Denis Villeneuve breaks down the Gom Jabbar scene

Denis Villeneuve breaks down the scene where Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) is challenged to a test, the Gom Jabbar, to see if his humanity will overcomes his animal impulses. A poisoned needle is held to his neck to incentivize him to complete the test. Denis explains how he built such a tense scene with the layering of an ancient aesthetic and visual effects.

Watch Kanye West Talk Cancel Culture, His Beef With Drake, & More On Drink Champs
Kanye talks about his split with Kim Kardashian, the 2009 VMAs, his beef with Drake, Balenciaga underwear, cancel culture, Big Sean, TikTok, Damien Hirst, getting “shadowbanned” on Twitter, politics, his vaccination status, abortion, his choppy new haircut (“harder than wearing a Trump hat”), and more.

🎶 New Music

Snail Mail – Valentine

Spiritualized – Always Together With You

Jenny Lewis – Puppy and a Truck

Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats – The Future

📡 Signals

1. Pay attention to the things you find yourself doing when you have free time. Figure out how to make a living doing those things.

2. In business, people don't remember very much... but they always remember how you made them feel. Be nice. Laugh. Don't take yourself too seriously.

3. You generate your own magic.

4. Focus on generating work that you are proud of and trust that the dots will connect. 

5. Be really good at a few things. 

6. Have an opinion. The louder you are with that opinion the bigger the risk. 

7. To be recognizable you have to be different.

8. Don't get bogged down in the past. Who cares? The future is so much more interesting.

9. Show up. He who is absent is always wrong.

10. The universe is not indifferent. It wants you to succeed.

🌎 Links

Can Are.na Make The Internet Calm Down?

The social platform that feels like a more organized Tumblr. 

The Soft Sell... 
The health-care brand Hims wants to leverage young men’s anxiety over erections and hair loss into a multibillion-dollar empire.

Apple Glass' could project AR directly onto a wearer's retina
Apple is researching how "Apple Glass," or other future Apple AR devices, could skip tiny screens altogether, and instead use micro projectors to beam the images straight onto the wearer's retina.

Baseball, Popular but No Longer Dominant, Seeks to Reclaim Its Cool
Add trampolines to the warning tracks... that's it, that is answer.