Welcome back to The Good List, where we’re in pursuit of things that make life a little bit better. This is our second installment — if you missed last week’s, you can check it out here. If this newsletter was forwarded to you, sign up to get next week’s sent to your inbox.
On this week’s list:
1. March Madness madness
2. Pleasantries, reconsidered
3. Life in Death Valley
4. An irresistible film about creativity
5. Before she was Carolyn Bessette
6. The right amount of upset
7. Live from London
8. Tuna salad, lawful good?
1.
March Madness madness
I used to have a clever book called “The Enlightened Bracketologist: The Final Four of Everything,” a compilation of N.C.A.A.-style brackets for dozens of non-basketball matchups — video games, arias, bald guys, wine. Each March, alternative brackets emerge for pretty much anything you can think of.
My editor noticed a battle of the top 16 circulating books at the local library in Norfolk, Conn. That called to mind the glorious Tournament of Books, which has been presenting a bracket of the year’s best novels since 2005. I’ve enjoyed the ’90s weepies matchups that are accompanied by thematic March Sadness essays. Farmer Blake’s March Milk-It contest pits the cows of an Iowa farm against one another. Arizona State University runs an annual March Mammal Madness bracket (humpback whale is going head-to-head with Indian rhinoceros in the division featuring animals that appear on currency).
I have yet to find a bracket of “Dateline” episodes or of seltzers in surprising but oddly satisfying flavors, but I feel confident I’d sweep both.
2.
Pleasantries, reconsidered
I tend to disdain small talk as throat-clearing, scripted to-and-fro, the on-ramp to big talk. I’ll admit that it’s often necessary, to grease the conversational wheels, but it sometimes seems so tedious! Or so I thought. Roger Rosenblatt, who has written several books about aging, made a pretty convincing case for small talk as a virtue unto itself. Here’s an excerpt from his essay, which ran in Times Opinion:
The initiation of small talk — how’re you doin’ — means that someone has chosen to break through the carapace of normal self-interest, and is thinking of you, if only briefly. And you, if only briefly, are pleased enough to return the same question.
When he puts it that way, I feel churlish. Rosenblatt so prizes small talk that he makes a point of letting five people a day know he’s thinking of them. I’ve never been this deliberate about reaching out to people, but on Tuesday, I tried it out, randomly texting five friends. It turns out people are flattered to know you were thinking about them, such that they are likely to issue you invitations to coffee or dinner, a welcome byproduct of the experiment.
Desert fivespot, gravel ghost, pale wolfberry, Wallace’s woollydaisy: The names of the flowers blooming in Death Valley are evocative enough. The photos are even better. Instagram is rife with shots of fields of desert gold, but I prefer the isolated blooms submitted by users on iNaturalist. The metaphor is perhaps too on the nose, yet a lone flower persisting in an inhospitable landscape does make for a convincing exhortation to keep going.
4.
An irresistible film about creativity
Have you seen the 2024 documentary “Secret Mall Apartment”? It’s about capitalism, corruption, Providence, cinder blocks, community and how to share your creativity with other people. I think you’ll love it.
5.
Before she was Carolyn Bessette
The final episode of the anthology series “Love Story,” about John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy’s romance, streams tomorrow night. Much has been made about how the show faithfully captures downtown New York City in the 1990s — the fashion, the music, the cellphone-less-ness.
If you’re swept up in the nostalgia, might I suggest time-traveling to another decade? Before Sarah Pidgeon portrayed C.B.K. in all her Calvin Klein chic, she was nominated for a Tony Award for her Broadway debut in “Stereophonic.” Pidgeon played the lead singer of a 1970s rock band recording an album amid a storm of ego and libido. I’ve been revisiting the original cast recording from the show, marinating in the Fleetwood Mac-esque tunes that were written by Will Butler of the band Arcade Fire. Pidgeon’s voice is lovely throughout, but “Bright v1” is a standout.
6.
The right amount of upset
In a wonderful essay about changing his phone number, the writer Ronnie Scott says that most of us “walk a line between the need for constancy and the need for change.” He ponders the degree to which people might intentionally upset their lives before they find they’ve made some irrevocable mistake.
Until I read it, I hadn’t thought about how identified I’d become with my phone number. It has a pleasingly repetitive final four digits, and I feel inordinately proud of its original New York City area code, as if it lends me some kind of telephonic street cred. Letting go of it seems like it would invite intolerable havoc.
That wasn’t the case for Scott. The most dire fallout he suffers is encountering an acquaintance who’s chilly, leaving Scott to wonder whether it’s because texts to his old number went unanswered. “There’s a trick to calibrating the appropriate level of change,” he concludes. “An act that disturbs the firmament, but only disturbs it.”
Now I’m thinking about how I might disturb the firmament without knocking the stars from the sky. And not just in 10-digit increments.
7.
Live from London
“Saturday Night Live U.K.” premiered last weekend, with Tina Fey as the host. The opening monologue was fun and showcased how Fey’s “sharp and savage humor has always seemed to fit nicely in the British tradition,” as our comedy critic Jason Zinoman observed. The questions from the audience, featuring some recognizable faces admonishing Fey to learn the geography of the British Isles, were particularly entertaining.
8.
Tuna salad, lawful good?
I placed the In-N-Out Double-Double Animal Style burger at 66 percent chaotic and 19 percent evil on the sandwich alignment chart. Some will recognize this diversion as a variation on the Dungeons & Dragons system where players determine characters’ morality on axes of good versus evil and law versus chaos.
Where does a meatball sub fall? What about a broccoli Reuben? This is one of those low-stakes, high-passion activities that could destroy a friendship, so tread carefully.
One more thing: Mary Wall, a reader from Hamburg, N.Y., has a recommendation for reorienting toward the good:
Years ago, I heard someone say to acknowledge every green light you make. For those of us spending time in cars, it’s not uncommon to hear the gripe, “I got stopped at every red light today!” But we never really take time to notice when we make green lights. I’ve been doing that for probably 10 years now, and I really do make more green lights — even difficult ones — more often than I ever realized before I made a point to pay attention.
I’ll be paying attention to the green lights this week, and I hope you will, too. If you’ve found a way to reframe how you think about a semi-annoying thing like stoplights, I hope you’ll share it in the comments. You can also write me. If you want to get The Good List in your inbox, sign up here. I’ll see you next week. — Melissa
The Good List is edited by Jodi Rudoren. Eli Cohen handles the photos.