 When I was a kid, everything made me cry. My feelings poured out in ways that felt like they were branding me. It was too easy, and it would last. As a young man, I didn't love this. In my mind, my parents, my classmates, my teachers, they all saw me as "a crier." One year, in a letter accompanying my Easter basket, the Bunny told me he thought I was a "cool dude" but that I "shouldn't cry so much." Embarrassing. But more than that: terrifying. In a few years, when I would be old enough to try out, how would I make it through the basketball season? I cried on the way home from games is how. I cried on the bench once, too—the day I looked into the stands and motioned to my mom that I was going to quit the team. I cried when I told the coach later that week, too. And again when I ran into him at a graduation party that summer. Seventeen years a crier at that point.   If you've found yourself in the catacombs of Reddit or YouTube lately, you'll know that the culture created by the post-credits scene—one where we're obsessed with reveals and Easter eggs and fan theories—has fundamentally changed how we view blockbuster movies. The culprits include nearly every blockbuster franchise, including Star Wars, DC, and Marvel, of course. Take the upcoming Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, for example, which by many accounts will be Marvel's biggest event since Avengers: Endgame. You can't click a stray Reddit hyperlink without ramming into a sketchy-looking, computer-generated, alleged leak of concept art from the film. (Which, by the way, is probably, most definitely, fake.) Take a look and ask yourself: What are we doing here? Creating our own post-credits-esque moments in souped-up Photoshops?
 Several years ago, after I'd made a concerted effort to die, I decided to keep living, and not only to keep living but to live well, to live happily, and to try to avoid trying to die. I tried all sorts of ways of living—alone, and with others, and alone but with strangers—but nothing really seemed right until I'd found the practice of Life Rotating. It was only after I began Life Rotating that I felt I could survive. I have no home of my own. I don't own more than I can carry. I live in a series of sparsely furnished houses in average American cities—existing quietly and contentedly for one month at a time and at the end of a month I—like all the other Life Rotators—take a calm evening journey by bus or train to the next life on the map. It's like musical chairs, in a way, except everyone always has a chair and the chairs are never removed, only added, as more people have been admitted into this frictionless way of life.  True crime is all around us, these days. From podcasts to television shows to movies and conventions, it's practically in the air we breathe. It's the true crime junkies' world—we're all just living in it. When it comes to literary true crime, these stories grip us unlike any other genre. For every suspense novel that shocks and awes readers, there are real life stories that make those fictions seem tame and predictable. True crime is a loaded genre: the best authors do not sensationalize violence and human suffering, but they provide context and depth to the crimes they study. In these excellent books, we see how all lives—from the perpetrators and the investigators, to the victims and their families—are profoundly changed by the destruction detailed within. We've rounded up some of our favorites, which cover a wide swathe of crimes highlighting a wide swath of societal implications. If you need to leave the light on when you go to bed after reading, we won't judge.
 It's been a uniquely chaotic movie year, and things are about to get very busy in November when an avalanche of high-profile mainstream releases and award-seeking dramas crowd the marketplace. Keeping up with that onslaught will be a difficult task for most, but it certainly bodes well for cinephiles, as well as the industry, whose health has been a constant question throughout the pandemic. There may be many more films to look forward to in the coming month, but as of now, these are our choices for the best movies of 2021.  At 51, Padma Lakshmi is a food industry titan, having anchored each season of Bravo's Top Chef since 2006, two seasons of Hulu's Taste the Nation, and authoring three cookbooks. Also a memoirist, her first children's book, Tomatoes For Neela, released earlier this fall.
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Sunday, November 07, 2021
The Moment I Knew I Wanted Kids
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