Pop Culture Diaries: Meghan Jordan
Pop Culture Diaries: Meghan Jordan
This week: a grant project director listens to the Margo’s Got Money Troubles audiobook, researches children's literature for a writing project, and watches Industry
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This week: a grant project director listens to the Margo’s Got Money Troubles audiobook, researches children's literature for a writing project, and watches Industry - all while navigating the demands of work and parenthood.
Name: Meghan Jordan
Occupation: Grant project director at a small liberal arts college
From: NY’s Capital Region
Week Covered: Sunday, September 22- Sunday, September 28
Sunday:
It’s Sunday, so that means getting my kids ready for my son’s basketball skills and drills session at the park. For my son’s YouTube turn, he flips through videos about playing Fortnite, online challenges that seem staged, and Easter Eggs in SpongeBob Squarepants. I tune in and out while I do the dishes to make sure he’s not watching anything inappropriate (he’s eight). When it’s my daughter’s turn, she watches her new favorite: Ben Azelart, a twenty-something whose most interesting videos are about creating secret rooms in his house. Definitely doesn’t rise to the level of Ripley’s Believe it or Not, but it’s mildly interesting (and who doesn’t want a game room hidden under a couch cushion?). YouTube time is up and my son hops on Fortnite with one of his best friends, while my daughter tunes in to The Loud House on Paramount+. I get caught up in an episode, because truly I can get lost in anything, and I like the idea of having a thirteen-person family.
We have to eat and get dressed for the day, so I toast a bagel and read The Ambitious Kitchen Cookbook, which just arrived this week. I am an avid cookbook collector and have been following the AK blog for a while, so I was really excited to receive this (thank you, past self, for preordering!). I read my cookbooks cover to cover, so I’ll be dipping into this one all week.
We get home and my daughter goes off to the park with my husband. I tell my son I have to check something online, but secretly I also check a few of my favorite food blogs (Smitten Kitchen, Butternut Bakery, A Cozy Kitchen, and Half Baked Harvest) before I get caught and scolded, because I promised to play a game. We play a round of Guess Who? before my daughter comes home and then I play a round with her. Now I’m ready for a break. I make some Healthy Carrot Muffins from Pinch of Yum while calling my best friend in California.
The kids go out to play baseball and fish with their dad (not my jam) and I clean up the kitchen and turn on the Margo’s Got Money Troubles audiobook, which I just started reading on the recommendation of Alisha Ramos in her Downtime newsletter. I am loving it so far. Everyone heads back inside and I turn off my book because I’m not wearing headphones and this book is not appropriate for my six year-old and eight year-old. Oh, well.
At bedtime, I settle into reading Alexandra Lange’s history of the mall, which is a delight. Although I was a mallrat too, I did not think I’d like an architectural history of commercial properties this much. Highly recommend. My husband watches football on mute until the kids are asleep and then we have just enough energy to watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which we did not watch in real time and have just started in the last month or so.
Monday:
I read The Ambitious Kitchen Cookbook while eating those carrot muffins with butter while getting through the general school morning chaos. I listen to Margo’s Got Money Troubles on the drive and on my way into the office. I take a snack break at 10 am and play my favorite NYT games: Connections, Strands, The Mini, and Wordle.
It’s time for my lunch-hour yoga class at the college gym, so I pop on my AirPods and listen to Margo again while I walk over and then on the walk back to my office. At a late meeting, everyone talks about what they used to watch as kids and how nothing now is as great. I’m happy to report that we all watched Reading Rainbow, but I’m the oldest so no one knew what the hell Fraggle Rock was.
Before bed, I read a ton of Lange’s Meet Me at the Fountain while my husband does class prep. I’m a slow reader, though, so I’m still thirty pages from the end, which is maddening. We decide to have dessert and watch at least half an episode of Industry, which is a great show, despite the fact that I know so little about investment banking (the subtitle function has helped a lot with allowing me to follow the plot).
Tuesday:
I sleep in until 5:45 am (fun!) and we buzz about in our usual routine: TV, breakfast, get dressed, get on the bus, get to work. It’s The Loud House and SpongeBob again for the kids. After the kids get on the bus, my husband and I get in the car to go to work. I’ve been trying to listen to more music lately, so I can be “hip,” as the young’uns say. We listen to FLY 92.3, a Top 40 radio station. “Espresso” plays twice, but I’m proud that I know who sings it.
I get into work and sift through emails. Then I read the NYT Daily Briefing and The Atlantic Daily. Because I work on a college campus and design and facilitate or co-facilitate many of our programs on gender-based violence prevention and response, I make sure I know exactly what’s going on in the world every day. I get a call from school: my son needs to be picked up.
My planned day shifts quite a bit and I’m exhausted by 7:00 pm. I read an article about food critic Keith Lee in the New York Times and watch a couple of his Tik Toks, which are oddly satisfying. I finish Lange’s book and fully pass out. No TV watching tonight.
Wednesday:
Up and at ‘em for Hump Day. Thank sweet Heaven for those carrot muffins I made because there is no time for breakfast. I hop in the car, but I need a little space from Margo this morning. I turn on The Dolls of Our Lives podcast, which I came to very late in its run, basically when it was a few episodes from being over. I decided to start from the very beginning of the podcast and am now on the Kirsten section. Just what I needed this morning. It’s kind of thrilling because I know I have 100+ hours of content left to enjoy, like rewatching an old television show that ran for several seasons. At work I catch up on Landline, Anne Helen Petersen’s Culture Study newsletter, and Sara Petersen’s In Pursuit of Clean Countertops newsletter.
I read the introduction to a special issue of Ecozon@, “Plant Tendrils in Children's and Young Adult Literature,” for a writing project. My husband reads a novel about SpongeBob Squarepants being a detective to the kids while I read some early popular children’s fiction for the above project. I’m reminded that Kipling’s The Jungle Books are actually pretty boring. I don’t know how they have remained such a looming source of cultural myth.
Thursday:
The cat and I are bold this morning: we get up at 5 am for Zumba. I used to take a class, but now I enjoy videos from either Zumba Sulu or TaNa on YouTube. I think the cat is pleased with this arrangement, although her version of Zumba is belly flopping in the middle of the floor so I have to dance (gracefully, to my mind) around her. Zumba is fun: it’s distractingly active and the music is great - a cross between Top 40 and all The Music Equinox Forgot.
I have a doctor’s appointment before work, so I get to catch up with Margo and Jinx on the ride there and back. While I wait, I check emails, including the NYT Daily Briefing and The Atlantic Daily.
I have to help out with a workshop on campus at night, so I listen to Margo again on the drive home. This book is so captivating! It’s quirky, but relatable and human, too, somehow. It’s as good as Alison Espach’s The Wedding People, which I recently finished for the book club I’m in.
Since I’ve finished Lange’s book, I’m ready to pick something else off of the TBR pile on my nightstand. I finally decide on Marlon James’s The Book of Night Women. The dialect is difficult for me, but the story is enthralling and I quickly read three chapters (might be a new personal record). Once the kids are asleep my husband and I watch Bad Monkey, the new Vince Vaughn show on Apple TV. I can’t even with this show. I love it so much. It’s funny; it’s smart; it’s suspenseful. It’s just everything I want a show to be right now.
Friday:
Ah, sweet weekend! Margo and I drive to work together again. In the afternoon, I take a walk and Margo comes with me. Once I get into an audiobook, it’s really hard for me to pace myself, no matter how hard I try to savor it. This also happened with Jessica Knoll’s Bright Young Women, although I had a serious book hangover after that. The subject matter alone was too weighty to follow with anything else for a while.
I get a chance to dip back into my writing project and skim E. Nesbit’s The Enchanted Castle and Five Children and It, not contemporary pop culture, but the latter has never been out of print since it was published in 1902. It’s a weird little novella about five children who meet a fairy that grants wishes, but all of the wishes turn out awry. The fairy is this grumpy, hairy creature. It’s a fun one.
While the kids watch TV after dinner I finish The Ambitious Kitchen Cookbook and then read some more of The Book of Night Women before bed. My husband and I have just enough juice to finish that episode of Industry from Monday night.
Saturday:
It’s a busy day of cleaning and errands. I don’t get to watch or listen to a single thing until the evening. I still subscribe to three print magazines - Vanity Fair, HGTV, and Better Homes and Gardens - so I grab an issue I haven’t read yet. I love the feel of print in my hands and it’s exciting to open the mailbox to a new issue. When I was in college, my best friend and I would send each other packages so we’d have something on the way and wouldn’t feel homesick or lonely. I always looked forward to the little laminated card that would tell me I had a package in the mailroom. Getting print magazines is 1/10 of that feeling, but it’s something.
My husband makes some margaritas and we relax with a family viewing of one of the Transformers movies (honestly, my favorite action franchise). Before bed, I finish the Halloween issue of Better Homes and Gardens, then we watch Slow Horses, a spy show with a great cast, on Apple TV. It’s fairly complex and slow moving - not something I plan on binging (which is not a reality for me anyway, as you can see from this diary). Then off to bed.
Pop Culture Round-Up: Meghan’s Week in Review:
Articles:
Korsha Wilson “How Does the Internet’s Most Popular Food Critic Keep Creating Drama?” New York Times (September 23, 2024)
Ecozon@ (European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment) Vol. 15 No. 1 (2024): Plant Tendrils in Children’s and Young Adult Literature | https://ecozona.eu/issue/view/265.
Books:
Monique Volz. The Ambitious Kitchen Cookbook
Alison Espach. The Wedding People
Marlon James. The Book of Night Women
Rudyard Kipling. The Jungle Books
Jessica Knoll. Bright Young Women
E. Nesbit. The Enchanted Castle
E. Nesbit. Five Children and It
Rufi Thorpe. Margo’s Got Money Troubles
Alexandra Lange. Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall
Food Blogs:
Games:
NYT games: Connections, Strands, The Mini, and Wordle
Movies:
Newsletters:
The Atlantic Daily (The Atlantic)
Culture Study (Anne Helen Petersen)
In Pursuit of Clean Countertops (Sara Petersen)
Landline (Me!)
The Morning Newsletter (NY Times)
Podcasts
Radio:
Recipes:
Healthy Carrot Muffins (Pinch of Yum)
TV:
The Loud House (Paramount+)
YouTube:
Call Me! (or not!)
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