ft. ‘The White Lotus’ & Healthy Baked Donuts

July 23, 2021 by Sydney Grant

Welcome to the (almost) weekend, everyone! The 2021 Olympics are finally here, although we are for some reason referring to them as Tokyo 2020???? I don’t know about y’all, but I’m pretty sure I’d rather not relive last year? Regardless, it’s a very exciting week. To get you ready, I’ve included a streaming schedule of all of this weekend’s games, a new HBO thriller that may be even more anxiety-inducing than watching someone attempt to land a double pike vault, and a “healthy” donut recipe that won’t have you feeling guilty after you stress-eat 10 of them.

However you’re planning on spending your weekend, enjoy these quarantivities!

Quarant-streams

‘The White Lotus’

Watch this to say “Aloha” to your next favorite show:

The White Lotus may be set in a tropical beachfront paradise worthy of anyone’s Pinterest board, but from the getgo, we a viewers can tell that there is something amiss at this Maui resort. Perhaps it’s the eerie score that pops up every now and again, or the horrifying Hawaiian shirts one of the entitled guests sports throughout. Or maybe, it’s the cardboard coffin we see being loaded onto the airplane within the first five minutes of the first episode. Who’s to say?

After hitting us with the classic “one week earlier,” rewind, what we as viewers know about this new HBO thriller is this: Someone is going to die. Of course, we don’t know who or how, but by the end of the first episode, you’ll probably have a list of preliminary suspects. Could it be husband and aforementioned Hawaiian shirt-sporter Shane, who calls his mom when a room mix-up denies him the Pineapple Suite? College students Olivia and Paula who may find themselves so bored on their family vacation that they decide to shake things up with murder?? The manager of the resort himself, Armond, who is one unsatisfactory mai tai away from a nervous breakdown??? And then, of course, there’s the question of whose body has the unfortunate pleasure of riding cargo home. Will I ever meet an HBO limited series that I don’t feel the need to finish in one day? Seriously, @HBO, this whole released weekly thing is just not working for me.

Stream it via HBO Max

‘Invincible’

Watch this if you want something with a twist better than M. Night Shyamalan’s new movie:

I try (to the best of my ability) to include a little bit of everything in these newsletters. And so, every now and then I have to throw out a suggestion for my fellow animated series lovers. After a friend recommended this one to me last weekend, I shamelessly binge-watched the whole thing in mere days, so I am now officially qualified to attest to its greatness. Based on the comic book series by The Walking Dead’s Robert Kirkman, the series follows Mark Grayson, a high-school student living in a world not only where superheroes exist, but one where his dad is the Superman of all superheroes. In this case, Omni-Man.

After finally coming into his powers one fateful night in the parking lot of the burger joint he works at, Mark is thrust into the world of superherodom, as he’s forced to balance his old “normal” life with his new “super” one. For Mark, maintaining his high-school relationship is just as important as stopping an alien invasion, and so we as viewers spend nearly as much time watching him try and save his relationship as we do watching him try and save the world. As we learn early on, his father doesn’t share quite as much of Mark’s sense of humility as we’d expect from Earth’s #1 superhero, however. Amidst all the bad guy takedowns, colorful super suits, and cartoon fun, Invincible packs a nefarious subplot (that may or may not involve a certain Omni-Man) that will keep you on your toes and smashing that “Next Episode” button. Oh, and did I mention that the voice cast is phenomenal?

Stream it via Amazon

Quarant-reads

‘Appleseed’ by Matt Bell

Read this if you want a not-so-gentle reminder to reduce, reuse, recycle:

Part science fiction, part speculative nightmare, Appleseed takes a time-traveling journey from the 1700s to a thousand years from now, with a pitstop in the 2050s along the way. Bell imagines the tolls of climate change and what our world will look like in as little as 50 years, with one company monopolizing all of Earth’s natural resources. Fast-forward a thousand years and things have gotten even worse, as North America is now one giant North Pole covered in ice. From two brothers set out to make a fortune off apples to a cyborg determined to encounter any semblance of humanity that may be left, Appleseed will consume you from start to finish. (And then cause you to lose no less than two nights of sleep over the impending doom of what we are doing to our planet. Fun stuff!)

Purchase via Amazon.

Quarant-eats

30 Minute Pineapple Chicken with Coconut Rice via Half Baked Harvest:

Make this if you’ve only got 30 minutes and a pineapple you told yourself you’d cut up days ago but never did rotting on your counter (Please don’t actually use a rotting pineapple…):