Con’s Consumptions (April 2026)
Everyone has their own process for how they discover things for their consumption. For me, I like to think it is a combination of research & whimsy. Research can only get you so far, but there is something about our own human intuition that adds to the magic of discovery. So this month, I am going to show you the thread that led me to these things & made me decide to consume them.
Bojack Horseman
My friend McKyna recommended this show to me back in November. She specifically recommended it to me because she knew that I liked shows that are light but philosophical. I find that form of art so intelligent. The ability to deliver really complex feelings & topics in a way that doesn’t make the entire show super dark & heavy OR just a show that is trying to get laughs with no depth.
I have a running notes app of ‘Things to Consume’ so I added this to that. What made me pluck it off the list though? It actually was because I had watched the show Long Story Short in November, based off a rec from another one of my friends, Kenz. She said it had such a great storytelling format to each episode & I was in the midst of really focusing on learning in the storytelling department. So I watched that before McKyna told me about this & when I was doing my own research on Bojack, I saw that Long Story Short had the same creator as Bojack.
From there, the recommendation bumped itself up on the list. So I did start this show back in November or December but I just finished it in April. The last episode, I started crying & I really had to zoom out for a second & realize… I am crying over an animated horse that is voice by Will Arnett.
Would definitely recommend if you are looking for an animated series that has humor & depth.
Mom
Speaking of shows with humor & depth. I have also been watching Mom. Something about watching a sitcom before I go to bed brings me back to my childhood. I used to always fall asleep to Nick At Nite. This one I’ve known about for years & seen some misc. episodes but Kayla had been watching it last fall & mentioned it. I took a mental note of that & as I was looking for a new sitcom, it came across my Netflix & I thought back to that so I started watching it.
Similar to Bojack, I feel like it covers the complex topics of addiction & it has really smart humor within it.
Even The Good Girls Will Cry
My stepmom recommended this one to me. She had seen a random FB post about it & how Melissa Auf der Maur had talked about the Chicago music scene in her book so she just sent my way. I had never heard of Melissa before this recommendation but I did some researching to see she was the bass player of Hole & The Smashing Pumpkins. I had been in a phase where I was interested in learning about women in music in the 90’s so just reading the description of the memoir had me order it immediately.
This book really sent me down a rabbit hole & influenced a lot of other things I consumed this month. I could tell that this book came into my awareness at just the right moment when it was supposed to. I then started to see videos about Courtney Love & snippets from Billy Corgan’s podcast. It was a broader history lesson & life lesson that was built around this specific book & it then allowed me to see different things that I was experiencing around me with a new lens & some of the knowledge I picked up from it.
I was listening to a lot of music from women in the 90’s this last month. I started listening to Hole & watching their old performances. I had watched Man on the Moon last year, the Andy Kaufman movie Jim Carrey did. I didn’t realize Courtney Love was in it, but when I found that out at this time, I went to watch the documentary about the making of Man on the Moon, Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond, to see her in that light as well. I listened to Billy Corgan’s podcast with Courtney Love & the one with Melissa Auf der Maur.
The cap on it all was that I was able to catch Melissa Auf der Maur on her book tour stop in SF. It was sold out but then the night beforehand I looked it up one more time just in case & they had created a later session to open up more spots, since it was at a pretty intimate book store in Haight-Ashbury.
One word-of-mouth recommendation shaped where my time & energy was focused for this month.
EMELINE
I went to go see EMELINE at Cafe du Nord this month. I actually discovered this show through the Cafe du Nord’s instagram. I follow them & they post all of their upcoming shows, so I chose this one spontaneously to go to on a Thursday. I had known one or two of her songs in the past, but never dove into who she was as an artist. She just released a new album recently, but also has a pretty deep catalog so this sent me down finding a bunch of new songs from her.
She also had an opener, DEZI, who I had never heard of & I went early to see her & it was one of the best openers I have seen. She brought the energy & then it sent me down the rabbit hole of finding her music too.
You can see more of the songs I like from them here:
TAVERNA
My friend, Morgan, was in town from Chicago this past week for work & was staying in Palo Alto so we planned to get dinner in that area. I could not tell you much about the dining in South Bay so this wasn’t something where I could just pick out a restaurant from a list of ones I have already been aware of… discovery had to be done.
Google is always my first plan of attack when it comes to finding restaurants & I usually like to find something from a major editorial source, like The Infatuation or EATER, to start so then it can narrow down the pool of restaurants in an area.
From there, I am going to dive deeper into the selections that pique my interest. That means I am looking up their website, their instagram, their TikTok, etc. Now I have to go deeper, I love the app Beli, so that is always where I do my last bit of research to see photos, reviews, if other people I have known have been there. THEN I finally choose the place. It is not a straightforward process. It is a lot to carry the restaurant selection process… you are determining the vibes for an evening in that case.
So this research process, mixed with looking inward at what I was feeling food-wise that day then had me land on Taverna… obviously with sign-off from Morgan too.
This is one of those things that you can’t even fully predict from the reviews… we had a phenomenal dinner (the food looked just like the photos so that was easy to be predicted from the digital side of things). BUT I couldn’t predict the server we would get. His name was Moose (I could not tell you if that is the proper way he would spell that) & he was a lovely Greek man in his 50’s. He made the whole experience go from great to unforgettable. He sat down at the table with us to chat & was pouring extra wine. He surprised us with a dessert choice & came over to ensure that he didn’t lead us astray. Then ended the night with Mastiha from Moose.
The food was great, but that surprise experience & dining journey on a Monday night made it one of those things that I would specifically go down to Palo Alto for. You could tell it wasn’t just Moose, the whole staff created a great dining culture & experience for the people there… if you were open to it.
Chelsea Cutler
Chelsea had a small pop up show in SF at Rickshaw Stop. She announced it 1.5 weeks before the show & I saw her announce it on her IG story. This was my fourth time seeing her live, so it was a no brainer that I was going to get tickets to this pop up show… I will see her live at any opportunity I can get because she is a phenomenal live performer.
Sometimes you follow an artist for so long that you forget how you originally found them in the first place. I do remember with this one though. I was on a first date in 2019 & they played this song in their car & sent me the artist afterwards… that artist being Chelsea Cutler. I’ve just been following her since & she is like the same age as me & living in big cities, going through the queer experience of coming into yourself, dating, also just philosophical about life.
She is someone where I will always follow her career & music over the years.
I find that what I consume directly influences the seeds & inspiration I have for my own creation, so I am quite picky these days about my own inputs & how they impact my outputs. Humans are very impressionable, so when companies try to control what we are discovering & consuming… it actually shapes our view of the world. It is important that we are in control of our own discovery process & have authority over our own taste.
There are different layers of discovery for everything. I have had experience at a company that has focused on data, so when I think about things like this, I always go back to the ‘Funnel’ visualization of things. Please bear with me on the corporate lingo here. You have top of the funnel that feeds down to the eventual decision you make. Closing the deal on what you are going to consume or experience.
This doesn’t just apply to music, it applies to the discovery of most consumptions these days. The one thing that can’t be represented in a funnel though… that’s whimsy.
The funnel gets you close. But there’s a moment in every discovery where the data runs out… where no algorithm or recommendation could’ve predicted what you’d choose or why. That’s intuition. That’s whimsy. & I think protecting that part of your discovery process is actually really important.
🔗 https://connoreschrich.substack.com/p/cons-consumptions-april-2026
