blindsided by the blind side

+ shit you should cook about: the magic of growing a vege garden 🪴

Good morning my besties!!!! Happy Friyay to all who celebrate, and happy Thursyay to those who aren’t living in the future like me 𓆩♡𓆪

Close Friends came with Soph and me to look at some sheep and lambs yesterday:

paying supporters got to actually see the animals

AND we announced our new BOOK CLUB PICK!!! This next one is chic, it’s a ‘living autobiography’ and it’s a Bel rec - so I think you’re gonna love it!

• Normy teaches us some facts about women’s football

• Was Michael Oher blindsided?

• This week in podcasts

• Shit You Should Cook About: Why everyone needs a vege garden🪴👩‍🌾

Normy teaches us some facts about women’s football

I just feel like I should be mentioning the Women’s World Cup whenever I can because OMG has this been something to behold for women’s sport!!! The semi-final (where England beat Australia 3-1) drew in an audience of 11.15 million people and was the highest viewership ever recorded for Channel 7 (the host broadcaster.)

On another note: I woke up to an email from Normy - who’s been listening to a podcast about women’s football to help him fall asleep (he’s just like me fr) - saying “Did you know that women’s football was banned by the English football association for over 50 years until 1970!!??”

He’s currently sitting on the couch fact-checking this and reading me out extra facts like:

• “A year after more than 50,000 turned up to watch Dick, Kerr Ladies play St Helens, a ban was introduced that was to last half a century.”

• The game brought in what would be around £140,000 which FREAKED out the Football Association and the ‘Political Establishment because it was “outside their jurisdiction and control.”

  • “Worse still, that money was no longer being raised to support the war wounded but was being channelled into political and working-class causes – causes antithetical to the establishment.”

• So, one year after that game, the FA voted to ban women’s football. “The sport’s governing body did not have the power to ban women from playing outright – that was impossible, so instead they ruled that women’s games were barred from FA-affiliated football grounds. The ban was to last for 51 years.”

Funnily enough, he’s singing ‘Push’ by Matchbox Twenty as he’s telling me all of this.

---

Was Michael Oher blindsided?

Woooooooah ok this story…. there’s a bit of ‘he said she said’ going on, but here’s what we know.

On Monday, Michael Oher, (the NFL player whose story inspired "The Blind Side,") filed to end his legal relationship with the Tuohy family, claiming he only recently learned that he was never adopted by them, but rather, he was ‘tricked’ into signing conservatorship papers. This is significant because he says it gave them “the authority to make his business decisions” and allowed the family “to profit from his life story with "The Blind Side," which earned $309 million at the box office.”

Sean Tuohy has since responded, telling The Daily Memphian that none of Oher's allegations are true and that they “didn't make any money off the movie.”

“Tuohy told the local Memphis newspaper that Michael Lewis, the author of the book that The Blind Side film is based on, gave his family half of the share of profits from the book — saying that everybody in the Tuohy family got an equal share, including Michael, of about $14,000 each.”

He also said this, about Michael signing the papers:

"Michael was obviously living with us for a long time, and the NCAA didn't like that," Tuohy told the publication. "They said the only way Michael could go to Ole Miss was if he was actually part of the family. I sat Michael down and told him, 'If you're planning to go to Ole Miss -- or even considering Ole Miss -- we think you have to be part of the family. This would do that, legally.'"

Finally, Tuohy has said that if Oher wants to end the conservatorship now, he would "of course" be willing to end it.

A strange, sad, and murky story, and there’s way more info on it here if you’re interested!

Culture Vulture: On being a teenager in your 20s

This week on Culture Vulture (our pop culture podcast):

• Micheal Oher (who inspired the film The Blind Side) has filed a lawsuit alleging that the Tuohy family tricked him into a conservatorship and lied about his adoption status

• Alex Cooper’s new network 'Unwell' has signed Alix Earl and Madeline Argy

• Addison Rae is about to drop new music (and maybe become the next pop it girl?)

• Stevie Nicks says that Daisy Jones & The Six feels like 'her story' and that she hopes the show will continue

• Why we all feel like teenage girls in our 20s right now

Spotify:

Apple Pods:

The Shit Show: Zepotha: How Gen Z created an entire fake movie

This week on The Shit Show (our weekly news podcast)

• Zepotha, explained

• An update on the soldier that crossed the border into North Korea

• The mother of the six-year-old who shot his teacher in Virginia has pleaded guilty to a charge of felony child neglect

• The NZ labour party, explained

Spotify:

Apple Pods:

Shit You Should Cook About: Why everyone needs a vege garden🪴👩‍🌾

Shit You Should Cook About is written by London Laura - our resident ray of sunshine and co-host of Culture Vulture (our weekly pop culture podcast!) She’s a new London dweller, chief of romanticising literally everything, and will definitely ask you all what your love language is at some stage. You can find more Shit She Should Cook About over here!

Hiiiii lovely whānau! I loveeee seeing you cooking up last week’s beans, they truly are a perfect brunch or dinner for one (Normy making them for his brunch was an absolute highlight for me!!). This week’s SYSCOOKA is something a lil different and tbh very Chicken Soup For The Soul (since we are embracing our inner teenage girl), but I think having been here a year now (!!!) we’re ready for that? 

I’ve mentioned before how cooking represented a large step for me in learning to take care of myself. For me, a huge part of that journey was learning how to grow my own food and tending to a vegetable garden. In the autumn of 2018, I moved into a new flat with a big, unused planter box and decided I was going to put it to use. My flatmates helped me lug home 10kg bags of compost from the garden centre and baby zucchini plants from the farmers market, I’d call my green-fingered friend in a desperate panic over how close to plant tomato vines, and I held pot-luck dinners where each attendee was marched outside to admire the garden. It was wild and crowded and haphazardly planted, but it was all mine and I loved it. I thought about it so much that for several months I started dreaming about it. It became a very overused metaphor for my life, gently teaching me how to plan ahead, and how to dream things up for the future - it was part of committing to something, something tangible I had to tend to regularly rather than my usual boom or bust. I had to prune my vines in November to see cherry tomatoes in January. I had to pare back the basil to stop it going to seed. I had to waaaaaaait for signs of new life to sprout from the compost. 

Side note: the concept of compost in itself is strange. When planting a garden, you start with compost/soil that has mess and death written all over it. But did you know that topsoil actually has its own entire ecosystem? It literally talks to itself, held together by a structure called mycorrhiza that is alive – and more than that – we only know 10% of what is going on on a microscopic level in there. The other 90% is literally unknown. From this mysterious place grows new life… which is comforting to think about when things feel very in the dark and you aren’t sure how to build your life from what feels like a lot of mess/rubble.

For a while, it all fell into line. I was growing tomatoes, lettuce, spinach, strawberries, zucchini, comforted by the knowledge that what I was planting would one day nourish me, my flatmates and the people who came into my home. But life eventually got away on me, I went away for work, got caught up in a run of late nights and early mornings and went down to the garden one day to find my spinach had gone to seed and a tangled mass of rotting tomato vines. Overwhelmed by the mess and disheartened, I pulled everything out, hacking up fully-mature shooters and ripping up roots. The little planter box was mine, and only mine, and despite some well-intentioned flatmates, nobody was going to step in. It was totally up to me whether it flourished or faltered. Eventually, I replanted, kept a close eye, and that summer we enjoyed fresh heirloom tomato pasta, courgette and lemon salad, silverbeet and ricotta linguine. It was glorious. And when the February heat started to wane and the vines heaved their final crop, I watched the leaves turn a pale yellow and wither. Gutted, I once again called my friend, who reassured me it was all okay – simply put, their job was done. It was time to let the leaves fall & fertilise the soil. She said even the soil has to rest - there is a time for planting and a time to let the land lie fallow. Which may mean doing absolutely nothing at all. 

Now I live in London where I dream of a having garden again, instead, I have downsized to a windowsill herb box and a wall-climbing bean plant. To continue the heavy use of metaphor, I’m learning to be measured and contained, that it’s okay to be in my place, to love my community and my lot really well. And whatever season you find yourself in, can I humbly suggest you get out there in your garden!! Pull up what you need to, whether it’s an unhelpful narrative, a lie that’s allowing you to accommodate bad behaviour, or some literal weeds. Water yourself with good books and fish burgers, or let your soil rest and watch a comfort show -  but please tend to it because nobody else is going to. See you in the garden centre <3

Laura xxxx

---

Ugh on that absolutely BEAUTIFUL and wholesome note, this weekend I will not be planting a garden (but I will be devouring a fish burger and a good book at Laura’s rec) and I hope you find something similar to water yourself with too!!!!!

If you wanna:

• Become a Close Friend on Instagram

• Become a member of our 📚Book Club📚

• AND get Bel’s Sunday morning newsy ‘No News Is Good News’

Please consider becoming a paying supporter 💌