Mostly Just Fun New Photos
Obviously what a newsletter is for.
Greetings. I took a bunch of new photos for author/publicity type reasons with Elise Holowicki, and I wanted to share them here because why not? Plus, a couple comedy recommendations below, too.
I did my own hair and makeup, which was fun. Also, I think Elise captured a time and a place, specifically Chicago on the Spring Equinox in 2025, that I love.
Oh, but before you look at these photos…if you’re in or near Chicago…
Grab tix for the 4/30 CLASS! with Sara Benincasa and Chad the Bird at Lincoln Lodge in Chicago! Our March show sold out and it was silly and wonderful.
Plus we’ll be at C2E2, so LMK if you’ll be there, too!
And thanks again for all the kind words on the piece I wrote for The NY Times Magazine about agoraphobia and Jewel-Osco (with a major shout out to Wegmans). It’s animated online, so here’s a gift link.
Substack has a gallery function, but it isn’t working for me, so ANYWAY, here are the pics. First, we have a chill English (canonically queer) professor named Darla-Rose Jippenjam who eventually quits to be a full-time organic landscaper…
As you can see, we also summoned a woman called Vanessa Maria Marie Cinqueterra, who abandons her husband and children in 1994 after accidentally taking a wrong turn en route to Little Italy from her parking garage and wandering into a Cindy Sherman mid-career retrospective on the Lower East Side. She looks at one (1) portrait and is changed!
Does she purchase a loft with her divorce winnings and make it into a comfortable, safe orphanage for wayward drag queens? Yes. Does she surely get a much younger partner named Arturo who eventually politely leaves her for a drag queen and she’s not even mad? Also yes.
Anyway, I have to go back to reading and writing about Abraham Lincoln now. HOWEVER. If you have recommendations for bizarre roadside attractions to visit in America’s Middle West, please drop them in the comments below. I’ll have to trek all over this region to do my Lincoln research whilst on PTO from my full-time job, and since some of the sites are a bit of a schlep, I’ll need entertaining midway distractions like World’s Biggest Pile of Balayage Hair Extensions or whatever.
Love and other indoor sports,
Sara
Darla-Rose! I think I had her for Victorian lit where we spoke of nothing else but mad woman in the attic tropes. (Her real name was Sheila.)
I don’t know if you’ll be in Southwest Indiana, but you could visit New Harmony. It has a utopian society for about 5 years in the 1820s? There are lovely meditation spots and it’s a charming town.