Hot Summer Hot Takes
E+E’s extremely biased advice for your best (hot) summer yet!
It’s summertime at Each + Every, and the only thing hotter than my car’s vinyl steering wheel after a day of sitting in the parking lot outside of our office is the hot takes you’ll hear from our team about this season’s latest TV shows, movie debuts, album releases, and food + bevs!
In that spirit, each member of our studio invites you to grab a cool beverage, set up your lawn chair, apply SPF 50 sunblock, and take a moment to relax and enjoy our Hot Summer Hot Takes. We can’t promise that you’ll agree with what we share, but we can promise you that our arbitrary emoji ranking system will provide you the recommendations, clarity, wisdom, and extremely biased advice you need to have your best (hot) summer yet.
HOBI: Stranger Things 3 was kinda boring.
I work in an office with a bunch of Stranger Things stans, so I’m sure I’ll catch a ton of flack for this smokin’ hot take: Stranger Things 3 felt boring and offensively formulaic. I was totally fine with the second season suffering from a bit of sophomoritis after a fantastic first season, but rather than improving its storytelling and offering a fresh format, ST3 continues to stretch its long-form monster-of-the-week story structure all while regressing its best characters and failing to back up its emotional climaxes with any real depth. It’s this structural repetition that made the character motifs feel tired and the 80’s nostalgia feel stale — both things that made the first season great. I did like the darker tone quite a bit and really enjoyed new character additions, but all-in-all, I’m left disappointed and less excited for a fourth season.
Stranger Things Season 3
🐀🐀½ / 5 (I can’t do half-a-rat)
GABE: Iced Maple Lattes are the greatest espresso beverage. Year-round.
Everyone hates lukewarm coffee. But if you drink hot coffee, once that hot caffeinated water hits your cup the clock is ticking. Unless you drink your lava liquid within the first few minutes it’s only a matter of time till that delicious hot brew turns into an unpalatable room-temperature puddle.
Fortunately, your local barista and God himself have conspired to create the Iced Latte. Not only is this a cool and refreshing beverage, it’s also got espresso. All the caffeine and deliciousness of a brew coffee, packed into a shot glass serving. Now add a dash of cream and a splash of your sustainably sourced, Grade A amber-colored, maple syrup harvested from the best Vermont maple trees that have been around longer than Bernie Sanders has been alive…. And you have the perfect morning elixir.
Iced Maple Latte
🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁/5
CAIT: Bon Appetit’s honeydew salad is the best way to be popular this summer.
Between the potlucks, barbecues, and holiday parties, it seems like you can’t leave the house in the summer without being asked to “bring a dish.” Here’s the problem: it’s a 91,000 degrees so the oven is not an option and you know Aunt Linda already has the ramen salad covered…so what do you bring?? Bon Appetit both saved my life this summer and made me the most popular person at every potluck with this honeydew salad from their June issue.
First, it’s SO EASY. Chop a bunch of stuff up, coat it in an amazing ginger dressing, sprinkle some mint leaves and peanuts on top and you are done. Second, it is the most delicious. We got salt, we got fat, we got acid, we skipped the heat because it’s summer in Ohio and we’re dying. It’s a taste explosion and a crowd-pleaser. (I have even watched picky eaters scarf this down.) Your thumbs will be worn out from texting the recipe to every aunt, cousin, and next-door neighbor. Third, it’s beautiful. Almost every ingredient is green: honeydew, avocado, cucumber, serrano, mint. It stands out amongst the neutral sea of burgers, corn on the cob, and cheesy potatoes. The only downside is this salad doesn’t keep well in the fridge…but no worries, there won’t be leftovers.
Bon Appetit’s Honeydew Salad with Ginger Dressing and Peanuts
🥑🥑🥑🥑🥑/5
ALEX: “Self Discovery for Social Survival” is one of my favorite records to-date.
“Self Discovery for Social Survival” is a collaborative surf and music film and soundtrack created between record label Mexican Summer and Brooklyn based Pilgrim Surf + Supply. I grew up skateboarding and snowboarding, and this is much of the reason I became interested in graphic design. In both cultures, music and art play a key role in the design of boards, films, merchandise, and the like — but they are also respected forms of creative expression. It’s rare though that the sports themselves and the creative acts which surround them are as symbiotic and collaborative as in the film Self Discovery. The film features 16 surfers across 3 oceans paired up with 8 musicians creating in response to their experiences:
“The idea was to send surfers and musicians off on these trips together. Get them out there amongst it — in the surf, in the afterglow of the surf, talking story at dinner, just all the great stuff that happens on a surf trip. Then, right after their trips, the musicians jump into the studio and compose based on their experiences. With their hair still wet, so to speak. SDSS is not afraid to tightrope the guidelines surf is usually associated with. The experimental spirit is alive and well in the film. The artist on the trip is reacting and responding to the moment we’re having. It’s about relinquishing control and taking creative risks.”
— Director and Pilgrim Surf + Supply proprietor, Chris Gentile
As soon as I heard about the soundtrack, I pre-ordered the vinyl version, and it has quickly become one of my favorites. Mexican Summer has been one of my favorite labels for a long time (i.e. Real Estate had their beginnings there), and the film features Allah Las alongside Dungen alongside Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. The artwork and cinematography is also wonderfully derivative to 60s surf posters and typography.
Self Discovery for Social Survival
🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀/5
LEAH: LaCroix is Actually the Worst
LaCroix is objectively the worst. There I said it. Get ready for an argument completely based on gut reaction and stubbornness. Maybe it’s possible that some people actually enjoy LaCroix. But I’m tired of watching millennials walk past the bottled water and lemonade to snatch a can of LaCroix in an effort to participate in a trend that will hopefully die out as quickly as the Silly Bandz we wore a mere few years ago. I’m sick of watching people hide a grimace as they guzzle down this carbonated nightmare in an effort to be “cool.” I call it The LaCroix Effect™ and yes, I too have fallen prey to its temptations before. I used to guzzle Arizona green tea because of the beautiful mint-colored cherry blossom cans that house a beverage that ultimately tastes like watered-down honey, let’s be honest. But not this time. LaCroix’s deceptively bright, tastefully colored cans cannot finagle me into consuming their ultimately tasteless contents.
Let me just say what none of you are thinking: water should never be carbonated in the first place. Fact: the ancient manuscripts have been lost, but carbonating water is the actual eighth deadly sin. In a generation which passionately cries that we all deserve to be ourselves, I’m surprised that we deny water that same right. I first tried LaCroix a couple years ago, and my tastebuds begged for mercy. It was then that my conspiracy theory was born: Maybe we consume buckets of coffee and LaCroix every day because we want to like it and we want people to like that we’re trendy, not because we actually like it. Something to think about as you happily sip Satan’s drink of choice this summer.
If my biased opinion hasn’t yet convinced you to refute your own biased opinion, here’s a (most likely) biased article to further unhinge you: False Claims About Chemicals in LaCroix Cans. It’s a hot summer out there. Be an off-trend loser with me and get yourself some pure, cold water. Or lemonade. Or iced tea. Or honestly anything that isn’t LaCroix.
(I’m giving LaCroix one tea cup out of five only because it succeeds at being a consumable liquid. I used the tea cup because thank goodness there isn’t a LaCroix emoji, and because I’m out here spilling the truth tea of the quiet minority of LaCroix haters.)
La Croix
🍵/5
GRACE: The Jonas Brothers have the best pop album of the summer and Kevin Jonas is the best Jonas.
The Jonas Brothers’ fourth studio album “Happiness Begins” technically dropped before the official first day of summer, but the amount of playtime I’ve consistently given it since then deems it worthy of being the focus of my Hot Summer Hot Take. When the album’s first single “Sucker” released on March 1, I — along with approximately every other twenty-something female who used to watch the Disney Channel — lost my mind. Not only was I not expecting the band to come back, but I wasn’t expecting the comeback to sound so GOOD! While boy bands like One Direction and 5 Seconds of Summer had their fifteen minutes of fame, my fandom for a band of three brothers from New Jersey is forever.
The night before the album released I took to Amazon Prime to stream the band’s accompanying documentary “Chasing Happiness.” My hot take here is that the documentary didn’t have as much juicy, revelatory drama as my People-magazine-loving self craves, but it did have quality Kevin Jonas content which caused me to declare him to be “The Best Jonas Brother.” Fueled by the propaganda of the documentary, I approached the album release day with the same kind of excitement I had whenever the “Burnin’ Up” music video would come on during the commercial breaks of The Suite Life of Zack and Cody. Did everyone in the studio love that I played “Happiness Begins” on our studio’s Sonos for approximately 6–8 hours straight? I do not know, but I could not hear their complaints if they were voicing them because I was too busy having the time of my life blasting the straight-fire bops that Kevin, Joe, and Nick gifted to each and every one of us. Summer is a season of taking trips down memory lane and leaning into nostalgic memories of summers past, and the Jonas Brothers have proved to be the perfect soundtrack for those trips.
“Happiness Begins” by the Jonas Brothers
🕺🕺🕺🕺🕺/5
NATE: Cure your ills and lift your spirits with some Mamajuana.
It’s no secret that, as an office, we enjoy sharing and sampling, as my 4-year-old would say, “all kinds of food and drinks.” This summer, my wife Amy and I ventured south to the Dominican Republic for a long-overdue getaway. As part of the wonderful hospitality we experienced on our travels, we had access to a variety of cuisines including the unique DR delicacy Mamajuana. There’s a lot of history to this concoction — I’m not sure you’d call it a cocktail, but it’s a drink made from a handful of ingredients including bark and herbs from the island. You steep rum, red wine, and honey-like a tea and let the drink mature for about one week. Supposedly Mamajuana is older than rum distillation and can cure liver disease, cleanse your blood, help you recover from the flu, and more! I’m not sure about any of that, but it’s a funky beverage with some spice and a really unique flavor. You can purchase the ingredients online and try it out for yourself. Cheers!
Mamajuana
🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷/5
I don’t know about you, but after reading all those Hot Summer Hot Takes, it seems like a good time to sit cross-legged in front of my newly purchased AC window-unit with a cold glass of La Croix while I rewatch and LOVE Stranger Things season 3! It might not be everyone’s favorite way to spend their summer, but that’s the great thing about this time of year; freedom is a key feature. So stay indoors, head outside, eat a melon salad or don’t. Rewatch Stranger Things and blast the Jonas Brothers in your car. Pour a glass of something funky or pour that drink down the drain. After all, it’s only summer for the summer!
Season’s Greetings,
Your E+E pals
