Diego Luna is Andor But He'll Always Be Javier Suarez To Me

I'd rather he salsa dance than save the galaxy

We wrapped up Andor a while ago, although we were definitely late to that party. I’ll get a lot of grief for this, but I did not enjoy that series. I’m not a huge Star Wars fan anyhow, and I felt like the show didn’t really go anywhere.

But there was a silver lining of sitting through all 12 episodes, and that was watching Diego Luna.

Diego Luna has a long resume of very watchable stuff, but where I first saw him was as Javier Suarez in Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights. I grew up watching the original Dirty Dancing and I have had a great love for ballroom dancing since I was young, so 20-year-old me was ecstatic when I saw the trailer for Havana Nights. I remember going to see it in the theater and drooling over the chemistry Javier shared with Katy, the sexy dancing they did in the shadows of the projector screen, and passionate kiss they shared on the dance floor. But mostly I loved the sheer joy that Diego wore on his face in almost every scene of that movie. Because, folks, that movie is not exactly fantastic, and I often wonder if Diego is embarrassed at all that he made it, but I can’t imagine he is, not when he looks like he’s having so much fun in every scene. A fun that is entirely infectious. I have the dumbest smile on my face every time I watch that movie, and it always makes me want to start ballroom dancing again.

I think that’s part of why I love thinking of Diego as Javier more than any of his other characters or even as himself - it reminds me of a time in my life when nothing was yet set in stone, when the future still held great mystery to me, when every day was about finding something fun to do, and for me, that usually involved dancing. Watching Diego Luna in Havana Nights makes me feel like a young adult again without any of the scary or questionable parts - just joy and love and dancing.

Speaking of finding joy in dancing, I stumbled upon Monica Drake’s lovely essay in Oldster about finding tap dancing at 57. Makes me think maybe I should give ballroom dancing another go. So many fantastic quotes in here. Here’s one of my favs.

When I tap dance I’m temporarily transported away from all that. I am dancing back to simple, silly childhood dreams that never stood a chance, sure, but better yet, I am laughing in the moment, and that’s what matters now. My body is running on the upbeat brain chemistry found along certain neural pathways, and joy. 

- Monica Drake

I remembered you can make strings of paper dolls this week by folding paper and not cutting all the edges. Funny what can come back to you.

I watched Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights today in the middle of the afternoon because it’s been a WEEK - I had a cold, my husband was out of town, my daughter gave me grief at bedtime, and oh, it SNOWED when it’s nearly May. So while I usually spend my off days writing or cleaning or both, I decided to let myself off the hook today. Even though I wasn’t doing my usual housework, I felt Reannon Muth’s essay in Motherwell where she talked about the expectation that mothers should keep their houses clean and organized. And I love that she’s challenging that expectation.

When I was a kid, I had a friend whose mom always had a dirty house. Her coffee table was always sticky with juice spills and her brown shag carpet was probably beige under all the dirt. But this mom was surprisingly unapologetic about it. 

“I don’t care that my house is a mess,” she’d once said. How freeing would that be? To say that you don’t care that your house is messy…and then just actually not care?

- Reannon Muth

My daughter did some portraits of her stuffy, and I’d say they’re pretty damn accurate.

In her Substack The Mother Lode, Cindy DiTiberio has been exploring the Math of Motherhood, or more specifically in this week’s newsletter, the cost of a stay-at-home parent. The numbers absolutely astounded me. Citing Laura Danger, here’s what it would cost in a household if a stay-at-home parent no longer stayed at home.

• $24,000 a year for 8 hours of daycare per day

• $25,000-35,000 for a housekeeper

• $32,000-130,000 for a personal chef

• $50,000 for a personal assistant

• $27,000-$82,000 for a chauffeur

• $35,000 for a personal shopper

So even using the lower estimates, a stay-at-home parent is saving the family $193,000.

The whole newsletter is brilliant, but here’s where she gets really brilliant:

Why does “supporting the family” have to mean money? Being there day-to-day for the childcare and household maintenance is the ultimate way to support a family. But because everyone who does this work knows that it is undervalued, we seek to escape the situation so that we can feel good about ourselves. So we can have value in the world. 

- Cindy DiTiberio

Saw this on social media and it kinda shook me. Like, why had I not realized that before?

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