Hey babes,
Currently my inner child is throwing a tantrum right at the base of my throat, kicking and whining ughhh nooooo whyyyyyy. Truly a rotten mood – shoutout to the luteal phase. Anyone else figure out that PMS lasts for two whole weeks while in quarantine? I am a bog woman squatting outside a gas station, tearing open cellophane packages of Yodels with my teeth, hissing FEAR ME. FUCK YOU! GO AWAY. I’M CRYING.
Wait, men– don’t unsubscribe. The Sopranos content is in a minute. I could even throw in a paragraph on the Top 10 City Highway Infrastructures of All Time or Dumpster Diving For Synthesizers, or whatever else you want to talk about! My Buddy and His Girlfriend Have a Place Out There. I Still Appreciate Woody Allen Movies For What They Are. Journalistic Objectivity. 90s Hip Hop. Dune. Oh thank god you’re back.
I’m feeling better already. Let’s get to it.
(P.S. Thank you to everyone who subscribed to the first letter and told your friends. You rule.)
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(Don’t click on the link above if you don’t want a single scene to be spoiled.)
Madonn’. My first watch of the masterful cartoon about family and death is over. Tony’s belly. Carmela’s nails. Melfi’s voice. Paulie’s hair. Adriana’s hoops. Janice’s tattoo. Christopher’s profile. Good thing they all exist forever.
A few moments after the screen faded to black in the final episode, I opened up a million tabs of analyses, award show acceptances, and interviews with the actors and creator David Chase. In one finale debate between two super-critics, they mention that for their Sopranos book they spent hours with Chase asking about his artful choices, the intricate orchestration of every subplot, the toxic ripples of family ties, the dreams and portents, and of course the meaning of the series’ final scene. Meaning the underlying question was really just: how did you even think of that? And though Chase was willing to take part in the extrication of his art, his answer much of the time was, it just sort of happened that way. Oh! The most comforting answer.
Thomas James, “Reasons”
We lie down with each other. We lie down alone. And watch the moon’s flawed marble getting out of hand.
Raise your hand if you are a grown adult who will never turn down an online paper doll / avatar maker. Raise your hand if your dad taught you how to right click somewhere on any given Angelfire page to locate a cache of hundreds of PNG files of Dollz and open them in MS Paint so you could zoom in 500% to painstakingly alter each outfit to your specifications. Raise your hand if you know about a little something called Otaku World. Kisekae Set System much? And then go ahead and raise your hand if you lost your virginity at 22. High five!
It’s taken me a while to have a real grasp on the essence of Potomac. Every Real Housewives city is about money, and who has it, and how women of a certain age and class relate to it, each city through its own distinct filter. RHONY’s is the intoxicating New York combination of charming alcoholism, emotional intelligence, and complete lack thereof that runs this town. Beverly Hills communicates that unbearably tragic sludge that seeps up through the pristine facades of Hollywood. Orange County is about the brutal farce of the American Dream (stay with me now…)
As the ritzy suburb that relies on DC for its caché, the Potomac franchise is about politics and proximity to power. For a zip code no one else in the country could give a shit about, let alone identify on a map, the upper echelons of Potomac society (apparently) have especially stringent rules about who can claim it. We see a small glimpse into this dynamic when in a recent episode, Monique breaks down crying for the first time since getting into a physical fight with Candiace, saying the stress of feeling like she has to prove something to her peers is what made her lash out. It was the first time I’ve seen anyone on the Potomac cast show that level of emotion (as opposed to say, Ramona Singer crying face-up on a bed in Morocco). Poker-faced and plotting, this Housewives cast is also the most beautiful, making their sophisticated interpersonal strategies that much more compelling.
Plus, Monique has a parrot named T’Challa who has his own subtitles. C’mon now!
Night Call podcast: Nxivm episode
Created by Emily Yoshida, Tess Lynch, and Molly Lambert, three foremost experts on Internet culture, Night Call is my newest favorite podcast, and listening to this episode was like finding the one other person at a house party who knows exactly what you’re talking about. Molly Lambert’s take on the Nxivm cult about sums it up — god, actors are annoying. If you’ve been watching The Vow, it’s worth a listen. Though I can merely grunt about how pathetic I find Mark Vicente, guest Nikki Mayard’s observation that Mark wants to be Keith, but just can’t hack the level of evil, made so much sense to me.
We learn on the HBO show that one of Keith Raniere a.k.a Vanguard’s tactics is to go on ominous “night walks” with his followers in the Albany cul de sac where they live, and of course all of them are recorded in high-definition audio because he is obsessed with the sound of his own voice. In the scene pictured in the image above, he responds to a concern from Bonnie, whose mental and physical health is now failing because of his demands, with the notion that “enslavement is a good first step,” a chillingly direct summation of his way of manipulating people with the language of self-help. Anyone who has ever been in a meeting with a corporate bullshitter is familiar with his tone, completely self-assured while expressing absolutely nothing. Yet somehow there is an unspoken agreement to nod along, if only to get him to stop. A sociopathic narcissist does give you an endless amount of material with which to work, dissect, and theorize. That’s the point: he’s a void. And we keep trying in vain to figure out how to shape it into the form of a person.
Picture this: It’s any given Sunday between the years 2012-2020. Late afternoon light saunters into my third floor bedroom window and the talismans tacked to my walls glow in response. I’m likely re-reading over a Word doc poem I wrote in the throes of obsession, now mocking me in its sincerity. An acute, mind-altering crush drains from my blood; is replaced with medical-grade despair. From under my duvet I move my cursor to locate Connie Converse, who disappeared a long time ago. From how softly she sings the words it seems the room itself is humming them: “…spring seemed to linger in the little bunch of flowers he pressed into my hand.”
Plaintive and true, her music is a metronome for the comedown. Those who understand relax their scowls and hum along in the frames of many windows.
We live in each other for an hour,
Delighter
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