act i: The Rundown Before the Hoedown
act ii + Cowboy Carter coming soon...but first, a spot of theatre (and 🏀), that 🙄 The Cut essay, a new lesbian icon is born, fashion news you can (maybe) use, Carol Burnett, Zayn + more.
Hi hi hi.
Live from New York1, it’s act i of this week’s main post. I’ve been traveling for work again this week and will be bringing you act ii as soon as I can get a few more listens in on Cowboy Carter and do my due diligence on reactions to share with you all and whatnot.
That is what the Queen B deserves and as this album is act ii, so shall it be on WHN. What I will say is that I’m already beside myself over how fantastic it is, not that I was expecting otherwise. But damn.
As I said to my Beyoncé group chat this morning, the story is TELLING. The features! The covers! The innovation!
Also, THE HAIR!
Stay tuned for more from KNTRY Radio Texas…but I will say that “Ya Ya” is 100p my new hype song of the moment.
We clappin’ 👏🤠
For now, let’s take a look at what caught my eye in the culture this week that is not Beyoncé-related. I’m a bit off my usual intake schedule right now, but there will never be a week I don’t have notes on something or other. I’ll be back to full tilt consumption of TV, etc next week, so we’ll talk some more shows then.
The Effect
As mentioned, I’ve been back in my old home this week and it’s been fabulous, work-wise and personal life-wise. So much good food and good times with good friends. There were many I wasn’t able to see, but NEXT TIME.
I took in a lil theater action Tuesday night with my friends Gwen and Alexis.
We went to The Shed for one of the final performances of The Effect, which had a limited run in the city after playing last year at The National Theatre in London.
I’ve been so intrigued by it since last summer and, yes, it does star Taylor Russell, who is currently dating a certain British Fruit Witch. But let it be said for the record (again) that I was following her BEFORE they got together. Much like I had my, ahem, opinion of the last GF before *gestures around* all of that.
I’m telling you, consistency is a key pillar of my pop culture opinions—and I always have my Reasons, typically longstanding.
Taylor first landed on my radar after I saw Waves.
I thought she was incredible in Bones and All, directed by Luca Guadagigno2 and co-starring Timmy Chalamet. Art house cannibalism? That’s a hard yes from me.
Plus, she’s a fashion baddie and a Loewe muse. Translation: I love her and would recommend watching both of those films if you’ve not already done so.
Anyway, this play was superb. It’s a super stark production in terms of set design, lighting, staging, costuming, etc. Every choice from director Jamie Lloyd felt spot on and intense in its minimalism.
The material itself is so sharp and smart.
Lucy Prebble is the kind of writer that very much speaks to me, in that she can layer a lot of ideas and questions in a way that doesn’t feel like she’s hitting you over the head with said BIG THOUGHTS. To me, that can sometimes feel really pseudo-intellectual. Her writing is the opposite. It’s also fucking hilarious and emotional. At one point, I was crying and I couldn’t exactly pinpoint why or when I started. I love when art makes me feel like that. Lucy was a writer and EP on Succession, so you are likely familiar with some of her work without even knowing it. She also co-created I Hate Suzie, which I feel like I must have talked about at some point here.
The play centers around two people in a drug trial who start to fall for each other and it’s unclear whether that’s “real” or an effect of the drug they may or may not be on (because, placebos). You’re going through the dizzying stages of falling for someone in a condensed period and we all know that can truly feel like being on drugs, but also confined to essentially the same small space the characters are. Then there are the two doctors administrating the trial who also have a back story that comes into play.
There are only four actors in the production and they are all on stage for the entirety, though sometimes crouched and cloaked in darkness when they are not really “in” the scene. There’s Taylor as Connie and Paapa Essiedu as Tristan. (You might know him as Kwame from I May Destroy You and if you haven’t seen that, do so immediately.)
And Michele Austin as Dr Lorna James and Kobna Holdbrook-Smith as Toby. I was not familiar with them, but no less impressed.
Each performance was crackling and layered and so well-calibrated for whatever the moment or scene called for. I’m still thinking about a lot of feelings and ideas the production brought up and it also reminded me I need to go to more plays in general. (You can check out the NYT review here.)
There really is nothing like watching something so well written come alive right in front of your face with beautiful, vulnerable performances and staging.
The three of us decided we absolutely have to see Kenneth Branagh’s King Lear at The Shed this fall/winter. I mean, talk about the Full Branagh™ x 10000000000000.
Speaking of Loewe, I loved this.
(I would like to thank Elsa Klensch for teaching me how to pronounce the brand’s name way back when I was just a fashion + magazine-obsessed midwestern youth.)
In other fashion news, Alessandro Michele has finally landed somewhere after leaving Gucci—and that place is Maison Valentino. If you’ve been around here for a while, or know even a bit about my general aesthetic, it’s no secret I’m a huge Alessandro fan and would have killed to own many pieces from his tenure at Gucci.
There was very little time between Pierpaolo Piccioli announcing his departure from Valentino + Alessandro’s appointment. I think Pierpaolo is incredibly talented and I can’t wait to see where he lands. My first thought about his next role was that I’d like to see what he’d do with Chanel, an obviously iconic brand that hasn’t made me excited in quite some time. We shall see...
AM is way more my vibe, personally, and I think I’m mostly just so happy that we’re going to get his ideas and dreamy perspective back in the mix.
(We also sometimes dress alike.)
I am extremely excited to see how he puts his unique spin and lens on the archival references of the maison and what he does now that he will be designing couture, as well. Alessandro definitely has a distinct point of view, which one would assume is a prerequisite for any major design job, but that’s not always the case.
(Sidebar: I would once again recommend Lauren Sherman and Amy Odell as great resources if you’re interested in digging deeper into the always-fascinating machinations on business side, by way of two excellent fashion journalists. Lauren, in particular, has been keeping me abreast of all Alessandro murmurs since she launched the fashion vertical at Puck.)
Marc + Anna 4EVA
I really would love to own this varsity jacket collab between Marc Jacobs + Anna Sui, but I’m not enough of a lunatic to buy it for just under $2K. It just had to be green, didn’t it?
However, I could not pass on this Charlotte Simone beauty. She opened up the archives for a limited time and I was powerless against its draw.
Lesbian Icons Seth Meyers and Kristen Stewart
Day Drinking is one of my favorite late night segments of all time3 and I mentioned last week I was unnaturally excited for this one with Kristen Stewart. It did NOT disappoint.
I truly LOL’d many, many times and fully guffawed at Seth’s “Austin Powers” aside. I would love to day drink with them both regularly—and be styled as a lesbian icon. This means I really need to get back to work on that tight five I’ve been developing about Still Alice…
Carol Burnett is just the GD best.
(Yes, I’m going to get to Palm Royale before next Friday’s edition!)
Pleasing really missed out on this one.
They should have listened to me months ago…but I love this for my guy, Jared.
Also, we are ELIITE4 once again. The intensity of that second half was A Lot™ last night. Rest assured no feet were broken as I paced my hotel room and punctuated said pacing with loud, short claps and vaguely controlled shout yelps. Even more delicious is that UNC is no longer in this tournament.
Bless + LFG 🔵😈😈!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A new Harry photo popped up in Mitch’s post about the end of his first tour.
The expression on Mitch and Sarah’s lil guy’s face as he looks at his Uncle H is one the Coven of Psychos and I know all too well.
Siri, play “Night Changes”.
Matty Healy/Truman Black, what are you up to?!?
The Jinx was obviously my entire personality for a minute when it first aired.
Now, there’s more coming.
I’m also v. intrigued by this drug treatment facility that appears to become a full-on cult????
Hi, Zayn.
The specific way Pitchfork hates Justin Timberlake.
Man, it’s really been making me giggle.
Meanwhile, my concerns about Britney’s well-being also continue.
The Cut’s personal essay circuit.
Every 6-8 weeks, or so, The Cut publishes an essay that a certain swath of the internet goes to town on in a way that reminds mr of the good old days of social media meets media commentary that didn’t feel like a piece of my soul was leaving my body with every word I read.
This week, it was this ridiculous essay entitled “The Case for Marrying an Older Man”.
I barely made it past the opener because…well, you’ll see.
In the summer, in the south of France, my husband and I like to play, rather badly, the lottery. We take long, scorching walks to the village — gratuitous beauty, gratuitous heat — kicking up dust and languid debates over how we’d spend such an influx. I purchase scratch-offs, jackpot tickets, scraping the former with euro coins in restaurants too fine for that. I never cash them in, nor do I check the winning numbers. For I already won something like the lotto, with its gifts and its curses, when he married me.
He is ten years older than I am. I chose him on purpose, not by chance. As far as life decisions go, on balance, I recommend it.
From the writing style to the sentiment to the, wait, only 10 years? I was ready to dip, but we know I don’t love to be left out of the discourse, except when I really want to be left out of the discourse. I am a woman of strongly defined—if often hard to anticipate or understand—rules + regs + boundaries.
Reader: It didn’t get better from there.
So naturally I began to lug a heavy suitcase of books each Saturday to the Harvard Business School to work on my Nabokov paper. In one cavernous, well-appointed room sat approximately 50 of the planet’s most suitable bachelors. I had high breasts, most of my eggs, plausible deniability when it came to purity, a flush ponytail, a pep in my step that had yet to run out. Apologies to Progress, but older men still desired those things.
If I ever earnestly use the term “Bovarist”, feel free to smack me dead in the face. Actually, if I ever write in any way that reminds you of this essay, feel free to smack me dead in the face.
I was competitive by nature, an English-literature student with all the corresponding major ambitions and minor prospects (Great American novel; email job). A little Bovarist, frantic for new places and ideas; to travel here, to travel there, to be in the room where things happened. I resented the callow boys in my class, who lusted after a particular, socially sanctioned type on campus: thin and sexless, emotionally detached and socially connected, the opposite of me.
It devolves into some real tradwife-coded nonsense, but you also learn this “older” man was 30 when they got together. As if one can learn SHIT from a 30-year-old man. He certainly is not “on intimate terms with the universe.”
Like, come tf on. You married rich, girlie pop. That’s what you did.
But I’ll let you read the rest for yourself, along with the 562 comments if you’re so inclined. It is a doozy, for sure. And certainly one reason for them publishing it is to get this level of engagement and conversation and outrage.
(Abby: Don’t go into your broken media model fake Ted Talk again today. Just don’t.)
This is the kind of bait I’m more than willing to click, though.
These days I pretty much only go on Twitter to look for specific topics of conversation and I was not let down on this front.
A sampling:
What even is the publishing industry anymore?
If you had “Karlie Kloss and Josh Kushner are taking over Life magazine” on your 2024 predictions list, please join the coven immediately and teach me your powers. The i-D thing, I could wrap my brain around. This boggles.
There were also a lot of really talented people laid off at Condé Nast this week. Ughhhhhhhhh.
I will always have time for a new Kacey MV.
They really were and I miss them so much.
Excellent social media work by #1 Olivia.
She is me. I am her.
Until act ii, here’s a video I’ve had in File Name: HA! for a while and kept forgetting to post. Talk v. soon. Stream Cowboy Carter in the meantime…
xA
Well, mostly. With some finishing touches made aboard a Delta flight back to Indy.
He’s also the director of Call Me By Your Name and the upcoming Challengers with Zendaya.
It’s also one of my favorite activities 🥂
Double ii in honor of Cowboy Carter. act ii. obvs.
I literally LOL’ed at the idea of a 30 year old being an Older Man. I want this essay from a 36 year old married to a 60 year old!! - J