Content Consumed: Addison Rae’s music, Bradley Cooper’s nose, Aaron Rodgers, and more

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Content Consumed

5 min readAug 21, 2023

Hey, hey! Welcome to another edition of Content Consumed.
Today, we’re chitchatting about…
🫦 Addison Rae is my new sleaze-pop princess
🫣 Ugh, is Aaron Rodgers actually a likable guy?
🎬 Bradley Cooper just shot himself in the… nose
📚 Book review: After the Funeral and Other Stories
🌶 Read of the week: How Pop Crave turned into the Internet’s wire service

Listen to Addison Rae’s new music—I’m serious!

You know in the trailer for The Idol, where someone says: “When was the last truly f*cking nasty, nasty bad pop girl?”

Hear me out… what if TikTok darling Addison Rae could be that girl?

I know, I’m jumping the gun. But her EP is a banger.

Let’s rank the five songs:

it could’ve been you — Easily the best and the catchiest. Lindsay Lohan could’ve sung this in a 2000s movie. Iconic chorus. And yet! The least listens on Spotify. Call me early to this sleeper hit.
I got it bad—The definition of pop sleaze. Diiiirrrttyyy.
Nothing On (But The Radio) — Selena Gomez meets Britney Spears.
Obsessed — Really lazy lyrics, but that’s pop! “I’m obsessed with me-ee-ee-ee too.” So bad that it’s good. This was her first (and only) single.
2 die 4 (ft. Charlie XCX)—Overrated! You heard it here first! Not even satirically bad lyrics… just bad. Oops!

Aaron Rodgers, unfortunately, is fun to watch

Oh, Hard Knocks. You do this to me every time.

That football player that I was convinced is an egomaniacal, sociopathic, obsessive-compulsive athletic genius?

He’s all those things, but also likable. Somehow!

This season of Hard Knocks follows the Jets, but it’s basically the Aaron Rodgers show. He’s a football freak for sure—that much is obvious, as he constantly picks at the grass on the ground for various reasons (wind testing, etc.), recites encyclopedic knowledge about the game, and seems to have a personal relationship with everyone on any field.

And then he’s funny! Example #1: going up to an old coach, that his team is playing against, and saying: “What’s up, you little bitch? Looking fat as shit.” Who does that?! Only Aaron Rodgers can get away with it. Example #2: his handshake with Sauce Gardner. Example #3: engaging with a “mentalist” that the Jets hired for some pre-season entertainment.

It’s fun to watch.

Bradley Cooper’s nose is officially a problem

ICYMI: Bradley Cooper is playing famous Jewish-American conductor Leonard Bernstein in an upcoming biopic. He’s also directing and executive producing the movie.

Photo stills from the film were just released. And… there’s a small (big?) thing that folks aren’t too thrilled about. It’s a comically offensive prosthetic nose.

While thousands of people online have been offended by the prosthetic, Bernstein’s family released a (quite long) statement saying that they were involved in the production and they’re cool with it.

So, take that as you will.

Sidenote: Should Jake Gyllenhaal have gotten this project instead, as he passionately wanted to?

Book review: After the Funeral and Other Stories

It’s difficult to review a book that serves as a collection of short stories, as each story really deserves its own review. However, I want to look at this work of twelve short stories by Tessa Hadley more holistically and thematically.

My primary insight: Just when I started really connecting with each character and their universe, the story would end without resolution.

Hadley’s an extremely talented writer, someone who can write just a sentence and instantly provide the reader with deep insight into a character’s state of mind. An example:

That evening while Pippa and Gillian watched television, Serena went rummaging through the cupboards upstairs, renewed and energised. Her sisters were still jarred by the scene she’d made; she’d always had this trick, of unleashing her worst and then being the first to recover from it.

And doesn’t that just tell you so much, instantly, about Serena and her relationship with her sisters?

Not every story was a hit. Not every story was a miss. I appreciated Hadley’s subtle insights into death and family (in all its forms).

While the characters are incredibly well-developed for the short space they’re given, and the writing is beautiful, I wanted more plot. I wish each story could be finished in some way — with more conclusion — but maybe I shouldn’t be reading short story collections.

Read of the week: How Pop Crave turned into the Internet’s wire service

“I get all my news from Pop Crave.”

No, but really: I found out about the UFOs from Pop Crave. I found out about the Supreme Court striking down student loan cancellation from Pop Crave. Pop Crave called the 2020 presidential election before some major news outlets. I also found out about Bad Bunny and Kendall Jenner from Pop Crave and Keke Palmer’s new music video with Usher from Pop Crave.

Pop Crave is a Twitter news outlet for the ages. In this Vox story, a journalist asks: “Why does it seem like I’m learning more and more breaking news from Pop Crave before anyone else?”

Read on here.