Content Consumed: Nepo babies, the World Cup, and HotD
Hello! Happy Monday! Don’t worry, this isn’t just about the HotD finale. After all, this is the 100th edition of Content Consumed!
So, so wonderful to reach this milestone. Thanks for reading!
In today’s edition of Content Consumed, we’re chatting about…
🎺 Is Jack Antonoff bad for pop queens?
🧊 Skincare will not rehab you, Jared Leto and Brad Pitt!
🇺🇸 Buckley Carlson, born for nepotism
⚽️ The Christmas World Cup
🐉 The House of the Dragon finale
Is Jack Antonoff bad for pop queens?
My thought process on this began with a viral tweet from this weekend, in which Twitter user Caleb Gamman claimed—and then proved—“I’m able to instantly detect if Jack Antonoff worked on a song due to a visceral hatred of his production style.”
We watch Caleb get tested song-by-song through the entire Midnight album and correctly guess within seconds whether or not a certain Taylor Swift song was produced by Jack Antonoff. It’s impressive. It’s also a bummer.
Because like Caleb, we soon realize that all these songs sound the same.
A bit of background: Antonoff is the lead singer of The Bleachers as well as a popular collaborator and producer on albums by artists like Lorde, Lana del Rey, and Florence and the Machine. But especially Taylor Swift.
But what good is talent for production when it starts to sound the same, like filler pop radio songs with the same beat?
Is he making female artists lose their edge and creativity by producing pop songs with big choruses and homogenizing their unique sounds? Ex: Taylor Swift’s “Lover” and honestly most of Midnights; Lorde’s Solar Power.
My answer’s yes.
Skincare will not rehab you, Jared Leto and Brad Pitt!
What do famous men do when they’ve been outed as freaks and abusers? Create lines of skincare.
First of all, I’d like to draw attention to the fact that Jared Leto does not have a “Personal Life” section of Wikipedia—extremely suspect, because every famous person does—which is where people like me can do Very Important Research on lawsuits and relationships and such. But for your background, Jared Leto has a long history of being with underaged girls, possibly being a cult leader(?), and being a menace on movie sets. Just a shitty dude.
Anyways, his new line of skincare is called Twentynine Palms, it has a $97 eye cream, and he promoted it by saying, “I’ve never been really interested in beauty products,” which is exactly what you want to hear from a guy making beauty products.
Meanwhile, Brad Pitt’s “Le Domaine” line is named after the winery that he co-owns(owned?) with soon-to-be-ex-hopefully Angelina Jolie. You know, the same soon-to-be-ex-hopefully that he’s in a bitter divorce trial with, a trial which recently revealed in court documents that Brad became physically abusive with his family on a plane.
Both these skincare lines boast that they’re “genderless” as a major marketing point, which is some of the most obvious woke-signaling I’ve ever seen. Both of them have exorbitant costs, like a 30 ml serum for $385. So are these men trying to appease the public—or the industry? Is someone like Brad Pitt too big to fail, to big be blacklisted in Hollywood anyways? What’s out there besides celeb skincare, anyways?
Buckley Carlson, born for nepotism
Tucker Carlson is upset because his baby boy (okay, 24-year-old son) has been accused of being a nepotism baby and only getting a job because of his father’s power at Fox News.
First of all: Buckley Carlson. One more time for the folks in back: BUCKLEY CARLSON. That is a man born for nepotism! It’s WASPy as hell, it’s old New England money, and it’s obnoxious.
Second of all: of course he only got the job because of Tucker Carlson’s political positioning! Electoral candidate and House Representative Jim Banks (R-Ind.) hired a 24-year-old to be his communications director. That’s a big ($130k!) job for a little baby! (And I’m allowed to say that because I’m a 24-year-old and I know that no one my age should be qualified for that job.)
It’s getting even sillier on Twitter. “I stand with Buckley Carlson,” the gremlin Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted. STAND WITH HIM? Buckley hasn’t even said anything! Also, Trump Jr. thinks that Banks’ rival hired “henchmen” to attack Buckley.
I do think these things are especially ridiculous when you remember that Hunter Biden helped get Buckley into Georgetown at Tucker Carlson’s request.
God, I really hope Buckley isn’t White House-bound. But who knows with this country.
The World Cup, with a holiday twist
I watched a lot of sports this weekend, as I talked about in my Friday preview. And from all those commercial breaks, I remembered only one this morning. Okay, actually two—and I’m pissed that Pizza Hut has ruined Pusha T’s “If You Know You Know” like that.
But the other one: the World Cup. It’s around the corner and it’s over the holiday season for the first time ever. The commercials emphasize exactly that: Jon Hamm as Santa Claus, ’Tis the FIFA World Cup as the slogan, and queen of the season Mariah Carey making a cameo. We get some Tom Brady for no reason, as he is not a footie player or maybe even a fan of the sport. But we know that divorce comes with a price tag and commercials pay well.
Anyways, it’ll be a #Sports winter more than ever before (and yes, I’m counting the Winter Olympics, because the FIFA World Cup is significantly bigger in my mind). NBA basketball really ramps up, NFL franchises dream of post-season glory, Formula One concludes a rather quickly-ended season, and now there’s international soccer all around Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, and Christmas.
Let’s feast.
What the hell was that House of the Dragon finale?
Spoilers ahead!
My jaw dropped multiple times during the episode. I screamed, I laughed, I damn near almost cried. All of that happened during the birthing scene alone, of course, but also the rest of the episode.
Head this way to get my full recap and review.
And that’s it for today, the 100th edition of Content Consumed! I’ll see you tomorrow. Thanks for reading!
Love,
Casey
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