Pop Culture Mondays/12.28.20
The “Grift” Edition
Happy LAST MONDAY OF 2020 you guys!!!! I know a lot of us (me included) hope that at the stroke of midnight on January 1st everything just goes back to normal and our world as we know it comes back and everyone stops getting sick and everyone gets the vaccine and masks are only fashion statements and lipstick becomes a thing again and bars and restaurants all open up again and everyone has a job. OK so maybe not on January 1st but I know many of us think this will happen the day after Biden is inaugurated like the weird UPSIDE DOWN world we have been living in will automatically turn right side up. I mean MAYBE? Ok so we won’t all go back to normal but chaos will stop and there will be infrastructure and organization and CALM. REMEMBER THAT? BUT in the meantime, we are going out with a BANG in 2020 and truthfully, it is the finale we all needed. So for those of you who don’t get the CUCUMBER reference above….buckle up.
In the meantime, welcome to all my new subscribers and I will only say this a few more times but we are a TRUMP-FREE safe space though thoughts and prayers he gets the help he needs (haha just kidding, not wasting either on him). ANYWAY, I digress. Please be safe and healthy and welcome 2021 WITH A BANG (literally, everyone needs to go have sexy time and have fun and out this year behind us as it will get better maybe not over night but it will….)
WHAT A LONG STRANGE GRIFT IT’S BEEN:
OK, I honestly don’t know if I will have the energy to write any posts after this one as this will take a lot out of me and it really cancels anything else out that happened this past week. I KNOW there are some of you are as obsessed with this story (as it unfolds in real time) as I am…actually way more and I thank ALL of you who have sent me insta stories and tweets from people with more details of this crazy story.
And then I know there are a lot of you who are like HUH? WHO is this lady? Or if you know who she is you’re like WHY DO I CARE ABOUT ALEC BALDWIN’S SPANISH YOGA TEACHING INFLUENCER WIFE HILARIA? Well, this post is for you my darling ones who may have missed this perfect finale to 2020 that is unfolding AS we speak. It will leave you with more questions than answers. I will have of course missed a few things (ok a lot) because there are so many layers and years this encompasses it is impossible to cover in a post.
ALL I ASK IS CAN NETFLIX OR HBO MAX PLEASE MAKE THIS INTO A LIMITED SERIES ASAP.
OK…Let me try to navigate this.
We all know Alec Baldwin and he has done a remarkable job of still staying UN-cancelled despite his many public meltdowns, fights, recordings of calling his daughter terrible names and everything in between. Oh Alec. He’s just so funny and charming so we give him a pass..or 2….or a million. I will say every time I saw him on the sidewalk in NYC as we lived in same neighborhood, I kept my head down and one time I took someone’s parking space totally by accident — like I thought the guy was double parked not looking to get the spot behind him as I moved in and my first thought was like OMG please don’t let this be Alec Baldwin (It was not, but I relinquished my spot anyway.)
OK I digress again. SO, you may or may not know that Alec married a SPICY Spanish woman named Hilaria (ELARIA) who is a yoga instructor and they have had FIVE babies who are all very beautiful and that should be a beautiful story. Hilaria became more and more known as she did interviews and was known as one of these women who didn’t look like she had a baby a day after giving birth and was back at posing in lingerie on Insta (more on that later.) OK so FOR example here is Hilaria in a TV interview after getting married:
FIRST of all, I do NOT understand and never did why a yoga instructor who married a celeb would be booked on prime time morning shows doing an interview about their wedding? Think about that as a SOCIETY this is what we were hungry for? OK. BUT if you watch this…please watch this….you will notice her Spanish accent. Which makes sense…because she is FROM ESPANA..as she has made clear and HAS BEEN IN ALL HER BIOS on websites and her agents websites and so forth. 🇪🇸 🇪🇸🇪🇸🇪🇸🇪🇸🇪🇸🇪🇸🇪🇸🇪🇸🇪🇸🇪🇸🇪🇸🇪🇸
SOOOO…things started to get weird after Hilaria posted the millionth photo of her looking ridiculously hot (good for her) in lingerie after theoretically bathing her baby. Look, I cannot talk about the narcissism that prevails with Instagram as I have posted a million of my own pics…BUT there was something about Hilaria’s pics that felt off. Like the worst kind of show-off and entitlement and instead of making people feel good and inspired it made a lot of people feel bad and frustrated and defeated. New mothers who were like WTF. ANYWAY, Amy Schumer in good fun took Hilaria’s insta and put in a now deleted story making fun by saying it was her and her family. Which led to Hilaria posting this in defense which I cannot embed so click on the link.
Or read this:
She is trying to explain the Amy Schumer thing and say she thinks it was funny and she is in on the joke sort of after having people explain it to her and she had a “few calls” but she tried to redirect the conversation by suggesting she is the victim of body shaming? OK. So that set people off and gloves are OFF and frankly if you fight so hard to be a public figure then you open yourself up to this sport of thing.
ANYWAY, another thing you may notice in the video if you click the link is she has NO accent. Like not at all. It is gone. Now I understand people can take on accents but there is ALWAYS a hint of it especially if you had that accent into your 30s. So this set some people digging and ONE Twitter user then put it together in a few tweets that has set off the STORY OF THE CENTURY.
Hilaria Baldwin who has said many times she is from Spain and moved to the US FOR COLLEGE:
(It is the hand flip for me BTW)
She has said many times she was from Spain and she knew NO pop culture and therefore had NO idea who Alec Baldwin was when they met and blah blah blah….
GIRL.
EEEELARIA turns out to be Hillary from Cambridge, MA who does not in fact have Spanish parents as she has also PUBLICLY stated nor does she come from an IMMIGRANT family as she has ALSO publicly stated. In fact, she comes from a family that is so part of the fabric of Massachusetts that they have pre-dated the REVOLUTIONARY WAR. She is a “daughter of the American Revolution” kind of American.
But MAN this girl kept the grift going for a long time. And here is why we have cucumbers as the image above because how do you say OMG in Spanish???
🥒 🥒🥒🥒🥒🥒🥒🥒🥒🥒🥒🥒🥒🥒🥒🥒🥒🥒🥒🥒🥒🥒🥒🥒🥒🥒🥒🥒🥒🥒🥒
Her parents live in Spain now as they retired there but they are full on 5th generation Americans. She learned Spanish and I am sure spent time in Spain and maybe fell madly in love with the culture but she is NOT SPANISH and was born in Boston and grew up there and went to school there and now classmates are coming out of the woodwork saying she was super nice but not Spanish. And she has NOW admitted she is a white girl from Massachusetts BUT..here is the BUT…both she and Alec are blaming the media (sigh) and Alec took to Instagram to rant about Twitter and the Twitter user who INITIALLY brought this to light:
I actually cannot write about it more…so many people have done a better job than I ever could and there are SO many more layers to this story. And frankly, she could have stayed playing this part if she hadn’t rubbed SO many people the wrong way with her grating Instagrams like the one that set this off:
Because HELL hath no fury like NEW MOMS saying “OH HELL NO”.
But I have so many questions. Like so many.
- When did Alec know? Like surely he knew the truth as her accent went away and she sounded like an American girl sucking on Helium. Surely he met her AMERICAN family who are all most definitely not Spanish?
- Why did this take so long to come out? If I came blazing onto the scene telling everyone I was Italian, I PROMISE YOU all the girls I grew up with at Sacred Heart and Rye Country Day would be within 24 hours like UM NO. HOW DID THIS NOT COME OUT THIS WHOLE TIME??
- Why did her seemingly prestigious and proud New England family allow this?
- Cultural Appropriation IS a big deal. You don’t get to just say you are something you are not and take on the burdens of others to further your own career and place in life. Was this JUST to land Alec? Was this JUST to become famous? IS this mental illness? I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS.
These are some of my fave things at the moment from this story:
We can all laugh. But really, it is a big deal. On so many levels and it just is that ICK factor you cannot shake.
AND FOR SOME OF MY FAVORITE THINGS (OR THINGS THAT ANNOYED ME BUT I HAVE TO SHOW):
OK guys…this is an abbreviated PCM not for ANY other reason but the fact that after Hilaria…I am DEPLETED. I need a reboot. I need to take a bath in lots of bubbles and wash this all off of me. But here are a FEW things that captured my attention and MANY other’s this week.
- OK, so Wonder Woman 1984 came out. We all watched it at home so that’s an amazing thing for HBO Max which I am a big fan of. I am not a movie reviewer BUT I will say this…if movie studios want to hire me to advise them on things like STORY or MUSIC, I AM HERE FOR IT. But since this is the last PCM of the year I want to showcase:
THIS post from my VERY FIRST PCM ever which was December 9th 2019 — which was a big big deal for me as was Wonder Woman:
WE WERE SO INNOCENT BACK THEN! Pandemic what??? Movies coming out in the summer!! Can you imagine? IN the theater??? ALL of this is summed up in this post. What is also summed up in this post is MY TOTAL EXCITEMENT FOR THE WW1984 SOUNDTRACK. Because it was obviously going to be amaze. AMAZE.
SPOILER ALERT!!!!!
There really is no soundtrack unless you want to rock out to a score by Hans Zimmer which is great but NOT the same thing. Sigh. I mean I would have played that soundtrack a million times. Think of all the FEMALE music it could have showcased??JUST to name a few:
- The Bangles
- The Go-Go’s
- The Pointer Sisters
- Bananarama
- Tina Turner
- Gloria Estafan
- Annie Lennox
- Cyndi Lauper
IT WOULD HAVE BEEN AMAZING. Maybe they can come out with a POST-Production soundtrack? Well I just hope for the next one they think about music. A lot.
- AND in other news, Tiger Woods son is JUST like him (let’s hope only on the golf department!) — Sorry not sorry. But seriously, it is amazing. AMAZING.
- “Favorite Celebrity Interview” — If you are obsessed with TikTok like I am (an elderly person on TikTok) your FYP (For You Page) was literally flooded with this girl in a hat asking the question that everyone then responded to.
SO much so that this girl started receiving backlash from disgruntled TikTokkers that she was flooding their FYP. OH THE YOUTH:
- Sigh. A Kardashian mention. Sorry sorry. but people live for their holiday party and pics and outfits and while they didn’t have their big holiday party this year, they had one for the family and everyone dressed up and the socials exploded over Kim’s outfit which I am in agreement on with the public…this is way too HULK than anything else.
OK we DID it. The final newsletter of the year. Call is a blog. Call it whatever. BUT WE DID IT. I have had an amazing year for so many reasons but writing this has been truly one of my favorite things.
AND just a heads up…we are launching a PODCAST SOON. It is called “POP CULTURE MONDAYS….ON THURSDAYS”. There is EVEN a ridiculous teaser made by my friend and producer the VERY CHEEKY Jake Curtis who I am VERY MAD AT but also I adore him:
And it will be wherever you listen to podcasts and it is SUPER homemade fun and there will be more details next week but in the meantime, have a wonderful and safe and healthy new year.
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