Pop Culture Mondays/5.17.21
The “FLAMIN’ HOT” Edition
Happy Monday my Pop Culture junkies! I admit I needed ONE more day this weekend and I am really hoping one day we can all one day adopt the 3 day weekend as POLICY because my brain needs it! But yes…it has been a week and I found myself struggling again with the seriousness of the things happening around us and how to then write a silly newsletter about pop culture. Can they co-exist? I am most definitely not the person who is going to dive into what is happening in the Middle East right now. I just hope that it stops soon and the killings stop and the fear and conflict can come to an end in our lifetime. I cannot imagine any of it being our normal day to day.
BUT…in the spirit of escapism here is PCM this week. Just a little sugar free escape from all the bad and sad news out there. And for you MEDIA junkies — and I know my subscribers that is a LOT of you — you had a hell of a weekend due to the Discovery/AT&T news and obviously EVERYONE is an expert and godspeed to you all but this newsletter is not going to get into that. ALL I have to say is whatever happens to HBO Max please please please make a million more episodes of “HACKS” which is maybe my new favorite show because it is DELIGHTFUL and fun and I want to be Jean Smart when I grow up aka I might at least be on my way with my passion for caftans and throwing my devices into bodies of water.
If you have NO idea what I am talking about, here you go (and thanks to media guru Jason Hirschhorn for the tip):
OK, sit back and enjoy the ride. For my new subscribers…WELCOME BITCHES and if you are confused, that’s ok. Everyone is too. There is no rhyme or reason to this newsletter other than ONE thing and that is we are and always will be TRUMP-FREE.
BENNIFER IS WHAT WE NEED:
I remember exactly where I was in 2003 when Jen and Ben called off their wedding, blaming all the media attention and stress it had caused. They didn’t officially break up until the beginning of 2004 but it was the wedding being called off that sticks in my brain. I was dating a rock star at the time which I had romanticized and I was a believer in fairy tales and glamour (FYI spelling glamour with a “U” is more glam than spelling it the American way…) and I was CRUSHED by the news. I was in that perfect storm age-wise where the tabloids ruled my consciousness and I felt personally heartbroken for our couple of Camelot. We didn’t have social media then so it wasn’t a dialogue we were all having with one another globally, just our pockets of friends. I had had dinner with Ben and some friends shortly before he began dating Jen and he was such a nice guy and down to earth and I cannot imagine what that sort of spotlight and attention would do to your brain and how I think it changes your entire psyche. BUT the point is…my gen, the GEN Xers….we were all Bennifer, all the time. These sweet little GEN Z kids today are constantly having to be taught about the important BENNIFER history and why it matters.
SO in case you were living under a rock (or actually have a life and therefore not aware of this breaking news) JLO and Ben were spotted MAYBE slightly holding hands or at least holding hands ADJACENT whilst boarding a plane reportedly for Montana which is basically where the celebs all go to escape now.
JLO who HONESTLY has been single 17 days her adult life is truly one of the most beautiful and talented women out there but seemingly CANNOT BE ALONE. In the time I have been single she has been proposed to by AROD and engaged and broken up and together with Ben like I CANNOT CATCH MY BREATH. But it riveted people and I think for so many different reasons. For MY generation, it brought us back to a simpler time…weirdly it was the height of the horrible tabloids and paparazzi which was NOT good but seems so much more innocent a time when compared to social media. And I can at least speak for myself…it made us think maybe a fairy tale CAN exist…maybe just time is needed and all that we lost 17 years ago in our belief system of true love and fairy tales can come back and this at a time when may of my gen are in a transitional period in their lives. But also…it’s just sexy AF tbh.
BUT I leave it to my girl TINX to say what it signals…we are in for a hell of a good summer. And also….girls love when the boys come BACK. WE LOVE IT.
For more on this BREAKING NEWS:
CANCEL CULTURE CANCELS CANCEL CULTURE:
I could launch an entire new newsletter on this topic alone BUT there are many many way better writers than me out there breaking this entire moment down in a much more analytical and substantive way than I ever could. BUT I will say we could talk in circles here and it’s gotten so crazy that those people who were cancelling others just a few months ago are now being cancelled themselves. I think for most of us, we are exhausted by it all. These extremes our society is going through is….EXTREME. I mean I cannot even keep it all straight and what one got cancelled for deservedly a la Harvey Weinstein seems a long long time ago and now people are being cancelled for much smaller infractions and the danger here to me is that those who might deserve to be benched for a while vs shut out all together VS actually the people who can be like yeah I fucked up and here how I am being a better person are all lumped together. And those who did the cancelling are now being cancelled..some maybe rightfully but whatever the case I want the whole term to be retired because it is so awful. BUT nevertheless, here we are and I thought best to try to summarize a few high-profile ones this past week. I honestly don’t know where I firmly stand on these…it is the weirdest unstraightest straight line thinking I cannot even articulate.
FIRST UP, we have Chrissy Teigen or as some in my circles have begun calling her “HypoChrissy”. Many of you know her as a model and mom, wife of John Legend, social media star and born for this “we share everything online” moment. Now Chrissy is brilliant in making people think she is being totally transparent but she follows my rule I have talked about for years which is “AN IMPLIED SENSE OF TRANSPARENCY”. She makes you think this is her life and she shows the goofy side of her and the painful side of things like her miscarriage but this is ALL pre-meditated and manufactured which TBH is fine. It is all done through a specific lens. But it is brilliant how she did it and people all rally around her because they feel a connection and they feel she is their friend. SO when many months ago, the chef Alison Roman got cancelled for what she said in an interview about Marie Kondo and Chrissy Teigen being sell-outs and apparently using an accent to imitate Kondo. What she said and did was WRONG no question. Was it cancellable? Or could she have repented and learned and grown? The New York Times thought cancellable and she was gone in a flash. Chrissy Teigen COULD have spoken out and said, “We are all human and we all make mistakes and LORD I sure have and while it’s a bummer what Alison did I totally accept her apology and I think we should sit down together and discuss….” BUT she did not. She fueled it. And I GET IT..
But the problem is, Chrissy had a past which she seemingly knew about since it was um..hers and yet had not copped to it. OK here is the deal…it came to light that years ago, Teigen had bullied a 16-year old named Courtney Stodden (they) who was a problematic figure then as they were the child-bride of a D-list 50+ year old actor who paraded them around like a trophy as they dressed extremely proactively and apparently had been signed over to their predator husband by their mother. They were one of these people that people loved to hate. We all did. And perhaps thats why Chrissy was banking on as the victim was no angel in the minds of the public.
But they were 16.
And we are all guilty of being assholes at some point in our lives. We are all guilty of making many many mistakes.
But I am pretty sure most of us have never told someone to go kill themselves. An adult telling a child.
I first read the news in this Stodden interview last week and I am not going to lie…my first instinct was she is making this up. THERE IS NO WAY Chrissy Teigen would have said that. OR if she did it was something lost in translation. And surely at the very least she would have called this out on her own and admitted her mistakes or deleted the tweets. But nope. Here are just a few:
Chrissy did respond…on Twitter. And acknowledge her bad behavior and said she had tried reaching out to Courtney to apologize (there is a whole thread):
The problem is, this is what others in her orbit have done in terms of taking responsibility and apologizing and reaching out on social (Alison Roman) but they were not given a chance. So here we are. Apparently Target has ended its relationship with Teigen (they say the timing was always set to now but who knows) and now the story is Macy’s is too. A lot of people on Twitter who came after Alison Roman and did not accept her apology and said it was only because of the fall out are the same people saying they applaud Teigen’s public accepting of responsibility.
LIKE I SAID….circles.
And then to the next one this week.
You may have no idea what this book is or who Antonio García Martínez is unless you are on MEDIA TWITTER which if you are not on, consider yourself lucky. BUT the summary is, Antonio is a former Facebook exec who then went on to write THIS book which is a brutal analysis of the company and his time there. He also writes problematically about women. Like it’s not one sentence in a book of 70,000 words. And even if it WERE JUST ONE SENTENCE…it’s a NOPE from me. But it’s a lot more and he claims he was writing in the style of Hunter S Thompson which I assure you if Hunter S Thompson COULD come back to life (let’s not forget his ashes were shot up to space) he would just to say NO NO DO NOT COMPARE YOURSELF TO ME. BUT I digress.
This book was written 5 years ago. What is the drama? WELL….he was hired by the beloved APPLE. After railing against tech and Silicon Valley culture, after calling women pigs on Twitter for what they weigh (yeah so….), he went to work for APPLE. Now let me say this…TO ME AS A WOMAN this is a pure definition of MALE privilege and what I mean by that is this:
My career is working with brands/founders. If I went and wrote a book taking down one of my former clients, I one thousand percent guarantee I would NEVER EAT LUNCH IN THIS TOWN AGAIN. What company would hire me with the risk of me going and doing the same thing to them? BUT alas, Apple overlooked all of this and brought him on.
And employees freaked out and created a petition to have him fired and took it to the press and less than a day later he was fired and then doing a media tour about it. AND IT IS COMPLICATED.
Either people blame Apple for hiring him in the first place, or people blame the employees for doing a which hunt on a guy who has claimed to have evolved since he wrote his book. Either way, it is dividing people AGAIN. Each side believes the other side to be worthy of death basically. IT IS ALL BAD.
So, yeah sorry there are no TikToks here but this all needed to be said.
For more on Antonio, listen to himself on Peter Kafka’s pod:
AND JUST A FEW OF MY FAVORITE THINGS (AND SOME DESPICABLE ONES TOO…)
Those were some heavy posts so I just wanted to get right to the good stuff and summarize that quickly also I have to get back to my day job.
- WHY is today’s issue called FLAMIN’ HOT? Well for those of you unaware of the fact that Cheeto’s have a very very popular version of their product that is SPICY and called FLAMIN’ HOT, it’s a whole thing. In fact, there is a whole FLAMIN’ HOT subculture on socials around all the things you can make in the kitchen using them. NO JOKE. Other generations had Monet, Van Gogh, Picasso…we have this. For example:
NEEDLESS to say, they are a thing. AND something I learned this weekend was that the person taking credit for CREATING the hugely successful FLAMIN HOT concept has a movie being made about him. His story was he was a janitor at Frito-Lay and he dreamed up the idea of a SPICY Cheeto and he called up the CEO and bada bing bada bang A STORY MADE FOR THE MOVIES. He has written books and gotten paid $$$ to speak at events.
ONLY problem is…
It’s not true.
And the stories were flying this weekend. Thanks to the LA TIMES for their exhaustive expose…and do NOT complain about the paywall guys….PAY FOR CONTENT (I say in my free newsletter no one pays me a cent for but alas..)
You have to wonder if Eva Longoria who is making the movie is freaking out. But I would think this adds a great layer of drama to the whole thing!
- GERIATRIC MILLENNIAL. This is the term that took over last week. I mean it’s ridiculous and funny and I got a laugh. It stemmed from an article on this platform, Medium.
And the socials lost it.
More here:
- Also, I know I do NOT do a lot of royals talk here because it is all so much. But I loved this pod. And I really find Harry and Meghan compelling I do I do I am an American sorry.
- And lastly, HALSTON. GO WATCH HALSTON. But before you do, read this profile from a week ago by Maureen Dowd on Ewan McGregor/Halston. OH the days when cocaine and cigarettes and legendary sex with countless partners was all acceptable. THOSE WERE THE DAYS. Anyway watch this series, it is visually stunning and FUN. AND sexy AF.
That is IT my darling POP CULTURE JUNKIES. THOUGH I do have some exciting news to share. IF you love this newsletter and pop culture in general, then please come check out my new community on the JUST LAUNCHED platform called Geneva. It is JUST getting started but it can be a place to meet other subscribers, to talk all things pop culture and it is so cool we can ultimately have audio and video conversations and it’s just a new fun layer to this wild mix.
GO SIGN UP!
Be safe, be kind. Don’t Cancel anyone this week.
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