Pop Culture Mondays/6.17.24
The “SUMMER SLOWDOWN” Edition
Happy Monday, my darling pop culture junkies. I will just come right out and say it was a slow news week this week, pop culture-wise. ONCE in a while, the world of pop culture takes a break, and I am ok with that, especially when it coincides with me needing a break too. It’s hard to keep up with everything on top of everything else that is going on in the world. A great many of you reading this (or maybe NOT reading it this week) are in Cannes for Cannes Lions, which is the boondoggle for advertising and media peeps. A little tech and a little entertainment mixed in, and you have the rich even flying to Nice COACH because business class seats were tens of thousands of dollars. Frankly, it was TOO rich for my blood, and I LOVE a South of France moment, but I would also prefer not to drop a ton of money so I can hang with media execs all day (sorry!) LOOK…if someone wants me to SPEAK at their event next year, vs. carry Kara Swisher's bags….CALL ME. I can justify THAT next year. But alas, enjoy the rosé all day, the Lenny Kravitz concert, and all the other boondoggle things going on.
We also have Juneteenth on Wednesday, and I am so pleased to see so many companies make this a company-wide holiday. If you want to read up on it more, here is a FREE article from The New York Times I am gifting you all:
It was also Father’s Day on Sunday, and as someone who lost her parents a long, long time ago, I have a complicated relationship with these sorts of holidays….and I am SURE I am not alone. I also am sure I am not alone in trying to navigate grief which is a slippery little sucker that does not function in any linear way, so sometimes it shows its ugly head at the most unexpected of times. ANYWAY, it's a very long way for me to explain that this week’s PCM is a SHORTISH one.
I hit a milestone last week: the 100th episode of my podcast, Pop Culture Mondays on Thursdays. I think of it as my 10,000 hours, and now I can start having more fun and doing MORE with it. But please do listen, subscribe, give 5 stars…all that jazz:
Alright alright alright let’s get to it. Grab your 🎧 and some snacks, and enjoy!!
THE SLOW AND PAINFUL DEATH OF THE COMPANY FORMERLY KNOWN AS TWITTER:
I loved Twitter. I really did. It wasn’t perfect by a longshot, but it was important, useful, and entertaining all at the same time. It is not that anymore.
The burning cesspool that X has become reminds me of when you return to the town you grew up in and see your first love after 25 years. This was the boy whose name you drew all over your notebooks in cursive and whose last name you added to your own everywhere you could in bubble letters. Your first kiss, your first heartbreak. The boy you used to occupy so much of your brain that there are STILL songs from those years you listen to and immediately think of him. But you went away to college, and then you never looked back. The boy stayed put in your hometown, and all the promise he had sort of went away, and time went on. You still think of all the fun times you had together and how hot he was, and how silly and carefree you were together. Until all these years later, you run into him when you are visiting your hometown, and he looks 20 years older than you, and he is overweight and bald and real rundown and smoking a cigarette and wearing a dirty t-shirt, and he doesn't recognize you, so you do your best to slip away unnoticed, and get back in your car and drive off.
Yep. That’s what X is like now. You get some good old-fashioned racism, sexual harassment, pornography, fake news, Antisemitism, bullying, and wowzers…if you want to call that a good time, then have it.
There were still useful parts to it, though…barely, but they were there. Notably, you could tell who liked something you posted. They were on your team, engaged with you, or had different views than you, and that was helpful to know, too.
But because Elon is well….ELON…he killed this feature. You can still like posts. But you can no longer see WHO liked posts. Your posts or anyone else's. Just numbers, no engagement. NO sense of community.
YEP. Sounds about right.
They announced it with this:
All accountability is now OUT the window. You can like the hateful, racist post, and it’s OK!! NO ONE WILL KNOW!!! 🙄
But the responses were GREAT, and we have that at any rate.
Let’s first give it up for Luke MOTHER FUCKING Skywalker, Mark Hamill, who is doing GOD’S WORK. He decided to just respond to every tweet (sorry, post) he likes by writing “like.” GENIUS.
SO good.
Other fun ones:
Elon himself was called out for some very questionable likes, so people think this is a personal response to that. What do you think?
A ROUND-UP OF MUSIC-RELATED THINGS:
Nothing about any of these things is related OTHER than being connected to the music industry. CALL me lazy. It’s fine. I am today. I just am.
But let’s start with one near and dear to my heart. For me, time is a very strange thing. Maybe it's connected to that grief thing I was talking about earlier. But I really have a horrible understanding of time. Things that happened a lifetime ago sometimes feel like they just happened. I see a friend’s kid, and I swear they were just born, but Insta tells me they are graduating high school. It sounds like I do too many drugs. Or maybe not enough!
REM was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame this weekend…as they should have been. And for a lot of us, the nostalgia HITS hard. This was the band of our youth. We were petulant teens blasting “Losing My Religion” every chance we got. It was the soundtrack of our young lives for many of us.
For me, it was a bit more personal. For several years, REM was my family. One of my first adult relationships was with a member of that band. I remember the day we met like it was yesterday and not 1998. I remember what I was wearing and what HE was wearing and that first conversation. I remember the first time he sang to me and showed me how he wrote a song. The first time he said I love you, and the last time we broke up. Even though it has been a LONG time since we broke up, and I have come to love him as a friend and am so grateful for the lifelong friendships I made during those years, nostalgia still hits hard. And I shed a few tears looking at the tons of pics and videos my friends sent to me as I tried to ignore socials for a bit. I was proud. I was delighted for them. I was sad and nostalgic, too. ALL the feels. But at the end of the day, we got them to play our song after all these years:
But when asked if they will get back together, assuming other than this impromptu reunion at the awards…Millsey made it clear that this was a no.
You can watch the whole interview here…I cannot watch it all yet, but I will eventually. I will.
Leaving this walk down memory lane with one of my most fave REM songs, “Harborcoat”:
MOVING on to more music stuff….we have a little gem from Taylor Swift this weekend, who decided to drop a bomb during her Liverpool show. Remember BACK in the day when she dated Calvin Harris, which ended VERY badly, and it was all wrapped up in that time. Taylor was becoming very unpopular, and it was likely a painful time for her to live it all publicly. But before they broke up, she helped him write a song that became a huge hit for him and Rihanna. When I say she “helped,” one assumes she wrote it because it sounds like her, and she got a writing credit for it.
Well, she dropped this…
The story goes that she was going to put it on her REPUATION album but instead gave it to Rihanna. Now, fans are speculating that this means REPUTATION (TAYLOR’S VERSION) is coming soon, and her version of this song will be on it.
Swiftie Nation…look, I trust them more than any Federal investigative agency. Let’s see….
And LASTLY, in music-related content making some noise this week, we have DRAKE’S FASHION STATEMENT.
May I present to you, Drake’s PANTS. I spent some time on this topic on last week’s pod, but it was worth mentioning here because the response were hilarious. I mean, I am more low-key when I go to my friends’ kids soccer games. Usually a pair of jeans and a sweater, but I am not Drake. He needed to make a MOMENT. And he did.
The responses:
And really, my fave guy on Twitter/X right now:
A LITTLE THIS & A LITTLE THAT:
SHE IS ONLY 24???
Lols, no, no, Estelle Getty was NOT 24 here. But she was also not 80 when she starred in “Golden Girls.” She was 62 which today is basically 40. I DIGRESS. But TikTok has exploded with disbelief on the latest cast of Love Isalnd, the hit UK show, as they learn their ages. Everyone is beautiful, no doubt. But the ladies have a certain look and everyone thinks as a result, the look much older than their age.
Here is one theory, and she is probably right:
BUT…I also think it has to do with trends changing. This was VERY much the look for a long time. Big lips. Lots of filler. Lots of make-up. Big hair. Think Kardashian. Melania. Etc.
But that trend is changing. People are opting for a more natural look. No fillers and not a lot of make-up. Fake boobs and butt implants are becoming passe. The NO MAKE UP MAKE UP look is ALK the rage:
And according to The Cut, it is ALL about the GLOW DOWN now:
WHICH MEANS we are going to see a lot more of these videos showing people’s “eyebrow blindness,” a term they coined for when they had crazy eyebrows but could NOT see it at the time:
LOVE this.
HAVE YOU HEARD OF STRAWBERRY MILK MOB?
Maybe two or three times a year, I get a craving for strawberry milk…literally ripped right from my childhood. I keep a stash of Nestle Strawberry Quick in my pantry JUST for one of these random cravings…while I may be lactose intolerant, I am NOT going to mix my strawberry Quick with non-dairy milk. Sorry, but I am not a monster. So, I suffer the consequences. Worth it.
But I digress.
The Strawberry Milk Mob is a bikini brand started by a girl who has a huge following on TikTok and still lives with her parents…well, watch this instead of listening to me:
And here are some of their videos:
Yeah. GOALS.
MARLON WAYANS IS ON FIRE:
Actor and comedian Marlon Wayans posted the above on his Instagram in support of his transgender son, Kai. And some bigoted, small-minded people DID NOT like it. Marlon made sure to shine a light on some of the haters and also posted some great responses:
Love to see it.
And he didn't stop there. While he turned the comments off of his OG post, he continued to post more pics from his PRIDE shoot and leave comments open.
MORE OF THIS, PLEASE.
LADIES & GENTS, THE TONY AWARDS:
One of the things I miss most about living full-time in NYC is the theatre. When I get back to NY, I always aim to see at least one show, but it almost becomes impossible with everything else I try to pack in a short amount of time. Living there, you can almost forget what is right there at your doorstep. And yeah, sure, these days you have to contend with tourists who show up to a night in the theatre in flip flops and jeans and their boxes of Peanut M&Ms, which makes it — at least for me — a hard pill to swallow. I can only imagine what my mother would have done if confronted with this scenario. A BASEBALL CAP?? Thoughts and prayers. But despite all that (and the occasional cell phone ringing), NYC has the best theatre. I cannot even comment on LA tbh. I am sorry, but it is a travesty. Even shows that started on Broadway that come to LA…it’s a travesty. The theatres aren’t done correctly for that kind of performance (too big), or the talent is not really professional THEATRE people (aka North West.) So, for now, it is NYC or BUST.
This year, I feel Broadway is on fire. Amazing productions, amazing talent, and the Tonys…Broadway’s Oscars were last night, and some things have gone viral. So here is a brief breakdown.
- Jonathan Groff won his FIRST Tony. That’s hard to imagine, but it’s TRUE. He won BEST ACTOR IN LEADING ROLE FOR A MUSICAL for “Merrily We Run Along.” His speech had me IN TEARS:
The fact he didn’t win a Tony before this is mind-boggling. I saw him EIGHT times in “Hamilton.” Yes, I was that girl. I saw that show more than eight times, BUT eight times with him as KING, and it was unparalleled.
- Eddie Redmayne’s performance at the Tonys from his role in “Cabaret.” There is a lot of talk about this, with many saying it was terrifying. Let me be clear…this is not ACTUALLY subjective. I am here to tell you that, without a DOUBT, this is a genius performance, and he is an unbelievable actor. I mean, his range is insane. So let’s start there:
It is meant to evoke emotion…and darkness, and it is meant to be creepy. I was SO lucky to have parents who raised me on the theatre, and I got to see Joel Grey in this role…for reference:
And while this doesn’t show it maybe because of the decade, but it was always dark and complex.
But here are some of the social media takes from last night:
- And lastly…this. THIS is the thing that has me thinking of calling up the movers and packing up my shit and moving home. If I had been in the audience, I would have died. Just wait for it. WAIT for it…
I ❤️ NY
THAT IS IT, my darlings…
That’s it! Short and sweet and early on top of it all!
Enjoy the week. For some silly content, if you didn't see “The Fall Guy,” you can now rent it on Apple. I did, and I loved it. I mean, it is silly fun and a hell of a soundtrack. And so many ’80s references, LOVED it. Also, Ryan Gosling and Aaron Taylor-Johnson? YES PLEASE.
We are switching off of Medium SOON….so expect an update there. NOT SUBSTACK, so do NOT worry.
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Xx,
Brooke
