Pop Culture Mondays
Mamba Forever
by Brooke Hammerling on Monday, January 27, 2020
Hello my pop culture junkies and welcome to a Crying Baby Yoda edition of this week’s PCM. While this newsletter is meant to be an escape from all the awfulness in the world and a place where we can get away and laugh and feed our brain gummy bears and licorice, sometimes its not all rainbows and butterflies. So obviously, the biggest story this week is the death of Kobe Bryant, his daughter and the other children and parents on the helicopter and it’s a story that everyone has a lot of emotion over and puts a lot of things into perspective for all. But as Alicia Keys so beautifully put it (more on that below) → “He (Kobe) would want us to keep the vibrations HIGH.” So that’s what we will try to do here.
Also, side note. I will be appearing tomorrow on one of my favorite podcasts of all time, Pivot with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway, to talk Pop Culture!!! OMG. I was super nervous but it was fun, so when you can this week, give it a listen — it drops at 9AM ET TUESDAY, JANUARY 28th!!!
THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES:
MAMBA FOREVER:
There’s not more to say here as everyone knows by now. Losing someone suddenly who is ingrained into the culture is always something that is shocking and hits us to the core. But when there are children involved, it’s another thing entirely. The news broke first on TMZ. Long before any established news source would go on to confirm it. It went around the world in a matter of minutes where people were walking up to one another on the streets of NYC asking if it was true (I know this because it happened to me.) The biggest problem here is that TMZ — clearly given a tip by someone in emergency services — released this before families could be notified. In this day and age, when information is shared in milliseconds, the people behind TMZ really should be ashamed of themselves and held accountable, in my opinion.
There are a lot of people with a lot of opinions about Kobe, about helicopters, about everything in between but the fact of the matter is he was beloved by many and the world lost beautiful and talented children senselessly and that’s the tragedy, full stop. And there was no denying Kobe was a proud father of four girls, evidenced by his now haunting interview on Kimmel (below). We tend to make superstars into superheroes and therefore untouchable by tragedy in our minds, no matter how many times we have to be reminded this isn’t the case.
Our hearts break for Mrs. Bryant and her three daughters.
RIP Mamba.
Watch Kimmel interview here:
GRAMMYS 2020: ALICIA KEYS WILL HOST EVERYTHING FROM NOW ON!
OK, onto happier and more joyful moments from this past week. The Grammys was a hot topic this week for a LOT of reasons, least of all seemingly were the awards themselves which took place last night. We had drama over the now ousted CEO, Deborah Dugan, of the Recording Academy who was fired right before the awards. And then both sides came swinging culminating in a lawsuit filed by Dugan for wrongful termination where she also raised sexual harassment allegations and irregularities in Grammy nominations. I mean dramorama…turns out the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences has a board of like 40 old dudes, for the most part, who did not like to have their boat rocked in any way, and from where I’m sitting it looks like Ms. Dugan was planning on trying to fix the organization and make them financially successful (meaning kushy perks going away) and BOOM, they attacked.
We then had rumors flying around that due to Kobe, the Grammys were cancelled out of respect or due to logistics as the awards were being held at the Staples Center, the home of the LA Lakers. You had crowds of people coming to grieve together mixed with crowds of people in tuxedos going to the Grammys. What a thing. The Grammys went on.
While Lizzo opened the show by saying “This is for Kobe,” Alicia Keys tackled the complexity of being host and having to address ALL the elephants in the room, not just Kobe. She addressed the Grammy CEO drama by saying, “We refuse the old systems. Hear me on that?” and with that, a wild Grammys was on. AND let’s be clear — This night was magical DUE to Alicia Keys. She now is anointed the HOST OF EVERYTHING. OSCARS? Alicia. Emmys? Alicia. TONYS? Alicia. Debates? Alicia. EVERYTHING.
OK back to the show…Billie Eilish won basically everything for an album her brother and collaborator, Finneas told the crowd was an album “…about depression and suicidal thoughts and climate change and being the bad guy…”
It’s that kind of year guys.
Many people think it was Adele who was the last person to do a sweep like this, but it was actually Christopher Cross (I mean….SAILING, ANYONE??) in 1981. Adele has won all the categories but at different times. Fans of Lizzo, Ariana Grande, Lana del Rey, H.E.R, Lil Nas X, Bon Iver (really??) and Vampire Weekend were up in arms but there you have it. Remember when teen angst was Taylor Swift breaking up with a boy in high school?
Anyway, there were a ton of moments from the awards (ignore the Aerosmith one if you can as it wasn’t their finest moment tbh) but my favorite really was Alicia Keys singing her own song to Lewis Capaldi’s hit “Someone You Loved” where she addresses everything going on in the world seemingly and makes us all feel ok and safe and loved and connected and inspired. It will GIVE YOU CHILLS. She is a gift.
Watch it immediately. WATCH THE WHOLE THING I PROMISE YOU (Though CBS YOU ARE SO stupid for not having embeddable video. OK Boomer.)
For a list of all the winners:
And for more on the CEO debacle read here (full disclosure, my experiences with Deborah Dugan have always been incredible and respectful.):
DOLLY PARTON CHALLENGE:
Back to two days ago, when we were innocent and ignoring things like the destruction of democracy and the Coronavirus (which incidentally does not involve Corona Beer), we had this delightful meme which took hold of society. It all started with Dolly Parton who posted the above with a call to action for people to “Get you a woman who can do it all.”
YES QUEEN.
We can be ALL business and ALL vixen and ALL ingenue and ALL wholesome and be one woman. TRUTH! And while Dolly didn’t originate this meme, she might as well have as it took on a whole new life after she posted it and is now forever known as the Dolly Parton Challenge. People had a lot of fun with it from celebrities to your dad to my dog, Potato. The idea that we have different personalities for each social platform is pretty much the most accurate assessment and we all leaned into it.
Check out some of the best ones here:
THIS BABY IS OUR SPIRIT BABY:
I am not going to lie, I watched this video upwards of a 100 times, as did millions of others. There is a lot to unpack here, but the baby’s pure joy at tasting ice cream for the first time is contagious. But I have so many questions like how did that baby hold onto that ice cream like she did? And how pissed was that baby when they tried to take it away like she went from Punky Brewster to DAMIEN in a second. And WTF flavor is that? RUM RAISIN? Can you imagine what this baby will do when she gets a hold of chocolate ice cream? Or Cookies in Cream? Or cookie dough? My God. COOKIE DOUGH. Anyway, the baby is iconic now.
BEZOS AKA POP CULTURE ICON:
I am pretty sure ten years ago if asked who might be a huge name in pop culture in ten years, Jeff Bezos would have been last on your list. But miracles do happen! And look, he’s not entirely faultless here. From his physical transformation which has everyone talking about the power of HGH and stem cell therapy to his private life to his fashion sense…there are plenty of titans of the universe who live their lives as anonymously as possible. But now you have Beefcake Bezos in a half buttoned shirt on a boat in St. Tropez and you have Bollywood Bezos in a shimmery jacket in India. And BOOM. ICONIC.
And everyone seemingly got the jaw dropping alert on their phones Friday night, that maybe MBS (the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia) wasn’t the source of the leak but MAYBE it was Jeff’s current girlfriend who maybe shared his naughty texts and pics with her brother who then went and sold them. It’s a sordid tale that has everyone captivated. But for reals, the conversations circle back to privacy and what does that mean and does it exist and should we all be terrified (yes probably). But I continue to be here for more Beefcake Bezos tbh.
More here:
And this is a doozy which may keep you up at night:
IT’S VINE! NO, IT’S BYTE. WHICH IS VINE!
So for a moment last week the social media world was overtaken by Byte, which is the new Vine which was the old (2016 aka a lifetime ago) app that let you post 6 second looping videos and it became a massive creator community PRE-TikTok. Vine was bought by Twitter and then who knows the reasons but it all imploded rather suddenly and Vine was shut down. But the Vine community, which spawned artists and creatives who told entire stories in just 6 seconds…almost like a GIF with audio, were outraged and heartbroken. The Day Video Died…ok I exaggerate but people took it hard. So now the founder of Vine has brought it back to life — something that is old and new at the same time — with Byte.
IT IS LITERALLY VINE.
It’s missing all the bells and whistles that TikTok has feature-wise, but maybe there is an appetite for going retro aka 4 years. TIME WILL TELL!
For more on Byte:
And for more on Vine:
Until next week Pop Culture Junkies….
PS: There was a lot more this week we could have covered but we all have real jobs to get back to!
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