I don’t know if you know this yet (and if you do, I certainly hope that you don’t know it firsthand) but it turns out that everyone was right and the coronavirus really sucks. I can say this with certainty because I currently have it. And while I’m v thankful for being fully vaccinated, I’m still giving this “mild” case 0/10 stars. I was going to give it 2/10, but then I completely lost my sense of smell and most of my sense of taste and, like, how am I meant to meaningfully live if I can’t fully enjoy the food I make, or huff a can of new tennis balls, or feel comforted in these dark times by a lovely scented candle? Please, if you’re reading this, I implore you to wear a mask in public and continue to practice caution. I would much rather walk around in a mask and have “weaker” vaccine protection than have to endure these many days of unwellness and isolation in exchange for “natural immunity,” which actually doesn’t feel natural at all as I can’t taste or smell.
On top of the whole ‘rona situation, the lamp in my living room burned out on the night I tested positive so I’ve been forced to use the big light this past week. Even in the most normal of times the big light is an abomination, but as a sick person it’s a true affront to my remaining senses. The big light makes the bags under my eyes heavier, my pockmarks more pronounced, my pale, sun-starved skin appear even more crapey and sallow. It seems incredibly wasteful to order just one (1) lightbulb through the post so I’ve been bumbling around my dark flat with my LED lantern and only strategically using the big lights. David is not pleased with this solution but I think it’s actually cultivating a cozy and kinda creepy late autumn 👻 Halloween 👻 vibe. But I guess it’s all fun and games until one of us trips over a power cord and winds up in an ambulance for 13 hours before being admitted to A&E... God save us from this Tory government, everyone!
Anyway, here are a few things I’ve been thinking about/watching/distracting myself with while being alone in my house (with David) for the past ten days. Only five* more days to go!!
scorpio season
Do you remember a few years ago when Channing Tatum and all the rest of us were momentarily obsessed with the Girlboss astrology app, Pattern? You know, the one that sent deranged messages like, “Girl, wash your face and watch out for Sandra. Her moon is in Venus right now and she’s coming for blood!” and made all of us contact our moms to find out ~exactly~ what time we were born? Well! When the Pattern craze took hold, I was on holiday in Provence with my friends Angie (a textbook Scorpio) and Tessa (a “Cancarian” as David says, but I think they’re actually just called Cancers?) and the three of us decided to fill out our profiles together. When my mom texted with the vital birth time I needed (4AM) I popped that missing piece of important astrological information into my profile, then clicked to make it live and let the Universe reveal Herself to me. The results were shocking. I am a Libra?
While I don’t put much weight into my horoscope, the Indigo Girls made it quite clear that the resting soul of Galileo, (King of night vision, King of insight) got things right, so I still, years later, find it fully bananas that despite being born on the day Scorpio season iconically starts, I am still somehow a Libra. And not just a normal, run-of-the-mill Libra, but, like, the most Libra of Libras. A Libra triple-threat. A Libra jackpot. The Mother, The Daughter and The Holy Libra, if you will. Let this story serve as a lesson: nothing about this world makes any sense!! And also: Happy Scorpio Season to all who celebrate.
Andie MacDowell walked (was generally just an okay actress) so Margaret Qualley** could run (one day win an Oscar)
Seriously you guys, MAID! More suspenseful than any thriller I’ve ever seen (literally watched with my hand over my eyes multiple times), this is a heartbreakingly brilliant portrayal of the compounding difficulties our most vulnerable members of society have to navigate in order to seek help and safety and secure a foundation on which to build a stable life. But it’s also a show about hope and doing right by the people we love. I finished it over a week ago and haven’t been able to stop thinking about:
How beautifully it was filmed and how fully real it all felt.
How sad it was while still having so much heart and empathy for these characters.
How what happens to Alex and Maddy happens to thousands of women and children every day, and how much harder it is for those who have even more controlling/abusive/unstable partners, who have their own addictions, or don’t have any semi-reliable family around. How much harder it is for those who aren’t white, aren’t cis-gendered, aren’t able-bodied, aren’t as educated, and aren’t fluent in the language of the country in which they live.
Maid is absolutely one of the best shows I’ve ever seen, and so compellingly tells an important story that we’re culturally uncomfortable examining as it exposes just how broken our systems are. Everyone should watch it. And then, after we’ve all seen it, we should have a revolution. Who’s in??
L’Agence
Like a more wholesome Selling Sunset, this French real estate show follows the Kretz Family Real Estate group as they sell stunning properties to chic French people. Everyone is very real-life attractive in a way that feels shocking for reality tv in 2021 (do they not know about Botox in France or do they just do it better?) and the confessionals often reveal emotional honesty that I fully believe is genuine. Are producers prodding things in the background to create drama? Probably! But by and large this feels like a show where everyone is trying to do right by each other and keep their family business afloat, and even though it does get a little messy near the end, it’s still really nice.
Special shout out to Majo, the grandmother, who is such a babe. Christine Quinn could never!!
it’s a slippery slope to big trou
While watching Only Murders in the Building (I liked it!) I took a detour and revisited the Father of the Bride movies bc I wanted a hit of Martin + Short (lol) as younger men so I could better understand what kind of face work they’ve both had done and you guys, I cannot state this enough: I was SHOCKED to learn that the parents in the first film are 46 (Steve) and 44 (Diane). Now please, don’t get me wrong, both of them look great in the FotB films, and they have wonderful chemistry but… is this for real how people in their sexual prime dressed in the 90s?!
Look, I know that Diane Keaton’s whole thing since forever has been big trousers, but her real life big trousers (at seventy-five, might I add) are a thousand times better than the big trousers in this film. You know the scene where Steve Martin is ripping apart bags of hot dog buns in the grocery store? Diane should’ve gone along and used him as a distraction to smuggle a few Thanksgiving turkeys out in the legs of her khakis. Maybe a bag of potatoes, too. Nobody would have noticed; the khakis are massive! In another scene, she’s walking up the stairs and untucking a silk shirt from a very boxy pencil skirt and the shirt basically trails on the ground behind her like a train. All her clothes are so so massive. WHY?
But it’s not just her wardrobe! Steve Martin could strip down to his shorts and use his enormous Tommy Bahama’s to sail a Tall Ship to battle if he wanted. And to make matters worse, he wears them with clown man tennis shoes??? I get that his character owns a sneaker factory but was that actually a look?! A parachute of suit fabric punctuated by a pillowy bright white athletic shoe that will definitely never decompose in a landfill???***
And then there’s the daughter, Annie, (who IRL is married to Brad Paisley btw) who wears a wedding dress made of so much fabric that it almost looks as if it should be a Russian nesting doll dress; throughout the ceremony and reception she removes a layer of dress, only to reveal a smaller dress beneath****... All this leads me to wonder, how much did fabric cost in the 90s? Was it not sold by the yard, as it is now, but by the cubic tonne?
I bring this up because fashion is cyclical and big pants appear to again be on the rise. Just look at Selena Gomez’s trousers on the cover of Variety, which are almost as big as Diane’s. I may be speaking only for myself here, but I personally believe that we cannot let enormous pleated trousers (with waistbands!) that require special washing and ironing (!!!) to once again become the pantaloon du jour. We must unite together to oppose this. Who is with me?!
Did you know that The First Wives Club is not a movie about women married to presidents?
Speaking of giant trousers, I hand’t watched The First Wives Club because I always thought it was a film about women who were married to presidents and I didn’t find that particularly compelling, but after watching FotB I went on a little Diane Keaton Giant Trouser Marathon and it turns out that the film is actually about a group of college friends (from the era when only rich girls when to college and they gave each other pearl necklaces at graduation) who reconnect after one of them dies by suicide. At a post-funeral lunch, they learn that they’ve all been left by their (first) husbands and then they plot revenge. Diane Keaton wears trousers that are somehow even more enormous, Bette Midler is strangely not memorable, and Goldie Hawn steals the show in a role where she’s supposed to look like she’s had so much work done but by today’s standards looks like the most natural and beautiful face the screen has ever seen. She also notably wears very chic fitted white trousers, so it’s not like people in the 90s didn’t know they had options!!
wwvd?
I’ve just watched season 1 and 2 of What We Do in the Shadows (delightful!) and I can’t help but wonder What Would Vampires Do in the face of catastrophic climate change? If I were a vampire, I feel I would really hop on the environmental activism route. They do, after all, have to live forever and having to endure all the different stages of climate collapse without dying seems like it would be a real drag. Plus! If the humans die out, the vampires would lose their food supply, so it’s actually very much in their best interest to befriend Erin Brockovich and stand at the forefront of this crisis. (Vampires, if you’re reading this, please take note.) Maybe the What We Do in the Shadows team could explore that approach in future seasons? And maybe they could do an episode where they throw out all their candles and, like me, invest in nice LED lanterns to light their lair. Not only are they very attractive, but they’re safer than candles and give great glow to even the sickest and palest of faces. Trust me, I would know. x
*In typing this number I have realised that I’m actually only halfway through *my* isolation period and am now overcome with deep deep sadness. 😩
**Margaret Qualley and I share a birthday. Is she also an accidental Libra?? I must find out.
***I’m sorry but the only person who can even remotely do this is Greta Lee.
****I actually think this is a good idea and would be really fun, like a drag RuVeal but make it matrimony!