Hey guys. I hope you’re well because I sure am not.
I was in Miami this past weekend. For those of you who’ve never been, Miami is a magical place where you can do molly two nights in a row, eat 25 pounds of ceviche, and spend an entire afternoon on a yacht taking photos of your butt. What it is NOT is a place to sleep. The earliest I’ve gone to bed this week is 4:30am. I am writing this at 8am and, yup you guessed it, I haven’t gone to bed yet.
I know these newsletters have been incredibly and impressively cogent up until this point. This one might deviate from that.
HIGHBROW
This week’s HIGHBROW goes to the Main Bitch on my #bootygoals vision board: Kali Uchis.
Imagine being hot. What a concept. Sometimes I’ll give myself the gift of letting my mind explore that alternate reality. What would I be doing as a hot person? I definitely wouldn’t be writing this newsletter. I would probably be in a VIP section with Bad Bunny and Timothée Chalamet. I wouldn’t even remember to look at who watched my latest instagram stories.
I bet that’s how Kali Uchis lives.
Ms. Uchis is a chanteuse with a voice like maple syrup, a pout like Betty Boop, a wardrobe like a Bratz doll, and an ass like that.
I was pretty late to Kali Uchis, having only discovered her music about a year ago, around the time she dropped her truly masterful music video for After the Storm. It’s directed by Nadia Lee Cohen who has an incredible body of visual work, and Creative Directed by Ms. Uchis herself. I’m so happy they’re out here making things, it’s just… I am also envious. I want to make stuff too. Should I go to film school? Should I go to bed? Or maybe I should just stay on task and finish this newsletter.
The video features Tyler, the Creator as a plant, and Bootsy Collins as a box of cereal. It’s such a good video. Watch it here.
LOWBROW
This week’s LOWBROW selection is a gift to 18-year-old Simone, fresh outta high school, fresh into college, untainted by the psychological trauma through which H*rv*rd was about to drag her, and obsessed with a very simple flash game called Robot Unicorn Attack.
It’s a tale as old as time. You are a robot unicorn, you jump over shit, you ram into other shit, and you see how long you can last. The adventure is underscored by a haunting song, which starts with an incredibly poetic couplet: “Open your eyes, I see/Your eyes are open.”
And because I am an explorer at heart, I looked into who the mind behind such timeless lyrics could be. That is when I was introduced to Erasure.
The song is Always. The music video is bonkers. I’m going to give you my analysis of it, but to be honest, I think the text is far too advanced for me. I’ll give it my best go.
From what I’ve been able to glean, this story is set in the Japan (?) of an alternate dimension, where the fabric is shinier and the people are white. A young woman has frozen to death in the middle of a Japanese (???) garden, but is promptly rescued by our hero, who beckons spring by throwing an exploding marble into the sky. While trying to woo the newly thawed woman, our hero is confronted by a demon who throws a different marble into the sky, bringing back winter. Now frozen into a giant snowball, our hero somehow manages to grab the spring marble again, exploding it in the sky and killing the demon. He pays brief tribute to a man who looks like Bruce Willis in the middle of getting his eyebrows microbladed, and then flies off into the sky, where it is revealed that this all took place inside of a Japanese (?????????????????????) painting.
In conclusion, this music video is a metaphor for how New York winters are oppressive and I should just move to LA already.
You can watch the music video for Always here.
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Okay, thanks for reading!
I’m in that weird phase now where I’m so tired that I’m actually not tired anymore. Should I just see how long I can stay awake? If I hit the “hallucination phase,” I’ll take that as my cue to pass out.
xoxo,
Simone