Rabbit-Soft Self-Care

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You know that part in SubUrbia (1996, not the 1983 Penelope Spheeris movie of the same name, minus the capitalized U; a medium-OK 90s-sploitation movie; nonclassic; but I guess worth watching) where the baby-barrette maybe-candy-raver, maybe-riot-grrrl’s mom says something and the baby-riot-raver goes “The fuck!” in Platonic teenage-girl response? That most perfect moment is typically my auto-response to the first, small waves of new and usually half-formed and almost always worse information about an already “The fuck!” situation, which this week of news, of events, of collective consciousness, decidedly was. So although my purpose at the moment is only to absorb and absorb and absorb the human horror that has been steadily unfolding in Boston (are y’all shivering, too?), I can offer up some mostly other, mostly unrelated Obseshes of the week for you. Just a little rabbit-soft self-care, let’s call it.

BOSTON

You don’t need me to be aggregating your news and also “see above” but considering that we’re in the midst of an enormous, scary, still-baffling information situation, I’ll just offer up this link to what Boston looks like (looked like? Depends…) emptied out while the search for the bombing suspect happens. Or happened. I don’t know.

SIFL AND OLLY

What would you say if I told you that a few sock puppets with badditude and terrific hosting skills and crazy friends were really formatively important to me? You’d be like, “Yes me too, Sifl and Olly right?” Right.

Beautiful genius Liam Lynch (whom we referenced in the first little bit of last week’s Obseshes riiiiight here) is back with his rad-dude sock puppets, of the erstwhile MTV appearances that of course live on and on and on online, but “back” only sooooort of: Sifl and Olly are now, as if out of nowhere, on the Nerdist YouTube channel, doing what I think are video-game reviews. (Is that a, as you say, thing?) Since I am turned off by sad fan culture, I will withhold my critiques of WHY DOES OLLY SOUND LIKE THAT? HE USED TO SOUND DIFFERENT! IS THIS HOW IT’S GOING TO BE? IS THIS IT? IS THIS WHAT WE GET? and instead think positively about having been given what anybody who has waited for the return of their own sock puppets to come out of retirement has hoped for.

THE SORORITY EMAIL

Here’s a teaser trailer for the Spring Breakers-of-news that flashed on Gawker yesterday: 1. “Sorority girl” + “list-serve”; 2. Misuse of “literally” in all caps; 3. Adamant, incorrect mathematics; 4. “WEIRD at sports” (my five-star favorite); 5. Very and curiously 80s refs; 6. Casual homophobia providing the “Oh, shit” denouement moment, at least of the Gawker summary I’m looking at, because the real, whole email was basically tl;dr; and 7. The comment at the very top, which reads “Like a slutty Ari Gold.” I’m actually totally down with sororities and anything else that sanctions 24/7 pal time, pal culture, and pal responsibilities, so a long “W/EEEEEE” to everyone else getting their weekly schadenfreude units from this. Y’alls are mean.

THIS

HAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHA.

COURTNEY BEAUTY

Courtney Love did what is called a Top Shelf on the beauty website Into the Gloss, which is a primo website if you like to get stoner-level detailed about cream versus powder blush options. Let’s discuss. My favorite thing about Courtney Love the media/Twitter/internet figurine is the way in which she… talks, I guess? How would it be literarily theorized, really, how she “talks”? It’s like ingratiating and braggy but also overconfident power-positioning at once? Who pulls this off? And so definitive and declarative in its statements that it (I guess “it” is her manner, her habit of speaking) sounds like someone put a standard-issue person through a should-exist “Courtney Love” setting on Google Translate. Out-of-nowhere “… which are several hundred bucks a bottle.” Stuff like that. And “Gold is a really heavy perfume, but you kind of feel like the queen of England when you wear it—it’s a huge smell.” A huge smell! Yes! And “Lagerfeld was like, ‘You look like the 26-year-old perfect rock-star whore—but you are not 26. You are never going to get laid like that.’ And it was Karl Lagerfeld, so I was like, ‘OK.’ [laughs]” and “He’s like a 45-year-old goth with eyeliner—amazing.”

So here is my working theory on Courtney as told through this feature: we already know she is whip smart and book smart and street-smart and if not fucked-up then just… tilted to one side, with a li’l hat on, and fucking incredible, but I’m wondering if all she does that is so different from everyone else—except for maybe Camille Paglia, and Cat Marnell—is not regulate or temper her realness, vulnerabilities or creative sensibilities in a way that we’re more familiar with, more comfy-co-co-cozy with. OK anyway now I’m having light-blue-gauzy daydreams about a gilded, double-height room of some kind occupied by Courtney, Camille, and Cat and that, as you’d expect, it’s using all of the energies I didn’t spend yet today on everything else, something so much better, so OK OK OK Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz goodbye.

Previously - Bummer Obseshes

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