My actual obsesh this week was rolling out of bed and onto the hard floor before the clock striked (Stroked? Struck? Struck!) six, because I was bizzzeeeee and sick and am doing this thing where I am trying to conceive of hateful snow-times as somehow insular and cozymaking and early bedtimes and work work work but instead I’m just kind of bored and sad and my roots are at Threat Level Infinity? Anyway here are some competing obsessions of the week.
NECKS
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The tidy neckline, buttoned up and arranged just-so-ishly with a necklace of Chiclet-gemstones or ironic pearls, has been a definitively nice/solid neck-look for a little while. I’m not mad. But, now it has all my style-attention on the neck (well, actually, my style attention for the month of January has been about whether or not it’s OK to clash pajama separates if it’s just you and a cup of coffee all day long) (it’s not OK). So, what can we expect next, neck-wise (Haaaa, EXPECT YOUR NECK! My matching pajama separates liked that one a lot) in the approaching months? I’m guesstimating a wide-but-not-so-wide-it-compromises-your-bra-strap kind of neckline, not as limited as a boat neck or as 90210-slutty as a tight scoop, but open and flowing and without an underlayer, in a serious fabric like thick cashmere or a rough linen, all the better for the mysteries of the post-winter clavicle to be reveaaaled. Wait for it, this is happeninginginging.
WAKE-UP LIGHT
I have this new Philips-brand “Wake-Up Light,” which is a Max Headroom-shaped clock radio-cum-quasiorb that you can set to chirp bird sounds at you. So, instead of waking up by sleep-chasing after a slippery iPhone and its tinny melodics you wake up to a butter-warm glow and pre-dawn summertime sounds that you will think, at first, only existed in an ancient fever dream that you had once. It’s rilly, rilly cool.
BLACK FLAG
Let’s clarify what we mean by “obsesh”: we mean a preoccupying concern, interest, or thought. Maybe usually “obseshed” indicates approval, but it doesn’t have-to-have to. So when I say I’m obseshed with the just announced mini Black Flag re-re-reunion (or reunion-ish, depending on whether or not semi-regular surprise performances “count” for you) (and with Ron Reyes, so my caring is limited to begin with) I mean that I am interested in the way that an academic is interested when a Google Alert pops up about something tangentially related to his research but isn’t like busting a nut about it.
The fandom of something that came, decidedly, before you—or before you were born and then also while you were in nursery school, in my case—is especially complicated because the crucial element of being a fan is being a part of something, and in such a case you are decidedly left out of it, left with crumply zines and seven-inches and someone else’s stories. This also conflicts with my aversion to corniness of the “my fan opinion of this fan-adjacent matter is of any importance to anyone anywhere” variety, as in, I feel like responding to a reunion announcement with any kind of triangulating, organizing evaluation of the reunion’s potential goodness, badness, meaning, value, too-bad-it’s-not-Dez-ish-ness, whatever is actually counter to fandom. Fandom is a rare human occasion to be humbled, egoless, inspired, and willfully participatory, and hopping up on your internets to mangle that state of being with general pissyness (which is, to be fair, informed by loss and unresolvable nostalgia and real need) is just bad for everyone. I willfully love Black Flag but I will just as willfully not care about this announcement.
OLD PEOPLE
I think the reason that old people compel me especially in the winter is because they have what I not only am missing in my own life but can’t precisely identify. It’s not that they’re necessarily resolved or better or peaceful, but I take this one bus to my office (read: Brutalist structure in which my mail is stacked in wait, in which I maintain a salt-shaker of emergency Ativan and a furry white blanket, in which I do not do any “work”) that is routinely lined with olds in their stiff coats and their matching wintery accessories, and they just sit quietly, not listening to music or really talking or really looking around, just being still. And not to deify something that isn’t mine for my own purposes (except that that is precisely what I am dooooiiiiinnnnnggggg ewwwwwwwww!) but how can you be that still? Where does dignity cross paths with stillness, is what I want to know, like, at what point in a life do you have the capacity and wherewithal to accept who you are and where you are going and your present bus-riding circumstances without Jiminy Cricketing your caffeinated butt all around your little bus seat?
SEX-ADJACENT CRUSHES
I sort of thought I was gay before I thought I was straight because when the whirlygirls at summer camp would want to be excited together about those Crayola-colored jerk-off rags (Bop, etc.) I would be like “I gueeeessss?” and feign crushes on the boys of KNOTB and Backstreet and the Other One. In reality I was interested in somehow acquiring daisy-embroidered overall shorts and reading the books on the higher shelves of my dad’s library, which I still called “liberry” probably on purpose. Then after a while I fell in love and etc. etc. etc. and now that I’ve fallen off the youth-cliff of 30 and understand things about men, relationships, myself, all of it, I am all and often about boys boys boys in that same “I just want to look at them” Bop magazine way, in particular/of late/this month of January hideouts with my laptop open in front of me, boys like Marc Maron, Chris Parnell, Nick Kroll (covered in sex-detail in last week’s Obseshes on the occasion of his rad new show, it’s really good, are you watching it? Are you? It’s like Tim and Eric plus Bravo! which is my formulation for everything perfect), Fred Armisen (theme!), plus Scooter Braun (I’m sorry; it’s his totally fucking absurd tweets. “#GRATEFUL” and so forth, he is so confusing to me and therefore compelling), Seth McFarlane (I’m sorry), who else… (Does this constitute a “type” other than something about my general internet behavior?) ANYWAYSENFRATZ: my willingness to be crushed out on dudes now in a way I was never crushed out on dudes when I was supposed to be is indicative of something, is pulling at me.
So it’s now at a level where I think my years and years of ingesting birth-control pills every morning have slowly poisoned me—I did a cleanse so maybe they got trapped in my liver somewhere?—and the various hormones are emerging out of my ear and mouth and fingers and, like, into my Apple products? That’s real, right?
MY ICE MACHINE
It’s hellzapoppingly loud when I forget to turn it off but did you know that I can have ice ANY TIME I WANT?
THAT LIL WAYNE SONG
Let’s parse “Love Me” a lil bit… Actually, it’s not so good, neva mind, but, “I fuck who I want / and fuck who I don’t” is just….. is just…. Can we remix this into some riot grrrl tapes post-haste?
Previously – Self-Imposed Chocolate Poisoning
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