The weekend roundup.
Featuring Abe Lincoln, NYFW, and "literary bratdom."
As my friends know, I am a chronic oversharer of internet ephemera in my group chats. I am plugged into the internet like an IV drip, getting that good shit seven days per week. Instead of peppering my friends with links, images, memes, and an avalanche of content, I’m trying out a special “weekend edition” of the newsletter, featuring a handful of things I’ve read, watched, listened to, laughed at, etc. Let me know what you think, and keep an eye out for the next full edition.
Welcome to Public Service.
Weekend Links:
Seeing an image of a man dressed as newly out and proud homosexual Abraham Lincoln watching a newscast of Donald Trump almost getting assassinated again altered my brain chemistry. Besides the politiception of it all, I’m more confused about why this man was dressed as Honest Abe at an airport. Was the plane to Gettysburg delayed?
The Washington Post’s fashion writer Rachel Tashjian reaffirmed that New York Fashion Week will never stop being cursed. “Substack steps into the fashion spotlight” is a crash course on how much influence fashion newsletter writers have amassed in NYC — despite them all seemingly hawking the same exact brands lol, which brings me to my next point.
Despite the aforementioned Substack fashion superstars, I really believe that has some of the best analysis on the internet right now is happening right here from writers who aren’t hawking high end wares. I say this partly because of Julia Harrison’s great new piece, “their PR is deluding you,” in her orzo bimbo newsletter. I will confess that I was partly drawn to it by the use of a fantastic archival Prada Fall 1998 campaign photo, but I was also hooked (like an eel caught on a fishing line) by her great takedown of the absolutely unhinged level of dissonance between product and seller. Spoiler alert: the people telling you to buy a $600 sweater are not, in fact, paying $600 for that sweater. As for those Substack writers who are hosting NYFW events? They’re also not paying for all merch from Khaite and The Row and whatever the fuck Toteme is.
Harrison’s piece led me to The Cut, where Emilia Petrarca compared the price of eye-watering luxury clothing to everything from a BBL procedure outside the U.S. to a 1981 used John Deere tractor with an attached mower. Stop what you’re doing and read “A Tom Ford Romper or a Ford SUV?” right now.
As a lover of Drive My Car, I will stop and stare at any image of two people standing next to a cute, boxy car. While I know what a Honda is, I have no idea what any of these words mean beyond that. The comments are open if anyone wants to explain what “Sonoda's Riding Bean OVA” is.
I’m very glad that Katy Waldman read three new novels by Gabriel Smith, Frankie Barnet, and Honor Levy for The New Yorker because I simply would never. Just seeing the headline “The Temporary License of Literary Bratdom” was enough to send a shiver down my spine and make me clench hard. I feel a recurring secondhand embarrassment for the amount of content made by Gen Z and young millennials that feels made to be edgy but has the sharpness of a butter knife. The three novels Waldman shreds here (Smith’s Brat, Barnet’s Mood Swings, and Levy’s My First Book) gave me the ick without flipping a single page. Do yourself a favor, read the critique and save your literary downtime for something else.
On Tuesday, I texted my friend the following message about a “hot take” so dumb it may have melted my brain a bit: “Everyone on the left wants to be an edgelord while still maintaining their pick me status.” This was in response to someone knocking Sabrina Carpenter for making “cis white girl bimbofication hypno” music and embodying “the fascism of neoliberal compulsory positivity.” They say upfront that they are joyless and admit the choreography in the “Don't Smile” video goes hard, but my god. We need to stop letting terminally online Yale graduates have internet connections. Someone in Brooklyn, please throw a pager at the 5G towers. It’s time to turn it OFF.
Announcements:
I will be seeing The Substance tonight, one of the first movies in ages that feels like it’s having a monoculture movement. Though… maybe I just follow too many gay people on social media who stan Demi Moore.
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Thanks for joining me and have a nice day!