Uncultured turns one this week! It honestly feels like it’s been five years lol due to all the grey hairs I’ve acquired from my aggro self-imposed deadlines.
Since our humble beginning, we’ve shared 60 issues, dropped seven JoJo Siwa mentions, and I’ve snapped at my friends who called this project a “blog” more times than I can count.
Special thanks to my Substack pals Tom, Heather, and Kitty for their support in the lonely, dark chasm of newslettering — if you haven’t checked them out already, highly recommend!
And thank you so much for reading, skimming, or opening and immediately discarding over the past year.
If you enjoy Uncultured as much as you enjoy half of a shrimp tempura roll, consider becoming a paid subscriber or sharing with a friend.
Low-Brow Lowdown
The Idol scandalizes Cannes. The torture-porn Sam Levinson series did not go over well with its debut audience of rich olds. It’s currently sitting at a 17% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Also, apparently it exists in “the same universe” as Euphoria and Maddy Perez will make an appearance?? So it’s basically the NC-17 version of those Disney channel crossovers when it was like “That’s So the Suite Life of Hannah Montana” except everyone is on Molly and fucking.
Khloe reveals her baby name. In the season three opener of The Kardashians (more not that below), Khlo-Money announced that Baby #2 is named Tatum. We did it, Joe!
“Don’t Call Me Karen” workshop falls on its bony ass. Uber’s DEI officer has been benched after hosting a panel designed to discuss how white women feel about being called Karen. Who’s a snowflake now, boomers???
RIP to Harajuku Bitch (2000 - 2023). Paris Hilton’s 23-year-old chihuahua passed away this week, who lived a “long, beautiful, and iconic life.” Jealous that he got a Page Six feature to commemorate his death and when I die I’ll be lucky if the soulless corporation I work for even sends out an FYI memo.
Burglars caught on camera in JoJo Siwa Bling Ring heist. Luckily (and naturally) she was on a CRUISE at the time of the break-in.
Prue from The Great British Bake-Off chats saggy bottom affair. She discussed in - wait for it - a PODCAST EPISODE that she had a thirteen year affair with her mentor and the chairman of her company when she was in her early twenties. She didn’t care that he didn’t leave his wife for her because she got all of the D with none of the wifely duties.
Alix Earle gets stranded in Italy. The A-list TikTokker and friends flew from Spain to Italy, only to realize that the “villa” they booked didn’t exist.
This editor was complaining about how tacky it was that a publicist for some travel security company pitched her 40 minutes after Alix posted about the issue, but I’m like omg relax. You have to give points for shameless hustle in this life.
Uncultured’s middest hits
Some of my fave stories from the archives in celebration of year one.
2023 Pop Culture Predictions — we’re nearly halfway through the year, how are we doing??
White Girl, Wasted — me whining about turning 25
Gaslighting My Friends with AI Headshots — some super serious investigative journalism
Caught Red-Handed — new interview series with cool people
Midnights Track Rankings — a refresher for everyone going to Eras this weekend without me!!!!
The Kardashians S3E01 Power Rankings
My latest for Betches went live this morning! Is this the pinnacle of my kareer? Maybe.
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In this world, nothing can be said to be certain except death, taxes, and the Kardashians.
America’s royal family is back for a third season of their hit Hulu series, literally rolling onto our screens in the most chaotic manner possible.
In a meta moment, the episode began with the fam filming their season 3 show opening–a cheesy and low-key cringey roller rink music video that left us with so many pertinent questions. Namely, did they hire stunt doubles to skate for them? We know from Kim’s Dancing With the Stars fiasco that coordination is simply not her thing. Is Kris Jenner violating network safety protocols by skating in the dark with her shades on? And how hard did she have to lobby to get Corey Gamble upgraded to marquee billing?
As we return to the gilded gates of Hidden Hills, we learn that Khloé is dealing with a worrisome health scare, a post-Pete Kim is navigating more Kanye drama, and Scott has somehow wormed his way into another featured friend contract despite Kourtney hexing his voodoo doll every night before she goes to sleep. Kris is still breaking necks and cashing checks, Kendall and Kylie spend the majority of the episode trying not to crash their car during an ill-advised stick shift lesson, and Stormi wins the Unbothered Award for attending the 818 party wearing massive, over-the-ear headphones to block out all of the smarmy hobnobbery.
Khloé warned us that this would not be a calm, serene chapter, and she and her sisters quickly delivered on that promise. To make sense of it all, we’ll be coming to you after every episode with post-game analytics that determine who’s at the top of the pyramid and who’s being the least exciting to look at.
Since everyone knows a Kardashian episode isn’t a Kardashian episode without an aggressively shaken salad, we’ll award a bowl of greens (🥗) for each Succession-grade power play, juicy confessional, and well-timed zinger. However, points will be deducted for things like a fashion faux pas, pick-me behavior, or anything weird or uncomfortable that even remotely reminds me of Foodgod aka Jonathan Cheban.
KRIS
🥗 Creating a conveniently generous timeline to encourage Kim to take the Dolce project–it’s been a whole four months since Kourtney’s wedding, and by the time the collection is released, it’ll be nine!
Kris is the devil on your shoulder talking you into buying Chipotle for the third time that week even though you have groceries at home: You’re going to Pilates tomorrow and you have 500 reward points so it would really be a crime if you didn’t order this sofritas quesadilla.
🥗 🥗 Having Kim tell Kanye that she’s almost 67 and is too old for his goddamn manchild BS. The woman deserves her peace!
🥗🥗🥗 Winning the endorsement from her current favorite daughter Kylie that she’s the most fun KarJenner to get drunk with. I wonder how many martinis it would take for her to actually deign to eat her signature Papa Johns Doritos Cool Ranch Papadia.
TOTAL: 🥗🥗🥗🥗🥗🥗 (6) salads
KYLIE
🥗🥗 Screaming “there’s cops!!!” while learning to drive stick in Kendall’s 1997 vintage Porsche on the sordid streets of Beverly Hills. This also runs through my mind every time I take the Toyota Camry out for a spin in my hometown, so it’s affirming to see this evidently universal experience represented by the one percent.
Being overly complimentary of Kendall’s Porsche’s cupholders. It’s giving first date when you run out of smalltalk at the restaurant and have to be like, “Aren’t these plates such a nice shade of white?”
🥗 Prompting Hulu to splurge on the “my money don’t jiggle jiggle” song after her “wiggle wiggle” comment about the car’s neutral gear. I’m honestly so over the shitty Selling Sunset transition music they’ve been using when we know that this is flagship content with the budget to do better.
🥗🥗🥗 Spilling the tea on all of her sisters’ drunk alter egos. Kourtney becomes a free wielding geyser of pee after two margaritas? Incredible.
❌ Claiming that she holds her liquor better than the rest of the fam. The “I’m gonna get wasted” song called and she begs to differ.
TOTAL: 🥗🥗🥗🥗🥗🥗 (6) salads and (2) Jonathan Chebans
KHLOÉ
🥗🥗 Speaking her truth on the complex realities of surrogacy. Having a baby isn’t always sunshine and rainbows as the glossy pages of Family Circlewould lead you to believe. . .they went bankrupt for a reason!
🥗🥗 Pulling out her stopwatch to time Kourtney and Travis’s emergency ovulation fornication. Kourtney promised a five-minute sprint and Khloé held her accountable (even though her inner child was triggered by the memory of falling asleep under her parents’ bed during a game of hide-and-seek and waking up to the sounds of them having sex).
Taking the tiniest forkful of pasta from the serving plate at the 818 dinner. I’m sure she’s like, minding her macros and I totally get it, but it looked so yum that it felt disrespectful to the noodles.
🥗 Finally revealing her baby’s name, and letting us breathe a collective sigh of relief that she didn’t pick Tristan.
❌❌ Reminding Kim that Rob’s under no immediate pressure to continue the family bloodline since he can have kids until he’s “like 90.” A haunting visual no one asked for!
TOTAL: 🥗🥗🥗🥗🥗 (5) salads and (2) Jonathan Chebans
KIM
🥗🥗🥗🥗 Getting a once-in-a-lifetime offer to collab with Dolce & Gabbana and creative direct their Milan Fashion Week show.
We know from the trailer that this is about to spell major doom for Kim’s relationship with Kourtney, who feels like Kim leveraged her D&G-sponsored wedding as a business opportunity. But Kourtney is squarely in the wrong and needs to get over it–weddings, funerals, and brises were made for networking. Facts are facts, and Kim will not be known as the girl who didn’t go to Paris!!
❌ Elaborating on her breakup with Pete by explaining, “We just had talks and talks, like we had been talking about it.” Go girl, give us nothing!!!
❌❌ Worrying that no one will want to date her because she’s in her forties with four kids. KIMBERLY, GET A GRIP!!! You’re a brilliant, stunning billionaire, and if you wanted to create your own reality show where Tom Brady, Drake, and Brad Pitt vie for your heart, you have all the money and resources to do so.
❌ “The dramz isn’t penetrating me 100%.” Can someone please buy her a Thesaurus, what is this word choice?!
❌ Wearing those distracting, firetruck red shorts and slippers while filming in her eerily white monastery of a home. Kim has said in interviews that her SKIMS employees have to abide by an office color scheme dress code where they can only wear, like, Desert Storm Beige, so shouldn’t she hold herself to the same standard?
🥗🥗🥗 Taking the high road with Kanye to protect her kids from a public he-said-she-said media frenzy, unless she wants to resurrect her short-lived music career and drop a diss track—which I’d support too.
TOTAL: 🥗🥗🥗🥗🥗🥗🥗 (7) salads and (5) Jonathan Chebans
KOURTNEY
🥗 🥗 Having an incredibly active, voracious sex life. Who has 90 minutes in the middle of the day for a marathon bone sesh? Kourtney does. Not that we’d expect anything less from our crunchy granola, self-actualized Poosh goddess.
🥗 Somersaulting onto the confessional couch for her interview. We will always award points for parkour.
❌ Wearing that same matching skeleton onesie with Travis AGAIN. Do those ever get washed?! Or do they just have a Mark Zuckerberg-style closet with thirty identical sets so they only have to do laundry once a month?
❌❌ Unironically offering to lead a sister yoni steam.
TOTAL: 🥗🥗🥗 (3) salads and (3) Jonathan Chebans
KENDALL
🥗🥗 Knowing how to drive stick. I guess I have to award points for this since it’s a solid survival skill, but I’m doing it begrudgingly. It’s so “I’m not like other girls.”
❌ Calling Kylie an old lady. Betch is basically a teen mom.
❌ Hiring a robot to bartend her 818 event. Stealing jobs from hard working Americans is so not hot. Plus, it was slow AF, and even one of the EPs called out that it would be much more efficient to have four guys making drinks versus one sluggish robot and the four engineers it took to operate him. Plus x2, did we learn nothing from I, Robot?!
❌❌ Paying a man more money than prob my entire savings account to drop into the party on some sort of leaf blower contraption to deliver a SINGLE bottle of 818. You’re in a room full of billionaires, Kenny—no one is going to be impressed by this poor man’s Elon Musk and his sad excuse for a jet pack. Sure, people took out their phones, but no one posted that lackluster content to Instagram.
TOTAL: 🥗🥗 (2) salads and (4) Jonathan Chebans
SCOTT
🥗 Quipping “are they anybody’s?” after Kim laments “breakups are so not my thing.” Although I guess you could argue they are maybe Taylor Swift’s thing, but we won’t rub salt in the wound by taking it there.
❌ Fumbling with the doorbell to Khloé’s mansion. The number one rule of proximity to end zones and extreme fame is act like you’ve been there before, literally and figuratively!
❌❌ Saying he could make “so many good jokes” after Kim explains that when you’re carrying a baby “there’s no one else on this planet that will feel you from the inside like that.” Scott, are you a fifth grade boy who just watched The Miracle of Life video in health class???
TOTAL: 🥗 (1) salad and (3) Jonathan Chebans
JAMES CORDEN
❌ Burdening us with his presence in the first place. (Who invited this guy??) We already had to see him last season during Khloé’s appearance on his talk show, and all of this screen time from Mr. Egg Yolk Omelette better not become a pattern.
❌❌ Joking that every baby will look like him at some point in their life, even if only for a day or a minute. I don’t know what this means but I’m traumatized by the thought of James’ grown man face on a 2-week-old newborn’s body.
❌❌ Screaming some shit like “I love peppers!” (or maybe it was Peppa, as in Peppa Pig?) when loudly chatting with a small child in the background of the shot while Kris and Kylie were trying to film a serious conversation. I get that you’re a Leo but you gotta read the room.
TOTAL: (5) Jonathan Chebans
The gang was largely on good behavior this week, but we know we’re gearing up for a headbanger of a Kourtney x Kim MMA rematch in the very near future. Hopefully, Kourt has been taking some Rumble classes between all those new age kegel workshops.
You can watch The Kardashians every Thursday at 12am ET on Hulu.
All images courtesy of Hulu.
Prekend Wrapped
Watching: Blackberry
Reading: “It’s Going to be a Barefoot Boy Summer” (The Cut)
Listening: Sounds Like A Cult on the cult of Survivor.
Bahahahaha one of my former colleagues really pass-agg-ly referred to my stack as “your blog thing”. So I killed her.
Props to the shamelessly hustling PR rep! And very excited to listen to that Survivor ep of SLAC.