Sound baths are a big slay for me

Kim K's GQ Cover, Lil Tay's Comeback, and Millennial Terminology

Should I watch the new season of Fargo with Jon Hamm? It looks good, but do any of us really have time for this?? I can’t imagine fitting another show into the fall roster.

Speaking of, I started The Curse with Emma Stone and Nathan Fielder on Showtime last week and I’m obsessed. You’ll never look at a baby carrot the same way again.

And lastly, I gotta mention that Vogue finally came out with the long-awaited Nicki Minaj 73 questions. They do it at her Malibu studio and it’s so cramped and awkward. . .there’s nowhere to roam which sort of defeats the whole college-tour-guide-walking-backwards gag of it all, which sort of defeats the purpose.

Gwyneth Paltrow’s courtroom ski drama hits the West End. A limited-run musical adaptation of Gwyneth’s infamous ski collision with a Utah optometrist is coming to London’s West End this December.

Karlie Kloss buys I-D magazine. This is so Kendall Roy coded.

Lil Tay speaks out on death hoax. Earlier this year, child influencer Lil Tay was wrongfully reported to have died. In an exclusive with Rolling Stone, she explains that the hoax was orchestrated by her father, who recently lost custody of her, in an attempt to sabotage her career and plans for a comeback as a pop star (after refusing to sign any contracts that would allow her to pursue business opportunities during the five years she was in his care).

But according to the reporter, Tay is mostly interested in talking about the Harry Potter books. A lot. Like, I seriously didn’t expect to be reading that the kid who became famous for calling everyone “broke ass bitches” would go on a tirade about how much she hates Rita Skeeter.

Bobby Berk announces Queer Eye exit. The Netflix show’s upcoming 8th season will be Bobby’s last, and honestly rip, because he’s the only one out of the five stars who isn’t completely insufferable. I guess Tan is fine.

Kim K is GQ’s Man of The Year. I’m obsessed! Taylor Swift thought she was the man? KIM IS THE MAN. The accompanying feature is so complimentary about her drive, and not at all backhanded in the way so many of these profiles are. I love Kim propaganda. Get the people on the right side of history!!!

Keke Palmer files restraining order against her ex. Good! This is the same guy who slut shamed her PUBLICLY for wearing club attire to an Usher concert. I’m sorry, what was she supposed to wear? A cowl neck sweater? Bffr.

JoJo Siwa reveals her future best man. And it’s her Special Forces co-star Tyler Cameron. I love this odd couple pairing but I don’t see them going the distance — it’s like when you try to keep in touch with your friends from summer camp (a random camp, not a Jewish camp) for a few weeks after camp ends but it fizzles out when you realize you can’t keep recycling the same inside jokes and anecdotes for the rest of your lives.

Lauren Sánchez gets the Vogue treatment. Jeff Bezos’ fiancé was featured in an extensive profile where she tried really hard to make her and Jeff seem normal. My favorite part was when she said that their yacht’s figurehead isn’t actually modeled after her, and if it were, it would have bigger boobs.

No.

A Glossary For Gen-Z On Wet Seal, Limewire, And Other Ancient Artifacts Of The 2000s

When I see the youth of today, I can’t help but feel a little jealous. Like, imagine growing up with endless TikTok resourcesabout how to contour, how to pose for photos, and the best prom dress color for your skin tone? 

We lived through the 2000s flying blind, trying desperately to be cool while constantly getting in our own way. We were forced to wear skinny jeans because they looked good on Kate Moss, caked mattifying makeup onto our already dry skin, and learned about sex from the library. 

To give the next generation an appreciation of what society was like in the olden times, we put together an exhaustive glossary of some of the most culturally significant fashion trends, technological advancements, and key figures of our childhood.  

AIM (technology)

Basically insta DMs, except you had to use an embarrassing username that still haunts you to this day, like laxbabe1993. Your profile picture was probably a sparkly butterfly, and you’d get hyper-specific with your away message when disclosing your whereabouts — “brb, gmas funeral.” 

Bath & Body Works (beauty/style)

Let’s get one thing straight: You were either a Warm Vanilla Sugar Girl, or a Cucumber Melon Girl, but either way, you were dousing that “fragrance mist” all over your body after PE. 

Warm Vanilla Sugar girls wore fuzzy socks to school for a little longer than was age-appropriate, and Cucumber Melon girls were always playing with gimp string during class. 

Blockbuster (entertainment)

A shining beacon in an otherwise dingy strip mall, Blockbuster housed thousands of VHS and DVD rentals. It was a key destination to hit with your divorced dad on a Friday night on the way back to his sad condo, or with your friends before a sleepover, where the gum-chewing, teenage cashier would let you rent R-rated movies because he was too stoned to care. 

The Care & Keeping Of You (biblical text)

While today’s teens have pretty much grown up with softcore porn on TikTok and whatever is happening on Euphoria, our understanding of puberty and Sex Ed came from a strung out sixth grade health teacher putting a condom on a banana and calling it a day. 

The Care & Keeping of You, brought to you by the American Girl Doll company, was given to every 11-year-old by their mom so she didn’t have to answer questions about pubes. It provided cartoon illustrations of taboo topics like boob development and tampon insertion, and we’d obsess over every lurid detail before hiding it under our bed. 

Camis (beauty/style) 

A core fashion basic, we had camisole tank tops in every single color and felt absolutely naked without them. The correct styling was to wear one underneath your cheap Aéropostale t-shirt, then stretch it all the way down over your butt. 

It was preteen self-consciousness personified, but was also probably a strategy to prevent our ridiculously low-rise jeans from getting the best of us when we bent down to open our bottom lockers. 

Cell Phone Minutes (bane of my existence) 

If you were a middle class child and your parents didn’t want to splurge on Unlimited Talk & Text, your janky flip phone came with a monthly “minute” allotment. 

Every text you received and sent lost you half a minute which, as you can imagine, meant your telecom rations got eaten up faster than an ADD kid with a fruit rollup. 

Charlie The Unicorn (key figure)

It’s hard to believe now, but when YouTube first launched in 2005, there were, like, seven videos on there that we all watched over and over again, thus creating an internet monoculture that could never exist today.  

The flash animated series Charlie The Unicorn was probably as insufferable to our parents then as Paw Patrol is today — Charlie was a depressed unicorn who’s coerced into a journey to Candy Mountain, in a twisted Dora The Explorer-style escapade. We thought it was peak comedy, and it had us spending our allowance money on “shun the non-believer” t-shirts from Spencer Gifts. 

dELIA*s (beauty/style) 

If you weren’t a totally mainstream Abercrombie girl, dELIA*s was your pseudo-artsy alternative. This was a major hotspot during back-to-school shopping week, where you’d beg your mom to buy you a pair of neon purple jeggings that she didn’t think were practical, but you knew would be a total slay with converse and peplum top. 

Farmville (entertainment)

When Facebook used to be a true extension of our world instead of a toxic wasteland where our conservative aunts write tirades about pronouns, we also used the site for games, including the viral sensation Farmville. 

We’d log on religiously every day to make sure our crops were thriving, but it wasn’t always so simple — exotic crops required intense care at specific times, which meant those of us who were diehards would have to set alarms for 3am so we could wake up and harvest our blueberries before they went bad. 

Formspring (technology) 

An ill-advised website where users could ask each other questions anonymously, which would then be answered publicly. 

The masochist motivation was to find out “what people really thought” about you, but of course this meant far more comments in the vein of “ur an ugly virgin” than “you’re the best tuba player in the tenth grade!” 

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Bronze Medal: Chris Pine, advocating for his right to wear short shorts: “I don’t think there’s anything to defend. . .I’ll be wearing the short-shorts…I mean, until the legs go.”

Silver Medal: When asked to speak on the worst sofa he’d ever owned by Architectural Digest, Robert Pattinson shared, “My least favorite could also be my most favorite. There was a time when the only piece of furniture I had for about six months was an inflatable boat that would double as my couch, bed, and dining table. I loved it very much but it caused a lot of back problems.”

This needs to show up in one of those viral TikTok videos: “We’re guys — we’re gonna eat off of pool floats instead of going to IKEA.”

Gold Medal: Jacob Elordi pulls a page out of the R-Pat book and disparages the shitty Kissing Booth franchise that made him famous: “I didn’t want to make those movies before I made those movies.”

Me, but it’s “I didn’t want to make that deck before I made that deck.”

• Watching: Saltburn

• Listening: ‘Houdini’ by Dua Lipa

• Reading: “When ‘The O.C.’ Killed Marissa: An Oral History” (Vanity Fair)