Harry Styles lost his hair, Taylor Swift lost her mind
+ Timothée Chalamet and boygenius did SNL, and the Hollywood Strike ended!
Ok so today’s newsy is basically like a bumper Culture Vulture episode because HOLY SHIT it feels like a LOT of internet/ celebrity shit happened over the weekend and I just wanna talk to you all about it! Sue me!!! I spent my weekend going between working on the book and feeling guilty for not working on the book, but reminding myself that this is a dream project and the idea that you’ll all hold it in your hands one day is both INCRED and INSANE and WHY WE DO ANY OF IT.
Personal pep talk over, I also started watching Love Island AU after Rubes recommended it to me and let me tell you…. it’s VERY good. It feels like it has a bit more drama and personality than the UK season which is necessary because the last UK season needed a bit of spicing up imo!!!
HUGE HI TO ALL OUR NEW CLOSE FRIENDS!! Ugh gorge to have you here - love sharing my life with you. I’m going to send out an email this week reminding everyone how to access the Book Club, all our bonus podcasts, how to get on Close Friends, and how to get Bel’s gorg weekend newsy, so sit tight for that!!!
Harry Styles got a buzzcut
Taylor Swift FED US last night
The Hollywood strike ended!
Timothée Chalamet and boygenius did SNL
Speaking of boygenius….
REC: Olivia Rodrigo and the Impossible Pressure to Stay a Prodigy
I want to gatekeep this from you but I won’t
Harry Styles got a buzzcut
Now that I’ve had enough time to process this I am ready to wade into the discourse. The way I see it there are three reasons for this, either he
was inspired by the many haircuts of David Beckham after watching his new doco
was listening to too much of Lorde’s ‘Buzzcut Season’ like I do every time I’m in a crisis, or
he’s prepping for a new movie role (dear god plz let it not require him to do an accent.)
Either way, the locks are gone. I have nothing else to say.
Taylor Swift has lost her mind… in the best way
Taylor Swift’s show last night is going down in herstory for sure because Girlie is in LOVE and she’s letting us all in on it for once. Here are a few of the things that went down:
She changed the lyrics in “Karma” to “Karma is the guy on the Chiefs coming straight home to me.” See Travis Kelce’s (the guy who plays for the Chiefs) reaction here.
Travis held up a sign during The Archer that said ‘we will stay’ (because she sings “Who could ever leave me, darling? But who could stay?’)
SHE SUNG LOVER AND LOOKED AT HIM THE WHOLE TIME, AND THEN SUNG END GAME (one of her best live performances imo)
AND THEN THIS HAPPENED
Honestly, after that segment, I’m starting to wonder if I should be the new Taylor Swift reporter instead of that other dude…
The Hollywood strike ended!
In much more imp news - the Hollywood Strike ended!!! Gonna take some words that our trusty Slam Dunc wrote over in
about it because, well, they’re good and I know he won’t mind:The actors union has a tentative deal with streamers to return to work after 118 days on picket lines. It has slowed or stopped the content pipe not just in the US, but all over the world, with our local production sector also highly impacted. My general fear (see the note up top) is that any media business which is paying for content is going to struggle against platforms which get it free – but in the immediate term it’s just really good to know that the culture factory can start working again, for all concerned.
Now that it’s over I’m already seeing an onslaught of all the banked content that actors have been holding onto since it began (like the cast of Red White & Royal Blue posting their behind-the-scenes stuff which I’m not mad about) and the already tired jokes about how celebrities are now going crazy with promo for their upcoming projects like Timothée Chalamet did on SNL…
In case you missed it: Timothée Chalamet and boygenius did SNL
And I feel like I’ve watched the ENTIRE thing on TikTok (unfortunately my algorithm knows me INCREDIBLY well.) Some standout moments for me were:
The second instalment of Timmy and Pete’s rap:
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The Troye Sivan sleep demon:
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The babyface rap:
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The bloopers of him and boygenius (deeply unserious):
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Not to plug myself here, but me not actually watching SNL and just seeing the imp bits on TikTok is very in line with what I wrote about the other day in the culture vulture newsy….
Speaking of boygenius, in a GENIUS move, these boys graced the cover of GQ for their ‘Men of The Year’ issue
Just so smart.
SOME FINAL RECS FROM ME:
Olivia Rodrigo and the Impossible Pressure to Stay a Prodigy
In a crossover as good as boygenius and Timmy Chalamet, this weekend I read a piece by R.F Kuang (who wrote Yellowface, which we read in Book Club earlier in the year!!) about Olivia Rodrigo and ‘the impossible pressure to stay a prodigy.’
The apex of your career has to occur sooner or later—but what if it’s already come and gone? What if I am never as funny, sympathetic, or attractive as I was several years ago? What if next year if I’m not even nominated for an award I won when I was younger? What if the most interesting thing about me is, in fact, my youth? Rodrigo’s “Teenage Dream” (the true thesis statement of this album) articulates the problem with painful precision: “They all say that it gets better/It gets better, but what if I don’t?”
Ugh just @ me next time Rebecca!!! Read it here xxxx
AND I wanted to gatekeep this from you but I won’t. Samia is my fave:
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travis and taylor are too cute <3
You know you are old when you ask the question...who is Boygenius?