Do you ever think it's weird it just goes on and on and on

f*ck, then you should use a r*bber

In early 2022 I watched the Josie and the Pussycats (2001) movie at the apartment of a man who lives in the West Village and is dating a famous model now. He couldn’t believe that I hadn’t seen it. He thought I, specifically, would love it. He was absolutely right (which made him hot to me) I loved it. I haven’t watched it since, but I remember that Parker Posey is an evil record executive who gives Jose and the Pussycats a record deal, but something goes wrong and people are getting brainwashed or something? Basically, it’s about selling out.

My parents weren’t religious. I was an only child until I was 8 years old. I grew up on a seasonal vacation island and I was raised by pop culture in a way that felt comfortingly distant and distinct. In 6th grade every single person in my class watched American Idol 3 nights a week and we all talked about it together at school the next day. The person who won American Idol would become a star, and that was that. One time two years ago I was walking to from the 6th avenue L station to my retail job in the West Village when a presumably drunk woman with actually a kind of good voice started howling the first verse of “Killing Me Softly” while exiting the station. We were walking the same way, and as she turned a corner a normal looking couple picked up where she left off, then when they drifted off around another corner, a third party even tapped in until they had (without knowing it) collectively made it through a full verse/chorus of the song!!! I <3 NYC.

I can’t give you any statistics about anything except for something that I saw somewhere that said only 4% of the amount of people watched The Oscars this year than they did in 1996. I don’t know what the answer is. I hate when people from my parents’ generation complain that rock music hasn’t been good since they were young. I don’t think that’s true, it’s just that it’s harder to find because of the 12 million sub-genres and micro-bands there are to dig through (myself included). I don’t believe that artists are worse at making art, it’s just that they aren’t incentivized by the platforms to put enough time and thought into anything to make it extraordinary. I felt this longing last Christmas when I watched the movie Gremlins with my dad and my brother. How exciting it is in a movie to see practical effects and imagine the joy the people working in the art department must have felt when they figured it out together. I’m skeptical of people who don’t have iPhones because in my opinion the apple interface is all we have to keep us unified. I want cultural guidance. I want The Titanic. I want The Wizard of Oz. The most innovative people to make the best movie in the world once a year and I want everyone who sees it to agree that it’s the best one.

I’m obsessed with the passage of time. I live off popsicles and muffins. I rode in the back of my dads truck to the beach with my cousins like we did when we were all kids last week. My friends argue about where to go to dinner based on what place has the best natural wine. I hate myself for taking myself so seriously sometimes, but then I’m always glad when I do. I think having your phone camera out all the time is ok actually. We should be, why not? It’s nice to remember. My dead Great Grandmother, Ruth famously had photo albums and photo albums, each page filled exclusively with photos of herself in different hats. My family thinks this is narcissistic, but I think it’s cool.

I don’t know any of the science behind why social media is bad for you, but I can feel that something is wrong. I hate what it’s doing to me. My brain space is clouded with strategy. I see a girl in LA posting a photo on tik tok telling me to “stop scrolling!” in front of another photo with the lyrics to 15 seconds of a song she wrote that sounds vaguely like Phoebe Bridgers. She’s really good at wearing blush and has poignant natural freckles that scream 22 or 23. I’m taking note, “Be so young and hot then tell everyone exactly what the song you wrote is about in one sentence.” I go to her page. “Ok, do this 4 times a day and then sometimes do thrift hauls and GRWMs and whatever the equivalent of artful b-roll of Southern California is in New York, and set it to a song from from the 70’s or 90’s, but one that is also somewhat trending so it shows up for people. Sometimes you must post an adorable video of yourself in a giant sweatshirt where it appears to be late at night because it’s so quiet and you’re resting your beautiful little head against an acoustic guitar whisper singing in a squeaky little mouse voice. Stick your middle finger out at the screen. Smile a lot. Act like you love doing this” I see her in 500 girls every day on my phone because I’m a little bit addicted to looking at her. Because I agree with the other people looking at her page, that she’s beautiful and talented and seems to understand me a little. If she follows me back I’ll feel validated, if she doesn’t I take note and do better. 

In 5th Grade I’d accompany my mom to the supermarket after school and at checkout I was allowed to pick two magazines. “Glamour” was my favorite because it had a mix of paparazzi shots of what celebrities were wearing, quizzes, sex tips (though, more mild than Cosmo which I found too adult for me at the time) and one 3-4 page editorial/interview with someone like, Hilary Duff (if it was a really good one). Every month a new issue would come out. Sometimes it would be someone like Jennifer Connelly. Though less exciting, I would still add it to the conveyer belt with a box of cheese-itz, and learn who Jennifer Connelly was by reading every word she said about “lasting love, heartbreak and her new movie, ‘He’s Just Not That Into You” the minute I got home. Maybe my brain has always been filled with garbage.

I don’t think that I want to look at pretty girls I don’t know mouthing the words to pop songs or lines from movies on the internet, but apparently I really do. I want something they have and everyone tells me (subliminally, or literally) that I in order to succeed, I must. Do I care about being successful enough to be that insincere on the internet? Or do I have it wrong, and being an artist is about innovation and adapting to culture & I’m just not interesting enough? I was born in 1996, technically too young for Josie and the Pussycats (2001) to have crossed my path when it came out. I’m on the edge of a cusp of a generation that has distain for selling out. If I were even just a few years younger, maybe I wouldn’t have a little voice in the back of my head making me feel like an idiot for lip syncing my own songs over and over again into my phone, if I were a little older maybe I wouldn’t do it at all. My brain is a never evolving carousel powered by mediocrity. I’m thinking about starting a podcast.

My new song “Celebrity Wax Museum” comes out July 30th. I wrote it last Summer when I was wondering what was going to happen to me and all my friends. We have a show at TV Eye on September 14th with Annie Blackman, May Rio & itg.url DJ set. Tickets go up Friday. Album out September 6th.