Little treats: I am Westley (sort of), a movie boyband, and Bridgerton!
It's all about the bite-sized, snackable, tapas-style content this week when I talk embarrassment, a nautical boyband, and Bridgerton!
Aroha mai
Apologies for being a bit peripatetic with this newsletter. I could probably give you a half dozen unimpressive reasons as to why I'm not doing this more regularly but I think it mostly boils down to... I don't think my regular writing muscle is as buff as it could be. It's been a minute since I was doing this all the time and I've maybe atrophied a bit? So now I'm weak both physically AND mentally!
Anyway, even though I have deigned to put fingers to keyboard this week I still haven't had a brainwave about an actual topic to write about so instead you get some brain leftovers. Think of them as entertaining thought tapas!
Embarrassme-me
It occurred to me recently that my super-power, if I have one, might be my almost total unfamiliarity with embarrassment.
Which is not to say that I never utter the words "well, that's embarrassing", I'm just usually talking about someone else, or if I'm talking about myself it's more as a shorthand for "I acknowledge that people who aren't me would understand this to be an embarrassing experience... but whatever".
I'm not sure at what point in my life I stopped giving a shit1 but it definitely has happened. And it's a glorious way to live. I strongly recommend it.
Oh buoy
A lil while back I saw some promotional stills for the Henry Cavill movie, The ministry of ungentlemanly warfare, and I'm sorry but I felt this needed saying...
You know Jack Reacher guy is going to bring the baritone to their debut album of banging sea shanties.
A Bridgerton too far
It's safe to say that I have an unhealthy relationship with Netflix's soft-focus soft porn, Bridgerton. In that I binged all those episodes, hard, like a Regency romance crackhead. And I have also digested quite a bit of Bridgerton-adjacent media in the last month or so, my favourite being this gent's take on "the carriage scene".
I think what I love about this video is that just about every phrase out of this man's mouth is linguistically novel, to me at least. I don't know what part of the US this guy's from but I am transfixed by his way of speaking. I have so many thoughts!
- What part of speech is "drip drop" in this context?
- His pronunciation of "Colin", a name so irredeemably dull there's an actual TV show called "Colin from accounts", is the sexiest that the name "Colin" has ever sounded. It's a fucking miracle.
- Does "diddled" means something different than I thought it did?
- Hans Zimmer?!?
- "He goin' for dem thangs, boy!" now lives rent-free in my head.
- HOW GOOD WAS THAT P****Y!!!
Bridgerton has also infected the part of my brain that makes purchasing decisions, as I found myself buying a poofy pastel dress that can't imagine actually wearing anywhere, given that I'm not in the habit of being invited to garden parties or fairy princess birthday parties. Oh well.
It's official. Malls are dead.
This popped up on my Facebook feed today. It's not my local mall but that doesn't make it okay.
RIP malls. We had a good run. We'll always have Pierre's (Sushi).
1 You spend enough time doing embarrassing shit eventually you just blow out your receptors or something, I think.
