SHORT:
I’m reading a book called Atomic Habits that says to “point and call out” things to “raise your level of awareness” – so I’ve been walking around the house pointing to myself and being like, “bitch”.
Something the book doesn’t mention is if it’s bad to spend almost an hour of your life trying to figure out if a celebrity’s 13-year-old kid got lip filler…
Maybe the 2023 edition will include that…
MEDIUM:
I sent my therapist last week’s unhinged newsletter about the FBI coming to my apartment so that I didn’t have to spend half of my session explaining “what happened”.
Well actually I didn’t send it to him, I copy and pasted it into the body of an email.
I don’t need him “getting curious” and clicking out of last week’s Substack and searching “therapist” in the little Substack search bar and then reading every single other newsletter in which I mention him!
After copying and pasting it in, I got self-conscious that he was going to think that the FBI retrospective was “bad writing” so I wrote: “by the way, this isn’t how I normally write, I spiral-type in my newsletter as a comedic CHOICE.”
I also said, “if you see any spelling or punctuation mistakes, those actually aren’t spelling or punctuation mistakes, that’s me ‘queering traditional notions of grammar and syntax’”.
He asked me “if the Denzel part was real” — and I was like YES.
LONG:
I have a few more weeks before I go back to school, which means I’m just sitting around thinking about my past and present and doing absolutely nothing to set me up for success in the near future.
My ancestors came to America so I could stay up all night worrying that my "Twink Play" doesn't have a strong enough "emotional arc" and that my “Egg Pilot” is “too long” !!! — (and then do nothing to fix those insanely stupid “problems”).
“Send me your worst pilot/ writing sample” – is something I wish agents and managers would say.
Wouldn’t that be amazing? If we lived in a world where agents and managers said that?
Most of you are like, “this doesn’t apply to me, I work a normal job and don’t care about the entertainment industry” – and THAT is why I love my READERS! Please keep on knowing nothing about the entertainment industry, that’s one of the most attractive qualities someone can possess!
One of the “past” things I’ve been thinking about is the year 2007. 2007 was an amazing year and nobody is talking about it.
In 2007, Sanjaya was on American Idol.
In 2007 the movie Blades Of Glory came out, and I watched it and it unlocked something within me which then led to my ferocious crush on Adam Lambert and my, years later, taking testosterone. I can’t really explain how that chain of events makes sense, but anyone who knows me is nodding along while reading this and being like, “yeah, no but it does though”.
I was so obsessed with Adam Lambert. I still am (I guess). I just looked up how many times I’ve talked about Adam Lambert over the course of my 67 newsletters and the answer is 4 and that number should be way higher.
Remember when he sat on that box and sang Mad World?
Remember how wide he opened his mouth?
Remember how he went on the news with his mom and they talked about his coming out story and how I watched that over and over again for 2 years and cried every single time and had to “calm down” by watching a different Adam Lambert video where he sings a sultry slowed-down version of “Crazy” Gnarls Barkley?
He and Clay Aiken both should have won American Idol but the country wasn’t ready yet. I guess we needed Glee to happen to prove to the world that you can clap for a gay man singing.
Speaking of Clay, because he’s running for congress. Did you know that?
Well there’s some NEWS for you (finally, in this so-called “news”letter).
WHEN he wins, I hope he passes a law that all coffee shops have to play his 2004 album “Merry Christmas With Love” on a loop 24/7, 365 days a year. It will do wonders for gay rights and American morale!
I really don’t have much else to talk about this week.
I passed out at Quest Diagnostics, but that’s old hat.
Seasoned readers know that this happens every single time I get blood drawn or hear about blood (tbt to my surgeon’s hot wife feeding me candied nuts after I got queasy in his office).
This time around, I walked into Quest and told the lady drawing my blood that I most likely will “throw up and faint in the chair against my will approximately 3 American minutes after she’s done filling the vials, like clockwork, for no reason at all” and she said, “oh good!” – and then it happened, like clockwork.
I sat there, white as a ghost, in the chair, and she put wet paper towels on my face and neck like Kate Winslet did to Saoirse when she was sick in bed in that lesbian movie Ammonite. After 16-700 wet paper towels, she begged me to “drink at least one sip of water” (with her holding the cup because my hands were too sweaty/shaky). I did, and my hearing and sight came back, and then I walked home in the snow… freezing my little ass off because I had just sweat through all my clothes <3
When I exited the Quest building, the nurses waved me off like, “c u next time!” “can’t wait to do that all again!” “that was a slay-ass time!” “can’t believe that even though you tell yourself that everything is going to be fine and that none of this is scary, your body reacts otherwise!”
Speaking of my BODY, my hormones are making me… hm… a bit disgusting.
The other day, I found myself in the bathroom being like, “I can’t believe every man in my life was a teen and had to go through this… I’m 25 years old and can’t handle it… imagine this at 16…”
Yeah so red alert, I’m sympathizing with men.
It’ll pass.
Just like the Quest queasiness.
Someone get me 16-700 wet paper towels and an angelic nurse with olympic-level patience!
My Atomic Habits book keeps saying to, “decide what kind of person you want to be, and then prove it to yourself with small wins” …
I think this week I will try and decide…
I told my girlfriend that “the book was working” because I started running again, and she said, “how did you get yourself to do that?” and I said, “well I got on the treadmill and said, ‘you will be in the world’s worst mood if you don’t run and you will hate yourself for eternity if you don’t make it to at least one mile’” – and she said, “was that a tactic that the book suggested?” and I said, “no”… and then she just laughed and shook her little head…
She agrees, BY THE WAY, that it looks like that one celebrity’s 13 year old kid got lip filler. I rolled over in bed and shoved my phone in her face with the picture. And she was like, “yeah I think so”.
Can you believe she’s still with me after the FBI came to her house last week because I tweeted something chaotic from her IP address?
Her new roommate moved in and has yet to ask about the card on the fridge…
C U NEXT TUESDAY WHEN HOPEFULLY I WILL HAVE DECIDED WHAT KIND OF PERSON I WANT TO BE AND HAVE HAD AT LEAST ONE SMALL WIN TO PROVE IT :)
Thank you for subscribing. If this is your first time reading the newsletter, read the archives. Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s not – it’s very much like when people slip on ice.
Sincerely,
Reid
Venmo: @rpope-venmo-26
Donate to The Audre Lorde Project
