SHORT:
Once upon a time Martha Stewart went into labor and birthed Kristen Jaymes Stewart. Soon after, Martha went to jail for giving birth to someone so criminally stunning and talented. Then Kristen was nominated for an Oscar and lost. Maybe she would’ve won if Spencer had more “pearls in da soup” moments. Alas, it did not. One day Kristen will win. This I believe.
An optimistic start to the newsletter? Food’s all over the ground cuz the tables have turned!
MEDIUM:
I’m not gonna do a full recap of The Academy Awards (mostly because my brain is busy processing KJS’s loss, thank you to all of you who texted me ur condolences).
But here are a few of thoughts:
-Nobody wore clothes on the red carpet. Awesome. If I was currently in 7th grade and saw Timmy on that red carpet, I’d be at every Bar Mitzvah in town with a blazer on, no shirt, big smile, stomach out!
-Whenever I hear Kristen’s fiancée say “Kristen”, I go Will-Smith-mode and scream “get my wife’s name out of ur f*cking mouth.” Just kidding I guess I’m… happy for them? My gf and I are gonna do their red carpet look for halloween (I’m Kristen because I already have the shorts and because I’m the bottom™).
-I will never watch Dune because it stresses me out to see that much sand. Imagine how many grains are in their shoes and underwear and stuff… I don’t care if there’s a big worm… I’m not seein’ it.
-Congratulations to Kodi Smit-McPhee for winning The Reid Pope Award For Flouncing Around & Looking Cute While Having A Violent Inner Life as well as the Alvin And The Chipmunks/Sara Bareilles Brave! Award For Hula Hooping In A Western Environment.
-Amy Adams should slap the Academy next.
LONG:
On Monday I was running late to a show and received a text from the host that “a group of 20 Danish schoolchildren and their creative writing teacher just walked into the bar”. I arrived to find exactly that: 20 of the coolest gayest all-girls-school Danish 16-year-olds ever to walk the earth.
I performed standup for them (and, for some reason, asked them “what they’d been up to that day” as “crowd work” and they said “The MoMA” and I said, “oh wow if you went a few weeks ago, you could’ve been stabbed!”)
They didn’t know who Meghan McCain was (good to know her reach isn’t that big), but their hot creative writing teacher laughed at my joke anyway (and said he assumed she was somehow related to John McCain, who he did know about). We will b married in the spring!
After the show, each of the girls came up to me and told me they were some shade of gay and asked to follow me on Instagram and now I am a god in Denmark.
Today one of them messaged me saying that my Instagram story looked like “a dad staying awake at night with the help of like 18 cups of coffee to try and figure out who murdered his child or a satanistic cult being formed”. Hell yes! I AM A GOD IN DENMARK!
But even Danish Gods have bad days…
On Thursday, I got a cold and slept until Saturday and then woke up with a UTI.
The UTI kept me up all night (which of course made me panic about how I was going to get sick again due to lack of sleep and have to “sleep-off the cold all over again” and miss class and fall behind in school etc. etc. )
The human body is so stupid ... a speck of bacteria gets inside me and suddenly I’m peeing blood uncontrollably? Come on! Grow up!
Anyway, while I was peeing blood for hours, I listened to a podcast about a boat that sank off the coast of South Africa in the 90’s.
It was very interesting. I ended up having an amazing time being awake when I did not wish to be.
When the boat was sinking the whole crew abandoned ship and the only people left to help passengers were the entertainment director, a musician, and a magician.
And THAT’s why we need ART and Artists in this world!
(imagine I was serious… am I? I might be… I hate cruises and ships… why get on a rocky boat when life’s already so rocky?)
Anyway, I think my UTI is gone now.
What else do I have to say…
This week my therapist called me “extremely accommodating, 2 the point of my own detriment”. Is that interesting?
I’m back on TikTok studying the lesbians there for a project I am temporarily calling TikTok Lesbians or: “something toxic masc this way comes”. What are we to do with rockstar gay girlies who embody toxic male traits? It’s so powerful. It’s so cool. It’s so bad. It’s so dangerous. Hm. Hm. Hm.
I never want to move to L.A. — it just seems like a lot of people being near each other in a room all the time.
Every morning you wake up in L.A. and get ready to go to one of those rooms at night and b photographed there. Standing near other people.
And then brands will be like “congrats on standing near the right people! here’s a bag to advertise on ur IG!”
Congrats to everyone who’s every written a movie tho. I am rly finding that writing4thescreen is… hard!
Sometimes I think that we should all agree to not try that hard and just make bad/easy things cuz existence is hard enough and we shouldn’t have to work ourselves 2 the bone in this world we call world.
Anyway, I love my life and how every single day I post 90 stream of consciousness things to Twitter that get liked by 2-3 accounts called jewfag69they.
But also…
How do I become like the cute blonde lady in the shiny dress that won best screenplay 4 Coda?
…
God bless Elliot Page for standing up there at the Oscars like “fml” … … … i felt that i saw that and my voice sounds Xactly like that rn & also i wish i had the jaw fillers he has jk idk
If I hear “short king spring” one more time, I’m gonna short circuit!
C u next Tuesday.
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
Bonus Jonas Zone:
"Sometimes I think that we should all agree to not try that hard and just make bad/easy things cuz existence is hard enough and we shouldn’t have to work ourselves 2 the bone in this world we call world." --> HARD YES
This one’s for the books. Aka sent immediately to my daughter before i finished reading it. Congrats on god status, carrying off Oscar lewk and your upcoming marriage to Kristin Stewart and some other lady. Love your writing always and forever.