SHORT:
Love, Victor is back on television teaching me that inside? I’m 100% slay.
They’re doing drugs on this season, so it’s just like Euphoria.
There’s also a straight man playing a gay man on it who looks like a 55 year old lesbian.
His character goes to rehab (willingly, so that’s less like Euphoria).
Happy Pride!
This week I am turning 26 on the 26th.
MEDIUM:
When I was a child in Northern California, I would lay in bed at night and listen to Adam Lambert’s world-famous-perfect-will-never-be-topped cover of “Mad World” on my red-and-black iPod Nano (that for some reason had Bono’s signature on the back)…
As I drifted off to sleep, I pictured my life at 25 (almost 26)… I saw myself running, tit-less, through the streets of Brooklyn, getting ready to record a Senior Citizen Center’s Big Year-End Improv Comedy Pizza Party™… in desperate need of a micro-SD card for my recording device… something every store within 3 square miles of my apartment “happens to be sold out of”.
Well guess what, reader? Today? That little dream? Came tru!
LONG:
I can’t believe I’m going to be 26, and I can’t believe I’m losing my health insurance, and I can’t believe that I have decided to just “record all of tomorrow’s senior citizen event on my phone and hope for the best!”
Sort of breathtaking that I still “hope for the best” after all these years of that exact plan backfiring!
After failing to find an SD card, I walked home and stopped at the Carvel I said I would never return to. When I walked in, they were playing a club remix of Fergie’s “Big Girls Don’t Cry”.
Whoever took the time to make a club remix of Fergie’s “Big Girls Don’t Cry” is a very creative person… (and I wish them the best in all their future creative endeavors)... but to take a ballad and turn it into an uptempo dance track… feels a bit like… taking A Duck and turning it into A-Duck-On-Instagram… maybe it could’ve just stayed… A Duck… ya kno?
In addition to it being my bday week, it’s also The Dyke March in NYC. Last year, I went to The Dyke March there was a person playing “Sucker” by the Jo Bros on the tuba. If that person’s not playin’ “Sucker” this year? I’m not marchin!
What else… J Lo’s kid came out as nonbinary…
I’m gonna need a video of Ben Affleck interacting with them… stat…
Last week I saw the movie where Tom Cruise is the He-E-O of death or whatever (even though I am on antibiotics that make me dizzy…. and I hate movies where explosions happen and people are screaming and hanging out of vehicles).
Why? Because I am an amazing parter to my gf who “is anti-war but loves when shit gets fucked up and planes go fast”.
The other night (at midnight, to be exact), my girlfriend rolled over and said, “I am going to show you a YouTube vid of how they flipped ‘The War Rig’ in Mad Max Fury Road.”
And I said “no no”.
And she said “here it is”.
And I said “alright”
And then I watched a 30 second clip of a large bundle of metal flippin through the air Tony-Hawk style
There was a bunch of smoke and then a bunch of FIREMEN who rushed up to the metal bundle and used SAWS to cut open and EXTRACT PEOPLE (who I guess were driving the rig) from INSIDE the SMOKING VEHICLE.
Two days later, I read an article about how one of the Top Gun actors got jet fuel in his BLOOD because they shot the movie using real fighter jets and shit.
WHY ARE WE DOING THIS
JUST MAKE MOVIES WHERE TWO PEOPLE TALK IN A KITCHEN
WITH THE SAME EMOTIONAL STAKES
THERE’S LESS RISK
OF PEOPLE DYING
Btw if you think I knew /know what “The War Rig” is or was before and/or after watching the aforementioned YouTube video/ the actual full-length movie? You’d be wrong!
My gf also cried at the end of the book she was reading about the production of Mad Max the other day. I wish her peace, love, and healing!
I guess that’s the end of this week’s newsletter.
On a more earnest note, I am so thankful for all of you. It's literally so hard to know what's WHAT these days. But the newsletter makes me feel happy. And I am CERTAIN about THAT.
Thanks for reading.
C u next Tuesday.
I will b 26.
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 Jonus Zone:
Tickets for the show I directed that’s gonna be at Edinburgh Fringe are now on sale HERE. Buy ‘em if ur British or Scottish or Irish or over in that area!
Happy BIRTH