SPOOKY SCARY WORLD
Amazon slop, Philip Roth, Kelly Reichardt, Lauren Sanchez Bezos, AND.... Zohran Mamdani's One Misstep (Taylor Swift related)
thanks for reading! if you could smash that like button so more people can discover Annoying Blondes, i will love you until the end of time. happy halloween!!!
Gasped when I saw this costume— less because of the shock value and more because I can’t believe no one’s ever thought to do this before. Maybe because no one else is bold enough to willingly stain Chanel?
Okay warning, this is a hodgepodge of a post— but something for everyone I hope?!? Strap in for a Haunted Mansion ride……
The following is a brief inventory of things I’ve purchased off Amazon Prime that have either broken or haven’t worked in the last couple months.
Skinny boar bristle hairbrush for flyaways
On the way to the airport this August, my boar bristle brush that I use to keep my frizzy flyaways down fell out of my carry on. I wasn’t sure of the brand name— my mom got it for me years ago, likely from TJ Maxx. It’s not a Mason Pearson or anything but it worked sooo well. On Amazon, I searched “skinny boar bristle brush” to see what I could find and, after consulting some reviews, I purchased a $30 brush that seemed like an appropriate replacement and looked more or less the same as my beloved old one.
The brush claimed to be “100% real boar’s hair” but was certainly not that, considering it literally didn’t work. When I used this brush, my flyaways sprang back within seconds of brushing them down. I tried again with water, then gel, and the same shit happened. Then I dropped the wooden brush on my bathroom tile, and it split in two. Oh my god! I popped it back into place and left it downstairs in my building’s lobby for someone else with smoother hair to perhaps inherit.
Area carpet grips
We have a handwoven hallway runner that was a gift from my partner’s family in Pakistan and the grip mat that goes underneath it went missing during our months-long staggered move. I bought corner grip squares from Amazon (again, well reviewed!) and they just…stopped gripping after about two weeks. They were 20 something dollars, and since they were already a little groaty from being on the floor for two weeks, I was hoping I could just put in a request for a refund and not have to bother packing them up. Not an option— if I wanted my money back, Amazon said I’d have to repack and drop off at the closest UPS (a twenty minute walk away) in order to return. I did not do this because the thought of packing up some sticky adhesive shit that was on my floor for two weeks is disgusting, so I just cut my losses, again, and threw them out.
CeraVe Vitamin C serum
I’ve been using this serum on and off for years. It’s the best, though the application tube was always a bit annoying; it would always crack near the opening eventually and the serum would oxidize. I switched to another Vitamin C serum for the last six months but then decided to go back to CeraVe. When I received it in the mail, I noticed they’d finally fixed the applicator to avoid this oxidation problem. However— after two days— the same shit happened with the redesigned bottle. I was pissed! I tried to request a refund, but of course, they wanted me to return the product, which now oozed brown oxidized serum. This one I did walk to UPS to return, much to my fucking DISMAY. And when I dropped it off the woman working there said, “Excuse me miss, this thing is leaking.” And I was like “I know, sorry. I don’t know why they’re making me return this.” And we both rolled our eyes in solidarity, but she still had to pack and return my gross, defective toiletry. I felt bad she had to do that, and regretted not just letting it go. But it was the principle, at this point!
Easier said than done, but the moral of this story is I need to just stop using Amazon. This round of purchases made me feel insane, indignant! If I’m purchasing something, and I’m not skimping out and buying the cheapest version of it, shouldn’t these things…work??? And when they don’t work, why must I have to walk two miles out of my way to return them in order to get a refund, when they make it sooo easy to give them money?!?!
I sound like an old man. Actually, I sound a lot like the character of Lou Levov in American Pastoral, The Swede’s old man who opened the Newark Maid glove factory and spends the book lamenting about how nobody makes fine gloves anymore, nobody makes anything, all manufacturing happens overseas now, and all anybody cares about is turning a profit, and the youth are corrupt, and everyone’s lost the plot, etc etc etc. But I also feel a little bit like our tragic hero, his perfect American son Swede Levov, because I’m like, “Things are supposed to WORK!!! Why aren’t they WORKING?!?!” …but then again, I also relate to Meredith “Merry” Levov—Swede’s baby boomer daughter, who bombs the general store/post office in town and kills a beloved doctor in the name of anti-capitalism— because I’m also like, “NOTHING WORKS and we need to DESTROY THE SYSTEM. I am THIS CLOSE to becoming a Jain.”
My early edition hardcover, purchased at The Strand over fifteen years ago.
This was my first reread of American Pastoral since I read it when I was in college at the behest of my then-bf who said I, being from New Jersey/my grandparents being from Newark, needed to read it. I was surprised how little I remembered about the plot of the book— I remembered much more about how it made me feel. It was the first time I’d ever encountered Roth, and I credit this book for providing me with a baseline context for my own existence. Roth is not a subtle writer— this book in particular is more allegorical than his others— and the story very fragmented. You experience The Swede’s straight and narrow, horizontal American Dream life out of order. You follow it into bottomless, absolute disrepair, as imagined by his alter-ego Nathan Zuckerman, who starts the novel in a nostalgic-filled state at his high school reunion and keeps up that cloying sentimentality throughout the novel. I was in a reading slump before I picked it up— I read it because I knew it would make me FEEL something. It didn’t make me feel great, per se, but it gave me faith that my exasperation with our broken society is universal enough to be found in a novel written 30 years ago, about a time period 30 years before that.
Speaking of forms subverting themselves… mid-reread, I went to see Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind, starring #1 Ratboy Josh O’Connor, which takes place during the same era as American Pastoral. Only it’s set in Framingham, Massachusetts, about five hours north from Old Rimrock, New Jersey. In The Mastermind, Josh O’Connor plays a once-aspiring artist named J.B. In the opening scene we see him stealing a small figurine from the Framingham Art Museum while his family sits looking at art in the other room of the gallery. A couple scenes in, and he’s suddenly hatching a far sloppier plan— a legitimate heist actually— to steal four Arthur Dove paintings off the walls of the same museum. Needless to say, a Mastermind he is not.
One of the Arthur Dove paintings O’Connor’s character steals.
Both these stories center around family men who have committed a crime. J.B.’s is more explicit, while the Swede’s is more a crime of the spirit: he is just too damn horny for the American Dream, he never learns to question, or to think for himself. The Swede is punished by his daughter turning into a domestic terrorist; J.B.’s punishment is, spoiler alert, getting arrested. J.B. and The Swede are nearly opposites— The Swede is addicted to being normal, and lofty-minded J.B. doesn’t want to be or believe himself to be normal. But in the end, they both get fucked by the same system.
Based on my three consecutive Prime fails, MY crime is believing late capitalism was designed to please me… not piss me tf off!!!!
Next stop on the Spooky Express: I need to speak my piece on Lauren Sanchez Bezos
This woman knows what she’s doing. It’s annoying, but …. credit is where credit’s due
This summer, World’s Richest Man J*ff B*zos married Lauren Sanchez Bezos in what felt like a PR campaign for The Status Quo. Both just a couple of kids from Tucson, their wedding weekend’s folio of pap photos set off a worldwide stir (it’s where we learned Sydney Sweeney was MAGA, and Scooter Braun too, which in hindsight is like… duh.) Much was said about how trashy Lauren Sanchez looked as a bride, which didn’t sit right with me and felt anti-Latina. Earlier this summer, I tweeted the following to my mostly-bot X following…
The photo before the wedding tweet is Lauren in a sheer Paco Rabanne skirt, out dinner with Eva Longoria last night. I personally find Lauren’s sense of style—and her botched-but-put together look— kind of genius for the wife of the world’s richest man. She dresses the way Kim Kardashian does when she’s trying to appeal to a cool crowd. Anyway, just something I wanted to flag… just keep an eye out for the discourse surrounding this woman’s image, I think it’s only just begun, thank you!
ZOHRAN MAMDANI’S SINGLE MISSTEP (TAYLOR RELATED)
I literally hollered watching this Popbase reel, where Mamdani is asked to identify the three pop songs that best embody his campaign.
The reason being, the third song he chooses is “Only the Young” by Taylor Swift. Have you heard of “Only the Young” by Taylor Swift? I’m sure you haven’t, unless you are out of your mind like me! It accompanied her Netflix doc, Miss Americana, in which we watch her contend with herself in a political context for the first time… ever. But it’s a bit of a fluff piece— you basically learn that she is socially liberal (duh), and drinks her white wine with ice (same!).
“Only the Young” is a lesser Taylor song, but it comes from a good place. It’s heaping with sincerity, and it’s about how only young people can change the status quo. But it’s the one response Mamdani has ever given that has felt try-hard to me, like something a staffer suggested. But also like… maybe Rama’s secretly a Swiftie, and put him onto it?
Mayor Mamdani, I’d like to humbly suggest a different Swift song for the soundtrack of the revolution. Check out “Change”, the final track off Fearless... ✪