everyone goes through a celery juice phase
if you haven't, yet, your time is near
Sorry for the extreme delay, y’all. I’ve been on a celery juice kick, and it’s made me believe I’m better than everyone around me and that I should gatekeep my comedic thoughts and opinions and boycott the newsletter. But I’m not. And so here I am.
It is literally so humid out that I can’t even get to the creative part of my brain (the left side? the right side?) to write something groundbreaking right now. I spilled lemon juice on my keyboard, and the thing about that is now my keyboard is sticky. That’s how my brain feels. Also, the pollen in this godforsaken city is trying to Kill Me. It doesn’t want me to enjoy the humidity. It doesn’t want me in my new bikini, climbing up the sketchy ladder in my apartment to get to the roof that we now know is “accessible” —accessible being a very loose term — so that I can tan (burn) my cheeks. The pollen and the humidity are here, queer, and murderous. Happy Pride, everyone!
Speaking of my apartment, it’s official: immovingout! I wouldn’t wish the wrath of my landlord upon anyone — not even me. But I was happy to be the victim of it for about three years, to realize that I Deserve Better, even in a city as unforgiving as New York. Oh, wait, that might be LA. It could be New York. Either way, we all deserve to live in a place where the power doesn’t go out because “the refrigerator is running, and you obviously haven’t lived in an apartment before because you don’t know that fridges take up a lot of power.”
So, yeah, I’m moving out and will never have to see this man again unless he doesn’t give me back my security deposit … we will then have yet another problem.
Sometimes, I write little sentences down in my phone when I think the topic would be good to talk about in Circle Back, but I’m having a really hard time remembering what the fresh hell this one was about:
Like, sorry, what does that mean?
So, I’m gonna just start writing as if I know what it means, and maybe it’ll come to me.
I’ve recently gotten back into my movie shit, which means … I’ve been watching a lot of movies.
I’ve noticed in movie reviews on Letterboxd or just from people in conversation that if there’s one specific actor in the movie, people are gonna love it, even if it sucks. That goes for music, too. Taylor Swift can do anything, and the Swifties are gonna have her back. Like, why are you still doing that? Pitchfork, until Taylor’s most recent album, always gave her high praise, which was so insane because they love to not give high praise to good albums. Hmm, I don’t think this is what that screenshot was referring to, but now that we’re on the subject of Taylor Swift, I’d love to comment a couple recent things that should stop anyone from being a fan:
Charli xcx’s new album Brat was about to hit number #1 on the UK charts, so Taylor released a UK version whatever the hell that means of her horrifically titled album Tortured Poets Department, and that went number one instead. She coincidentally releases something new (but not actually new) every time a female singer is about to get bigger as an artist. Not a girl’s girl.
Taylor Swift has not said one thing about Palestine. While there’s a conversation to be had over whether or not famous people have a moral duty to express their opinions on things, her entire fanbase has been asking her to make her thoughts known on it. The other day, someone commented on Lady Gaga’s appearance in a negative way, and Taylor was quick to respond with the opinion that it is “invasive and irresponsible to comment on a woman’s body.” She loves to give her opinion when it’s about white women. She also is obviously online seeing everything about Palestine if she saw some random TikTok about Lady Gaga’s physical appearance. Way to make your voice heard, girl, because we heard it Loud and Clear!
And people still support her! ohmygodifigureditoutiremembernow
Oh, you just released an amazing pop album that people will want to listen to all summer? Well, I just so happen to have a 27-hour recording of the sound of a lawnmower with my name on it. I guess that should go out right when yours is, huh?
People love to support the things they’re comfortable with. People HATE change. They don’t like to lose; they don’t like to see their teams lose, whatever their teams may be. And if their teams turn into the bad guys, they’re gonna stick with them because there’s no way that can be true! There’s no way “Vote Blue No Matter Who” can end up being the wrong mindset. We’ve never been wrong about Blue in the past, right? Right? Jerry Seinfeld is still funny, right? He’s still what we loved in the 90s? And Amy Schumer will always be who we loved on Inside Amy Schumer, right? There’s, like, no way she’d ever wish for the deaths of Palestinians, to prove her allegiance to Israel? And Taylor Swift is a billionaire now, but that can’t mean she’s evil, can it? She keeps making more and more of the same bad product whenever another female artist is about to take the spotlight, but that has to be a coinkydink!
Vote Blue No Matter Who is an idea that can be used for so many scenarios — so many topics.
To further a tangent, it’s really funny and cool and also interesting to watch the left and the right slowly turn into each other. They all have the same opinions but for different reasons. As a current example, the left hates Israel because it’s committing genocide, and the right hates Israel because they’re antisemitic. And the liberals — who are in the center and NOT the left — think those two opinions are the same. And I’ll admit that it doesn’t help that they dress the same these days and it makes it hard to separate them:
Ah, yes, the gentrification of the far-right. I’M KIDDING. Me, making fun of gentrification? I drink a celery juice every single day. But it seems to be so difficult for the Vote Blue No Matter Who crowd to separate these groups of people, especially when they love to separate groups of people!
It’s so hard to be a conservative these days. It’s so hard to be a liberal these days! We conservs and libs can’t get away with anything anymore. And now we can’t even wear cowboy boots and drink a damn Bud Light without being criticized! Because of woke.
You guys, I hate to move forward again so quickly, but I just remembered a topic I wanted to talk about after not being able to remember it for days, and I need to write it down now before it disappears again forever and you guys don’t get to know every waking thought I have.
I THINK POLITICIANS SHOULDN’T BE ALLOWED ON LATE-NIGHT TALK SHOWS. OR DAYTIME TALK SHOWS. OR ANY SHOWS THAT ARE FOR ENTERTAINMENT.
This is, apparently, a VHT (Very Hot Take). I don’t think politicians should be on Fallon or Colbert or Ellen or any show that plays games and is just for fun. I don’t think Joe Biden and Amy Poehler should both be making jokes on Seth Meyers. They’re not the same type of person, even if the country wants that.
Recently, Kamala Harris was on Kimmel, and the audience booed her and shouted that she was killing children in Gaza and shouldn’t be here. Those people got kicked out, but not before Kimmel made a stupid and lazy joke along the lines of, “You’re ruining my joke!” And those audience members were right to boo her. What the hell was she doing on the show while our country assists in the massacre of thousands in another country? I know what she was doing, and I know why politicians come on these types of shows. They want to look like Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Poehler and Julia Louis Dreyfus and Ryan Gosling because we love to hear about them, and we love to see them on TV. If we see certain politicians as celebrities, we’ll wanna vote for them. So they come on these shows, and they play games, and Michelle Obama competes against Ellen in a pushup contest, and Joe Biden bonds with Amy Poehler over her Parks and Rec character’s admiration for him. And we see them as celebrities, instead of what they really are: people who pretend to care about us.
When your job is to take care of your country 24/7 — a job you chose — I don’t need you to be humanized in that way. I’m not saying they’re not human, but they aren’t people who should be laughing up a storm with Stephen Colbert when they’re pressing the button that continues to send missiles to Gaza or Iraq or Syria or anywhere. They’re not laughing with Stephen Colbert; they’re laughing at us because they know they’re using our money to pay for the healthcare of the IDF while we fight for free healthcare here. They laugh at us because they know that we can boo them all we want, and they’re still gonna jet back to The White House and sleep soundly knowing that they’re gonna win (at least, they think they are) a second term because of Vote Blue No Matter Who. They’re stupid, and they don’t belong on my TV, unless they’re telling us that they’ve ceased sending bombs to kill innocent men, women, and children.
So keep booing them, y’all! They’re not funny! They’re not celebrities! They’re civil servants. Servant is a shitty term, but if that’s what they’re choosing to be — if that’s the kind of power they want to have — then they need to get back in their luxury offices and Get To Work. I don’t need to know who their favorite musical artists are right now; I need to know that they’re actually human beings who care about the lives of other human beings if they so badly want to be humanized. I also need to know if drinking celery juice every day is going to show positive results anytime soon, but I’m never gonna find out. Because of woke. I’m not asking for much.
Now, ya see? This is what happens when you skip a few weeks of Circle Back, Kerry. You exhaust the community! You make people’s necks hurt when they’re done reading! At the end of today’s newsletter, everyone is dehydrated! They haven’t had water in hours, maybe even days. Every time they see a green juice, they’re gonna think of you. Every time they see Kamala Harris laughing, they’re gonna boo her. IS THIS WHAT YOU WANTED? CELERY JUICE AND BOOING KALAMA HARRIS = CIRCLE BACK EVERY SUNDAY SOMETIMES MONDAY SOMETIMES NOT FOR A WHILE? WAS THIS YOUR PLAN ALL ALONG?
Yes.
Thanks for reading! See you next week on:
standup special rec: Hannah Einbeinder: Everything Must Go
music rec: Not God by Finom
hot take to have: politicians should not be on talk shows