This Is the Weekend We Could Get Robert Pattinson to Do Porn
AnnaLynne McCord nurses a nation, Salma Hayek is afraid, Sam Elliott doesn't think cowboys do anal, Robert Pattinson & Zoë Kravitz look hot, Charli XCX fires back, & more rated Top Shelf to Low Brow!
Our first Thursday edition of The Weekly Letter, how decadent! I was busy on Monday evening conducting a very cool interview for a very cool piece that will hopefully come out very soon (fingers crossed), otherwise, we would’ve met yesterday. But coming face to face like this, one day from the sweet, sexy release of Friday? It feels almost…sinfully delicious. Dangerous and tempting. Let’s get into it.
Top Shelf, Low Brow: February 22nd-March 3rd
This is what happens when people with four capital letters in their name are given verified Twitter accounts
Last week, star the CW’s 90210 reboot and the Lifetime original holiday movie Feliz NaviDAD, AnnaLynne McCord, decided that Russia’s full-scale, targeted invasion of Ukraine would be the perfect time to pen and post a bizarre spoken-word piece where she posits that, if she had been Vladimir Putin’s mother, the whole thing could’ve been avoided from the get go.
At one point upon watching, I truly began to worry that she was about to say something really fucking insane. “Mr. Putin, I wish you had been able to suckle from my nourishing teet. I wish I could have ducked into bathrooms and dark corners of buildings across the cold hills of Russia to pump so that YOU could KNOW that the woman from whose womb you were bore wanted to do everything she could to provide for you.” She might as well have. I’m surprised she didn’t just title this “Mommy Milkers.”
Something about phrasing the tweet as, “Dear Mister President Vladimir Putin” is so funny to me. “Dear Mister Putin” or “Dear Vladimir Putin” weren’t cuttin’ it? So, so many steps to get to the point of hitting the TWEET button, and at none of them did she stop to think, “Now…let me just consider what could happen if I were to tweet this out to the world.” I imagine AnnaLynne pouring over outfits in her closet, trying to find the best piece for the context of the video’s content. A sensible, mauve turtleneck vest? Perfect.
Then again, Ms. McCord hasn’t been exactly regretful of any part of this process. Speaking with BuzzFeed News, she had the following to say:
“I know how I could easily have moved in the direction of becoming a dictator myself,” McCord told BuzzFeed News when asked about her reasons for writing the poem. “If certain circumstances of my life were different, were I a little less bent toward healing and more toward vindication, I could have been a darkly powerful person.”
I love that last line feeling more than vaguely threatening. What’s going to happen to the world if AnnaLynne McCord ever takes a turn for the worst? God help us all. “I know how I could easily have moved in the direction of becoming a dictator myself.” Girl, you already did! You dictated that fingerless gloves were fucking back on the cover of NYLON in 2008!
In summation, AnnaLynne said:
(Rating: Low Brow)
Paging Michael Kitten!
Smell that? It’s the scent of all the cum leftover from the circle jerk that is The Screen Actors Guild Awards, which took place last Sunday in Hollywood! The SAGs marked 2022’s official commencement of Awards Season, after January’s Golden Globes ceremony went untelevised when its telecast partner NBC refused to air the show while the Hollywood Foreign Press Association continued to dodge culpability for a startling lack of diversity in their membership. But thank god the telecasts are back. I had forgotten just how good it feels to be almost worryingly engrossed in an award show for the first half hour and then completely nonplussed by minute 31.
Not a whole lot to say here. Romy and Michele onscreen reunion of Kudrow and Sorvino? Good. Men talking? Bad. A Jessica Chastain win for The Eyes of Tammy Faye, enough to make-a anyone cry (even when they haven’t taken their peektchures yet!). But my favorite part of the entire ceremony, and one that I’ve replayed countless times since, was Salma Hayek Pinault announcing Michael Keaton’s win for Male Actor in a TV Movie or Miniseries for Dopesick. Hayek Pinault, sporting a high pony and gorgeous gloves, announces Keaton’s name to fanfare and then dead air—Keaton is in the bathroom. Salma is stranded. Her eyes dart around the auditorium for a moment before we cut to a wide shot of the audience in Camera B, when you hear Salma simply say, “Are you kidding me?”
I can watch this over and over and over and it doesn’t get old. The worry slowly creeping across her face. Desperate glances from table to table, looking for Michael to no avail but seeing all eyes fall back on her. The pageant smile and quick breath. It’s enough to make you say, “Are you kidding me?”
Perhaps my funniest friend and Princess of Canada, Jordanna, posted a video of Salma saying Michael Keaton’s name with Instagram auto-generated captions to her story the other day. I can’t stop thinking about it.
(Rating: Top Shelf)
The Horny Section
This John Bernthal fancam set to Lana Del Rey’s “West Coast” (one of the sexiest songs of the 2010s)…
END OF SECTION! THAT’S A WRAP! Take a break, go light a Newport, meet you back here in five.
Gotham City stylists, we will be fighting for your Q2 raises
Robert Pattinson and Zoë Kravitz have been continuing their promotional tour for their sexy new noir-adjacent superhero turn, The Batman, out in theaters this weekend. And if any two actors understand that the people playing Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle should be looking dark and mysterious with a playful wink, it’s Kravitz and Pattinson.
Pattinson has been rocking long, oversized wool and wide-legged slacks, bonus points for the chain in the pic on the left, which falls at the perfect intersection of late-90s techno-grunge and fetish fashion/Berghain clubgoer.
Zoë has been donning sleek, form-fitting dresses with similar silhouettes but frisky cutouts. Hands stay on the upper thigh!
In case you’re the world’s biggest fucking moron, Popsugar—our premier source for the most bottom-of-the-barrel banalities—is here to give you a hint as to what the shape of Zoë’s dress on the right might be alluding to!
Thank god someone could point that out!!! Our continued thanks to all the brave artificially intelligent algorithms at Popsugar who are making connections that my two-year-old niece could identify. And she only just learned what object permanence is.
First Michael Kitten, now Zoë Katvetz.
Now, I know you all have a ticket to The Batman this weekend—you can bet I secured my seat the moment they dropped!—but look at me. It’s so important that we all cancel our tickets for a full refund as soon as possible, as I had almost totally forgotten about when he said the following in 2019:
I’m cancelling my ticket and I expect you all to do the same for the greater good of the world. I’ve been waiting for this ever since the moment they fired up the paint gun to spray on his abs for the second Twilight movie. We need something to unite us. I think the artist formerly known as RPatz showing hog could be that very thing.
(Rating: Top Shelf)
The closest we will ever come to discussing religion at the TSLB offices…
(Except for worsipping at the altar of mens’ tiddies)
Top Shelf, Low Brow is a secular newsletter, as I, personally, am not one iota of religious—though I have certainly had experiences that make me believe there is a god—but Denise Richards absolutely crucifying this insta story advertisement for some random Christian meditation app is too good not to show you. The way she says “forty days leading up to Easter!” alone, with all the excitement of a child talking about a quasi-religious holiday that actually matters (Christmas), is something I’ll never quite be able to shake!
Anyway, happy Lent to all who celebrate I guess? Or is this something you “observe”? I will be observing the anniversary of Nicki Minaj’s “Roman Holiday” performance at the Grammys ten years ago. Father, (Bitches is my) Son(s), and Holy Spirit. Amen.
(Rating: Top Shelf)
Sam Elliott stupid ass thinks cowboys never took one raw. Bitch the west was wild!
On Monday, Marc Maron welcomed a talking mustache onto his podcast. But the fact that a mustache has become willfully sentient was not the novelty that made headlines, it was that the anthropomorphous being that is attached to the mustache, Sam Elliott, had the following to say about Jane Campion’s Best Picture contender (and rightful winner) The Power of the Dog:
Now I don’t know much about what Sam Elliott has been through in his seemingly eight hundred years on this earth, but I can say with almost utmost confidence that cowboys in the Wild West were most certainly sucking and fucking. If you haven’t seen The Power of the Dog, I won’t spoil anything for you (but also get your act together), but unless you’ve been in a media blackout the last three months, you probably know that there are some—as Miz Elliott would say—homosexual elements to this story.
It just seems so funny to me that you can be in even a handful of westerns and cowboy films in your career and never once realize that there are loads (pun intended) of gay undercurrents to the male bonding that happens in them. You think those cowboys weren’t “accidentally” grinding their boners into each other during their sleep, late night by a crackling fire with no one else around for miles? Come on, my dude. Those boys were just out there having intimate conversations that didn’t end in a BJ under the stars and a little cuddle sesh to “keep warm”? Get real. These “not gay” cowboys basically originated the phrase “a hole is a hole in the dark.” Where do you think the the word “barebacking” came from? The Power of the (Raw)Dog(gin’).
Furthermore, to discuss his statements on Jane Campion:
Bitch, you’re from Sacramento!
You grew up in the same place as Joan Didion and Greta Gerwig. You did not grow up gunslingin’ for your supper, babe! I’ve been to Sacramento and the whole place has a huge gay vibe. Plus, you can’t tell me you’ve never heard of a Spaghetti Western. You think that genre got its name because craft services was boiling up some al dente pasta on the set or something? Honey they were filmed in Europe!!! And you know what, I’m from North Dakota, I have more of a say than you, Mrs. Capital of California! What do you know? Quickly. And no mumbling!
Anyway, despite all that, I don’t really care about what Sam Elliott wants to say about gay cowboys eviscerating the American dream, but some other people may not see things the same way, namely a certain Bambina who led the Oscar vehicle that you were nominated for in 2019. Lady Gaga will be taking her A Star Is Born costar to the Chromatica-pink table in a Men dot com exclusive broadcast to hash things out.
In the end, shoutout to hottie Marc Maron, who simply just said this in response to Elliott’s statements:
(Rating: Low Brow)
The Music Section
After months of waiting to be satiated by a taste of delicious pure pop from the generous pop Goddess herself, Charli XCX, we were knelt on the ground and ready to receive. And receive we did, BABY! Madamemoiselle Vroom Vroom has finally blessed us with the song we’ve all been waiting for from her upcoming album CRASH (out March 18th everywhere music is sold!!!!), “Baby”…and to say it’s a smasher would unfortunately be an understatement that would result in five months of community service minimum.
All uptempo songs should be measured by how hot and sexy they can make you feel while walking down the street, and BABY I was pumping my shit past a Think Coffee yesterday feeling on top of the god damn world.
But life cannot be so simple for all of us, and soon after its release, Charli couldn’t help but wade into the toxic sludge of Stan Twitter to defend a song that needs no defense:
And…to offer a take no one asked for…here’s me: Artists shouldnt lose the right to defend their art to the public just because they have a certain level of fame and noteriety, but our current juncture of technology and total brain erosion has made that notion little less difficult to defend.
If an artist like Charli XCX—whose fanbase is modest compared to someone like Lady Gaga’s, Selena Gomez’s, or (very weirdly) Emilia Clarke’s, but still very strong and extremely vocal in their own right—chooses to defend their art in the realm of the public, it can potentially launch unwarranted harassment and vitriol toward someone. But the thing about Stan twitter is that if you’re a completely faceless twitter account with a random Kero Kero Bonito icon tweeting endless out-your-ass opinions on pop culture happenings the very MOMENT they occur, why can’t you expect the artist to say something back? It’s a public sphere for both sides, everyone can see what everyone is saying. And if you think an artist got into the pop music industry because they were afraid of attention and discourse? That’s essentially going to be your cross to bear if they decide to say something back to you.
It should also be noted that 10.2k twitter followers isn’t exactly powerless in terms of the internet. Compared to Charli’s 3.6 million? Of course, huge discrepancy, but almost all of the fans I saw responding were on the side of the fan. A good majority of Stan Twitter acts and tweets the way they do simply to try to get a rise out of other stans for no good reason, forgetting that the artists are present too (wave to my girl Marina Abramović!). It can be argued both that great art speaks for itself and that a less-than-three-minute pop song isn’t worth all of this discourse in the first place, but as a day-one fan of Charli myself, she’s really only recently just found a sweet spot between critical appreciation of her work and public understanding of her as an artist. I just…get what she’s saying. And I think it’s important to remember that Twitter is not a fucking echo chamber.
And on that note, BANKS has announced her fourth studio album entitled Serptentina, and this froot looks familiar! BANKS straight up copying Madonna’s Rebel Heart album cover is kind of a toot.
BANKS also released the album’s third single, “Holding Back,” which I’m so sorry to say…gave me tinnitus. What in the 2014 H&M store playlist hell was going on in the studio that day? That pitched-up chorus? I literally keep trying and trying to listen to this song in its entirety but it’s physically impossible for me.
Now, you might say to me, “Coleman, in the spirit of what you were just saying about an artist’s reaction to fans’ opinions of their art in regards to Charli XCX, how would you feel if BANKS tweeted at you about not liking her song?” And that’s simple, my defense of my opinion would just simply be to show her a photo of my ears bleeding and send her the invoice of my hospital copay.
It would seem The Lohanaissance really is…upon us?
On Tuesday, Netflix announced that they had signed Lindsay Lohan to a two-film deal, which begins after the premiere of her upcoming netflix holiday movie. So three whole films, that’s more insurance than she’s been given since 2009!
Huge day for Dina Lohan, the second best one after Lindsay posed with Angie and Meryl in 2005, which we will never hear the end of.
(Rating: Good for her!)
If you’re not also reacting to Penn Badgley like this…what the hell are you doing? Who are you? You think you’re better than me? Than the rest of us?
Last week, Drew Barrymore welcomed Bitch Sesh podcast cohosts Danielle Schneider and Casey Wilson onto her talk show in the culmination of a months-long saga that began back in November when Casey told Danielle a story about when she was talking with Drew Barrymore and the two of them were discussing their love of YOU. The Netflix show. Danielle, hearing what any normal person would hear, believed that Casey and Drew had been discussing their mutual love of herself. Tears flowed at the misunderstanding, and two months later, during one of their podcast’s virtual live shows, Casey brought Drew into the Zoom room to surprise Danielle.
This means that the only thing left to do was to have Penn Badgley, star of YOU, bring his sexy fuckin’ ass onto Drew Barrymore’s show with all of the women there. And it unfolded exactly as it should unfold when anyone sees Penn Badgley’s face. Sheer sexual frustration manifesting in chaos and bedlam.
And, scene.
(Rating: Top Shelf)
That’s it for this week! I hope you enjoyed our time together, I know I certainly did. This is a great weekend to stay home and watch Nicole Kidman in Birth, now on HBO Max! What else are you going to do, go see The Batman and potentially rob us of seeing Robert Pattinson’s meat? Grow up! See you again soon 💖. And hey, follow the newsletter on Instagram and like, comment, and share this edition! I never say that, but I’m feeling crazy with you this close to Friday. Okay, love you!
That Denise Richards video!!! 😂🤯