The Nails of Khloé Kaye, and More Scary Stories to Tell In the Dark
Lil Nas X bares soul and cheeks, Jessica Chastain goes live to diss Amy Adams, Tony and Gaga ready documentaries, Khloé Kardashian's sweet tooth, Malignant hive, and more rated Top Shelf to Low Brow!
Hi everyone! Happy first day of autumn to my northern hemisphere girlies. Greeting you on a Tuesday again this week, but had to extend a day to let the Friday letter breathe. How’re all of you doing? I’m holding on as best I can and I hope you are too! I have an eight-day vacation coming up beginning October 7th and I’m going to get to see my family for the first time in over a year and a half. So during that time, there will straight up be no newsletter editions as I recharge. Just letting you know now!
The Emmys happened last night, and as my brain continues to be melted by reality television I realize I care less and less as the years tick on by. Well, maybe I wouldn’t if things were different, but a show celebrating the last year of television where Veneno doesn’t absolutely sweep every drama category is really not a show I’m interested in. Michaela Coel got her well-deserved win, and that’s enough for me to end that recap on! Let’s get into it.
Top Shelf, Low Brow: September 13 — 20
I swear after this I’ll stop talking about Jessica Chastain for two seconds
Oh Tamma Mia! Noted Italiana Jessica Chastain’s new film, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, is finally here! Guess who hasn’t seen it? I know I should be putting in the time and money to support French-Italian excellence—even though I am neither of those things, but then again, neither is she!—but I simply just didn’t have the time to head out to one of the many screenings of this sure-to-be future addition to Walmart’s $10 value rack, joining similar hit features like The Age of Adaline and Young Adult. I did however have time tip tap over to Instagram to watch Chastain stick her head out of a car window in Times Square (just asking to get Hereditary’d) for an Insta Live on the way to the film’s premiere on Tuesday evening.
In just five minutes, Chastain is doing quite a bit of work here, with full Tammy Faye Bakker face beat and teased-out hair to boot. It’s a look straight out of American Hustle and a smack across the face to another one of Hollywood’s three redheads, Amy Adams, reminding her that though Amy may have more hits, Jessica holds the conviction. That’s how we ended up with Amy Adams trying to act her way out of a beaten-up flannel stuffed with sandbags filled to the brim with confectioners sugar in Hillbilly Elegy while Jessica Chastain sat in the makeup chair for four extra hours a day slapping on prosthetic cheeks to assure her signature on the Tammy Faye dotted line was not for nothing.
But Jessica can’t fool me. A good actress does not necessarily make for a good liar. As if she doesn’t know there’s a giant Scenes from a Marriage billboard in Times Square! “Now’s the time,” she beckons the viewers. “Ask me something really salacious. And exciting!” Just then, she’s “confronted” by a gargantuan ad that she “didn’t know would be there.” “Oh,” she remarks upon seeing her fifty-foot face mere inches from one delicious superhunk that she cozied up to in the throes of the salty air of Venice just a few weeks ago. “Okay, that’s-...by the way, just friends!” Yeah yeah, you can’t fool me! I may have fallen asleep both of the times I tried to watch A Most Violent Year, but I know real chemistry when I see it. You can’t call it acting when everyone on earth would cannonball onto his face in two seconds flat if given the chance. But Jess is a master of deflection, and in this case, it comes in the form of “go off sis, thanks babes.”
(Rating: Top Shelf)
Brain Broke Syndrome Tournament hosted by Khloé Kardashian!
I watched this about 48 times before I finally accepted that I have either:
A. Finally broken from reality completely.
B. Have been comatose since 2012 and my brain has reached the point where it can no longer make up new simulations and stories with the knowledge I had before because it has eaten itself from the inside out and this is the result.
So many questions. Really you just have to go beat by beat here. First, why is she wearing “Thriller” contacts? Jumpscare just to start the vid. Second, I did really think she said that John Legend did her nails! I don’t keep up with celebrity nail artists as I still have some remaining will to live, but I did momentarily think, “Wow. Bold of Khloé for picking sides when Chrissy Teigen is still in hot water.”
Then, the real fuck of it all: “They almost look edible, they look so real. But I’m not going to eat them. Because I am so excited that I get to be the host of America’s very first Candy Crush All-Stars Tournament!” Stay with me on this! If you follow that line of thinking, Khloé was considering chowing down on her acrylics BUT stopped herself BECAUSE she was so excited to host a Candy Crush live? If she hadn’t been excited, she would’ve feasted? Munched them down to the nail line like Bugs Bunny eating a carrot? And the way she emphasized “not” in “not going to eat them” as if we would’ve certainly believed she was going to eat her nails? Does she have Scarlet Fever? Do I?
(Rating: Low Brow)
The way she was swinging herself around in this studio trying to get grandpa hyped…this ain’t The elderRave babe!
Just two months after the first single, Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett have miraculously figured out how to release the second track from their album that has been completed for three entire years, just sitting around and waiting to be shipped out. Why the whole thing isn’t out already is beyond me, but maybe it has something to do with the whopping three documentary specials in the months leading up to and following its release. The first, One Last Time: An Evening With Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga, premieres the Sunday AFTER Thanksgiving, notoriously three days after the holiday where people are looking to sit down and watch whatever the hell they can find on television that’ll be a crowd-pleaser for the whole family. This is Thanksgiving Special fare, not Sunday night fare! But maybe Gaga wanted to end her Thanksgiving special legacy dressed as a dirty condom for an outing with The Muppets in 2013, who knows!
Not like the title track, “Love For Sale,” is much more kid-friendly anyway. It’s literally about prostitution and selling your body to old weirdos off the street in the 1800s! Or maybe the 1920s. When did Scarlet Fever happen? Mama let’s research. I’ll DM Khloé Kardashian! Now, we of course support sex work 1000% here at the Top Shelf, Low Brow offices, what we don’t support is taking this mid-tempo Cole Porter classic and turning it into a swinging, uptempo big-band affair. It’s so much better as a sullen, alluring tale of danger, destitution, and dick. Of cash and cock! Just ask the best to ever do it.
But, of course, I’ll still be purchasing! It’s also my honor to remind you of a photo I thought of this week, one that’s always running through some lobe of my brain at all times but one I was confronted with the humor of once more listening to Gaga singing about opening her shop (legs) to sell her wares (bangin’ P). Here’s Gaga popping her pussy in front of Grandpa, shot by Annie Leibovitz for Vanity Fair January 2012. A classique.
Sing(er) The Alarm
(Rating: Ring the alarm, I’ve been doing this too long, but I’ll be damned if I see Bethenny on your arm)
a mother! of a misread
mother! premiered a whopping 4 years ago last week! I’ll never forget seeing it at the latest possible showing in a theater in North Dakota with three other people, one of whom was my best friend who came with me. Panic attacks abound! As we celebrate Aronofsky’s terrifying vision of climate destruction, religion, motherhood, and the apple cider vinegar tincture I drink every night before bed, I think we should look back on this tweet and reflect:
(Rating: Top Shelf for the misunderstood masterpiece mother! and Low Brow to RuPaul for cursing its destiny and making it become that)
Buy my silence: $10,000 to purchase Troye Sivan’s jockstrap
A major trend of this newsletter seems to be me constantly saying that I want to fuck twinks. And I’m sorry but that’s just not going to change! Especially when Troye Sivan was out here posting these photos of him wearing a jockstrap and getting ready for the Met Gala. By the way, kibosh on all Met Gala discussions the moment the clock strikes midnight on the evening it’s held. Once it’s over, the discussion is done. The discourse has expired. We got it. It’s sooooo boring, like enough. Unless the boys are going to start posting pics of themselves in their underwear getting ready. Lee Pace…Frank Ocean…please send the polaroids to TSLB Horny Blurbs, PO Box 69, Brooklyn, NY.
Hot new couple alert!!!!
What’s this? Looks like Rihanna and beau A$AP Rocky are ON the Rocksies! The “What’s My Name” singer was spotted cozying up with multimillionaire mama Kathy Hilton, and we are SHOOK! Could this be the beginning of a power couple with the Hilton Hottie? Or are the Fenty Fashionista and Kooky Kath just friends? You know that we here at E! News will keep you updated with ALL the developments. Up next, the exclusive pics from Addison Rae and Khloé Kardashian’s adorbs Scarlet Fever Quarantine Photoshoot! More coming up for you soon. Keep it locked!
(Rating: Our best to the happy couple ❤️)
If you haven’t listened to the album of the year yet…
On my six thousandth listen to MONTERO and my favorite songs keep changing. Even the two I wasn’t thrilled with upon first listen I truly love now (that’s thee power of Megan Thee Stallion). MONTERO is such a gorgeous, powerful, moving rumination on Lil Nas X’s life so far—so completely out of left field, even for an artist who has proven himself known for accomplishing the unexpected. There has not been an album quite like this from a queer superstar ever before! And I’m not just saying that because he threw on football pants and took his shirt off, a winning combo for me from the day I could process thought…
And yes, I did write about it for last Friday’s edition (out a day late on Saturday, had to sit with the album even longer, great albums and great analysis take time!).
(Rating: Top Shelf. I’d make a sex joke here but honestly, the album transcends that!)
Kuma Theroux continues to have what I want
When Kuma and I duet “The Boy is Mine” and everyone thinks I’m the Brandy and she’s the Monica…omg how embarrassing for her
TSLB Hotties Movie Club: Malignant
If you’re not a Malignanthead by now, I ask—no, beg—of you to stop reading this newsletter this very second (but please come back!) and run to your television or favorite streaming device or movie theater to see this fucking movie. Don’t you dare watch the trailer first. Slam your laptop closed, throw your fucking phone across the room (unless you’ll use one of those things to watch, though this kind of cinematic brilliance should really be witnessed on a television or larger), and fire up HBO Max to stream or the Fandango app to get a ticket. I promise you will not regret it. I haven’t been so tickled by a horror film in…oh, I just can’t remember how long! (Maybe when I saw Ma in theaters on my birthday, but I would consider that to be more reminiscent of French New Wave). Truuuue THEY DON’T MAKE ‘EM LIKE THIS ANYMORE cinema! This is definitely going to be a huge boost to the Seattle thespian scene <3 they always say Seattle is the next Hollywood.
That’s all for this week! I hope you all enjoyed a truly off the walls letter. Last week was also Sophie Xeon’s birthday. She would’ve been 35. Celebrate accordingly by listening to this pure sonic happiness. 💖