I’ve spent my entire life fiendishly consuming every morsel of pop culture and media I could get my hands on, and through much trial and error (four colleges, two dropouts, lots of student debt), I’ve discovered the only thing I’m really good at is dissecting and analyzing the zeitgeist I just can’t seem to pull myself away from. Much of my writing revolves around queer culture, my place in it, and the gifts that being queer has given me; one of those gifts is being unafraid to do something in a nontraditional way, and I’ve been wanting to work outside of the conventional structure of the articles and freelance pitches I’ve been turning out while looking for a new job during a pandemic that has put the kibosh on staffed media work.
Having spent more than half my time on Earth being embarrassingly online (I shudder to think about past tumblr fame), I’ve sort of developed an innate knack for storing, filing away, and really loving little pieces of pop culture that so many have forgotten. My brain is constantly working itself over to pull references that piece together past and present. I can always find something special in culture both high and low, something that makes it worth remembering and helps to fill the endless puzzle of pop. That’s what this newsletter is all about, celebrating all sorts of media and reveling in what makes it so good, bad, insane, hilarious, trashy, or horrifying — and doing it with you.
This is where you’ll get a three-part investigative series on the bonkers brilliance of Fergie’s career; rankings of every 2020 Hallmark Christmas movie on a scale of one to ten candy cane lobotomies; speculative essays on things like the night Lady Gaga, Lindsay Lohan, and Ellen Von Unwerth all partied together in a room at the Chateau Marmont; a retrospective gallery of Serena’s most inappropriate-for-the-event outfits through all six seasons of Gossip Girl; a case for why Suspiria (2018) and Catwoman (2004) should be held in the same regard of brilliance; a guest dissertation on the equal chaos and charisma of Jennifer Lopez’s ads for a nondescript mobile game, and so, so much more.
The main component of Top Shelf, Low Brow will arrive in your inbox every Friday and will remain completely free. But because I’m starting this newsletter with the interest in being paid for doing writing I love, there is also a paid, premium option with exclusive content. For $5 a month (less than a container of oat milk and even more satisfying), premium subscribers will get a bonus newsletter on Mondays with a breakdown of things that happened in pop culture and news over the week before, rated as either Top Shelf or Low Brow, and detailed explanations as to why. Paid subscribers will also receive exclusive first-access content to articles, reviews, and essays I publish that don’t make it into the newsletter and aren’t picked up through freelance. That doesn’t mean rejects, it just meant you get to read about the stuff that was way too cool for anyone to really understand. And when they finally do? You’ll have “I-told-you-so” rights, so get ready to hop on the phone to brag.
So, that’s it for today! The first edition of the newsletter arrives tomorrow, December 4th for all subscribers, free and paid. I can’t thank you enough for being here, reading this, and (hopefully!) subscribing. Whether your subscription is free or paid, I value your time just the same. I love you. Let’s dive in.