Yep. New Year, same Bitch.
Sending my love, regards, prayers, positive vibes, best wishes, most fervent hopes and incredible dreams to my SWEETIE pies. We did it!
See you in 2024 for more nonsense, escapades, drivel etc.
🌟 SWEETIE RATES 🌟
Movies
I love da movies! God bless Louis Le Prince. I watched 111 films this year (angel number), 104 of which I’d never seen before, and I really ran the gamut of taste.
Here are the best films I watched this year (in no particular order):
The Conversation, Francis Ford Coppola (1974)
TÁR, Todd Fields (2022)
How to Have Sex, Molly Manning Walker (2023)
Singin’ In The Rain, Stanley Donan, Gene Kelly (1952)
To Die For, Gus Van Sant (1995)
Fire of Love, Sara Dosa (2022)
All That Heaven Allows, Douglas Sirk (1955)
Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Céline Sciamma (2019)
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, Laura Poitras (2022)
Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, Joe Berlinger, Bruce Sinofsky (2004)
Chungking Express, Wong Kar-Wai (1994)
Really hard to nail this list down, and I still couldn’t get to just 10. I am looking forward to cramming even more cinema in my brain in the new year. Call me Gregg Turkington the way I feel like Mister Movies rn!
2023
It was a big year for me — though it kind of feels like every year is at this point — and I have mixed feelings about seeing it shrink in the rearview mirror. In 2023 I listened to yacht rock, I had epiphany after epiphany, I had my heart broken (like, really broken), I picked up the pieces, I held on, I let go, I explored, I did things I used to despise, I suffered, I luxuriated, I learned, and I am grateful for each day that I experienced. I am so happy to be here. I used to dread the passing of time, fearing that I was rotting while I waited for my life to begin, and now I’m worried I don’t have enough time to enjoy it all.
Life is very hard, still, and I’m not going to make any New Year’s resolutions. I make, keep and forget resolutions every day. Instead I am just going to try to keep being messy and ridiculous and vulnerable and trusting, hoping for the best, and expecting the best, too.
The Rock lying
I love it when famous people lie. Some lies are astronomical, like Paula Abdul’s unverified plane crash, or Steve Rannazzisi saying he was in the South Tower during 9/11, or Hilaria Baldwin’s whole Spanish-not-Spanish deal. It’s not that I particularly love what they’re lying about, I simply admire the sheer audacity that one must have to publicly make false claims that can be easily debunked.
That’s why The Rock lying about eating In-N-Out for the first time really tickled me. Caught in a web of deceit by TMZ, the week of Christmas no less, The Rock must now switch from eating animal style fries to humble pie. He has made not one post, not two, but THREE posts since 2017 claiming that he has just tried In-N-Out for the first time. It’s a shocking betrayal to the burger community, and if it weren’t so embarrassingly funny, I’d be aghast.
Why is he lying about this? Only a true liar could ever know, and unfortunately, a true liar I am not. Surely the man who rips gates off their hinges can think of better ways to accrue Instagram engagement. May I suggest fighting with Vin Diesel again? I really liked that.
I have not reached out to The Rock for comment, because I don’t know how to do that, yet his silence on this matter is still deafening.
🤨 SWEETIE HATES 🤨
Movies
What, you thought I was going to like every movie I watched? Wrong. Many people make only best-of lists, I want to add to the oeuvre with a worst-of list. I do not watch critically-acclaimed films all the time, nor should anyone, lest it makes you insufferable. Watching garbage films fortifies taste, they test your boundaries, even if you’re counting down the minutes until the credits roll.
Now, in no particular order, here are the movies I enjoyed watching the LEAST in 2023:
Your Place or Mine, Aline Brosh McKenna (2023)
Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre (2022)
What’s Love Got to Do with It?, Shekhar Kapur (2023)
He’s All That, Mark Waters (2021)
Life-Size 2, Steven K, Tsuchida (2018)
Hope Springs, Mark Herman (the 2003 one)
Interstellar, Christopher Nolan (2014) (still mad)
The Old Man and the Gun, David Lowery (2018)
Green Book, Peter Farrelly (2018)
Bottoms, Emma Seligman (2023) (SORRY!)
See?
Ins and outs lists
I basically wrote a whole 2024 ins and outs list, but then an important thought occurred to me — who the fuck cares? Every two-bit Substacker, TikToker and Instagrammer scrambles to offer their ins and outs lists in the last week of December, and crucially, may I add, I am finding these lists very boring this year.
Ohhhh my God you think vulnerability is going to be ‘in’ in 2024? Should we throw a party? Should we invite Brené Brown? Somebody call The Paris Review! A 19-year old luxury goods influencer wants us to know that we’re all to sub out one flash in the pan microtrend for another flash in the pan microtrend!
Two years ago I posted an ins and outs list to my Instagram story that I had made at Tamworth airport, and a woman in her forties tersely replied to me, saying that the birthday balloons I had included in my ‘outs’ list would still be present at HER birthday, and I couldn’t stop her, thank you very much. It was the first time I realised that some people may actually look at these lists for either a sign of rejection or some kind of breathless acceptance. Ins and outs lists are intended to air petty grievances and invite people to believe you have some kind of cultural cache that they lack. And, once again, they’re also just boring. NEXT!
Auld Lang Syne
More like Old Stank Bye… This song sucks! They should make a New Year’s Eve themed song that sounds more like Where Them Girls At by David Guetta, then we’d really be cooking with gas.
MWAH 💋