Nic Cage’s Love Quest, British Mannerisms, Doing it for the Plot 👅
"YEAH BABY YEAHHHH!" - Austin Powers
Hi!
Back to life, back to reality — a stark reminder that you cannot live off of wine and saturated fats, go to sleep at 1AM and leave your days completely open to chance. It’s January, you bitch, and we’re back in business. It’s Capricorn season, the perfect time to get started on your will and organise your tupperware containers.
It’s also my BIRTH MONTH and I WILL be expecting attention and adoration :) That’s just me.
Anyways.
🙊 SWEETIE RATES 🙊
Nic Cage’s story of love
You can say a lot of things about Nicolas Cage. So much. Books full. He is a patently fascinating man and a pioneering figure in pop culture. But we don’t have the time or patience for all of that today. Instead, let’s focus on his romantic pursuit of fellow actor Patrcia Arquette.
This story is the definition of the theory “If he wanted to he would”, it’s proof that romance is not dead, just dormant. In an 1996 interview with Playboy with writer David Sheff, he regales the incredible lengths he went to in order to charm Patricia:
CAGE: I met her at Canter’s, a deli, a long time ago–eight years ago. I said, “I want to marry you.” She said, “You’re crazy,” and she didn’t believe me.
PLAYBOY: Can you blame her?
CAGE: No, but I was serious. So I asked her to put me on a quest. At the end of that quest, if I succeeded in bringing her what she asked for, then she would have to marry me. When she gave me the list, I knew even more that this was the right person for me, because it was so inventive and creative. She wanted a black orchid. She wanted J.D. Salinger’s signature-and anybody who reads knows that he hardly ever signed anything. She wanted a wedding dress from the Lisu tribe in northern Thailand and one of those Bob’s Big Boy statues. So I set out on my quest.
PLAYBOY: You took it seriously.
CAGE: I was completely serious. First I had to find out where she lived. She wouldn’t tell me. She said the street she lived on rhymed with “flower.” I found out where it was. Then I went to a flower store and asked for a black orchid.
The guy said they don’t exist. So I asked him for a purple one and I went to the yard store and got a can of black spray paint. I got on my motorcycle with the orchid in one pocket and the spray paint in the other and drove to her house and rang the doorbell. She wouldn’t come out, but I could see her peeking down from the top floor. In my very showy way, I whipped the orchid out of my pocket. Then I whipped out the paint can and started spray-painting the orchid black. She was freaked out. I rang the doorbell again and she came down. I just gave it to her and got back on my motorcycle and left.
PLAYBOY: Were you able to find Salinger’s signature?
CAGE: I called an autograph store and asked if they had anything by J.D. Salinger–any kind of handwriting or autograph. The guy said that as a matter of fact he had a letter Salinger had written to a woman who I think had taken care of him at a boarding house or something. Many people don’t believe this story. My manager, Gerry Harrington, is friends with J.D. Salinger’s son, who says his father never signed anything. But this was a letter he wrote. So I bought the letter for $2500, put it in a cigar box with one apricot and one cigar and drove to her house. She was playing hopscotch in the street with her girlfriends. Hopscotch! I was driving a Peugeot, a silver one, and I pulled up and left the box on the street and drove off. I got a call from her. She was off the Richter scale: “OK, all right, just stop. Stop now.”
PLAYBOY: What was next on the list?
CAGE: It was the Bob’s Big Boy statue. I’d already gotten the chain saw. I was gonna steal one and put it in a truck and leave it on her front lawn. But she freaked out and said, “No more.” She said, “I don’t know if I can marry you, but I will go away with you.” Well, my grandfather was conducting his score for Napoleon in Cuba, and I knew my whole family would be there. I had a plan: I would get her to go with me to Mexico City, then I would abduct her, take her to Cuba and marry her while my family was there. But I got derailed at the Mexican airport because they couldn’t find my tickets. I threw a temper tantrum. That scared Patricia. She didn’t like how I was yelling at everybody. She went back to her boyfriend, and that was that.
PLAYBOY: Were you crushed when it didn’t work?
CAGE: Yes. She broke my heart for many years.
PLAYBOY: But you didn’t even know her!
CAGE: I felt right about her. I don’t know if I knew her, it just felt right.
PLAYBOY: What happened after that?
CAGE: We went on with our lives. I became a dad, she became a mother. I maintained peripheral contact with her–she’s a good person who is a doting, nurturing friend–but I never saw her. We spoke six or seven times over eight years.
PLAYBOY: Until–
CAGE: I’d been thinking a lot about her. I was in therapy at the time and her face kept coming to me in therapy sessions. But nothing happened until last year. I went back to Canter’s. It was eight years later and I ran into her again. This time there was a change. Maybe because we were back at the place where we had met. Two months later she called me and proposed to me. I said, “Yes!” I mean, a voice from deep inside just came up and said, “Yeah, OK, let’s do it.”
He’s just like me (insane).
Literally what the hell is all of this? I’m scared and kind of sad that nobody ever tried to cut down a Bob's Big Boy statue with a chainsaw for me. Men just don’t borderline stalk women like they used to. The biggest take away from all of this? Patricia Arquette has flawless game. She plays hopscotch with her friends as an adult, she is unimpressed by grand romantic gestures and she proposes on her own terms.
She corroborated the account here in a manner that is so casual it’s as though she’s talking about picking up skim milk from the corner store. 10/10. Go Pat!
@mollymoonn2
With its trending sounds, songs, dances, GRWM and ‘A Day in the Life of…’ videos, TikTok is a platform that prioritises and rewards sameness, curated regurgitation, and the never-ending fight to be the first commenter to use the designated punchline of the week. Nothing is built to last and everything is innately forgettable.
On a platform sustained by homogeneity and replication, it’s exciting to see someone doing something actually creative and out of the box. Mesmerising and truly unique, @mollymoonn2’s videos have this eerie mix of horror and silly irreverence. It’s content that feels fresh — new and nostalgic at the same time. They feel like something I’ve purposefully blocked from my memory in the best way possible.
Nobody is doing it like Molly.
The 30 wears rule
I’m not going to pretend to be some kind of sustainability queen, seeing as I get a takeaway cup of coffee everyday and throw batteries into the ocean*, but if you like shopping and you like clothes and you want to be a little more mindful — I just want you to know, the 30 wears rule changed my life.
It’s sooo easy. Don’t buy anything unless you think you’re going to wear it 30 times. I can’t remember where I heard it from, but it has single handedly changed my approach to curating a wardrobe.
The rule branches out, of course, because to wear something 30 times you’re going to want it to be of reasonable quality, which will usually come at a higher price. If you want to wear it 30 times you have to be sure of your personal style and not buy things on a whim. Thinking about the longevity of an item is a point of consideration, which usually means you can’t just buy any old thing for a quick hit of dopamine.
Also, any time I picture some cute, slight, sparkly fast fashion for a one-off outfit, I just think of it sitting in landfill when it inevitably falls to pieces. I’ll still have donated it to charity anyway because some part of me naively believes they can fix it. They can’t! And they won’t. They’ll throw it in the tip. They aren’t miracle workers. And then it’ll end up sitting in the sun for eons, dimly glinting next to decrepit pizza boxes and broken dolls, and I feel bad. 30 wears it is.
*That’s a joke because I felt like I was being too sincere. I only throw expired medicines into the ocean.
🤕 SWEETIE HATES 🤕
Misunderstanding British people
I’m officially throwing my hands up. I don’t know how to effectively communicate with British people. I just don’t. I try to live by a say-what-you-mean-mean-what-you-say kind of vibe, but it appears that way of communicating has to go out the window when you’re in this United Kingdom. You could be standing next to a British person while they’re on fire, and you can say to them “Do you want me to put you out?” and they’d say “Oh, I don’t want to trouble you.”
I don’t understand why you can’t often get a straight response out of these people. Interactions are rife with psychological mind games where you have to guess how they feel about anything and everything depending on a slight shift in their tone of voice or the specific way they have declined efforts at hospitality.
Lately I’ve been getting the feeling that I need to wear a sign around my neck that says “STUPID + FOREIGN. PLEASE TRANSLATE.” I don’t know what else to do!!! Not everybody is like this, of course, but still — please help me, British people, I desperately want to understand your special kind of civility and your repressed ways.
Doing things ~for the plot~
The worst things I have ever done in my life, to myself, to other people, have all stemmed from an urge to see what happens if I take certain risks or push against my own boundaries. Why? Because I want to know what’ll happen. I’m morbidly curious. Perhaps masochistic, even. Oopsy doops!
Guess what? My life got approximately 200% better when I stopped doing this. My life is no longer a source of entertainment, it’s actually a real thing I have to do. I’m smart now and I vow to only do something extremely out of pocket once every quarter as a treat. Not sure what this quarter’s plotpoint is going to be, but I’m just saying, I’ve never had a shoplifting phase.
The saying “touch wood”
Yuck. This doesn’t sit right with me spiritually. When anyone says this phrase it brings forth all kinds of sensory icks, the visualisation of it that makes my teeth feel weird. It’s also lame and soft in comparison to its superior alternative, “knock on wood.”
“Knock on wood” has energy, it has vibrance, it’s got force, it’s a little violent. It’s also a great song. Why would I want to simply touch wood when I could manhandle it? I’m a relatively superstitious person. My endeavours for luck are not done by halves.
Catch ya later sl*ts.