Hey, hey… How y’all doing?
I am feeling very Don’t Stop The Party by The Black Eyed Peas this week. I hope you are, too. If you’re not at that level, I hope at the very least you’re feeling Imma Be by The Black Eyed Peas.
Here’s your SWEETIE Weekly.
🧡 SWEETIE RATES 🧡
Duckface selfies
These are coming back, I can just tell. This pose goes hand in hand with a recession. In retrospect, I believe that duckface selfies were unfairly maligned. After all, what’s a little cheekbone flex between friends?
We’re bringing it back. I’m talking a Myspace selfie-arm angle, a cheap digital camera with high-contrast flash and a perfectly positioned duckface. I feel the groundswell of a full-blown renaissance.
Joining random Facebook groups
Much to be said about the state of Facebook/Meta/Mark Zuckerberg’s profiteering ascension to fascistic glory. But all of that stuff is boring! Let’s focus today on a positive facet of Facebook. One of the greatest things that Marky’s silly little website ever did was create the Groups function.
Call it morbid curiosity, call it an internet addiction, but I just love finding new ways to waste my life online. Here’s an easy way to up your screentime — join The River Thames Mudlarking Finds. I love that community. Am I ever going to mudlark on the Thames? No. I’m not 100% sure I know what ‘mudlarking’ even means. Yet, I still desperately want to know what they’re up to in there. FYI, they have found a lot of washers, broken ceramics and rusty coins over the last few months and I am ceaselessly impressed.
If that’s not your cup of tea, try Mushroom Spotters UK, All Things Birdwatching UK or UFO Sightings UK, where people mostly post pictures with a lens flare and try to convince us it’s an alien spaceship. If you’re feeling nosy, join your local Are We Dating The Same Guy group. I cannot personally vouch for it, I wanted to be admitted to have a geez but I was too impatient to answer the entry questions. I hope you fare better.
I should note that I strictly do not participate. I am only a keen observer, not an active member. Lurking is all part of the allure.
The sun
I owe a public apology to the sun. I have slandered the sun, even at times I have cursed the sun for many things — burning me, being too hot, giving me heat stroke in Italy and then I had to lie on a lounge in a restaurant with ice on my body and people took pictures of me… Anyway, what was I saying?
Oh yeah, the sun.
I used to cross the street to avoid its rays, I would only ever sit in the shade, I would wear SPF50 even in winter. After doing b2b winters, though, I have discovered the power of UV and vitamin D. Turns out there’s really something to it! Before I was greedy, I had the sun on tap. I was so accustomed to its glare that I took it for granted. I’m sorry, sun. Please come out from behind the clouds and say hello, kiss my pallid skin. I’ll be nice from now on. I won’t ever be mean about you again.
🥵️ SWEETIE HATES 🥵️
New (suspicious) dinosaur
Guess what dummy, there’s a new dinosaur on the scene and he’s lopsided as hell. Let’s welcome the Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum to the fold. For brevity and the sake of a growing familiarity, let’s call him Mamen.
A relic of the Jurassic era, Mamen is a Sauropod who was found in China in 1987. You might think this all sounds great. What fun to continue finding dinosaurs left, right and centre!
But here’s the thing. I don’t like this guy at all. I don’t trust him one iota. Neck too big. What’s he doing with all that neck? Probably hiding something.
Here’s the other thing — scientists don’t know why he’s got that thang on him, either.
Professor Paul Barrett, a dinosaur expert at the Natural History Museum and an author of newly-released study about Mamen hypothesises that:
“It would require a lot of muscles to hold up a neck that size, and then there's the question of how it gets air down to the lungs and back up again.
This could support the theory that these necks were a sexually selected feature where only the strongest and fittest dinosaurs that were able to hold up these giant necks in impressive displays were able to mate.”
Hmm. No. I don’t agree with that at all. I might be an armchair Palaeontologist but I know for certain that women don’t like big necks. Stop reading and get up right now and ask a woman near you, preferably a stranger, if she likes a big neck. She’s not going to say yes! And that’s the SWEETIE guarantee.
I suppose it doesn’t matter anymore why he has such a colossal neck, because he is dead. And he’s not coming back. Not if I have anything to do with it.
Tár SNUBBED
I watched Tár with certified SWEETIE Harry Butt, and despite running just a tad long for my bladder’s sake, it was, as we say in the business, a FILM. I loved it even as I white-knuckled my way through its most difficult passages.
So, there I am, pleased as punch when Tár gets a host of nominations throughout the awards season, including the Oscars. Now, you cannot rely on the integrity of the Academy Awards — at least not after they awarded Bohemian Rhapsody for Best Editing, so I was hesitant to celebrate.
It soon became obvious that this was Michelle Yeoh’s year for Best Actress — an accolade I do think she earned — but I was certain that the Tár-nation would still be well-fed post Oscars. Nominated for six awards, Tár took home… Zero.
Now we get to the Everything Everywhere All At Once of it all. I didn’t mind the film. I thought it was fun! I cried at the rock scene, OK? Sue me, why don’t you? Sue me for being cringe! But SEVEN Oscars? For the sausage finger movie? Cinema has been found dead in a ditch.
You’re telling me that Tár, which is a modern masterpiece, a movie that feels like a movie, couldn’t even be granted Best Original Screenplay? I’m shaken. Mottled with rage.
Jack & Diane by John Mellencamp
Have always had a visceral, deeply-held dislike of this song. Why does John Mellencamp always sound so out of breath?
For what it’s worth, I believe that if John Mellencamp had never made this song then his awful daughter would never have starred on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and been the catalyst for one of the rockiest seasons of reality television in existence.
Jack & Diane not only sucks, it also robbed us of Lisa Vandermpump and her meddling ways. What a world we live in.
Arrivederci. I spelled that right on the first go, btw. Lots of love xx