Number One With A Bullet
A week in the pop-culture crosshairs.
I know what you’re all thinking…
Ice Spice “Deli” was a year and a half ago?!?
Damn. (Or grrrahhh, I suppose.)
Profoundly “who cares” but admit it: a slapper.
Didn’t really register until I spent half of Thanksgiving weekend in turnpike traffic with Hot 97 as my co-pilot. For a song with a quarter billi on Spotify, it remains… underappreciated?
Hyperactive even by Jersey Club’s own Panera Lemonade levels of caffeination, it continues to make me want to throw ass in a circle and/or bench press a Kia.
We all contain multitudes.
Anyway, “Deli” is a relentlessly joyful airhead anthem (non derogatory) that you should crank TF up during the next Holiday All-Mix Weekend, then finally notice how ooters on ooters, they know how to oot flows so casually after I’m the shit, I’m Miss Poopie.
I’ve had our country’s favorite ooter on my mind, just like the rest of you.
That does not mean I have any thoughtful points to add!
Still digesting the fact that, immediately after “brain-rot” was crowned word of the year, I watched a literal snuff film on my telephone that would hard launch one of the wildest parasocial relationships of all time.
The thirst!
The memes!
Brother, the memes.
Naturally, Film Twitter focused their jokery on the “How Soon Is Now” sniper scene from David Fincher’s 2023 The Killer, which — much like “Deli” — is deserving of appreciation, regardless of its place in current cultural discourse.
Widely considered a lesser entry in the Fincher canon upon release, it lived rent-free at the bottom of my “Substack Ideas?” phone note all year, alongside links to BTS footage and fight breakdowns, Andrew Kevin Walker’s Script Apart episode, Erik Messerschmidt on lenses and a bunch of loose quips about why more geniuses should spend their time intentionally making b-movies.
Even had my Moz playlist hot to go.
In any case, a lightly ironic Bond riff that scarcely exists in your suggested picks twelve months later (Auteur Cinema Based On Books!) has far less to say about this moment than, I dunno, the fact that the worst guy you went to school with has a blue lives Punisher logo next to the stick figure family on his jeep, GoFundMe is a Kyle Rittenhouse piggybank (when it’s not a healthcare utility) and Concealed Carry Outfit Of The Day became an actual thing.
We are as dumb as we are armed.
Ooters oot(d).
But back to ol’ Cheekbones in the taxi cam, and what it means.
Eddie Huang dropped a take in the deep fryer for his (excellent) new stack.
Salient point type beats!
I quite liked this New York piece as well, though it’s particularly brain-scrambly to hop from Engels’ thoughts on class warfare to What the Stars of RHONY Want for the Holidays in a click or two.
Our dude wasn’t even this week’s only notable mugshawty. It should have been La Muñeca’s time to shine, picking up the baton LOL Sweater left behind and clubbing someone to death with it...
I digress.
There will always be crazy news for crazy times; insurance assassin is only the Wildest Thing Ever until the next WTE comes along and shuffles him out the queue and off the playlist.
Scrambled brains remain on our breakfast menu for the foreseeable future.
As I write this up (right before a new round of memes based around “this-a guy’s Italian?” started battering my brain) the people’s princess was apprehended by authorities, toting a 3D-printed pistol in a Pennsylvania McDonalds.
McDonalds?
When you’re trying to do the race?!?
America runs on Dunkin.
Playlists updated!