Pop Culture State of the Union
Stateside Islanders, new Gracie Abrams Album, I saw Obsession, etc.
We’re at the official midsection of the summer.
The Hamptons are exasperated. The latest fleet from Love Island U.S.A. have landed in Los Angeles and hit the streets, hard. Movie theaters are flooded. We don’t have an official song for the third-ish summer in a row. New York City is being slammed with random, violent 10-minute storms. The dust from the World Cup has settled.
There’s a lot happening that doesn’t matter at all. But that’s what makes the summer so fun—it’s the least serious season. You can use it as an excuse for anything. I don’t want to work today, it’s summer. I need to drink tonight, it’s summer. I should buy this, it’s summer. Let’s go to Europe, it’s summer.
My summer has been great. I’ve spent a lot of it watching things and consuming even more (both physically via my digestive track and emotionally via keeping up with twelve or so strangers for ten weeks). Last week, I spent time complaining about everyone caring too much about the negative news. This week, I’d like to care too much about the “positive”, or to be more fair, neutral, unrelated news to me personally.
Let’s get started with the crew from Love Island U.S.A.
I was very satisfied with the winners of season 8, Trinity and Bryce. I am even more satisfied to see their post-island press presence, from their paparazzi walk with a pink-wigged Melanie (M-A-J-O-R) to their interview with People, everything just genuinely makes me so happy. At the risk of sounding “unc”, they are truly 2016 in the best way and evoke a feeling in my heart that is just, happiness and joy. I am so happy for them, especially since they seem to really deserve the $100,000.
With the rise of certain Islanders comes the fall of all of the Islanders before them, some worse than others. Unfortunately when you’re on a reality game show one season and don’t return the next, your star fades more and more with each season that passes, until you go from the front row at Canes Fashion Week for probably $500,000 to breaking up your fake relationship to get a headline.
I obviously never believed Nicolandria as far as I could throw them. The most romantic thing they ever did was a cover for Glamour magazine, and I’ve seen two models in a perfume ad look more in love than these two did for even that:
