Is Paul Anthony Kelly a red flag, anticipated Blockbusters and Hailey Bieber's visibility, Sarah's campaign to rescue Hera, on learning to interview, and my post-Met lace top/bodysuit
Very selfishly, Sarah, when are you teaming with Madeline Miller to write this enlightened, re-litigation of Hera, because I'm ready to preorder it right now?
1. Sarah, thank you for your thoughts on Hera...I have loved mythology since I was small, and adult life has really stolen time from me that ought to be spent diving back into those myths, and you are pushing me that way. I'm very excited for the discourse this summer.
2. Re: the non-red flag, I'll just note my annoyance that the Internet really has to make everything A Thing. People having different interests and tastes is okay. If someone asked me my favorite BTS song, I don't feel compelled to say, "I don't know but I really respect their cultural impact." If someone asked my thoughts on the latest T Swift album, I wouldn't say, "Don't have any, but she is one of the most important pop artists of her generation." Of course we should be aware of any effort to diminish artistic and cultural achievement, particularly when the dismissal is rooted in misogyny and/or racism. But also, people like what they like, and that means they don't care as much about other things. It's okay!
Thank you! I agree. My answer re Beyoncé would probably be “I don’t have one, I don’t listen to her stuff”. And (ducks) re BTS it would literally be “no idea, never heard their music”. There’s a time and place for more nuanced discussion; out at a pub with friends I might follow up with saying i appreciate Beyoncé’s work ethic, but in a quick red carpet interview, that’s not really the place. We make too much of random sound bites I think.
Thanks for the reply Lainey! I love that what could have been a simple fashion question opened the door to spotlight a Canadian entrepreneur and sex positivity - this is what I love about the spirit of the Squawk!
No I don't think Paul Anthony Kelly is a red flag; yes, he could have had a better, canned answer planned and said something like, "Anything on Renaissance. Great album" and kept it moving. Now, I'm a metalhead myself and most metalheads really do stay in metal, they don't listen to pop. If metalheads venture outside of metal, it's usually in the rock genres, alternative, synth, country, or hip hop. Most male metal musicians have an encyclopedic knowledge of major rock artists like Elvis and Bob Dylan and David Bowie and country artists like Johnny Cash. Few metalheads listen to pop. The closest most metal musicians and metalheads generally get to pop is David Bowie, Prince, Michael Jackson, Grimes, Phoebe Bridgers and Ethel Cain. Part of this is because the majority of metalheads are white men. Maybe that adds some context to his comment of "I don't know. I'm a metalhead."
1. Beyoncé: I am not much of a pop girlie, but reading this I was delighted to realize I still get to have two favorite Beyoncé songs because the Queen is generous with her range: 1. Apeshit 2. Formation. Cowboy Carter is my favorite album and my favorite song off it is Tyrant, which is what I might recommend to a metalhead. My most embarrassing and secret favorite musical genre is cock rock, which is what Tyrant sounds like to me (and possibly only me).
2. As someone who spent a huge chunk of her life dressing like FrankNFurter I will definitely be checking out the online boutique, we love a curated lingerie store where the fabric actually feels good (I assume, based on Lainey’s standards).
3. All here for more tellings of Robinhood. As it is the story of the slide from common pool resources into feudalism, and we are now in a slide from capitalism back to feudalism, it seems like a good time. And here is my favorite YouTuber talking about storytelling as it relates to economic change: https://youtu.be/E4D5doaKulk?si=8ym5V0FCo8jgr3lq
4. Hera!!!!! My Temple has a female head rabbi (Rabbi Jackie Mates Muchin the first Chinese American to be head rabbi in the world 💅) and a female assistant rabbi so we get lots of cool feminism with our lore. Reform Jews generally view the Torah as part historical and part mythological (with a heavy dose of nation building). My favorite part is trying to pull the earlier matriarchal folklore out of what was layered on top later. We view the disgraced queen Vashti from the book of Esther as likely an earlier deity dethroned for reimagining woman as obedient wives. Same with Lilith, Adam’s first wife, although she never really left us. Superstitious households have always tied amulets on the cribs of sick babies with messages for her. As an unmarried matriarch she is the mother of all babies who die and we ask the angels to entreat her to leave ours on earth. (Unlike our cool lion/ox headed cherubim these ones have bird of prey heads stuck on fat little sparrow shaped bodies)
Lilith gets a bad rap, too. Does Jezebel appear in the Torah? She's in the old testament. She also gets done dirty, and there is an actual historical record of Jezebel, I don't know why people still insist on the Bible version being the absolute truth.
Lilith and Jezebel are women I would also like to rescue from patriarchal memory.
She’s in our Tanakh! That’s the broader bible. And I’m definitely not trying to be all like oh Jews are cooler, the last 78 years have certainly highlighted that we have plenty of fundamentalists and nationalists. But my Reform Temple is cool. Hearing our stories through many of the Christian lenses is creepy. Jezebel, for example, is understood to be a villain in the story because she worshipped Asherah, an ancient Semetic fertility goddess who was sometimes the consort of Yahweh. We now read that story as it happened, which was the push for patriarchal monotheism and the vilification of female goddesses. Judaism is not a faith-based religion, you are asked to wrestle with the text, not take it as the word of G-d. We do a prayer service every year where we take the week’s Torah portion and rewrite the prayers from a femme perspective. So that the living oral tradition may balance out the ancient text. It’s fun because every year we pretty much start out with “what is this bullshit?” and by the end we find something cool to hold onto. I think it’s good to be accountable to your history. But I was raised in an artsy community that thought everyone who took mushrooms was halfway to enlightenment, so you know, pendulum.
In our 8th century text “The Alphabet of Ben Sira” the story is that Lilith left Adam because he refused to let her be on top during sex. These folktales try to reconcile the two different creation stories that are told in Genesis. Okay I’ll stop now sorry I get too excited 😭
The audio on Paul Anthony Kelly’s video won’t work for me but whooooo doesn’t know Beyoncé’s music in North America, in the year two thousand and twenty six, and lives/works in entertainment? I wanted to hear if he has any sarcasm in his voice. Like, you can’t be serious. I don’t think it’s a red flag, I just think I’m disappointed in you, and your hotness just shriveled up my loins forever.
Like when a guy I was getting serious with years ago told me he didn’t understand “the big deal” about The Avett Brothers, after watching their spectacular, Judd Apatow produced documentary premiere with me. I ended it immediately. Sexual attraction was gone. It’s a no for me, dawg. Am I fickle with men? Maybe, but if you’re negging with that kind of response to something others are passionate about, and these artists are undeniably talented, just STFU.
Anyway. Lainey that body ody ODYYYY suit on you! Hot DAMN! Bring your girls out more often! Now I’m inspired to, and always hide them. Also can we talk about that face card?!? JEZUS.
It was "What's your favorite Beyonce song?" He answered "I don't know" then shrugged and said "I'm a metalhead."
I don't think there is anything weird about not having a favorite song for an artist that you don't listen to on the regular, nor do I think this response is saying "I don't know her" or he doesn't get the hype.
This was my thought as well. No one is saying go out and listen to the entire discography and every deep cut, but it's simply showing a level of respect, I think, to familiarize yourself enough so you could answer a a simple question. My husband and I have pretty different musical tastes (luckily we have the same taste in everything else), and I don't need him to like pop music, for example, but if we went to an event where he was that dismissive of one of the hosts we'd have a fucking problem.
Totally agree with you. I have lots of different tastes with friends and men I have dated, even if they’re completely diverging. Like two men loved metal/mosh pit, kind of music and that’s probably my least favorite genre. But I was never dismissive of it. There’s a reason someone is passionate about something, and that’s precious to them. And if they took me to an event for their favorite artist, I would never dare of disrespecting them or say you didn’t “understand the hype.” But I also think that it was indicative of his personality type, to neg and pick flights just for argument’s sake. I don’t like that kind of personality as a friend or romantic partner.
If I were invited to an event where Insane Clown Posse or Slipknot was performing (or hosting, in this case), knowing I would be interviewed, I’d be complimentary of their talent in my answer because obviously they have many fans to have been asked to perform/host.
In this case, since I couldn’t hear the audio, and hearing that Kate shared a transcript, it makes a bit more sense, but I’m still not sure why he’s relating her music to being a metalhead.
Wait. I redact my argument that I would never yuck anyone’s proverbial yum, and disrespect an artist they loved who was performing. I just had a thought, and if I were invited to an event where [insert white male country artist name] was being honored or performing, and I was asked what my favorite song was on the red carpet (assuming people cared about my answer lol), I would absolutely reply with a snarky response.
For example, Morgan Wallen. He’s nowhere in the same universe as Beyoncé, but in this crazy world, I could see him co-charing something big, and there’s no way I would say anything complementary about him. But I guess that is a dealbreaker for me, I would never be in a relationship with someone who idolized Morgan Wallen in the first place. 😅
Sarah, have you read Hera by Jennifer Saint? I was pretty iffy on the first book she wrote, Ariadne, which started with a lot of promise and then fell into the Philippa Gregory trap of “plot is driven by men of the story and the FMC just sits around feeling shitty and helpless about it for literally hundreds of pages” but Hera was awesome, and I highly recommend it.
I did and I thought it was pretty good, but it is still very much rooted in the patriarchal view of Hera. I want to try and get away from that entirely.
His answer screams 'young person' to me. It's the kind of thing you grow out of when you grow up.
Like the urge to tell a famous person what you DON'T like about them when going up to them. Or talking about how you would never shop at Walmart or read a romance novel or drink unbranded cola or wear synthetic fabrics or ... y'know that whole 'I'm UNIQUE not like the MUNDANES' stage that everyone goes through at one point or another.
So... the red flag of youth. Unless he's old enough to know better, in which case he should get his head out of his ass already.
To be fair though (I reread this and realised I sound like a dick) I'm totally cool with people DOING these things (except the telling celebs what you don't like about them unprompted). Of course it's completely fine to refuse to wear synthetic fabrics or not drink whatever you want to not drink. What I object to is BRINGING UP these choices in totally unrelated conversations.
Thanks for sharing that podcast. Malcolm Gladwell is one of my favorite authors actually. I read tipping point and a few others. But I agree it was totally the interviewers fault, but Irv must be losing sleep over this all the time. 😭
Finn Bennett, who plays the latest Targaryen sociopath Aerion, is also in Backrooms and he has been quietly amassing a very strong resume - he was in A24’s Warfare and in True Detective Night County and Black Doves, will definitely be keeping an eye on him. He seems like a sweetie on his socials, such a contrast to Aerion lolol
Very selfishly, Sarah, when are you teaming with Madeline Miller to write this enlightened, re-litigation of Hera, because I'm ready to preorder it right now?
The dream!
1. Sarah, thank you for your thoughts on Hera...I have loved mythology since I was small, and adult life has really stolen time from me that ought to be spent diving back into those myths, and you are pushing me that way. I'm very excited for the discourse this summer.
2. Re: the non-red flag, I'll just note my annoyance that the Internet really has to make everything A Thing. People having different interests and tastes is okay. If someone asked me my favorite BTS song, I don't feel compelled to say, "I don't know but I really respect their cultural impact." If someone asked my thoughts on the latest T Swift album, I wouldn't say, "Don't have any, but she is one of the most important pop artists of her generation." Of course we should be aware of any effort to diminish artistic and cultural achievement, particularly when the dismissal is rooted in misogyny and/or racism. But also, people like what they like, and that means they don't care as much about other things. It's okay!
Thank you! I agree. My answer re Beyoncé would probably be “I don’t have one, I don’t listen to her stuff”. And (ducks) re BTS it would literally be “no idea, never heard their music”. There’s a time and place for more nuanced discussion; out at a pub with friends I might follow up with saying i appreciate Beyoncé’s work ethic, but in a quick red carpet interview, that’s not really the place. We make too much of random sound bites I think.
Thanks for the reply Lainey! I love that what could have been a simple fashion question opened the door to spotlight a Canadian entrepreneur and sex positivity - this is what I love about the spirit of the Squawk!
No I don't think Paul Anthony Kelly is a red flag; yes, he could have had a better, canned answer planned and said something like, "Anything on Renaissance. Great album" and kept it moving. Now, I'm a metalhead myself and most metalheads really do stay in metal, they don't listen to pop. If metalheads venture outside of metal, it's usually in the rock genres, alternative, synth, country, or hip hop. Most male metal musicians have an encyclopedic knowledge of major rock artists like Elvis and Bob Dylan and David Bowie and country artists like Johnny Cash. Few metalheads listen to pop. The closest most metal musicians and metalheads generally get to pop is David Bowie, Prince, Michael Jackson, Grimes, Phoebe Bridgers and Ethel Cain. Part of this is because the majority of metalheads are white men. Maybe that adds some context to his comment of "I don't know. I'm a metalhead."
This was my first reaction.
1. Beyoncé: I am not much of a pop girlie, but reading this I was delighted to realize I still get to have two favorite Beyoncé songs because the Queen is generous with her range: 1. Apeshit 2. Formation. Cowboy Carter is my favorite album and my favorite song off it is Tyrant, which is what I might recommend to a metalhead. My most embarrassing and secret favorite musical genre is cock rock, which is what Tyrant sounds like to me (and possibly only me).
2. As someone who spent a huge chunk of her life dressing like FrankNFurter I will definitely be checking out the online boutique, we love a curated lingerie store where the fabric actually feels good (I assume, based on Lainey’s standards).
3. All here for more tellings of Robinhood. As it is the story of the slide from common pool resources into feudalism, and we are now in a slide from capitalism back to feudalism, it seems like a good time. And here is my favorite YouTuber talking about storytelling as it relates to economic change: https://youtu.be/E4D5doaKulk?si=8ym5V0FCo8jgr3lq
4. Hera!!!!! My Temple has a female head rabbi (Rabbi Jackie Mates Muchin the first Chinese American to be head rabbi in the world 💅) and a female assistant rabbi so we get lots of cool feminism with our lore. Reform Jews generally view the Torah as part historical and part mythological (with a heavy dose of nation building). My favorite part is trying to pull the earlier matriarchal folklore out of what was layered on top later. We view the disgraced queen Vashti from the book of Esther as likely an earlier deity dethroned for reimagining woman as obedient wives. Same with Lilith, Adam’s first wife, although she never really left us. Superstitious households have always tied amulets on the cribs of sick babies with messages for her. As an unmarried matriarch she is the mother of all babies who die and we ask the angels to entreat her to leave ours on earth. (Unlike our cool lion/ox headed cherubim these ones have bird of prey heads stuck on fat little sparrow shaped bodies)
Lilith gets a bad rap, too. Does Jezebel appear in the Torah? She's in the old testament. She also gets done dirty, and there is an actual historical record of Jezebel, I don't know why people still insist on the Bible version being the absolute truth.
Lilith and Jezebel are women I would also like to rescue from patriarchal memory.
She’s in our Tanakh! That’s the broader bible. And I’m definitely not trying to be all like oh Jews are cooler, the last 78 years have certainly highlighted that we have plenty of fundamentalists and nationalists. But my Reform Temple is cool. Hearing our stories through many of the Christian lenses is creepy. Jezebel, for example, is understood to be a villain in the story because she worshipped Asherah, an ancient Semetic fertility goddess who was sometimes the consort of Yahweh. We now read that story as it happened, which was the push for patriarchal monotheism and the vilification of female goddesses. Judaism is not a faith-based religion, you are asked to wrestle with the text, not take it as the word of G-d. We do a prayer service every year where we take the week’s Torah portion and rewrite the prayers from a femme perspective. So that the living oral tradition may balance out the ancient text. It’s fun because every year we pretty much start out with “what is this bullshit?” and by the end we find something cool to hold onto. I think it’s good to be accountable to your history. But I was raised in an artsy community that thought everyone who took mushrooms was halfway to enlightenment, so you know, pendulum.
Omg Apeshit is my fav song as well. I rap the whole jayz part too 😂
In our 8th century text “The Alphabet of Ben Sira” the story is that Lilith left Adam because he refused to let her be on top during sex. These folktales try to reconcile the two different creation stories that are told in Genesis. Okay I’ll stop now sorry I get too excited 😭
The audio on Paul Anthony Kelly’s video won’t work for me but whooooo doesn’t know Beyoncé’s music in North America, in the year two thousand and twenty six, and lives/works in entertainment? I wanted to hear if he has any sarcasm in his voice. Like, you can’t be serious. I don’t think it’s a red flag, I just think I’m disappointed in you, and your hotness just shriveled up my loins forever.
Like when a guy I was getting serious with years ago told me he didn’t understand “the big deal” about The Avett Brothers, after watching their spectacular, Judd Apatow produced documentary premiere with me. I ended it immediately. Sexual attraction was gone. It’s a no for me, dawg. Am I fickle with men? Maybe, but if you’re negging with that kind of response to something others are passionate about, and these artists are undeniably talented, just STFU.
Anyway. Lainey that body ody ODYYYY suit on you! Hot DAMN! Bring your girls out more often! Now I’m inspired to, and always hide them. Also can we talk about that face card?!? JEZUS.
It was "What's your favorite Beyonce song?" He answered "I don't know" then shrugged and said "I'm a metalhead."
I don't think there is anything weird about not having a favorite song for an artist that you don't listen to on the regular, nor do I think this response is saying "I don't know her" or he doesn't get the hype.
Now if I was attending an event that Beyonce is a co-host, I would educate myself as to who all the cohosts are. Does he know who Venus Williams is?
This was my thought as well. No one is saying go out and listen to the entire discography and every deep cut, but it's simply showing a level of respect, I think, to familiarize yourself enough so you could answer a a simple question. My husband and I have pretty different musical tastes (luckily we have the same taste in everything else), and I don't need him to like pop music, for example, but if we went to an event where he was that dismissive of one of the hosts we'd have a fucking problem.
Totally agree with you. I have lots of different tastes with friends and men I have dated, even if they’re completely diverging. Like two men loved metal/mosh pit, kind of music and that’s probably my least favorite genre. But I was never dismissive of it. There’s a reason someone is passionate about something, and that’s precious to them. And if they took me to an event for their favorite artist, I would never dare of disrespecting them or say you didn’t “understand the hype.” But I also think that it was indicative of his personality type, to neg and pick flights just for argument’s sake. I don’t like that kind of personality as a friend or romantic partner.
If I were invited to an event where Insane Clown Posse or Slipknot was performing (or hosting, in this case), knowing I would be interviewed, I’d be complimentary of their talent in my answer because obviously they have many fans to have been asked to perform/host.
In this case, since I couldn’t hear the audio, and hearing that Kate shared a transcript, it makes a bit more sense, but I’m still not sure why he’s relating her music to being a metalhead.
Wait. I redact my argument that I would never yuck anyone’s proverbial yum, and disrespect an artist they loved who was performing. I just had a thought, and if I were invited to an event where [insert white male country artist name] was being honored or performing, and I was asked what my favorite song was on the red carpet (assuming people cared about my answer lol), I would absolutely reply with a snarky response.
For example, Morgan Wallen. He’s nowhere in the same universe as Beyoncé, but in this crazy world, I could see him co-charing something big, and there’s no way I would say anything complementary about him. But I guess that is a dealbreaker for me, I would never be in a relationship with someone who idolized Morgan Wallen in the first place. 😅
Sarah, have you read Hera by Jennifer Saint? I was pretty iffy on the first book she wrote, Ariadne, which started with a lot of promise and then fell into the Philippa Gregory trap of “plot is driven by men of the story and the FMC just sits around feeling shitty and helpless about it for literally hundreds of pages” but Hera was awesome, and I highly recommend it.
I did and I thought it was pretty good, but it is still very much rooted in the patriarchal view of Hera. I want to try and get away from that entirely.
How old is this Paul dude?
His answer screams 'young person' to me. It's the kind of thing you grow out of when you grow up.
Like the urge to tell a famous person what you DON'T like about them when going up to them. Or talking about how you would never shop at Walmart or read a romance novel or drink unbranded cola or wear synthetic fabrics or ... y'know that whole 'I'm UNIQUE not like the MUNDANES' stage that everyone goes through at one point or another.
So... the red flag of youth. Unless he's old enough to know better, in which case he should get his head out of his ass already.
To be fair though (I reread this and realised I sound like a dick) I'm totally cool with people DOING these things (except the telling celebs what you don't like about them unprompted). Of course it's completely fine to refuse to wear synthetic fabrics or not drink whatever you want to not drink. What I object to is BRINGING UP these choices in totally unrelated conversations.
Those body suits are gorgeous! I don’t have the bravery to wear one in public without anything underneath, but damn are they good.
Thanks for sharing that podcast. Malcolm Gladwell is one of my favorite authors actually. I read tipping point and a few others. But I agree it was totally the interviewers fault, but Irv must be losing sleep over this all the time. 😭
Finn Bennett, who plays the latest Targaryen sociopath Aerion, is also in Backrooms and he has been quietly amassing a very strong resume - he was in A24’s Warfare and in True Detective Night County and Black Doves, will definitely be keeping an eye on him. He seems like a sweetie on his socials, such a contrast to Aerion lolol