"Jane Eyre Farting in the Moors"
and "Third-wave vulnerability porn" -- a reeeall hipshot
Est. Read Time: 6 minutes. Read Time brought to you once again by the Ashburton Energy + Hair Logistics Group, in association with the Bradley Hills Bureau of Corrections + Housing.
New to the SternJourn? Check out the best of 2021, 2020, or whichever random classic this is.
SHOWS
Hater Tales — Hollywoodish - Fri 11/11 - time tbd (check my instagram!)
PauHaus Gallery — Melrose-ish - Sat 11/12 7:30
Best of the West @ The Creek and The Cave — Austin, TX - Wed. 11/16 - 8pm
Can’t Even @ Native Hostel — Austin, TX - Thurs. 11/17 - 8pm
Can’t Even @ Hudson’s on Mercer — Dripping Springs, TX - Fri 11/18 - 8pm
Can’t Even @ Pure Yoga — Austin, TX - Sat 11/19 - 8pm
Hello Sternal Journalists!
Thank you to all who came to Julian Stern Keeps Trying, and additionally to all who made it a great time! I did a lot of classics, figured out some new stuff, and gave myself plenty of room for growth. Can’t wait to do it again soon!
This week, I’m just gonna go off the rails and talk about a few things that have been on my mind recently.
First, Trader Joe’s samples are back. I heard rumblings of this a couple months ago when I asked my cashier “You all aren’t ever gone do samples again, are you?” And he perked up and said, “We’re actually doing food safety training now!” It came to fruition today when, thinking I was in a TJ’s aisle all by myself, I was dancing while looking at the pumpkin pies.
But I was not alone. When I broke my pumpkin dance trance, I looked up and saw a friendly man gesturing to his tray of “naan crackers. They were as delicious as they were (I’m fairly certain) culturally appropriatey at worst and culturally disregardant at best.
I love Trader Joe’s and couldn’t be happier that one of the pillars of the quintessential TJ’s experience has returned. If you didn’t already know my love from the dance I mentioned, the other day I heard people break out into applause because (I later learned) it was someone’s birthday. But my knee-jerk thought was “Gasp! A proposal!” That’s how revered of a place it is in my bizarro universe.
I assume we will lose samples again to the next winter covid surge, so I’m going to get as much as I can while it lasts.
***
What else, what else? Oh! I was gonna write a longer thing about this, but I’m becoming pre-weary about the wave of I’m kind of a bad person”-core entertainment we’re experiencing. This is a hipshot and a flimsy theory, but I developed it when I listened to Taylor Swift’s Midnights and watched Hasanh Minaj’s The King’s Jester special in roughly the same 24-hour period.
I like both of the projects, don’t get me wrong. But they both take the angle of “I know I look put-together and that I’m thoughtfully coiffed and that I coiff all my thoughts, but I can actually be a bad, reckless person and I have to be able to let that side of myself out.”
Which is fine. I’m not against that angle. For what it’s worth, I liked Midnights better than The King’s Jester partially because it pulled off the above better. But recognizing the parallels between those two things from fairly different mediums highlighted for me that it might be a trend.
We’re in—and now I’m really shooting from the hip—what I think is “Third-Wave Vulnerability Porn.” The first wave was all about sharing pain and trauma, the second wave was about the pain and trauma that comes with sharing that much of yourself publicly, and the third is a shift away from being vulnerable about times you’ve felt bad (because that well has run dry) to being vulnerable about times you’ve been bad.
And I want to see some of that, but not all of it at once.
***
And finally, I’m thinking about this New York Times article about how crop tops are creeping into everyday workwear, but then the main source they talked to (and the only person pictured in a workplace that was not explicitly a fashion shoot or fashion show) was a 22-year-old social media manager for a Miami plastic surgeon. Come on! Certainly not against casual and untraditional workwear, but if you’re gonna write a thinkpiece, prove your point a little harder. Show me a 50-year-old coroner in Des Moines rocking a croptop.
***
Bonus! I’m of course thinking about the midterms but in perhaps a less manic way that I’ve thought of other recent elections. I think that’s because I’ve gotten involved in my neighborhood council over the last year and, even though voting and the midterms are EXTREMELY important, I no longer have the frantic sense of “OhgodohgodthisistheonlytimeIcandoanything.” Which is not replicable or scalable for everyone, but it seems to be helping my mental health around it all.
In short: do not forget to vote on Tuesday (for everything and anything important in your area), and also don’t forget that there are lots of very productive-if-less instantly gratifying forms of civic engagement waiting for you on the other side.
Recommendations
Not Lost. Podcast. This Gimlet podcast is my new favorite thing this week. A casual travelogue of two friends in their late 30s trying to get invited to dinner in various cities. Notes of Heavyweight in the mix of tenderness and snark.
Being Funny in a Foreign Language. Album. After “Julian Stern Keeps Trying,” I was moseying around a fancy consignment store on Melrose laughing at $300 price tags when I asked a very musically-inclined friend of mine if there were any albums he was excited about. He got deadly serious and said, “New The 1975 record. It’s a perfect pop-rock record.” I’ve only listened to two songs and can already tell it will deliver.
Andor. Television Show. I’ve said it a few times, but ooooh I keep liking it more and more. It is somehow very funny and tender and interesting while also just being a meditation on different types of team organizational structure.
Tár. Movie. So obnoxious, but in a way that I felt was completely intentional and made me laugh a lot. I don’t think most people consider it a comedy.
“Jane Eyre Farting in the moors.” AI Art. I really gotta stop messing around with AI art because I think it can get addicting and it is not good for artists, but this one turned out so well. At first, you think Jane Eyre is the one in front having an intense fart but then you see that she’s the one in back feeling totally devious after letting out a silent one that is completely ruining the lady in front’s day.
Alrighty, that’s all for this week! Go get a TJ’s sample while you can!
And vote!
Much love!
Julian