👠 Barbie, cat murder?, and Janelle Monáe's pursuit of pleasure
Life in plastic — it's fantastic.
Hello, hello!
All dolled up
“Barbiemania! Margot Robbie Opens Up About the Movie Everyone’s Waiting For” | Abby Aguirre, Vogue
Y’all, I’m so excited for the Barbie movie. I also think that people who sincerely believe there will be a box-office “competition” between it and Oppenheimer are deluding themselves.
When I ask [writers Greta] Gerwig and [Noah] Baumbach to describe their Barbie writing process, the words “open” and “free” get used a lot. The project seemed “wide open,” Gerwig tells me. “There really was this kind of open, free road that we could keep building,” Baumbach says. Part of it had to do with the fact that their characters were dolls. “It’s like you’re playing with dolls when you’re writing something, and in this case, of course, there was this extra layer in that they were dolls,” Baumbach says. “It was literally imaginative play,” Gerwig says.
The Age of Pleasure
“Janelle Monáe Is Back From the Future and Ready to Play” | Mankaprr Conteh, Rolling Stone
It’s been fascinating to watch Janelle Monáe over the past decade and a half or so, and it’s wonderful to see her embracing herself and enjoying the fruits of her success. Calling in some of her energy to my own life, please.
At 37, Janelle has reoriented her world around pleasure, trying to consciously enjoy herself, to quiet her mind, to party but also be present. “I think being an artist gets lonely,” Janelle tells me. “Most people don’t understand what’s going on in my brain. Community has been so helpful to me; it’s beautiful that I have a title called The Age of Pleasure because it actually re-centers me. It’s not about an album anymore. I’ve changed my whole fucking lifestyle.”
Still, prioritizing pleasure has its challenges, especially when a world of anxiety lurks somewhere underneath.
Deep dish
“The Cat Who Could Kill Horses” | Ezra Marcus, Grub Street
Most likely, this is simply a story about abuse. I want to be careful not to turn that into entertainment. But also? Some of these details are just wild. (Note that he does deny these allegations.)
In the kitchen, [chef Will] Aghajanian began to make his underlings uncomfortable with his approach to food-safety protocol. He told his chefs that the only allergies that exist are shellfish and nuts and insisted they ignore other allergies that customers mentioned. [Chef David] Maihle says he’d secretly buy gluten-free flour to make bread for customers with a gluten allergy, even though he’d been asked to use regular flour. Another time, Maihle says, a box of crabs arrived that had been improperly shipped. “The temperature of the box was 80 degrees,” Maihle says. “I was like, ‘Dude, we can’t serve these. They’re all dead. They’re all warm. Like, there’s bacteria on these. We’re just gonna take it off the menu for tonight.’” But Aghajanian insisted that the crabs could be served. When Maihle tried to object again, he says Aghajanian sent him home.
Another time, Aghajanian brought in a case of frozen white rabbit heads. “We’re gonna have a group project,” he told his staff, Maihle says. “‘We’re going to be cutting the ears off of these rabbit heads and stripping away the cartilage. And then we want to hack into their skulls and take their brains out without damaging them.’ After a while, I was like, Okay, I’m done with this. So I broke off from the project. And he said, ‘Okay. I just wanted to see how long everyone would do this for.’”
Also, is every online publication just New York magazine? It sometimes feels like it …
Until next week, here’s Arthur.
