Bitches Get Hot

When We've Got Summertime, But NOT Sadness

August is over half over and this is the first time in my life I can remember not being extremely ready for fall. I hate being hot and I hate limbos and summer has always felt like a long, sticky state of suspension that probably dates back to being between grades in school and the idea that somehow a new school year would bring a new opportunity to be a better version of my plain old self. (Now I get that feeling each January when I buy a planner, use it for three weeks, and never touch it again.) This year, however,I feel tired and stuck and don’t really want to move forward just yet, but I must, we all must. Last Friday I went out to karaoke without brushing my hair or putting on makeup. I wore shorts, a tank top, and a sheer, airy button down over it, no bra, of all things. I actually felt cute and free and literally comfortable in my own skin, too hot and unbothered to care. I probably looked slovenly and eccentric. It’s summer, though, so too bad. Freedom in limbo. I also now carry around a sandalwood hand fan and just flap it whenever I want and if someone comments on it I say “A bitch gets hot!” and they laugh, which is great. A bitch does!

Literally me, feelings-wise, which is what counts

Three things I liked this week:

“The “internet onion” is a perennial website anthology about the possibility of love online. Launching late each summer, THE LIFE AND DEATH OF AN INTERNET ONION is readable for 5 weeks — a typical shelf life of a non-refrigerated onion. As its title suggests, it will live and then start to decay, resulting in a mostly dead onion by the end of summer. It will return annually.” This is very cool and beautiful and each “layer” is introduced by a really pleasing onion-y sound.

“There are Communists in the funhouse” and other international euphemisms for menstruation. [Every time I like something on Twitter I wonder if it’s going to be the last one.]

James Cotto Is Still Living In New York City’s Golden Age of Roller Skating by Jane Zhang for Hell Gate.

Over to you, Dame Margaret…

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Dame Margaret’s Live Favorites from Newport Folk Festival 2023

As promised, I am sharing a few favorites from last month’s Newport Folk Festival. I always go in excited about seeing a few favorites, but the really good part is all the people I come out loving about whom I didn’t know to be excited. Sometimes, that’s people I have simply never heard of outside of the Newport lineup. Other times, it’s people whose recorded music I’ve known and liked, but whose live performance is so special that I walk away a real fan.

The first person from this year’s festival who I want to call out falls into the latter category: Lana Del Ray.