⋆˙⟡ A quick note: anna dorn and I will be starting a live chat tonight at 11:30pm EST (8:30pm PST) to discuss The Life of a Showgirl when it drops at the stroke of midnight. Subscribe to Sample Sluts to get an alert and join us. ⋆˙⟡

As of this week, Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban are officially over. Their union was one that I never truly understood, but I have never been able to understand the whims or passions of Australians (althought I am a student of Australian Survivor). It’s sad when a decades-old celebrity couple call it quits, but look at his hair.

He’s always reminded me of Jane Lynch as Sue Sylvester. But he lackes the charisma of Jane Lynch and Sue Sylvester. I have no knowledge of his music, I’m sure it’s fine.

So who will Nicole Kidman end up with next? Let’s explore her options.

1. Tom Cruise

The obvious reunion, but I would hate this! For all of his very real movie star charm, he’s also been the face of a very weird cult for…forever. Did he leave? TBD. He’s also dating Ana de Armas so there’s that. He did, however, stand by his agent when she was about to be blacklisted for supporting Palestine, so that alone puts him on this list. Braver than like 88% of Hollywood unfortunately!

2. Lenny Kravitz

The less obvious but far more interesting reunion. I had no idea that these two were ever an item until someone mentioned it in the ever-crucial Hung Up chat this week. Did it make filming Big Little Lies with Zoe Kravitz awkward? Who knows. Kidman and Kravitz (it has a ring to it) were engaged (!) in 2003 and made a very hot couple. It seems that she was less fond of the flat iron/wig when she was with him. Just imagine what the fall street style photos would look like if these two got together now—the Row could shoot an entire knitwear campaign.

3. Chris Martin

I have my reasons! She loves a musician. She’s ten years older than him, so it would be an age gap in a fun direction. She needs someone who understands The Life of a Showgirl Starlet, which having been with Gwenyth, he does. And he was recently at the scene of a viral divorce/cheating scandal, so he’ll be understanding about the fallout between Nicole and Keith. I’m stretching, yes, but think about it.

4. Jacob Elordi

She could wear the highest of heels. Case closed.

5. Harris Dickinson

They have the on-screen chemistry, so they could Babygirl it out offscreen too. Sure!

6. Zac Efron

They worked together on The Paperboy, a movie I tried and failed to watch, and A Family Affair, which I will never watch. But I would watch them date. Seems like they get along. His brother is nice. I will now stop listing her co-stars.

7. One of the Guys I Know in New York

I know some guys in New York who are in their 30s and single. She could date one of those guys. It would be slumming for her for sure. But they’re perfectly okay guys. Maybe she just needs a rebound who has abs, you know? And at least two of these guys have abs. Nicole, have your people call my people (me).

You probably forgot you subscribed to this. Formerly ‘TOO DEPRESSING’, this now-weekly Substack has been rebranded as TRULY WHATEVER. Thanks to years of psychoanalysis, on-and-off stints of Wellbutrin 150mg XR, a loving husband, a reactive dog, and the many blessings of resistance training, I no longer identify with the ‘TOO DEPRESSING’ moniker on a day-to-day basis. Is it still poetic and beautiful, the kind of name that rolls of the tongue and looks great on a dad hat? Absolutely. But thematically it no longer serves me. Which brings us here: exactly what is the theme of this new endeavor?

Reader, I do not have one. I thought long and hard about this. I wrote many bulleted lists of ideas in my Notes app. One idea was to write about perfumes, which has come to fruition as ‘Sample Sluts’, a joint endeavor from myself and celebrity novelist Anna Dorn. That was my one good idea and all the others were bad. My mind is large and contains multitudes, so I have decided to let it run wild. And so TRULY WHATEVER is born.

Here, I will write about anything that feels right. I will send my writing to you weekly, perhaps more often if I’m feeling particularly incensed. I am not committing to a particular day, in the spirit of ‘whatever.’ I hope you’ll stick around to read it.

A Plea for More Tumblr Taylor

Taylor Swift season is once again upon us with the upcoming release of her 100th album, The Life of a Showgirl. Of course it never really left. The Eras Tour was going on for something like ten years, visiting seemingly every nation on earth and possibly several uncontacted peoples. I probably think of Taylor at least once a day—we recently we wrote about the perfumes of The Tortured Poets Department, sorry—and I am not even one of her most loyal disciples. But, but! I have been in the Swiftie-adjacent sphere since…2007?

It is with great specificity that I can remember listening to Taylor in PacSun as I cleaned the store for closing. Working at the mall, you get used to listening to the same twenty songs over and over, ruled by whatever soundtrack corporate has put together for that quarter. Sometimes at close we were allowed to play our own music, and I had a manager named Stephen (was in training to be a police officer, huge fan of T.I.) who would very rarely give up the aux. I played Taylor Swift’s ‘Hey Stephen’ at full volume whenever I could, annoying him as much as possible.

I loved her fake southern twang and simple rhymes. ‘Fearless’ and ‘Picture to Burn’ were other favorites of mine—on the latter her delivery veers into Brittany ‘rawt in hail’ Cartwright territory. She and I were the same age. When she was fifteen, I was fifteen. Her hair was curly, we were both gangly and tall. She even happened to hail from the same general area as me, having performed many times in nearby Allentown (I was from the Jersey side, probably like 60+ miles away from her hometown, but like…whatever).

I felt a sort of kindred spirit, even though she was ambitious and successful and I quit playing guitar as soon as it became remotely difficult (week three). And so it made sense that our Tumblr phases also aligned. I arrived to the platform earlier, using it all throughout my college years from 2010-2013 and beyond. She began her addiction in 2014, using it to engage with fans and regularly stoke the flames of her rumored romance with Matty Healy, the lead singer of 1975 (a band that featured heeeeavvvily on the PacSun soundtrack that made me feel suicidal, but I digress).

All of this to say—bring Tumblr Taylor back. Remove the red lip for a little while. Put on a black tank top. See how it feels. I think TLOAS will probably be a great album as I am usually a big fan of anything Max Martin. But its aesthetic is horrifying, sorry! The design of the cover art is if I did it in Canva when I designed the new icon for this Substack, and even the style of my icon would make more of a statement (Times New Roman in black and white? Graphic design is my passion). I don’t want an entire album of the Bejewled music video, okay? It’s too literal.

However! Reputation was an incredible album with trash cover art. And so we will pray. But I digress. Mizz Taylor Swift looks incredible sans lip color. A nude lip that is not nude in the J. Lo sense but is literally unadorned. A smokey eye! Smudge up that wing baby. Throw on something simple. Put the bright colors and pastels away for a second. Pick up that guitar. Park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, pretend you’re dating a scumbag again!

More rock star, less Rockettes. I know we won’t get it now, but maybe it could be next? Maybe Tree Paine will hear my prayer. She is releasing like one album per year now so it’s not that far-fetched. And I’m releasing one post a week…we’re really similar when you think about it…

As the White Lotus concluded its third season last weekend, I could only think of one thing: what did Patrick Schwarzenegger say to become the muse behind one of my favorite songs? I’m speaking of course of BB talk by genius Miley Cyrus, a track from her ‘I just discovered shrooms, did you know psilocybin is actually therapeutic?’ Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz era. Incredible album.

Up until last week, I had never wondered about the origins of this song. And then I saw a seemingly endless stream of one Saxon Raitliff and Miley Cyrus—he kind of looks exactly the same, no?

What an era for Instagram filters and men wearing very long shirts!

In BB Talk, Miley laments a relationship in which many things are good—there are 15-minute orgasms (presumably with zero gay incest handjobs) and the feral desire to smell her partner’s armpits and lick his teeth—but several things are driving her insane, like the way her partner baby talks to her constantly, even in front of his mom.

The mom in question is Maria Shriver by the way, in case you want to paint a richer mental picture. My mom had a book from her in our house growing up. I think it was a book of quotes? Cannot recall in spite of reading it like seven times because I was obviously a bored genius.

But I digress.

It sounds like the sex with Patrick Schwarzenegger was really awesome. Congratulations to everyone on that. But the baby talk was so bad that it sent Miley into a spiral, questioning her very character and coolness. “I mean, you put me in these fucking situations where I look like a dumbass bitch / And I'm not a fucking dumbass bitch,” she sings—and she was really onto something there. As Hunter Harris once wrote, “If a man has not embarrassed you…he has just not embarrassed you yet.”

The question is this: exactly how embarrassing was the baby talk? Did he talk in a babbly little voice, the small blubbery kind that one might use for dogs? And chiefly, what was Patrick’s pet name for Miley? Here, I offer a few of the possible culprits:

1. Baby — a classic and classically cringe. Sometimes I find myself accidentally calling my husband of three years “baby” and it still upsets me.

2. Babe — see above and also this and mainly Lindsay and Carl on Summer House calling each other ‘babe’ exactly 13577 in the summer before they ended their engagement on camera. Just say ‘no.’

3. Love — this really upsets me. Why? I’m not sure. I always come back to Dorit from Real Housewives of Beverly Hills calling her loser husband and perfectly fine children ‘my love’ in a little sing song voice with her mystery accent.

   

4. Dumpling/Muffin/Any other food item — The cursed nickname ‘Dumplin’ was used by Tom Sandoval and Ariana Madix before he cheated on her for months with their friend Raquel and ignited the Scandoval we’re all very tired of at this point. If you loved his deranged singing on the Traitors, then you will really be tickled by his bad accent in this rendition of 500 miles…

5. Bubba — I could probably think of a thousand other bad pet names but this is the one that would put me in a true place of scream-singing BB Talk and crawling around in a diaper to try to humiliate my ex. Divorcees Katie Maloney and Tom Schwartz of Vanderpump Rules were addicted to saying ‘Bubba’ and ‘Bub’ before the demise of their relationship…and even sometimes after. Never forget their cursed Bubba art from their chilling apartment….

I’m realizing now that I have covered like four doomed Bravo relationships in which baby talk was used heavily. Coincidence? I think not.

All is well with Patrick and Miley though—she’s dating a gen Z musician and he’s posing in his boxers with his hot wife for SKIMS. I hope he’s learned to be a little less mushy. If someone made a music video mocking me with a pacifier in their mouth, I would probably end up in Dr. Bobby’s ER on the Pitt, I know that much…

“I don’t want to die on the rocks” is what I try to tell the Sicilian captain. He flashes me a toothy smile that’s missing a few teeth as whips the wheel rightward. He’s driving the tiny boat I find myself on, being tossed up and down in the choppy waters of the sea off the coast of Taormina.

There are a number of beautiful caves you can visit by boat, but this is not the kind of boat I’d want to be on. It’s patched in several spots—there’s a green stretch of what looks like astroturf covering what I hope isn’t a hole. But it certainly looks damp. We paid a few euro to get on, bored on a cloudy day and thinking that it would be funny. I dig my nails into the soft wood of the bench, the captain steers us exactly where I don’t want to go. “Well, good luck,” I say, sardonically. He scoffs at me and mutters something I don’t understand.

Italians do not say “buona fortuna,” a literal statement of ‘good luck.’ It’s considered bad luck to say anything besides “in bocca al lupo.” This literally means “in the mouth of the wolf,” to which you should respond “crepi!” which is meant as “may the wolf die.”

The origin of this is debatable. Some say it’s from the founding story of Rome: Romululus and Remus were two human orphans taken in by a wolf mother. Canines protect their young by pulling at the scruff of their neck, using it to safely carry them or tug them back from a dangerous situation. In the mouth of the wolf, you are safe. But then why would the wolf die?

Perhaps Wikipedia should be believed, that the phrase came from something like hunters wishing one another luck before a perilous outing. Or that wishing one luck by conjuring violent imagery is actually common across several cultures. I like the image of the human pup in the big wolf’s mouth though—safely sandwiched between her canines. Maybe “crepi” is to wish that the other wolf, the proverbial wolf that represents the challenge, would die. So one can always stay safe, cradled in the jaws of their protector.

I’ve developed a bit of an oral fixation. In trying to learn Italian, one can make good use of “bocca,” the mouth. A few of my favorites idioms to throw around:

• acqua in bocca = it’s a secret, keep your both shut

• di bocca in bocca = the rumor mill, from one mouth to another

• il mattino ha l'oro in bocca = the morning has gold in its mouth, every new day holds promise

The last one is also the title of an Industry episode from last season, which really jumped the shark. But I love watching a woman ruin her own life so shoutout to our polyglot queen Yasmin.

Maybe you want a creature that’s slightly more slinky and rare than the wolf. The Leopard just came out on Netflix—an adaptation of Sicilian author Tomasi di Lampedusa’s classic novel Il Gattopardo, which tells the story of a high society family losing power on the island after the unification of Italy in the 1860s. The leopard himself is the family’s patriarch, Fabrizio. Like most Italian men, he snarls, cheats, leers, lies, and cries at the drop of a hat. Fabrizio and his kids cannot escape their fate, they can only watch themselves become relics of another time. The Leopard shows Sicily as a wild place. Many try to claim and tame it, but all are doomed. Watch it if you like period dramas, sexy Italians, girls breaking out of the nunnery, and if you want to see Monica Belluci and Vincent Cassel’s gorgeous daughter in a corset…

I love the novel’s cover. It led me to discover a bunch of covers by the same publisher that I find simply perfect.

We went to Sicily on our delayed ‘honeymoon’, a sort of cursed trip from the start. I tried to pack too many things into it—Barcelona, then Rome, then Taormina. On our second night in Barcelona I felt sick. The next day, I cried for my mom. I was feverish and delusional in one of the most beautiful hotel rooms I’d ever stayed in—I used “honeymoon” as a threat to get us upgraded to the one with a sun deck and a soaking pool, my karma was swift and severe. A handsomely paid doctor on a house visit said I had two options: go to the hospital in an Uber or get into the ambulance that he’d insist on calling if I did not choose the first option.

By the time we got to Sicily, I was just happy to be alive. That’s the only way I can explain why I got on that rickety skiff. I am quite anti-boat. I have no reason to be at sea. If it’s not docked, it’s not for me. As our taxi wound through the hills on the drive to our hotel, I looked at the towering palm trees and fluorescent bougainvillea flowers and realized I’d seen all this before—Los Angeles, duh. Many would call my comparison blasphemy but I am correct. L.A. and Sicily share a mediterranean climate (look it up, bitch), a lot of the same flora, winding hills, long highways, and a haunting quality that leaves you rapt and hollow all at once. It’s very Everything is Romantic. Bad tattoos on leather tanned skin, jesus christ on a plastic sign, you get it.

Even Freud was spooked by Sicily, the same way many find themselves ~hating~ Los Angeles after they take a trip their and find the veil has slipped. From Jamie Mackay’s the Invention of Sicily:

Shortly after returning to Vienna, the psychoanalyst was struck by an intense bout of paranoia and began to doubt his professional vocation. Later in life he came to view Sicily as a place where the unconscious and conscious minds become muddled: a limit point of the Ego itself.

Wanting to quit your job after you vacation in Italy? Relatable.

Lately I really want to go back. I know a few words of Italian now and I could tell the boat captain about my fears (he was just proud that I could tell him my great grandfather, my bisnonno, was Sicilian, so I think he’d be very impressed now). If Sicily is a beast, I crave the warmth of its mouth.

The week before I start bleeding is a slow-moving hell. Like a bikini wax done on .5x speed. Like an Uber Pool in 2015 from the Valley to Silverlake with ten stops. Like the first six episodes of this Minnesotan season of Love is Blind—actually all of the episodes, this season is terrible. Can anyone name one truly deranged moment? Give me Giannina Looney Toons tripping in the mud, running full-speed away from her failed wedding day or give me death.

PMS doesn’t give me cramps. It twists my mind into painful knots. Some people take a low-dose SSRI for PMDD but I’m already on a regular does of Wellbutrin, so I don’t think there’s a chemical solution for this spiritual problem. This is the week I spend doubting everything I have ever done. I had twenty-three tabs open before I opened this one—all were Zillow listings for rentals in Los Angeles. I think ‘Why did I ever move back to the East Coast?’ on a loop until I feel ill. I have a lot of answers to that question but none of them are satisfying in the face of pictures of palm trees.

Every time I see a photo of Demi Moore I have to remind myself that I’m not looking at Kyle Richards. Both women deserve Oscars.

Did you know that there’s a tunnel under ocean boulevard dirty alleyway behind a club in Charleston where they’re doing dumpster-adjacent dick sucking? This is my formal co-sign of Bravo’s Southern Hospitality, a show that’s carrying the torch of seasons 1-6 of Vanderpump Rules. People told me that and I refused to believe them, but then two weekends ago I was recovering from knee surgery and I saw the light. I started on season two and I have no regrets. It has everything: its own SUR alley, a castmember who had sex with Countess Luann, another castmember who made it their mission to expose that sex, a Scheana type who is delusional about her music career, a better-than-James-Kennedy type who is passionate about DJing (and a woman, shoutout to Gloria Steinem etc.), several cheating plotlines, gay main cast members (always difficult for Bravo to give them anything more than a ‘friend of’ coffee date), and an extremely hypocritical boss at the helm of it all. Here is a moment from the season currently airing that’s a beautiful homage to Black Swan.

Skincare brand Futurewise is shutting down, which is sad for me as someone who worked on the brand and is addicted to the cream and face mist—there is no finer face mist on the market, I am not financially benefitting from this endorsement. It’s so misty and euphoric, it’s like being on molly at Niagara Falls. I’ve never been there but I have a rich inner world. RIP to slug world.

I suppose I’m here to distract myself, to feel like I’m doing anything at all. I do have a job now (hence this being a VIP exclusive private invite only newsletter at the moment, even though that’s not necessary…will change that someday). Of course the feeling that I am wasting my life persists. At my worst I think of the many people making money on here and feel pure rage at myself for not devoting my life to this website, for not providing anything of value (some people make hundreds of thousands of dollars here, is the misery). I want to change this whole tHiNg into something else but I have yet to think of a better name or theme. Certainly It’s boring to talk about this.

Something I’ve become obsessed with is this book of perfume reviews by Luca Turin & Tania Sanchez. Turin is particularly cunty in his assessments of various scents. He calls one of my favorites “hotel shampoo.” Scathing. I like to flip to a random page and let his reverent praise or venomous critique wash over me. He’s like the Azealia Banks of perfume.

My favorite scents right now are Un Bois Vanille (powdery spicy chemical vanilla), Coven (wiccan potato dirt), Terre d’Hermes (sweet dirt), and Macanudo (rich girl private horse stables in the Hamptons dirt, been obsessed since before the fragrance obsessives found her okay?). Thank you to Anna for the first two recs, my decant duchess.

I suppose that is all. I will return. No good way to end this. Arrivederci?