PicoBlog

In the spring of 2004, American sweetheart Jennifer Garner starred in Thirteen Going on Thirty.  The film begins at the birthday party of freshly thirteen-year-old protagonist Jenna Rink. She is an awkward middle schooler who simply wants to be cute and popular. When she faces rejection from the cute and popular crowd at school because her childhood best friend, Matt, is acting like a weirdo, she hides in a closet in shame.

I’m honestly not sure where to begin analyzing the new Amy Winehouse musical biopic Back to Black. There are just so many angles to look at and moments that are meant to leave audiences saying, “What?” “Huh?” and “Why?” The recent resurgence of musical biopics has had some highs (Rocketman) though more often they’ve fallen into the low category (Bohemian Rhapsody). Much of this stems from questions of how much personal involvement family members and the band have in shaping a narrative, as well as a screenwriter’s individual thoughts on a subject.

This week is the 20th anniversary of my first chemo (of 4 treatments). Memory holed this all pretty hard, but my tricky brain just let it back out...why?! Remember being so upset about the idea of my hair (which was not that glorious to begin with). And totally free once it was gone: from male gaze, expectations, from the time it took! I got to keep that with me: the it does not matter / fuck it / just say yes to what you want.

Hey friends. Today we are releasing our fifth free episode of 2023, which means that it’s time for us to take a little pause so we can gear up for the next five. Free episodes will resume in May, and for the next month and a half, we’ll be continuing to release subscriber-only episodes and culture recommendations. If you want to get in on that, sign up for a paid subscription for just $5 a month or $50 for the year.

There are times in my cooking when I want the purest, freshest, cleanest, most genetically unmodified ingredients. There are times when I don’t. This recipe for what I will call my perfect grilled cheese is one of those times. I’m forgoing an aged cheddar from a grass-fed cow or some other high end dairy product and opting for slices of Velveeta inside my sourdough bread instead. Velveeta’s pristine ooziness and effortless melt-ability is exactly what I want in a grilled cheese.

What’s going on with Chandler Jones is very sad. Jones is a defensive end for the Las Vegas Raiders (it still feels weird to type that). As you can see from the above photo, he won a Super Bowl playing for “my” New England Patriots, where he was very good, approximately forever ago. Earlier this month, according to Jones, the Raiders sent a crisis response team to his home. Jones denounced the team for doing that in a series of fairly manic-seeming, all-caps social media posts.

If you’ve been reading Screenshot This, or know me personally, my love for Toteme is clear. And, unlike so many brands out there which are spoken at length, this is a brand I actually buy. I wanted this caveat before I get into this deep-dive about Totême because I am a consumer of the product, but I have also been on the sidelines covering its creative director Elin Kling and the brand itself for what I’ve now realised is over a decade.

The image above is a screenshot captured directly from Meta’s new Segment Anything demo application. I didn’t draw that blue outline on the white horse. The AI model did after I clicked on it. See the original image immediately below. The AI model can identify all of the objects in the image, and you can save them separately (see the example below). The image is from the example gallery provided by Meta, but you can also upload your own image when you try it out.

Certain songs take hold in my head, sometimes old, sometimes new, for reasons which may or may not be obvious. So, I’ll write stuff about them.  “I don’t want another heartbreak / I don’t need another turn to cry.” These are the first two lines of one of the most exhilarating and joyous bursts of endorphin-releasing pop songs I know. I suppose I should admit I never noticed the words to the verses until recently, but now that I have, I realize how much better they make the way Faith Hill captures the “rocket shooting straight across the sky” of her new connection.