What's the opposite of influence?
And a few other false starts
There’s a school of thought that exists out there but also mostly here, in the more “out there” spiritual sectors one is apt to wander into if one spends enough time in Los Angeles, that life, in all its unknowable glory, is actually full of signs. Angel numbers, tarot pulls, wind gusts, certain birds, or clouds, or who knows what at the bottom of your coffee cup. Synchronicities! A strangeness that’s just irregular enough to give you pause, and a pause that’s long enough for you to change direction—or at least to consider one. There are, generally, straightforward answers for most of these occurrences, and they usually make good sense: namely that if you’re looking for a sign, youre likely to find one. (Cognitive bias! Look it up!) But it’s true that sometimes all you need is a subtle little shift to get you going somewhere new, and sometimes you need that shift to feel somehow bigger than your own decision.
For example: The first time I had started this particular newsletter (then already late)(though with good reason)(the first intended date of publication there was a highly publicized assassination attempt sucking all the air out of the room, for instance) I was thinking, generally, to make it about influence. Namely, what counts for real influence when it comes to me and my life. What actually gets me to click, or add to cart, or to get in the car and go somewhere new. There’s a very real and very fact-based science to it that’s being exploited all the time by the algorithm, of course: a certain amount of cultural or interpersonal or media-related exposures to XYZ will lead a not insignificant certain percentage of people to finally seeking out XYZ. But equally interesting to me is why I only sometimes resist. (And not like, I will probably never see Deadpool <3’s Wolverine: Marvel Chamber of Moneymaking Madness, or whatever it’s called, though that is factually true.) I mean why do I initially resist even though I know I will probably like it, and then give in. Why is that? What is that? What’s the opposite of influence? The eye roll effect? Does it still count if you end up in the same place eventually, just with a time delay?
For example, I have no idea why it took at least three different unrelated people suggesting it to convince me to finally watch AMERICA’S SWEETHEARTS: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders on Netflix. A reality show that’s also a competition that’s also a treatise on a certain type of American womanhood??? Could anything be more up my strasse? I got there anyway, one technically inoccupied day, casting out for somewhere to catch my breath amidst the deluge of crapola streaming content available to distract myself. If you haven’t watched it, well, you absolutely should, right now, don’t wait, and I’m sorry that you will be occupied for the next 6+ hours straight. It’s fascinating, and really well done, and doesn’t feel too in the pocket of the Cowboys, somehow. I’d like to hear more from the filmmakers about how much input the Jones family had, because they participate a fair bit, and it is certainly not entirely flattering to that institution (which famously overworks and underpays its extremely hardworking cheerleaders), and I can’t imagine a business behemoth like the Cowboys giving up the reins that easily. But then the Cowboys have always considered the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders (DCC) somewhat extraneous—certainly less valuable, infinitely replaceable, definitely less worthy of protecting than the players whose bodies they destroy for (one hopes) massive paydays and our collective amusement. The DCC get destroyed too, but they make $500 a game; $15-20 an hour for practices. And perhaps especially grating: Most of the leadership around the DCC are former cheerleaders themselves, though their era never required much more than to be telegenic and charismatic and jiggle a bit. And now they’re asking for cirque du soleil! With a side of Mother Theresa! (Did you know they’re not allowed to interact with the players? Fine, they’re likely better off.) And they get ONE costume a season, and if they gain or lose a few pounds, well, too bad? Ann Helen Peterson wrote about the whole thing from the male gaze to the purity culture of it all beautifully a few weeks ago for her Substack, Culture Study. Anyways. See it and let’s talk about it?
But back to the point: I didn’t write that particular newsletter, the one about influence, or its opposite, and that felt like the right choice a few days later when I was sitting in a booth at a burlesque show at a tiki/sushi joint in the Valley chatting with some new friends over Mai Tais and we got onto the topic of effort. Indirectly, really—we were talking about the professional pursuit of dance, and how that leads you to all sorts of new realities, including burlesque shows at tiki/sushi joints in the valley, and how a performance is a performance, a loved and precious thing, and how it necessarily requires real and very hard work, namely effort, often intentionally far more than anyone knows. There are only a few occasions in which people really like to know how hard something is, I think. They like their accessories to be painstakingly pieced together, not their entertainments. Think about all the ways we praise perceived effortlessness: we use words like cool, easy, natural, real. Imagine a worse review than “boy, you looked like you were working HARD.” And yet hard work is nearly always required, even (especially!) in great acts of genius. Maybe I should write about effort, I thought. The Olympics are on, after all.
Effort is not always elegant. It’s rather earnest, in a way that I personally sometimes have to trick myself into engaging with, as I grew up with a real earnestness-aversion. (Blame the irony-rich 90s?) Effort is brave. Not trying is the easiest thing in the world (except spiritually, where I’d suggest it is actually deadening). Perhaps this is not news to you. Perhaps you are not, like me, someone who gets weepy or mystified watching Olympians push the boundaries of what the body can do. But it’s more than an exercise or exultation of the body: it’s also about belief. I watched a funny little documentary on a plane this week called Holy Frit, about the creation of the largest stained glass window currently in existence (for a megachurch in Kansas, of course), where one of the artists, an elder statesman of the genre, the wonderfully named Narcissus Quagliata, describes the blind faith required for this particular kind of effort, an undertaking previously believed to be impossible. “It’s kind of like Mickey Mouse,” he says, “when he goes off the cliff and falls only when he looks down.” (I think he means Wile E Coyote, one of my favorite tragic heroes, but you get the picture.) There’s something so beautiful and precious in that, the propulsive belief that gets you across the great divide between doing and not. And then of course just yesterday a Hilary Mantel quote crosses my transom from an old Paris Review interview: “The question is not who influences you, but which people give you courage.” A sign? And now here we are.
Is this all a lot of throat clearing to excuse for the absence of last month’s missive? No, let’s call that what it was: summer vacation, a sinking into the vibes. But also, as the podcasting sweethearts on Las Culturistas put it recently, we all must climb cringe mountain once in a while. Some of us may have more like Cringe Mountain ranges. I appear to have the cringe Alps. Effort is required. I guess what I’m trying to say is, sorry this was late? I was busy having a life. Forgive me: here’s some fun reccs for you if you want them as you enjoy August, one of my favorite months, from your beaches and pool decks and plane seats and office chairs dreaming of escape.
(And speaking of the wonderful world of cringe, here’s 100 of the greatest posters of celebrities urging you to read. I actually kind of love the Bill Gates one?)
WATCHING
We just started watching Kleo (Netflix), which is bascially a Cold War-set Killing Eve, in German. A little bloody, pretty funny, excellent to look at. I’m going to keep with it.
Janet Planet. Pulitzer prize winning playwright Annie Baker! The 90s! Coming of age! Set in Western Mass! In the summer! Need I say more?!??!!!?!?! Okay, it’s a quiet beautiful little movie and you should see it in a theater if you can (because why wouldn’t you? Everything is better there. We need to counteract the braindeadpoolification of the movies! This is our mission!).
Speaking of playwrights, I was lucky to see Slave Play during its initial Broadway run so initially thought the HBO doc (Slave Play. Not a Movie. A Play) would be a retreading of old material. I was wrong. It’s something altogether new, and great. A treatise on playwrighting and the act of creation on stage, as well as race and sex and everything that got everyone in a tizzy over the material in the first place.
The Taste of Things. Everyone told me to watch this movie, I ignored them for so long, my mistake, it’s so wonderful. Juliette Binoche! Benôit Magimel! True love! Loving and glorious shots of French cuisine (in terms of “food movies,” this one is up there with Tampopo and I Am Love and Big Night and all the rest of the heavy hitters you should also see if you haven’t) and the French countryside! It could be a perfect end of summer movie, actually. Simultaneously heartbreaking and filling and warm. Five stars.
The fabulous HBO series Fantasmas, by Julio Torres is utterly delightful and worth it for the very funny celebrity-stuffed cameos alone. His film Problemista (also on Prime), costars Tilda Swinton(!), is wonderful. I got teary at the end! In a good way!
We’ve also been re-watching Veep (Max), and oh my god, is that show brilliant. And, yes, extremely timely.
READING
Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe. Better than a beach read but lighter than air and you’ll want to bring it with you everywhere. The subject matter—a college student turned dropout single mom turns to OnlyFans and her father’s professional wrestling prowess to get out of debt and on with her life—shouldn’t work, but really does. I laughed out loud. A lot.
Liars by Sarah Manguso: a very good book about a very bad marriage. I inhaled it on a plane and it made the time fly.
The Fetishist by Katherine Min: Sort of a caper, sort of a thriller, sort of a love story.
Catalina by Karla Cornejo Villavincencio: the NYT called this novel “sparkling,” the WaPo called it a “singular achievement” and I call it excellent and utterly ingestible, like a frozen fruit bar at the pool that you race to consume before it melts in your hands. I devoured it.
NYT: Love when they splash out on an interactive feature. This one, on where the Olympic surfing competition takes place, is great (and terrifying):
The waves at Teahupo’o — which roughly translates to “wall of skulls” — can range from five feet to a death-defying 50 feet. “If you use a ski or snowboard analogy, it’s not even a double black diamond run,” Kevin Wallis, the director of forecasting at Surfline, a surf forecasting site, says. “It’s like going into the Alaskan backcountry and riding some huge mountain.”
The Times: The best reported to date look behind the scenes at the social media powerhouse that is BallerinaFarm and the “tradwife” movement (8 kids and no help and only one epidural…help!) that took over my group chats and TikTok FYP.
NYT Magazine: Upsetting, important, and really well-written from Danyel Smith, the former EIC of Vibe, on her history with Diddy, and the culture that created him:
My glory days were infused with crisis. There was the not knowing, the wondering, the suspecting, the kind of knowing, the actually knowing, the acting as if you don’t know. I have been a fly on the wall, and a fly pinned to it. I made a career in the music business. I loved it, and it almost killed me. It was a lot to hold in my mind at once. The sadness and anxiety pushed me to nicotine and then Wellbutrin. Some of my past times, including Combs’s stalking me at the Vibe office, had to be redacted. I blacked them out in order to keep the lights on.
If you haven’t read Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle, well, I’m sure I’ve recommended it before. If I haven’t, consider this your sign to read it. I love this book so very much, and was happy to see this recent NY books essay giving it its due.
NYer: Oldie but a goodie (and not for nothing, but also rather preoccupied with signs): Kathryn Schulz’s beautiful portrait of William Melvin Kelley, the “lost giant of American letters.” Fun fact: he’s responsible for the word “woke!” Don’t hold it against him.
EATING
Leopardo may be my favorite new(ish) restaurant in LA. The room is light-filled and unfussy; the service is great. The drinks list is kind of intentionally impenetrable but they make great ones, and the pizzas are, as I kept practically shouting at the time of consumption, “stupid good.” Also the bone marrow. Also the grilled fish. Also the tomato salad. Also the soft serve. Also, also, also…
Chainsaw is a backyard party with fabulous food and a rotating cast of chefs. No frills, thoughtfully led, and expertly executed. If you live in L.A., get yourself some tickets, and bring friends who like to eat. I had the best time.
If you are smarter than I am and eat out less, but also don’t want to make any more food yourself and also want to eat “clean” and protein-rich, Methodology has cleanse-appropriate prepared foods in beautiful packaging that are extremely easy to whip up in literal seconds. I spent several days on their program pretending to have scoured farmers markets without ever leaving my house. Highly recommend for those times when you’d rather have someone else do the scouring, but still reap the rewards. (I have a code, of course, for you, which is 10% off and easy to remember as it is just: ALESSANDRA)
LISTENING
To this playlist:
OTHER THINGS! These raffia Freda Salvador fisherman sandals are, as the kids say, “everything.” I’m a little obsessed with Material’s handsome BPA-free cutting boards, fancy chef knives, and extremely satisfying wooden salt cellars. An answered prayer: Merit’s excellent eyebrow pencil and brush. (I mostly just use the brush.) Gucci’s insanely perfect tennis collection. This skirt?? Excuse me??? And with the top? If you’re more into the tennis vibe than the technical aspects, I understand, and I love this bouclé polo dress, which is what Elaine Hendrix’s character (the evil new fiancé) would have worn in the Nancy Meyers/Lindsay Lohan version of The Parent Trap, and we all know she was actually maybe the real victim and definitely looked perfect throughout. (She would also definitely wear the new Dorsey east-west emerald pendant on her rivière, just sayin’.) Jacquemus x Nike arrived at the Grove and it is extremely cute and so is the blouson-style warm up jacket. (I’d wear the regular white warm ups to tennis, too.) There are such things as perfect Los Angeles layers: this Sézane suede jacket is one. (Not to mention this stripey men’s shirt, these perfect summer-to-fall flat sandals, this easy, classic trench, the perfect end of summer dress, the basket… don’t get me started.) This perfect new party shirt from Alix of Bohemia is coming with me to Nantucket, I will wear it open over a Hunza G bikini or buttoned up over these linen pants. (Other perfect “soft pants” that look sharp: these, by the always excellent Matteau. They’re the type of elegant, minimalist-minded packing solution you think you can find everywhere but isn’t anywhere. They’re perfect. Run, don’t walk!) I got a ZIIP and am excited to see if it zaps me back to how I felt when I wasn’t drinking alcohol and getting 10 hours of sleep a night. We shall see. (Want to try one? They gave me a code to share for 10% off: ATCZIIP)
PR department: For some reason everyone this spring wanted me to write about Paris. (Not complaining!) Here’s a little story I did about horseback riding à Paris for Town & Country; here’s a meditation on the continued appeal of French Girl Beauty (TM) for Violet Grey. Here’s a funny video I did with Sézane, and here’s a guide to Rio I did with Chase Travel x Vogue. A lot more to come in the fall, which at the moment feels twenty years away, but is of course something closer to twenty minutes.
I am off to Nantucket for a stretch, to remind myself of what the east coast is like in the summer—if there’s anything new on island I should be looking out for, let me know.
That is all I have for you this week. Thanks, as ever, for being here. It means the world. Send me a note if you feel like it! I love hearing from you.