Welcome to UCC, or welcome back! I’m hoping this finds you in good health and with an inbox free of emails that contain the line ‘In These Troubled Times’. Unless Fiona, Maeve or Fergal have used it in their editorials. Jesus, am I going to get fired before we even go to print? Forget it. I’ll rewrite this later.
Quarantine Brain, The Fog, mental block: Whatever term you use for it, it’s been a strange one for the headspace this year. We look to celebrities to reflect what we see in ourselves and, Dear God, did they lose the run of themselves.
The Wonder Woman/Lennon collab we were all waiting for
The earliest sign that being rich didn’t make you immune to making a fool of yourself on the internet. Organised by former gymnastics instructor to the Israeli military Gal Gadot, twenty-one celebrities came together to sing a bizarre version of the Christmas staple.
Listing them all would be a cheap way of filling my word count, but if you like Jamie Dornan, James Marsden, Natalie Portman, Amy Adams, Leslie Odom Jr., Pedro Pascal, Chris O’Dowd, Will Ferrell, Mark Ruffalo, Sarah Silverman, Kristen Wiig, Sia, Zoe Kravitz, Ashley Benson, Lynda Carter, Jimmy Fallon, Norah Jones, Kaia Gerber, Cara Delevigne, Annie Mumolo or Maya Rudolph, you’re in for a bad time.
Not to be surpassed, a few days later Bono came out with a song in support of our national health system that he’s avoided paying tax into for several decades. It was all very inspiring.
K-pop TikTok takes a stand against Trump
It was sour candy for Trump’s ill-advised June rally in Oklahoma, as a TikTok campaign among K-pop fans and social justice activists led to the rally selling out to an audience of TikTokkers who never showed up.
Ahead of the event, Trump’s campaign chairman tweeted that there had been over 800,000 tickets sold, and a second speech was organised for a stage outside the arena. About 6,000 people arrived to fill the venue’s 19,000 seats. Almost nobody was outside.
While the mass buy-in was more meme than movement, there’s no denying the satisfying sight of the empty seats.
‘I never asked for a free ride…’
Determined to be on top of the current album-merch bundling craze, Lady Gaga bundled the long-awaited Chromatica with the long-in-size-L Chromatica jockstrap. And it can be yours, dear reader, for just $26.50 plus international shipping! I know what you’re thinking: That’s value.
It’s been a bizarre year for the culture and with a certain rapper making a Presidential run, it’s not likely things will get any saner. Until then, all we can do is sit back and boggle at what money does to a mind.