Kim, I beg you, dump this slob.
We’ve been too long in our coffee-stained pajamas. You must set an example.
Welcome to Fashion, Brenda. For this first-ever newsletter, I bemoan our long, slow and then lightning-quick descent into mass slobbery.
Everyone: the dating world is a god-awful hellscape.
Me: Really? How bad can it be?
The internet:
Me: ***raised eyebrows*** Wow. I see what you mean.
Was I surprised to learn Pete Davidson and Kim Kardashian were smash-ian? Yes. I believe a time-traveler from the past would be too. See that pretty one on the left? She’s a highly eligible self-made billionaire. That guy on the right? The one wearing mom jeans, Keds and a jacket designed after an exploded pen? He’s apparently some kind of lady-slayer.
Does it make me sound old when I say that I simply do not get it? Judging by his side-eye, Chris Rock doesn’t either:
Pete Davidson breaking hearts is one of those cultural moments that make grumpy old people—which I suppose describes me now—disdain the youthful.
It also makes me wonder what my parents’ generation thought of GenX heart throbs like David Cassidy or Leif Garret or Robbie Benson. Did they look upon these shirtless, oiled, feathered-haired dreamboats gazing out from Tiger Beat centrefolds and despair? If so, it goes to show you that no matter how bad things get, they can always get worse. Try telling granny the ladies are swooning over this guy:
Or maybe don’t. She might just think ‘well, that’s it. World’s gone to hell’ then keel over and die.
Kim’s romantic life is obviously none of my business and anyway, this being a celebrity romance, there are things in her Sub-Zero fridge that will last longer. Nonetheless, my unsolicited advice to her is ‘move on.’
Dressing down is one thing. Dressing as an expression of civilizational decay is another. Fashion-wise, we appear to be in a race to the bottom, with the bottom now in sight. What’s beneath the bottom? Bloodied mummy bandages?
Just as the character Mike Campbell describes how he lost his fortune in Hemmingway’s The Sun Also Rises, society gave way to slobbery in two ways: gradually and then suddenly. Things began to decline when women stopped wearing gloves on Park Avenue. Then came the 1960s and its accompanying motto ‘tune in, turn on, look like shit.’ In 2020, we got the Virus and its accompanying stay-at-home orders, triggering the ‘slobbery’ variant. It’s vaccine resistant and while you won’t lose your sense of smell, it totally destroys your sense of taste.
Which brings us back to Pete Davidson dressing like he ransacked a crate of Value Village rejects parachuted into an impoverished African country. He apparently outran the other villagers to the UN drop, which is incredible since his perpetually unwashed physique appears to have all the athletic stamina of Montgomery Burns and Africans are the fastest runners in the world.
My friend Jenna, a stylist and makeup artist, thinks I’m being way too harsh. “Give old tatted up Pete a break. He’s damaged and you’re a softie. He’s an ok guy. Also, watch his film King of Staten Island.. You’ll want to give him a hug afterwards.”
I watched it. It’s good. He plays a millennial waster who, true to real life, lost his firefighter dad on 9/11. But are we sure he’s an OK guy? I’ve noticed lately that the King of Staten Island, despite his slovenly attire, lacks the common touch. In one of many unfunny SNL sketches of the past year, he mocks the owners of Staten Island’s Mac’s Public House as babies for defying governor Andrew Cuomo’s cruel, politically-driven restaurant closures. A lawyer and spokesman for Mac’s with the very Staten Island name of Mr. Tobacco summed things up succinctly when he said “we have millionaires ridiculing the little guy for the crime of putting food on the table.”
Kim, on the other hand, is a true-blue humanitarian. This year she personally helped evacuate more than 30 members of Afghanistan’s women’s youth development soccer team—and their families—to safety in the UK.
She’s a tireless and mostly unsung advocate for the unjustly imprisoned. In 2018, she convinced Donald Trump to grant clemency to Alice Marie Johnson, a 64-year-old grandma serving a life sentence for a non-violent drug offence. Kim shrewdly understood that all you had to do was sail into the Oval Office and work Trump’s bottomless need for attention to her advantage. Good for her! The haters got nothing. Now she’s **this** close to becoming an actual lawyer.
Kim fights for the underdog. Pete makes fun of them. When he does punch up, his targets tend toward those who lean right on the political spectrum. He took a clumsy swing at Joe Rogan in this cringey sketch where he appears to be reading his autocue. And missed. Credit him for trying, given their physical differences:
Jenna: “ok, now that’s mean!”
Me: He looks like a bum. Those tattoos are so ghetto, even he doesn’t want to look at them anymore.
Jenna: “It’s Christmas. Can you be a little more charitable? Also, Kim ain’t exactly Babe Paley (the mid-century New York socialite often described as ‘the most stylish woman of all time’). Remember when she repurposed the elevator protector blanket into a pair of bike shorts and flouncy top?”
“Speaking of repurposing, I bet you won’t find a single remaining bandage in her first aid kit”…
“What have we here? Ariel from Frozen, grown up and heading to an ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ party at Arendelle Castle?”…
“Fortunately, there’s holes in this outfit to crawl inside out of sheer embarrassment”…
Ok, fine. She’s disaster prone. Back in the day, Richard Blackwell would put her at the top of his dreaded worst dressed list. But she’s a long way from Pete’s disdainful, ‘late-stage capitalism’ chic.
Like her or not, Kim is a role model. It behooves her to find someone who dresses like he cares. Someone in the vein of John Legend or Esquire magazine’s 2005 ‘Best Dressed Man in the World,’ Pharrell Williams. At this point, I’d settle for anyone distinguishable from the crackhead holding out a chewed-up Tim Horton’s cup in front of the 7-11.
I get it, it’s tough out there. Nobody wants to be alone. But it’s cry now or cry later because I’m guessing nobody wants Pete Davidson’s sloppy seconds.
Slobbery Variant…wonder if Aritizia will follow suit and open a satellite store…”Shit-stainzia” They can sell John Tory Menstrual Masks at an inflated price.
Hilarious and on-point. But "sloppy seconds"? With Pete Davidson it's a lot more like "sloppy 700th." Then again, prolly the same for Kim.