#justgirlythings
On my cat giving birth, more Moon Knight shenanigans, and a new venture from the makers (me) of Hyperfixate.
Welcome to Hyperfixate! This is allegedly a weekly newsletter that dabbles in media consumption, hobbies outside of media consumption or my “personal life”, and embarrassing celebrity thirst. Sign up here. Support me or this newsletter on Ko-fi here .
I’m having these weird fuckin’ headaches. I think it’s the heat, I haven’t turned my aircon on all day. My cat went into labour this morning, hence the lack of air conditioning. Like an absolute star, trooper, and 1997’s Starship Troopers that she is, she delivered three (so far) healthy little kittens.
Two of them are orange and the oldest is a predominantly black Calico cat. My brother and I are coming up with names. He keeps pitching Anime character names (which are fine) and it is taking everything in me not to veto his ideas and call 2/3 of them Spencer (after Reid and Hastings) and/or Daryl (after Dixon). We came up with Frankie as an option for the Calico cat (after Frank Castle and Francesca “Frankie” Dart)1.
Life is pretty wild. We adopted Heidi, our little mama, in January of 2021. She came home looking like a little rat baby. I exaggerate because I like messing with her, but she was tiny, scrappy, and a mess of ear fungus and squeaking. She’s adorable. Revy (named after Revy from Black Lagoon), our cat that likens herself to a guard dog, was born a week after Heidi was, only she was built a little bigger and much, much shyer.
Cats are cool. Kittens are hilarious. They’re a handful, sure, what tiny creature born mere hours ago isn’t, but they are certifiably hilarious. I just watched the three of them play Spider-Man across their mother’s tummy just to clamor for a nipple to feed on. The cat-to-shenanigan ratio in my household has just increased, and I am very excited to watch it unfold. I love it when cats believe with tenacious conviction that they are not in fact cats, but people or other animals.
Not long after Heidi gave birth to Yet To Be Named Kitten #2, I checked Twitter only to find that my algorithm put three back-to-back adorable TikToks and photos of babies/toddlers on my timeline. I have been having really insane baby fever. I can’t explain why. And it’s weird to admit. But hey, the more you know. My kid is going to write a newsletter in response to how lame this one is. Or they’re just gonna do whatever the hell they want. Not really my life to decide. But I do know I want kids.
I think what I find comfort in is that I don’t have to figure out the specifics of having children just yet. We’ll cross that bridge when we get there. I’ve been feeling a lot better about a great many things because I’ve just been treating them as bridges to cross if and when I get there. No more panic-induced scrambling for things that are far into the future! That’s been quite nice. It’s not new or revolutionary, but it’s nice. Better late than never, right?
A really cool thing I read this week was Ayesha A. Siddiqi’s Memento Millenial. I wanna work my way up to being that insightful someday. It was really fucking cool to help my cat bring life into the world. That was rad.
Oscar’s Version (From The Vault)
If I had to see this today, so do you! I love when people go on El Hormiguero for promo. The last time Oscar Isaac was on, I think it was for Triple Frontier alongside Ben Affleck. Moon Knight promo is starting to pick up some steam, which means the shenanigans will keep on rolling in. The show will be out in two weeks and you can definitely expect weekly entries about every single episode.
Meanwhile, Ethan Hawke is promoting his new documentary, The Last Movie Stars at SXSW.
I haven’t had this much Festival Envy since I missed LFF last year, when they showed Seperti Dendam, Rindu Harus Dibayar Tuntas (even though I eventually saw the film here in Indonesia). I really want to see Bodies, Bodies, Bodies. Like, I need it now. I am also deeply obsessed with Ethan Hawke’s instagram. He doesn’t use it in any particularly special way, I just think it’s endearing that he’s on social media at all.
Batman & Scooby-Doo Joint Slays
I think Robert Pattinson is the only live-action Batman that can pull off a Scooby-Doo crossover. He’d be perfect for it. Maybe the original cast of Raja Gosnell’s Scooby-Doo (2002) can arrive in Gotham on a bizarre visit to one of Daphne’s relatives (Andy Serkis) and run into things that go bump in the night, much like 1972’s animated Scooby-Doo Meets Batman, a film I saw on a weekend trip to New Forest. In this live-action revival, though, Mystery Inc. should be tasked with solving a string of riddles left by a copycat upon The Riddler’s incarceration. Nah, it’s giving Criminal Minds.
Matt Reeves would do an excellent job. If Warner Bros. were about their money, they should consider my very underdeveloped pitch. In the meantime, please enjoy this video of Robert Pattinson meeting AKB48.
Speaking of Criminal Minds
There’s an absolutely insane episode of Criminal Minds set on South Padre Island where the unsub is murdering promiscuous Spring Breakers. The unsub is none other than Jasper Hale himself, Jackson Rathbone. I love it when they have wild (to me) guest stars on that show. Jasper from Twilight joins a long line of Los Angeles-based working actors in the mid-2000s at a variety of different stages in their careers, including but not limited to George Costanza (thee Jason Alexander) in a wig to rival Nicole Kidman’s in Destroyer, pre-Breaking Bad Aaron Paul, a young Amber Heard, and the late and great Luke Perry. In Season 11, Aubrey Plaza guest stars as an assassin. I’m kinda living for it.
Introducing: long story short
I have a lot of brainchildren. A lot of them still live at home, figuring themselves out. Some (like Hyperfixate) are addicted to skinny white guys from procedural dramas that carry gourds in their bags2. We cannot control what our children become, we can only help them come to be. Corny ass.
This child of mine, long story short, is experimenting. Experimenting with whatever they need to in the name of ‘finding themselves’ or ‘killing time’. Really, it’s just an excuse for me to exercise some muscles I fear have atrophied over the years.
long story short is a fiction newsletter by yours truly that’ll bring you one new short story every two months. I want to say one to two months, but I’m trying to be gentle with myself. I’m trying to slow down. Cranking out Hyperfixate every week is both a joy and a bizarre little pressure cooker, one I’ve created for myself. This is my attempt at giving myself the opportunity to reconnect with my first love, fiction, in a way where I can keep the stakes low and let myself be inconsistent for a change. Even if nobody read it, I would still write it anyway. Just because.
I do hope you subscribe and read it, though. We’re going to have some fun there. The first issue of long story short should be with you this coming April. Let’s say around the 17th.
In other ‘news’, I downloaded the Substack app on my phone, and, not gonna lie, I’m kind of obsessed with it.
It looks great and it’s nice to read on. It’s a great alternative to the morning paper without the endless doomscrolling garbage fire of Twitter or Instagram’s general horrificness. Check it out if you feel so inclined!
The Substack app is currently available for iOS. If you don’t have an Apple device, you can join the Android waitlist here.
Other ideas include Bart, Lisa, and Maggie; Phineas, Ferb, and Candace; or Zack, Cody, and London. I suggested Cece, Winston, and Nick but my brother thought that would be unfair to Max Greenfield, whom we both adore endlessly.
Hand in marriage, I am so, so, serious. Also, in that video, he says he looks like Hilary Swank’s corpse and that somehow makes him more endearing? Someone get me help. Shake me out of this trance!