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Pope Francis, some jokes, and a YT of him slapping away delusional touchy fan

If you love Catholic core and ritual and opulence and online gambling and 🙏 GOD 🙏, this is your Shark Week

Pope Francis, some jokes, and a YT of him slapping away delusional touchy fan

Between Conclave, The Two Popes, The Young Pope, and the 2022 wave of far-left and far-right edgelords roleplaying TradCath, the 2024 and current TikTok Catholic Core aesthetic trend seems, er, trendy, but maybe already peaked last year. Or 2018. Still, if you love Catholic imagery and ritual and opulence, this is your Shark Week.

I (for some reason) looked for Pope Francis Tik Toks but mostly found those looks, from fine lace head coverings and all-white cotton cottagecore purity, gothic Catholic witchcore spilling into The Craft / Cruel Intentions dark academia, and Y2K sacrosancta with dark lip liner, Mary cameo rings, thrifted crucifixes above the bed, even some Madonna-ish 80s soft-focus fallen angel vibes wearing layered rosaries, massive bows in messy curls, low-cut communion-eque dresses and captions like "feeling like a virgin rn, might convert." I found a TikTok of all the holy water one Catholic Core influencer keeps at home. I don't have any Holy Water at home. This is how social media sells the want, not the product.

Then I got to the young hot Catholic priest fan edits set to hardstyle techno. First one ended with a illustration of Christ Jesus with a Biblically accurate sharp jawline. That's weird, right? What's the end goal here?

But let's think this through? Did you know priests are sometimes fully ordained at 24? Or that men don't have to be a Cardinals or even priests at all to be elected... just any baptized Catholic male with massive charm and self-belief.* And humility, too (got ya).

I probably have something a sliver less trivial and wordy to say about post-covid loneliness, the desire for ritual, community, tradition, parasocialism and donating for attention, horseshoe theory, or the sheer volume of Catholic architecture, art, fashion and relics to discover, if you just like aesthetics.

A Gen Z person already wrote the piece on Pope Francis' death, and his return to Catholic faith inspired by Pope Francis. This was for Esquire! Gen Z may actually, really, be joining the Catholic church. We'll see (the data is unclear). He also argues for all of us, lapsed, faithful, indifferent Catholics, atheists, aesthetes or ascetes (in this economy) to all avoid the discourse this week, the meaning jokes and politics and, I'm sure, the online betting pools on Stake.**

All of the above aside, I did feel a shift, a sadness and appreciation for a man who could have locked himself away but dedicated himself to the poor, migrants, refugees, climate change, social justice. He met with Trump and criticized him right on Twitter (thats why Trump wrote such a weak tribute – so jealous.) Francis apologized to victims of church abuse and then the church's silence, he met with displaced indigenous people to ask for their forgiveness. He held an audience with Jimmy Fallon and laughed at his non-jokes, maybe as some kind of goofy self flagellation?

So yeah.. loss, sadness, worry. A woman interviewed early this morning outside St. Peter's (on CNN maybe) said "He left us..." or maybe, "He abandoned us..." but that's judgy wasn't like he wanted to. As I said on LinkedIn, the death of the Pope makes every once Catholic feel off... genuinely, hurt, surprised, a bit lost, fatherless?

We got lucky – the last one was awful AND a quitter. This one clearly should've been rested on Easter but still greeted visitors and blessed crowds, drove around the plaza in that car, met with JD Vance, which he should've gotten out of last minute. Pope Francis seemed so very human, esp for the vessel of God's message on earth. He had Pope jokes and a fav football team and hard liquor. Did you see his line of merch for his US tour? Kpop stans said it was better than favs and he gave away photocards, for free!

I followed him on Twitter, which is corny but sometimes you need some hope and encouragement between all the racial slurs and Elon posts. I don't know if we'll get another Pope like him, that's where the worry comes from... can we get another one that you could just like, be a sometime fan of, sometimes, casually, without following or believing he's a messenger of God's own tweets.

One hilarious and bizarre part of Catholicism is that the priests you like, or at least don't find scary, are nice old guys with kind eyes. trapped underneath highly covetable, frightening, stuffy, very on trend layers of opulent Catholic core. The church is comfortingly, reliably, anachronistically what it will always be. But I hope we get another Pope like the last one.

I have no idea why this brought me back to a blog I haven't updated in almost a decade. But maybe I'll do more? My last post was on Battlestar Galactica what am I? Please let me know if this is interesting as a read or if you made it this far!

Also here's the Pope handling a delulu fan like a absolute icon. I might make a YT short with it later. Is there anything more relatable than telling someone to back the fuck up?


*I would return to the church if they elected a 24 year old from like, Connecticut, to be the infallible word of God on earth. Very unlikely, but it's a "screw it, we go full send" time for elected leaders. If the kid's old enough to run the federal government into the ground, he's old enough to guide 1.5 billion (not literal esp compared to him) children.

no one ever shares my hobbies


Also, could I even have unwavering belief in a 24 year old Florida Pope with official decrees and hot takes on Twitter, but all from God? What if he also just returned to the church because he's Gen Z and liked Pope Francis and wants IRL community and organizations to volunteer with? I don't think I could get with a just converted pope with less experience than I, and I speak for all Catholics over 24 I bet.

I'm biased and still stuck on this debate... but Papacy is the perfect millennial career pivot. Jesus didn't start his ministry until age 30, the Prophet Muhammad was just over 40 when he received his first revelation from God. Young and passionate, and worked a real job first. And didn't live with their parents, I think. Our Pope should follow in their footsteps if he wants to speak for God.

** (Heretics should also stop talking shit about Catholics this week, for once. You are unhinged in your replies to that Mark Wahlberg prayer app ad. Literally – first reply was whining about how Catholics won't shut up about being Catholic. It's Mark Wahlberg pitching prayer, with some ranks or gamification, we know we need to work on ourselves. But remove the stake from your eye, so mad for what?)

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I was in a band once, we opened for the Gossip

What you see above is the only remaining evidence that I ever played music in public. I found an old unlabeled VHS tape in a box but I put off digitizing until this year. (I took the tape to Digitas, by the way, a great and friendly digital shop in

What you see above is the only remaining evidence that I ever played music in public. I found an old unlabeled VHS tape in a box but I put off digitizing until this year. (I took the tape to Digitas, by the way, a great and friendly digital shop in Greenpoint. Recommended!)

Anyway, this tape contains three or so performances I had with Obsession in Pink, a band started by two friends in Tucson. One of them, Brett, I can’t find at all. He was from Omaha and may be back there. The other guy in the band is Michael Coomers, who I met when I saw his band Coomers Explosion, and who eventually started the band Harlem. Brett and Michael invited me to join their months-old band to play synth — Obsession in Pink was all keyboards and a drum machine. Oh, and an organ that belonged to another Tucson musician, Seth Bogart, who eventually did Gravy Train and Hunx and His Punx. (We all tried to practice for a band exactly once, but he and Coomers got into a fight and Coomers kicked both me and Seth out of his house.)

For first shows, they were pretty great. My first time playing with a band in public was opening for the Gossip. Others we opened for: Tracy and the Plastics, the Rapture, the Fucking Champs. The video above is us playing our first song at the Gossip show. Even now I think our gimmick was solid — we played rough synthy minor chord stuff and wore suits (well, I wore skirts and dresses) to the shows. But our eighties was, in a word (and my bright idea), rich. We drank wine and champagne on stage, we had condescending stage banter. For this show, Brett and Coomers snuck into a graveyard and stole roses, which, if you can’t see, cover the stage. The Gossip loved us; they not only came out and danced for our set (and yelled ”sluts” at us the whole time, but when they returned a year later they asked the audience where we had gone.

I just encoded a second video of us playing a laundromat illegally, in our underwear. I’ll save that for another post.

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I was a pre-teen monster

I’m going down to the Bell House tomorrow to help prep for the Rarities From The State show, where cast members David Wain, Michael Showalter, and Michael Ian Black will show old show clips. Thing is, The State had a huge effect on my formative years. Without the State

I was a pre-teen monster

I’m going down to the Bell House tomorrow to help prep for the Rarities From The State show, where cast members David Wain, Michael Showalter, and Michael Ian Black will show old show clips. Thing is, The State had a huge effect on my formative years. Without the State I would have never learned about Girls Against Boys or Shudder To Think, who co-wrote the theme song. I would have never started listening to Kerri Kenney’s band Cake Like, which led to discovering experimental music (they were signed to John Zorn’s label).

So to celebrate I thought I’d post half of my State zine along with some transcribed quotes. This zine contains my first “interview” ever, a Q&A conducted over AOL mail with Michael Ian Black when I was 13. I then interviewed him again when I was 23, then again for Paper Thin Walls about a year ago. I believe my interview technique has remained stable, and remains still better than 60% of the Q&A’s I read from grown men and women.

Click on the pictures for full-sized pages.


Page 1 notes:

  • My zine was called “Squiky Clean,” because my principal’s one stipulation for distributing a zine on campus was that it be “squeaky clean.” The misspelling was intentional, as I was intentionally lazy when I did the layout in Quark.
  • I describe Michael Ian Black as “amazingly talented, amazingly attractive.” He looks pretty much the same now, so I stand by that.
  • I wrote a sidebar about how how protecting the environment, and charity in general, was stupid. This was during a brief objectivist stage that I got over quickly. In 8th grade I joined the young socialists.


Page 2 notes:

  • This is a continuation of the Michael Ian Black interview. I have inserted things like “Good answer” and “I agree” after his answers, to make it seem less “over email Q&A”-like.

 


Page 3 notes:

  • This page includes quotes from Shakespeare and Francis Bacon, which I think I got from searching a quotes database for phrases like “revenge.” Revenge was, for me, like many nerds in middle school, a big daily concern.
  • The second part of this page is called “Let’s play a game,” basically a list of fantasies like becoming an intern at MTV, front tickets to REM, shopping on Southstreet in Philadelphia, and getting “smashed on Yeagermeisters [sic] while hanging out backstage with Tim and the rest of the guys in Rancid after their show at CBGB’s.” I have still never had a Jagermeister. Or ever went to CBGB’s. Or hung out with Rancid.

 


Page 4 notes:

  • “New York is unconditionally, undeniably, the coolest city in the world.” Reasons I list were: invention of moshing, Greenwich Village and Soho, and the Hard Rock Cafe and House Of Blues. The latter two must have symbolized some sort of famous-cool to me, otherwise I can’t believe I held them in the same regard as CBGB’s. But, I did predict that they would be one in the same some day.
  • “Take this from a future New Yorker.”
  • I also explain what six degrees of separation is, because I had just seen the movie “Six Degrees of Separation.”

 


Page 5 notes:

  • I review Cake Like, mentioning that the CD was $22 dollars on import, which is like $30 after inflation and like $2,455 to a kid in middle school.
  • “Their sound is raw, edgy, unique and powerful.”
  • I also talk about their “chunky guitars, sporadic bass and lyrics about crushes.” This is, still, mostly what I’m looking for.

 

Check some things off the middle school wish list: As a 13-year-old comedy nerd in Yorktown, Virginia, I thought endlessly about moving to New York, writing for magazines, and going to shows. So for the most part I’ve done alright.

 

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FTW--I still love Radiohead

I’ve been listening to (nearly) all Radiohead since my four-hour Thom Yorke dream. This band is really, really great. And I realized I’ve never had to articulate my feelings about Radiohead, because Radiohead reviews/interviews are reserved for better critics than me. I’ve never been able to

FTW--I still love Radiohead

I’ve been listening to (nearly) all Radiohead since my four-hour Thom Yorke dream. This band is really, really great. And I realized I’ve never had to articulate my feelings about Radiohead, because Radiohead reviews/interviews are reserved for better critics than me. I’ve never been able to articulate my love of Radiohead outside of my job either. When Kid A came out I was 19 year old, and instead of writing about it or talking about it like a smart person, I spray painted a three-foot Kid A bear on my studio apartment wall:


apartment-wall-kid-a-bear-1


And then got this on my wrist:


2072183466_7e46bca71f


I thought these were appropriate ways of saying you like an album. Not like, writing reviews or books about them or going to see shows. Someday I’ll outgrow these ways of showing I like an album/band, and find something else.

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Is Magnolia Bakery a landmark?

Look closely at this Google Map. Why is Magnolia Bakery on here like this? I wasn’t searching for it. Has it been given landmark status? If so, I would guess that it commemorates New York’s domestic immigrants, small town girls who come to New York seeking a better

Is Magnolia Bakery a landmark?

Look closely at this Google Map. Why is Magnolia Bakery on here like this? I wasn’t searching for it. Has it been given landmark status? If so, I would guess that it commemorates New York’s domestic immigrants, small town girls who come to New York seeking a better life through H&M, Gawker, no-wage internships, and vanilla on vanilla cupcakes. I used to eat that crap for dinner when I worked for CMJ Magazine ($15,000/yr+Metrocard discount).

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How I almost became a gossip blogger

This Idolator post reminded me of one of my almost-first New York writer jobs. I moved to NYC in 2005 not to find love, start a new life/career, or find myself, but to get out of Tucson. I love Tucson as a place, but as a collection of people

How I almost became a gossip blogger

This Idolator post reminded me of one of my almost-first New York writer jobs.

I moved to NYC in 2005 not to find love, start a new life/career, or find myself, but to get out of Tucson. I love Tucson as a place, but as a collection of people it was lacking. Nothing affirms this more than going back and seeing who’s stayed (minus half a dozen people).

I moved to NYC in 2005 with the same job I left in Tucson: my boss let me commute from across the country, which was very nice of him. But I did spend my free time applying for writerly jobs. I answered a post with the headline “Snarky writers with an interest in celebs and Pop Culture wanted.” It asked for a piece of celebrity news and one rant:

Okay so example no.247 that Courtney Love will put anything in her body—or not? Both she and Steve Coogan have been busy denying that she’s pregnant with his baby. And really, between the drugs, the drugs, the booze, the drugs and the court dates, when would she have the time? The same judge who ordered her one-month stay in rehab said he’s considering sentencing Love to a stay in a long-term rehab program, or possibly sending her to jail. He’ll have his chance when Love appears back in his courtroom on September 16. Frankly, I blame Frances Bean for all this. Frances, where have you been while your mother’s been falling apart and taking in seed from minor British comedians? Trying to have a childhood? Please.

My rant was on the diminishing quality of celebrity sex tapes (this was 2005, mind, when Chyna’s steroidily-enlarged vaginal region had just seen the LCD-light of day). The rant will not be posted here.

I found out what I was applying for when I received this response:

Hey Jessica,

I’m very interested.

The job doesn’t pay.

Is that okay??

P.

The “P” stood for Perez Hilton, whose name I had to Google. We debated over the level of ‘doesn’t pay”-edness involved: Could I go to parties? Get a byline? But I dropped it after I started working at CMJ. He was very polite but pretty firm on the lack of payment or credit of any kind, and, even then, I was pretty insistent on some kind of benefit for me (I was writing news for Pitchfork for free at the time, but that at least got me a byline).

Seeing as how his site still is his alone, in terms of its voice, and I don’t see any bylines (though I bet he farms out most of his posts), I think I made the right decision. It’s funny that he’s being talked up as some sort of tastemaker. I haven’t looked at Perez Hilton’s site in months.*

*Except, when Heath Ledger died.

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200 Motels

Right now I’m watching 200 Motels. I rented this movie my freshman year of high school, and I’ve rented it four or five times since then. I’m not a Frank Zappa fan, but I had a friend who was, and who recommended it to me. I remember

200 Motels

Right now I’m watching 200 Motels. I rented this movie my freshman year of high school, and I’ve rented it four or five times since then. I’m not a Frank Zappa fan, but I had a friend who was, and who recommended it to me. I remember thinking it was so bizarre and cool (like I thought a lot of ‘cult’ films, or at least films in the ‘cult’ section of Hollywood video, were). Seeing it again over ten years later, it’s actually no less weird, but a lot less cool.

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Midnight movies

In a few hours I’ll be leaving the apartment to get in line to see Spiderman. I got the tickets a few weeks ago. This will make Spiderman III the latest in a long line of movies I’ve insisted on seeing at midnight on opening day. Other films

Midnight movies

In a few hours I’ll be leaving the apartment to get in line to see Spiderman. I got the tickets a few weeks ago. This will make Spiderman III the latest in a long line of movies I’ve insisted on seeing at midnight on opening day. Other films include:

Spiderman II
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
The Matrix: Reloaded
The Matrix: Revolutions
Star Wars episode II: Attack of the Clones
Stars Wars episode III: The Revenge of the Sith
(Multiple Harry Potter films that I cannot remember)

I’m not sure why I like going to midnight shows. I never read Spiderman comic books, never read Tokion or played D&D. I didn’t even see the original Star Wars trilogy until after I saw the new movies. I was never into Meat Beat Manifesto or Nine Inch Nails, so I don’t have an excuse for the Matrix. But I am a fan of people who are fans of these movies. And you don’t get to see people dressed up as movie characters when you show up on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. Just the midnight showing.

Before I left Tucson and my brief Arizona Daily Star-related column got co-opted by other staffers, I wrote about waiting in line for 5+ hours to see Star Wars III, a pretty terrible movie. Together with waiting in line, seeing Star Wars took up 8 hours of that day. The last three hours weren’t great. But for the first five hours I stood in line watching couples dressed up as Jedi, and talking to kids who came at 5 a.m. with Star Wars Stratego and sleeping bags. This stuff is always better than the movie.

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Girls Gone Wild

This is a somewhat-old L.A. Times article about Joe Francis, the founder of Girls Gone Wild, and how he assaulted the writer outside of a night club. When I was a reporter for my college paper, I interviewed Joe Francis. Francis and his party bus and camera crew stopped

Girls Gone Wild

This is a somewhat-old L.A. Times article about Joe Francis, the founder of Girls Gone Wild, and how he assaulted the writer outside of a night club.

When I was a reporter for my college paper, I interviewed Joe Francis. Francis and his party bus and camera crew stopped at a local club (called, predictably, 8 Traxx) and looked for competition-worthy girls for the Girls Gone Wild national pageant. My town was just another regional stop (full of interchangable blonde sorority girls) on their way to nationals in Hollywood. It only took one email to the Girls Gone Wild website to get access to the event and Francis, a terrible and awkward surprise after I thought no one would answer an email sent to their general ‘questions and comments’ address.

Three photographers from the college paper came with me, even though one was more than enough (the staff was all male). So somewhere, in their archives, there’s a photo of me in a Girls Gone Wild mesh trucker hat, sitting on Joe Francis’s knee with a whiskey on ice in my hand. They normally never take photos of staff members while they’re out doing stories, but they couldn’t resist–mostly because they knew how embarrassed I was.

This L.A. Times article mentions how charming and pursuasive Francis can be, but I don’t know if there’s a way to explain it, really. I guess I was naive to think the same guy who’s gotten several thousand women to take off their tops on camera for no money wouldn’t try to steer the direction of the interview. Anyway, here’s my old college paper story. Now I’d appreciate it if someone could step forward with the photos, because I need something for my CMJ bio.