predictive sext 001
brat, new york city & bruce labruce
welcome to predictive sext. fortnightlyish, ben (comic, writer, undiagnosed socialite & bestie) will be asking is this thing on? and hanging out to discuss topics du jour: the latest in pop culture, what we’ve been consuming and our lives. kinda like a podcast. kinda like a text thread. definitely like an exercise in hubris, but hey, isn’t everything?
your cohosts <3
joss: what’s this then?
ben: the first gay man and bi girl creative partnership in human history
joss: i think i would be quoting ms charli xcx if i were to say that it’s hard being so ahead
ben: shall we get straight into it, your sent from my iphone stans can keep up, can’t they?
joss: they’re all the winning combo of hot and smart. something you know a little about
ben: are you flirting? joss we’ve talked about this.
joss: sorry, sorry
okay so are we saying brat is aoty? I’m definitely saying at least marketing roll out of the year. I have such a boner for it all
ben: the lead up to brat did feel electric, didn’t it? i love how charli begs the question, what if a famous person was cool? there were moments in the roll-out, i must admit, where she lent perhaps too heavily into the “i only make music for faggots haha they do poppers” territory, but she really did stick the landing
joss: lolling
i know what you mean, but I think what i am so obsessed with is the whole brat universe. she’s made herself so accessible, is interacting so heavily with fans. the boiler room, the press, the party appearances. it’s actually more surprising we haven’t seen her around london than if we had at this stage. she’s got her hotline, she’s got her iconic poster walls, she’s got the brat generator, she’s doing screenings of all the films that inspired the album. she’s now synonymous with that slime green and that font. there’s so many touch points.
ben: totally. i think it’s all been mostly great and the album is so fab and fun, so much so she confidently gets away with some pretty terrible lyrics. however, I will jump if a.g made it!
joss: god yeah. but i feel like there’s a freedom in the brazen tackiness of them. like, she’s not tryna be all lana del rey about it. she’s making pop music and she knows it. reminds me of that part in your interview with babymorocco where he said it’s so much easier to write serious music then pop, because with pop you’re so focussed on making it catchy and sticky
ben: thank you sooooo much for mentioning my interview. transferring you 100 quid and vacuuming your room was so worth it. pop music should be simple and immediate, which can be hard, famously. anywho - i heard from a little birdy you just just back from the big apple? did you take a bite? how sweet was it?
joss: an apple a day keeps the doctor away because you can’t afford health care because everything is literally so expensive or whatever the expression is
but it was a dream. accidentally paid $25 for a glass of orange wine plus tip. my room was literally the size of a rat cage: the bed was just as long as me and if i stretched out one and a half arms i could touch both sides of the room. i couldn’t even go vitruvian man on that bitch! now that’s what i call cosy! i’m so obsessed. people were literally doing the jive on the street. i was like new york is sooooo new york. no one has ever danced on the street in london. i need to move, like, yesterday.
ben: wow, jealousy is a disease and honey I’m sick! when i went to new york when i was 19 by myself i remember feeling the same way. especially when i got fish-hooked with a pill by a stranger at elsewhere. non-consensual drug giving is not fun but this time it was!
joss: okay 365 party girl!
shall we do a little key? shall we have a little line?
ben: we could be days away from partying and drug-taking seeming cringe after the comedown from this album. you can’t make the rave mainstream without some consequences!
joss: the goddamn trend cycle giveth and it taketh away
i want someone to propose to me with everything is romantic in a lemon orchard with my name as a tramp stamp on their back
ben: i want to get out of my overdraft :(
joss: i guess we’re both waiting for hell to freeze over then
ben: i think the real test of brat’s staying power is if djs will actually play the music at the parties that brat is supposed to embody. has she reached total cultural push through, or will the metaphorical bouncers behind the decks not let brat in?
joss: okay philosophy! i don’t think she’s reached total cultural breakthrough, no. i think she’s cleverly made a lot of the songs with great sound bites that you could pepper throughout your set without necessarily plugging the full song in. but i can imagine a queer-adjacent headsy chin stroker feeling a little fruity and putting a little 365 in a set. i don’t think, like, reptant will be fucking with the album though
ben: everyday i strive to present as queer-adjacent. my life’s work
is it literally so embarrassing that we’ve spent the first version of this column ruminating in detail how we are the arbiters of partying and the club? cringe! oh well, anything that I say or have said in this column is hearsay, btw
i do agree that brat will sneak-in, perhaps in the back door (NOT A GAY JOKE).
joss: we’ve reached peak braturation
ben: anything else on your radar jossalina? i watched this fabu bruce labruce film the other night with mi amore called hustler white. it was incoherent and sexy and scary! it presented a strong argument for always being shirtless in public. i long for the summer and i'm scared london won’t give it to us
joss: incoherent? shirtless in public? sounds like a saturday night at adonis, no? pray do tell!
ben: incoherent in the sense it jumped from insane sex scene to scene with little introduction to the characters, but its kaleidoscopic look at la hustler culture in the 90s kept me gripped! see below re: argument for being s in p
joss: i hate to say it, but the whole 15 degrees halfway through june thing is not looking good for a s in p summer babe. buttttt, hang around hackney downs long enough, there might be a peak of sunshine and before you know it everyone’s hustling those shirts off quick smart.
ben: I know where you’ll be babe
joss: perverts unite
mwa!