First, thanks for your patience — and screengrabs and links — about the weird ad issue we’ve been having. So far, it SEEMS to be predominantly if not entirely a Chrome problem? (I stopped using Chrome because I swear my PC is rigged for it to run poorly and sluggishly and force me onto Microsoft Edge, and unfortunately it worked.) Our ad folks have been trying really hard to sort out what’s gone wonky, and said they tweaked a ton of settings in the last two days to make the ad unit behave. If it happens for you again… I know people hate when I suggest this, because it means you have to log into sites again that had been remembering you, but: Clearing the cache sincerely may help because it can get rid of any hangovers from before those changes were pushed through. And if it STILL does it, then we know our fixes haven’t worked. Thank you so much for being patient. We don’t want to lose you! Our intent is NEVER to make the site any more annoying than our natural personalities already do.
– HALLELUJAH. The WGA strike is over, and by all accounts, the deal they got is excellent and groundbreaking — in that they got concessions and/or inclusions of every single thing they were told would NEVER even be CONSIDERED by the AMPTP. Variety breaks down the deal here, and The Hollywood Reporter chronicled the party atmosphere at the big WGA meeting to present it to the membership. Congratulations to the negotiating committee, and to the union membership for never wavering even when things looked and felt so bleak. Now do the actors!!! (Supposedly, they’re sitting down on Monday. GET ‘EM, FRAN.)
– Noted Good Egg Drew Carey apparently spent half a million bucks out of his own pocket during the strike, as part of his offer to pay for WGA members’ meals at Bob’s Big Boy in Burbank (which is near Warner Bros). [Consequence.net]
– You almost certainly heard the good news that Moonlighting is finally coming to streaming. via Hulu. We have the DVDs, and were just watching it the other day, and I lamented that there was no point in writing it up for Drinks With Broads because nobody else could join in the fun unless they ALSO had the DVDs. NOT SO ANY LONGER. I cannot wait for everyone to rediscover the chaos. [TV Line]
– If you’ve been inundated with Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce content… well, that may not be ending anytime soon, as the Chiefs play the Jets in New York this weekend and there’s a chance Taylor will go. [Lainey Gossip]
– I liked this line in the Pajiba piece that is, at its core, about Dax Shepard pulling the “just asking questions” bullshit about trans kids in an interview with Jonathan Van Ness (who is non-binary): “As someone who’s always felt Shepard has the same insincere youth pastor energy as his fellow transphobe Zachary Levi, I feel they can join Jordan Peterson, Andrew Tate, and Joe Rogan on the manosphere slag heap.”
– This whole concept made me giggle: With the spinoff The Continental premiering, The Ringer ranked all of John Wick’s 415 kills. Don’t worry, they have to group several of them — like, “404-372. Ridiculously easy headshots (all four films).” Also, now I’m sad that The Continental is not, as my brain wants it to be, a show about Christopher Walken’s SNL character. Wowie wow wow!
– The Ringer was on fire this week, actually. There’s also a piece on the unexepctedly hot market for vintage Nirvana merch, and an oral history of the making of Stop Making Sense, the famed Talking Heads movie that is back in theaters this weekend.
— This piece about being a freelance prison journalist, and the history and occasional/potential current legal challenges to the profession, was written for Esquire by a freelance prison journalist.
– WaPo considers “Why People Are Weird About Taylor Swift Dating The Football Man” and in the process rips an anti-Taylor Federalist essay: “There are many reasons it’s foolish to compare anyone to the Beatles, but I’ll skip writing my own long essay and just briefly note the irony that the Federalist’s critic finds it tiresome to listen to a woman describe how she feels but illuminating to listen to how a man describing how he imagines a woman feeling.” [gifted link]
– Vulture did a juicy, and also sad, deep-dive into Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting attempting to sue Paramount over Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo & Juliet — in which both were naked and underage, and Hussey’s nipple was shown on-screen — and the long and strange trip their lives have taken since, the man pushing them to make it happen. It made me worried for Hussey and the people she lets into her life, and also Zeffirelli sounded like a monster and it DOES seem like they need more compensation for how enduring that film and its imagery has been, PLUS it’s a super argument for the present-day existence of intimacy coordinators, and also SHE WAS 15, etc. [I’m sorry I don’t have a gifted link for this, but if you haven’t read Vulture in a while, it should work for you, or you can paste it into an incognito browser window.]
– It’s happening: NBC Universal handed Julia Fox her own fashion competition show. I hate the name. But maybe it’ll all be so weird and whimsical that it’ll work?
– Entertainment Weekly reports that Christina Aguilera is producing a musical based on her movie Burlesque. I am here for this.
– Dovetailing with that, Jia Tolentino sat down with Julia for The New Yorker to talk about her life, and her forthcoming book, in which Julia says, “I am so over Julia Fox.” (I know some of you will relate to that.) She is a very forthcoming interview subject.
– Can you resist a Texas Monthly story called The Big Penis War?
– Pose’s Angelica Ross spoke up about working with Ryan Murphy — in the wake of revealing that Emma Roberts intentionally misgendered her on the American Horror Story set — and then announced she’s quitting Hollywood to go into politics in Georgia. Hollywood will miss her, and Georgia is lucky. [THR]
– ICMYI: On this site this week, we hollered about Vanity Fair Italia’s trifold supermodel cover, got crushes on Marcia Gay Harden, celebrated the beginning of Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers, lamented Timothy Olyphant’s bleach job, shared our Holy Grail makeup removers (timely, because I need a new one) and otherwise covered a variety of fashion shows and hilarious front rows like Marni’s. It felt good to have so much going on, with — hopefully — only more to come.
– And in Drinks With Broads, we did a special freebie on Monday for Only Murders In The Building speculation — if that gets a fourth season, we’ll have to cover it for real — and then another free issue Tuesday that ran down a variety of celeb dating rumors, my favorite Jeopardy! category in a while, and Lady Mary’s real-life wedding in Slut’s Hole. Paid subscribers got to read more about the Vanity Fair Italia supermodel covers (this time the individual ones), the gift shop at the House of Seven Gables, and my admission that Kim Kardashian is kind of delightful on American Horror Story: Delicate, which is otherwise not enjoyable at all.
