This cover is very appealing. This sounds like a backhanded compliment, but I don’t mean it thusly: I really like that Alana Haim looks like a real, singular person here (well, she looks like her sisters, but you know what I mean). A very attractive person, to be sure! But so many celebs sort of look alike nowadays — I think because they’re all doing the same brows and a lot of them opt to get the same veneers, whereas when you watch movies from even twenty years ago, everyone still has more or less their own teeth. (Was it Nancy Myers who posted on Insta a few months ago that she misses real teeth? I’m with you, Nanc.) Alana Haim’s natural teeth are cute and I am glad she has them. (I also love Kirsten Dunst for keeping her tiny lil’ snaggletooth, it’s so cute.) It’s fun to see a celebrity on the cover of a glossy mag who looks like your groovy neighbor. I do think the above cover, which I believe is the newsstand one, is better — or at least more magazine-y — than this one:
The photo itself, actually, is good. I love the lighting. But the ribbed knit catsuit? To be worn in front of other people? CANNOT STAND! COULD NOT IT BE A DRESS?
The profile is really good! (Although it also just taught me that the Valley Du-par’s is now a Sephora, which is a bummer even though I obviously enjoy Sephora, and they’re DEMOLISHING THE SPORTSMEN’S LODGE? I’m sorry, I need to go look this up. I appreciate that HB assigned an Angeleno to write this piece, and more specifically one from the San Fernando Valley. [I personally am from the other valley, the San Gabriel Valley, which is not the Valley. LA is very large and we are Valley-specific out here.] Thank you for living through this very niche sidebar.) I have not seen Licorice Pizza, which I know has been divisive. But it’s enjoyable to read a piece about a person who really enjoys being at a deli — again, this sounds like a backhanded compliment but I cannot tell you enough how much I enjoy delis myself, so I felt seen — and overall, Alana just comes across like a person who would make a very reasonable and responsible neighbor. I also liked this bit:
As for what it takes to date the real Alana Haim? “I’m looking for my Albert Brooks, and I’ve been saying that forever.” Her favorite movie of his is 1991’s Defending Your Life. “If you’re like Albert Brooks, I am here for you. That’s all I care about.” He also has to be good at long distance: “If he’s okay with me constantly being on the road, constantly touring. That’s the hardest thing. I mean, I’m always gone.” She was in love once, around a decade ago, and says it was an issue of “timing,” but she’s grateful for the experience. “I feel like that first love is just so deeply intense. The first cut is the deepest. All the songs are true, and you never have a love like that ever again. I think that’s a thing that’s kind of sad about it. Once you have that first love that cuts you so deeply, you never will feel that deeply ever again.” After that, she says, you build up walls.
Anyone who’s looking for her Albert Brooks is okay by me. (Although my personal fave is obviously Broadcast News, you don’t want to date anyone in that movie other than Jane!)
