A Love Letter To Very Famous!
Five years ago today, Valentine’s Day, I pressed publish on veryfamousmagazine.com during my lunch break at, randomly, a Greek yogurt shop. I was working at the time as a writer for an online retailer run by a French man and, more or less, two blonde women, and I was so relieved to have Very Famous. I am still relieved, even when I lapse, which is more often that I’d like! It is always a relief to have your own world to crawl into.
Very Famous has helped me express myself, even when those expressions are in my scattered little notes-to-self that only I see. A quote that I love because of its cool, funny, glamorous mystery is this one from an LA Times obituary for Jackie Collins. The quote is from an unnamed 1987 interview she did where she was asked about her research methods. She said: “This would be an example of things I write down in my notebook…It says ‘Mercedes deal.’ ‘Horror in bedroom.’ ‘Necking every two minutes’ ‘Pornographer.’”
These phrases were in mine (not at Spago and in the Notes app): “the rainstorm at the Rainforest cafe” “Do you boat currently?” and “Abstract Victoria’s Secret” (Wish I could remember what that last one was about ⛵) I’ve always tried to capture the feeling I get from being exhilarated by the mystery of a place, and it’s way easy to avoid writing when that feeling feels hard to reach. My favorite things I write tend to come on the heels of a) a trip to a casino b) a trip to the Kyle Flea Market in Kyle, Texas c) having the right combination of Starbucks and sun.
I don’t necessarily have that excited feeling right now, and I am going to make peace with that. If I were starting out as a 21-year-old journalist-flavored writer today I don’t know what the fuck I would be doing. I started out writing for xoJane in 2013, and that was the last time I was purely delighted by the potential of a future in mainstream digital media! Should seen the writing on the wall when I went viral for writing a “My Boyfriend Dressed Me For A Week” piece that I had been assigned. It was literally the most attention I’ve gotten to this day. Very Famous was a reaction to that feeling of “oh god this isn’t what I thought it would be!” Something I read recently stood out to me, this sentiment from writer Dean Kissick’s last column for Spike.
…the unravelling of one of the most frustrating strange paradoxes of media today: we’re told every morning that life is miserable and hideous, which it’s not, and also that culture is high-quality and life-affirming, which is plainly ridiculous. This is breathtakingly diabolical because the opposite is true: life is still beautiful, it’s culture that’s in the doldrums.
Over the last five years, things have developed in a way I’m not entirely familiar with — there are endless whorls on TikTok I only know the fingernails of. The Y2K aesthetic that felt fresh to me when I started with Very Famous feels, admittedly, less fresh to me now, but I also love what it symbolizes. Plus, things are so quick and circular now anyhow. Visuals have dominated the last 10 years, but I think writing is making a comeback because words can always convey mystery and uncertainty.
I don’t necessarily think culture is in the doldrums, but I do think we’re in a snake-eating-its-tail atmosphere. What could possibly shake us out of this now? Landlines or writing or roller-skating on a boardwalk or DVDs or just getting martinis together? But the future is also here! Party City, for instance, is a perfect name for a business. Asphalt syllables, declarative image — a city FOR partying. They filed for bankruptcy in January at least in part because they couldn’t quite figure out how people partied now.
That’s what I feel like I’m trying to figure out, and I do think people want a party — it’s easy to look to the past and images we recognize but don’t entirely *know* for that. Nostalgia will be an inevitable part of things because it’s just in our DNA now. But I’m very curious to know what the future looks like, and I think it begins with things that have a little mystery to them, immersive physical worlds that are a little messy, textured, grungy sometimes, opaque corners. The more things we can touch, the better! Very Famous, even when I wished it weren’t, has always been slow, and I think it will continue to be. Thank you so much for reading and sending things that make you think of us. Below are some of our favorite enterprising ventures. Might I recommend spending a little time with things that have a glamorous, mysterious intrigue to you!
There’s something around the corner I can feel it!
Club Libby Lu For Ultimate American Girls by Kelsey Lawrence
A version of the Libby Lu experience today might offer ring lights and, as Collins and I hypothesized, an emptily modern L.A. mansion. He talks about experiential retail in the late 90s and early 2000s as a huge fad when people had money to burn on their wacky ideas. A submarine restaurant is one example, along with concepts like Rainforest Cafe or virtual reality theme parks. “It’s all about treating the customer, giving them a storyline,” he explains. People were less fearful of themes for a while there.
All the Pretty Horse Girls by Taylor Prewitt
But I think there’s a darker underbelly to the horse girl too. Girls do grow up. In the same way the ponytail, a popular teen hairstyle in the 1950s, named for the horse’s tail, was thought to evoke innocence and eroticism in the wearer, so too does the horse girl straddle the line between little girl fantasy and an obsession that reads as more sinister on a grown woman, at least in this world.
300(ish) Words on Gamboling With Trisha Paytas by Jasmine Ledesma
I want Trisha to be there by my bedside as I fade from the spotlight, straddled in hospital cottons and gone dim with final doses of Phenobarbital A television on mute behind their head playing reruns of Dr. Phil season thirty six. Holding my hand in their bear-claw acrylics. Chewing gum infused with CBD and honeycomb. Mascara gone bad.
It’s 3 p.m…in Las Vegas, Nevada by Kelsey Lawrence
“WHAT ELSE DO YOU WANT FROM ME, CHASE?” a blonde, bobbed woman screamed at Chase, who stood six feet away from her at baggage claim. This began my four nights and three days in Las Vegas, Nevada! I meant to do a 3 p.m. scene report from one specific destination, but honestly I forgot. Hours blurred together as I was being transported up moving walkways to The Venetian’s European ambiance, watching Shania Twain’s dancers shoot out of a top hat, losing the $20 I won at bingo in the Poconos on Vegas slot machines, taking one “Mystery Shot” for $3, and being cattle-herded into clubs with the usual icy names like Omnia and Marquee.
