the vibes are off, but is it august's fault?
Between Covid, climate change and anti-vaxxers, late summer 2021 just ain’t hitting right.
Queering the Burbs is a weekly-ish distillation of pop culture, politics and queerness. If you like what you see, please consider subscribing (it’s free!), liking or sharing this piece.
I’ve never had strong feelings about the month of August.
Sure, as a pale goth whose favorite activities are exclusively indoors, I do tend to prefer the cooler fall months, and I do find the extreme heat and unstable weather that typically accompanies the last gasp of summer pretty unbearable overall. But there’s typically also plenty else to appreciate from the height of Leo season — some of my closest friends have had beautiful weddings in August that I cherish the memory of, and three of my favorite humans — my husband, his twin sister and Tori Amos — were all born this month as well.
But something feels decidedly off this go-around of the eighth month of the year. I think this tweet from The New Yorker’s Rachel Syme captures it perfectly:
Of course, none of the above is explicitly exclusive to this year, and August has a long history of being problematic as hell. The so-called “dog days” of summer (a period said to cover early July through mid-August) are named after the rising of Sirius (the Dog Star) and have origins that date back to the ancient Greek and Roman times. According to The Old Farmer’s Almanac, the dog days are associated not only with heat and unpredictable weather, but also bad luck and unrest.
Still, given everything that is going on right now — the uncertainty surrounding the delta variant, the rising number of children hospitalized for Covid, the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, the never-ending extreme weather thanks to climate change, the fact that even Trump is getting booed by his own supporters for telling them to get vaccinated — it should be no shock that there’s plenty of ennui and aloofness going around right now.
I’m feeling it deeply. When I’m not working at my full-time job, I find myself unable to focus on my various side projects and am also having a hard time finding the motivation to do things like cook, tend to our overflowing garden or exercise. Instead, I’ve been surrendering to the mindless pleasures of the Hilton-Richards Cinematic Universe (specifically the current season of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, early seasons of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills on Peacock, and Netflix’s Cooking With Paris) and spending a lot of time returning to my early-pandemic routine of doom-scrolling and general panicking.
We also just canceled a planned trip to Oregon in September. Is now really the time to fly for pleasure, I wonder? For us, the answer was no. But if we don’t have some sort of pleasure to look forward to, what exactly lies ahead besides the endless march of more of the same?
To be honest, I’m pretty freaked out about what the fall could bring. I’m freaked out for all of our friends and family who have children starting back to school — are their families truly safe given the way the delta variant appears to be impacting more children? Nobody can really say for certain. I’m freaked out for our friends working in industries like events, live music and nightlife — will they be forced out of work once again once more socializing returns the indoors in the cooler months, feeding a surge of the virus? Nobody knows. Will booster shots, once administered, prove actually prove effective against this variant, or the next one or the next? Again, we don’t know.
In a way, it feels like we’ve gone right back to square one. I don’t have answers, and I don’t know who does. But if you’re feeling exhausted and frustrated right now, just know that that is perfectly OK. And if it helps to feel like there’s someone to blame — let’s just say it’s all August’s fault.
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BRING ON THE LINKS (what I’m reading, watching, listening to and thinking about this week):
First off, on the local front, several friends of the newsletter have big things coming out: Batavia’s very own poet witch Annie Hex just published her latest book, Ungrabbable, and it’s available for purchase from her website. Also, the Paramount Theatre’s run of Kinky Boots just had its first weekend of shows, so don’t forget to get your tickets and support the ongoing queerening of the ‘burbs.
Last week, country icon Carrie Underwood liked a tweet from right-wing sicko Matt Walsh featuring his anti-mask speech in front of the Nashville school board. Author Lauren Hough had the perfect tweet for the occasion.
Anne Helen Petersen writes one of my favorite newsletters (Culture Study) and she just published her second dispatch in a series of essays she is writing on the cultish qualities of Peloton, its instructors and its users. This one focused on the fully embargoed, five-day wedding of one of its star instructors, Ally Love.
RuPaul’s Drag Race alum Willam is getting his own gay court show styled after Judge Judy, and it’s premiering Monday on OutTV’s Apple TV+ channel (which apparently is a thing?). This looks terrible, and I’ll be watching.
Vulture just published an incredible longread called “The Spine Collector” detailing an unsolved mystery currently playing out in the publishing industry. The tl;dr (though you should still read it): For at least five years, a still-unidentified individual has been stealing high-profile manuscripts before their publication date — seemingly for no reason.
H&M appears to be leaning hard into Victorian funeral dresses for the fall.. but I’m not mad about it? It’s giving AHS: Coven for sure.
Reese Witherspoon publicly called out Laura Dern for not picking up her FaceTime call in a now-viral Instagram post, and Dern responded (hours later) with a three-second video where she simply exclaimed “What?!” This is beyond, but I’m fully invested in this wine-mom nonsense and I need more details.
CNN was supposed to air a live concert called “We Love NYC” from Central Park last night, but it got shut down mid-Barry Manilow’s set due to heavy rains arriving ahead of Tropical Storm Henri. CNN still had plenty of airtime to fill, and Patti Smith helped them make the most of it by sharing a passionate plea on our climate crisis that the channel stupidly hasn’t officially released on its own platform. Watch the conversation with Anderson Cooper here:
Last night was another one of my brilliant pal Ruth’s Zoom dance parties and she, once again, pulled out some bangers and deep cuts, including this track from a U.K. band named Wet Leg. The song is called “Chaise Longue” and it reminds me of mid-aughts electroclash like Peaches, Le Tigre or CSS. Enjoy!