We are back, dear readers, after a much needed one-week hiatus! (It sounds cliché at this point, but the month really did fly by.) We hope you enjoy, and as always, please like, comment, subscribe, etc. if you feel so moved!
Forecast
Random predictions so we can say we told you so if they turn out to be true
One word for you: HitClips. The miniature boomboxes of the early 2000s that I mistakenly called HipClips, because I’d hook it onto my belt loop. When you Google “HitClips,” the question with the highest volume of search is, “What was the point of HitClips?” Wikipedia wins the SEO war for this one: the algorithm pulls the answer from this article, saying, “HitClips is a digital audio player created by Tiger Electronics that plays low-fidelity mono one-minute clips of usually teen pop hits from exchangeable cartridges. It first launched in August 2000 with 60-second microchip songs featuring Britney Spears, NSYNC, and Sugar Ray.”
I love HitClips for the same reason I will never scroll past a video of someone using tiny appliances to cook a miniscule meal that no one will eat—it’s not about the consumption, it’s about feeling like you’re playing pretend again. Using my little fingers to pinch a one inch wide cartridge and slide it into the HitClip player was probably as close as I’ll ever get to the lived experience of a Polly Pocket.
The internet is filled with remembrances and outdated takes on the early aughts relic, but they are all underestimating the cultural relevance of this toy-cum-audio player. Listening to the same 60 seconds of a hyper popular song over and over? Babe, that’s the entire basis of many a TikToker’s self-made multi-million-dollar careers. Sure, the sound quality has improved, the same way most phones now have cameras as good or better than many DSLRs, but the concept of a HitClip? Falling into the comfort of a few seconds of a song you love, and listening until the mere thought of it drives you crazy or sends you into a nostalgia fever dream? There’s no expiration date on that. Whether flip phone carrying Gen Zers dredge them up from the depths of eBay or Tiger Electronics does a limited run re-release, I don’t know how and I don’t know exactly when, but I do know HitClips are making a comeback.
— Sofia
One good read
Part of a nutritious media diet
I’ve long been a fan of writer and advice columnist John Paul Brammer, but I was blown away by his recent personal essay tracing the trajectory and merits of the genre itself. At the beginning of his own career as an essayist, Brammer, writes,
I discovered that the self was made of wet, elastic clay, able to take on many different shapes and forms, and that there were rewards to be had for those who could style it in a way that was pleasing to others. I learned that, in personal writing, as is the case in fiction, people primarily show up to see themselves.
The essay is frank, deeply thoughtful, and genuinely revelatory — in short, an excellent personal essay. It’s also peppered with hilarious faux clickbait headlines like “I Found Chicana Joy in Selena Quintanilla’s Music. Even Though Yolanda Saldivar Was My Cousin.” I can’t recommend it strongly enough. — Katey
If you haven’t subscribed to Katey’s own newsletter, what are you doing? My one good read is her mini essay on Taylor Swift’s new album (The Tortured Poets Department, in case you didn’t already know) and in particular, the lyric, “I’m the girl of his American dreams” — which, for Mitski fans, instantly echoes of her yearning ballad “Your Best American Girl.” I admit, I wept on the subway to Taylor’s new album, but mostly because of a well-timed breakup and because that’s kind of a fun thing to do in New York. But Katey’s essay made me feel glossy-eyed and seen in a way even the headmaster of The Tortured Poets Department giving her stand-on-a-desk call to arms could never. — Sofia
I have a problem with that
Gripes and moans
Not once but twice in the last two weeks I’ve gotten into a NYC yellow cab and the driver shamelessly handed me his phone and asked — nay, demanded — that I plug in my destination in Google Maps for him. I always assumed a sense of direction and knowledge of the city’s layout were prerequisites for being a cab driver, but no! Apparently you don’t even have to know that Manhattan is a grid system! I found this more disheartening than I can express; when I, famously directionally challenged, have a better sense of direction than my cab driver, there’s a problem. What is the point of a cab as opposed to an Uber if you can’t slide into one and coolly give your cross streets? Who is going to smugly explain to transplants that it’s pronounced “Howston” and not Houston St. (and thus save them from further embarrassment) if they can simply type it silently into the GPS? There’s nothing glamorous about plugging an address into someone else’s grubby phone, and I for one resent the erosion of yet another New York classic.
— Katey