Happy Sunday, readers! Depending on where you live you may have “sprung forward” last night—Hannah is still trying to understand what this means but thinks it's the not-good one (Team Same Time, All the Time forever).

Anyways, there’s nothing to take your mind off the Sunday Scaries like reading about Grimes and what’s going on in her life. Daysia breaks down some new facts we learned about the singer in her recent interview with Vanity Fair (surprise baby is just the tip of the iceberg!). Meanwhile, Hannah makes some recommendations—YouTube, books, and movies.

We’ll be back on Friday with more pop culture takes.

Happy reading,

<3

Daysia and Hannah

This Week's Fixations

Daysia: Grimes having a secret second child with Elon Musk is only one strange part of that unhinged Vanity Fair interview.

The couple welcomed Exa Dark Sideræl in December, and Grimes accidentally let it slip after inviting the reporter into her home. After reading the whole profile, I felt there were so many more points that made me scratch my head. Musk and Grimes’ relationship is just as perplexing as that one time Grimes admitted that she exclusively ate spaghetti and meatballs for two years. Which, now that I think about it, might have been a troll? But maybe not. Idk, she’s an enigma! Some other notable moments of the story include:

• Elon Musk, billionaire extraordinaire, refused to buy a new mattress for himself and Grimes, despite there being a hole on her side.

• Grimes and Musk call each other “c” and “E” respectively, which is unsurprising. But Grimes also calls Musk “bro,” which I absolutely hate!

• Musk sometimes asks Grimes if she’s a simulation… made to be his perfect partner… which is just… fresh for someone who seems like a robot himself.

• A reminder that Grimes is just as brilliant as Musk!

• Grimes lied about getting experimental surgery to remove blue light from her visual spectrum. I believed it 100% up until yesterday!

Amid all that chaos, apparently news broke that Grimes and Chelsea Manning are now together? Life moves fast, y’all!

Hannah: I was interested in watching The Batman, and I’m not going to pretend it was for any other reason than Robert Pattinson and Zoë Kravitz. I had all the intentions of going to watch it until a friend reminded me of the runtime. The Batman clocks in at 2 hours 56 minutes and that’s about 56 minutes too long for me right now.

Instead here’s a list of what I have been watching and reading that is approximately the same length as The Batman:

• Robert Pattinson and Zoë Kravitz doing promo for The Batman (I need 2 hours 56 minutes of them badly answering questions about each other). Bonus: their Entertainment Weekly cover lives in my head rent free.

• All of the YouTube! I’m embracing my younger years and have dipped back into YouTube. I have enjoyed Priya Krishna’s “On the Job” series on the NYT Cooking channel (around 43 minutes for all three episodes), Sebastian Stan’s episode of “Hot Ones” (23 minutes), and rewatching all the figure skating routines from the Winter Olympics—the Gala Exhibition clocks in at 10 minutes less than The Batman and is probably infinitely more fun.

• With 2 hours 56 minutes, you can probably make a decent dent in Sarah J. Maas’s House of Earth and Blood, the author’s adult fantasy debut (she’s known for her YA Throne of Glass and A Court of Thorns and Roses series). If you’re a fan of Leigh Bardugo, Maggie Stiefvater, or Kristin Cashore then you’ll probably like House of Earth and Blood. It’s fantasy but takes place in a world that is similar to our reality in terms of technology. And although there is every so often a change in character POV, I found that I genuinely didn’t mind because all the characters were interesting. My one mistake was not starting one of her other (completed) series first because now I’m stuck waiting for book three to come out.

• All of the movies I have watched recently have a way shorter runtime than The Batman: if you want a movie that makes you never want to take another vacation watch The Lost Daughter (Netflix, 2 hrs 1 min); if you want something heartwarming CODA did make me tear up (Apple TV+, 1 hr 51 mins); and if you’re looking for something funny and family-centric try The Adam Project (Netflix, 1 hr 46 mins).

And I’m not saying I won’t ever watch The Batman it just will probably be a little while before I do.

Has Lorde Dropped a New Album?

Lorde is in Vogue Australia! And she’s beautiful.

ICYMI: Hilary Duff took Vanity Fair’s lie detector test and revealed that she didn’t like all the music she released (an honest queen!). Hopefully she wasn’t talking about the gem of an album, Metamorphosis, which includes her iconic bop, “Come Clean.”

Too Many Tabs

Devin Gordon’s profile of Grimes for Vanity Fair (mentioned in Daysia’s fixation) really is something that can’t be missed, including the background on her almost-involvement with Dune and how the movie feels like her life.

For Vulture, Alison Wimore reviews Pixar’s Turning Red, a film “about a Chinese Canadian mother and child…neither dutiful in its treatment of them nor loaded down by obligations to meet the impossible expectations of a whole disparate demographic of viewers.”

Shirley Li speaks to film historians about the implications of Hollywood’s boycott of Russia in response to the ongoing war in Ukraine for The Atlantic.

Plus… Josh Peck joins the stacked cast of Christopher Nolan’s latest project, “he’s not a cowboy; he’s an actor”, the verdict of Jussie Smollett’s trial, SNL’s cold open inspired by a Taylor Lorenz piece, and please give us more acceptance speeches like this.