Unpaid Spokeswomen #17
Welcome to Unpaid Spokeswomen, a column where we log what we’ve been into this week. Behind the wigs, makeup, costumes, and several layers of irony, we are two humans who genuinely enjoy doing things. Here is a weekly roundup of our unfiltered expert recommendations.
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Trixie:
Oculus 2
It’s no secret that I, Terrance Martin, love video games. I have a PS5, a Nintendo Switch, and a tricked out gaming PC. Disappearing from my weary life as an international sex object is no easy feat; especially when that sex object has several businesses that need constant attention.
Last year, I did a quarantine show for a company I didn’t know much about called Oculus. I was told it was a VR headset and the whole thing seemed weird and fake. Nonetheless, I cashed the check and gave a fabulous performance with my band while very odd cameras filmed the show. As part of my contract with Oculus, I negotiated a set of VR goggles so I could watch the performance when it aired. I consider myself tech-savvy and rather connected to the video game world, but I really didn’t grasp was a VR experience would be like.
Cut to me obtaining my headset and putzing around my living room. This set retails at about $300 and let me tell you–it was worth every penny. The Oculus doesn’t have the graphics or fantasy that a PC or PS5 game has but the immersive nature of the experience truly transports you. I have made close friends via Oculus just from attending social outings! I quite enjoy it because no one knows I’m Trixie Mattel and I can go by my alter ego, Jade Roller. I recommend a few experiences:
Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners: super scary, immersive, compelling zombie game.
Resident Evil 4: one of the best Resident Evil games of all times has been ported as a VR game. Enough said.
Katya’s “Be Your Own Dentist”: very disturbing but very funny if you can get past the fact that you have to pull out your own teeth.
Surviving 9/11: a somber and terrifying experience that starts with watching the events of 9/11 and ends with compelling stories from survivors.
Sending Flowers
Hear me out–I love sending flowers.
Showing your appreciation through gift-giving can be a complicated web. You have the perfect gift in mind until you get to the checkout and your self-doubt shows up like an ex-girlfriend telling you that you are wrong. Suddenly you are second-guessing, third-guessing, and eventually fleeing the Target parking lot on foot even though your Honda is idling in the fire lane.
Enter flowers: beautiful, classic, endlessly customizable, and variably priced. Everyone feels special receiving flowers and people so uncommonly purchase them for themselves. My co-writer of GOOPED, Katya, notoriously hates receiving flowers. She finds them inconvenient and wasteful. I think they are romantic and timeless. Think about it! If you buy someone a gift, they have to love it enough to keep it forever. Typically they will regift it or throw it away at some point. Flowers have an expiration date and are incapable of overstaying their welcome in a home. The impermanence of this gift breeds appreciation.
And they go with any occasion. Baby? Flowers. Death? Flowers. Death of a baby? Flowers. I rarely forget receiving flowers and the best part of receiving my recent Critics Choice Award Nomination was waking up to flowers from my managers. Long live flowers, bitch.
Katya:
Laundry
Sniff, sniff. Sniff, sniff, sniff. Mmmm, what is that wonderful fragrance, you ask? Well, that my friend, is the scent of the freshly laundered items that I am currently folding right here on my living room floor. Why don’t you take your shoes off and join me on the rug, because I would love to talk to you for a few minutes. Something you might not know about me and something I only recently discovered about myself is that I actually love doing laundry. Unfortunately this love is limited to laundry alone as all other household chores inspire vigorous thoughts of murder and elaborate suicidal fantasies. As a prodigious sweater who exercises daily, and a notorious night-time drooler, I accumulate an impressive amount of washables that’ll have me wiggling to the communal laundry room up to 4 times a week! It would probably make a little more sense to just list my favorite detergents or dryer sheets or even the make and model of a washer and dryer, but I’m not going to do that because I don’t want to. I just love the process, and invite you to love it too. From the gathering of soiled items, sorting them into piles, throwing them in the washer, choosing a temperature, setting a timer and then opening the lid and catching the last whirring rotations of that marvelous spin-dry mechanism. My current place has only one washer and dryer to share among 6 units, and I quickly learned that the laundry culture runs deep and vicious when after leaving a load unattended for less than an hour, I found my wet clothes thrown all around the room and on the floor. Love that! So, now I set two different timers and really have come to appreciate the structured segments of time–21 minutes to wash, 42 minutes to dry, OR ELSE.. When the drying is done, then it’s really getting juicy as I dump everything on to the bed or floor to get folding. I’ll put my headphones in and listen to my favorite song on repeat and just get lost in the rhythm. Shorts, sweatpants, socks, shirts, hand towels, medium towels, beach towels, all my friends are there, cleaned up, smelling good and ready to be laid to rest and tucked away, just like the good old days back in Sicily.
Merrell Hydro Moc Water shoe
The nominees for ugliest shoe were all given a nasty water-proof kick in the pussy once these uggies stomped onto the scene. The classic style of a moccasin combined with the comfort and durability of a croc, these mocs are sure to knock off your panties and socks. Available in a hideous array of color assortments including rainbow and baby-shit, I chose the black and white, and they have quickly come to be my preferred choice of daily footwear. Soft, feather-light, and unbelievably comfortable, these rotten little kicks will charm the bunions right off your hooves. For a reasonable 50 bucks, these yuckies won’t break the bank, but are sure to strain some friendships.
My roommate and I were just arguing about flowers as a gift last night. She thinks they’re memorable and wonderful, and I hate them and think that even a bad gift is better than a gift that will die in 6 days. This was just the reminder I needed to go buy some for her birthday in a few days, even though I vehemently disagree with the sentiment.
I gotta say, I agree with the majority -- flowers suck. They don't do anything, and now I gotta keep them shits alive? There is something to be said about them though; although they're outrageously expensive for what is probably not even the same arrangement as advertised, sending flowers has saved me a number of times when gift-giving to someone I don't know well enough. But Trixie might be the first people I've ever heard enjoying receiving flowers. Keeping the LA Florists in business!