Unpaid Spokeswomen #5

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.

This week is all about the irresistible: fitness cults, pop music, and dessert.

Trixie:

Peloton: The spooky thing about cults is that they can really sneak up on you. My beautiful boyfriend David got a Peloton a couple years ago and seemed to really enjoy it. After a few hundred rides, he decided he preferred a treadmill and passed the cycle on to me as a hand-me-down. At first it was more of an alternative between marathons to burn calories and stay out of the heat, but soon I was seduced by the dizzying number of classes available to take anytime. Why would you go to an in-person exercise class when you can do it in your house anytime you want? I guess you have to pay a bunch of money for the bike and the membership, but since my boyfriend’s family owns a portion of this company, I invite you to please get into it because that might turn into better Christmas presents for me. As for the cult of Peloton, it’s pretty real. Soulcycle is soulcycle, Peloton is Zumba for adult gay men. Change my mind. 

“Rasputin” by Boney M:  How did a Jamaican musical group who was living in Germany come up with a euro-disco bop about Russian aristocratic drama? This song is sadly attached to a very annoying “Rasputin Challenge” Tik-Tok challenge, but standing alone, it is absolutely a banger. It sounds like if ABBA came out of the Soviet Union and competed on Eurovision. I recently was at Market Days Chicago and I was mid-sentence with my guitar player when the opening bars of Rasputin started playing. I mid-sentence ditched the convo and rushed the dance floor. I banged on the glass of the DJ booth and blew kisses at the poor disk jockey who was just trying to focus. Obviously I was completely turnt on tequila soda and so my response was especially passionate. Do yourself a favor and say “Alexa, play Rasputin by Boney M” and just wait for your life to begin.

Katya:

Where is that DAMN Baby? by Ayesha Erotica: It is no mystery that I love to wiggle, and certainly no fable that I love to giggle. What you might not be aware of is just how much I love to do both of these things together. My friend Sam sent me a Youtube link a few years ago to an insane suite of batshit-crazy hyperpop pussy-music and I recently re-discovered them on Spotify. I cannot tell you how many times I have uttered the phrase “bones stickin’ out, bones, bones stickin’ out” at random for no reason, because that number continues to climb every day without any end in the foreseeable future. This criminally brief high-concept EP is vulgar, shocking, offensive and has become one of my favorite musical projects ever created. It also doubles as an extremely effective pre-workout as it has roughly the same stimulant effect of ingesting 13 cups of coffee or 30 milligrams of adderall. She’s got a lot of other great tunes as well, so I highly recommend checking out the brilliant song “Literal Legend.”

Trader Joe’s Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Sandwiches: I famously don’t care much for eating. I’m so unreasonably picky when it comes to food and it’s an unrelatable feature of my life that keeps me perpetually annoyed and impossibly thin. But, when I discover a food product that is chemically engineered to hit the only three keys left in the dusty antique harpsichord that is my taste palette, I go berzerk. These tasty treats come in a pack of six and can languish in the freezer for weeks. Did I mention tasty? They’re fucking delicious, and I love them and no they’re very unhealthy and you should probably not eat them but I don’t care. To paraphrase the hedonistic devil character portrayed by Jack Nicholson in the movie the Witches of Eastwick: “Why are these old people busting their balls to stay fit? When I die, I wanna be sick.”