Unpaid Spokeswomen #7

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:

Grindr

We walk around with a gay bar in our pockets FOR FREE. Gay people used to rely on freshly shined loafers or gratuitous use of cologne to identify each other. Now we basically have the Gaydar version of Pokémon go in our pockets. (How did they not originally call it Gaydar?) Not to age myself but I remember when Grindr entered the scene. We were all using Craigslist to post headless nudes hoping to find a suitor or at least rehome an unwanted coffee table. Suddenly we could find hookups with proximity as a variable. You could easily walk a block for the just-okay dick or you could splurge on an UberX for that lit but faraway suburban dad dick. Even though we all take it for granted, I can’t help but feel like the first brick thrown at Stonewall was in the name of the gay sex apps to come. Also one time I worked Grindr’s Christmas party and they asked “Can Trixie wear red and have employees sit on her lap?” I said I would wear white and no one could touch me and they said “okay.” I proceeded to spend Christmas drinking tequila and giving away iPads from a giant velvet sack. Best gig ever.

Vanderpump Rosé

Red wine is for alcoholics, white wine is for prudes, and rosé is for the woman who is ready to live deliciously with Black Phillip the satanic goat. To be fair, I am a fan of all rosé wines so the Vanderpump Rose was an easy sell. (I love Babe Rosé specifically-it comes in a can!) But when I started having regular dinner dates at PUMP in Weho, the house Rosé became a staple in my young queer life. Light and delicious, this wine has a deceptively high alcohol content. You go from “drink your juice Shelby” to “should I get back together with my ex” in about one half glass. The bottle is ornate but not overdone in true Lisa Vanderpump fashion. It also makes a fabulous gift for any gay man in your life with a Bravo addiction. Obviously, the opportunity to have a pink drink is always welcome. Sometimes I add ice cubes and tell people I’m drinking Sangria because someone told me that ice in wine is trashy.  Pick yourself up a bottle and remember that every girl boss knows that everything can be improved with wine. Support a female-owned business!

Do you support women entrepreneurs???

Katya:

Dix Pour Cent (Call My Agent) on Netflix

You don’t have to speak French or be familiar with French cinema to enjoy this fantastic series about the constant chaos and drama that takes place at ASK (Samuel Kerr Agency) - a top talent agency in Paris, helmed by four senior agents trying to please and appease their roster of A-list movie stars. The agents and their assistants are played to perfection by an incredible cast including a fucking superb Camille Cottin, as the tough as nails, womanizing (lesbian!) Andrea Martel. Each episode is focused on a real french actor playing a dramatized version of themselves, and uses real life controversy and reputation to create comedic gold. The series is funny and engaging enough on its own without any knowledge of French cinema, so even if you have no idea about Beatrice Dall’s wild reputation or who the fuck Isabelle Huppert is, it’s still A+ entertainment. I’ve watched every season a few times, and a fun thing to notice was how often the subtitles in French do not match what the characters are actually saying. Also, Sigourney Weaver is in one episode and her French accent can be pretty painful to hear, but the episode is bananas. C’est super cool ça. 

Sigourney acting down the house, French style.

The Shivering Truth animated series on Adult Swim/HBOMax

This is absolutely one of the best things I have ever seen in my goddamn life, and after the third straight viewing of both its two seasons, I was left with such deep gratitude for its creator/writer Vernon Chatman and director Cat Solen. Ugh, their minds, wig. This is a short form anthology (11 min episodes) of claymation animation that explores dark subjects which weave and twist into each other in the most delightfully bizarre and wretchedly absurd ways. The Adult Swim 2017 press release described the show as a “delicately crafted, darkly surreal anthology comedy, a miniature propulsive omnibus cluster bomb of painfully riotous daymares all dripping with the orange goo of dream logic. A series of loosely-linked emotional parables about stories within tales that crawled out of the deepest caverns of your unconscious mind and became lovingly animated in breath-slapping stop motion–in other words, it is the TRUTH.” It’s incredible, though not for everyone, and the only warning I think is worth mentioning is don’t watch it while you’re eating.

Before the Accutane hit