Yes hello! Welcome to Volume 2 of Smooth Brain Gazette, wherein we survive these horrifying times by embracing denial and cultivating stupidity! (Missed Volume 1? Here!) We will now begin our brain ironing practice by chanting the sound of om three times while meditating upon the stupidity that is our highest truth.
Namaste.
So okay. You might have heard the Oscars were on Sunday, and boy howdy, was it a goddamn mess! Don’t worry, I am not here to comment on ~*the incident*~, the insanity of which has only been bested by the ~*discourse*~ that has arisen in its wake, which is ACTIVELY DERANGED. No thanks! Unsubscribe! Do not want! OK I WILL SAY THIS THOUGH: We sat in the fucking house watching Zoom awards shows for two goddamn years only to finally get an Oscars that immediately devolved into an unhinged hootenanny of hot-takes about violence being virtuous and Will Smith belonging in a maximum-security federal prison and if that isn’t the most 2022 shit I just don’t know what possibly could be. We live in wrinkle-brained hell!
Luckily, though, something else happened on Oscar night, something that has given me pause, made me stop to connect with my deepest self and reconsider my most elemental knowing. I have realized I have been resisting a golden (and wonderfully stupid) opportunity to place our brains under a steam roller and smash out every wrinkle we’ve ever had. This is a story about ~*acceptance*~
I have been in therapy for approximately 97 years on account of being wildly mentally ill, and I have learned that acceptance is the true key to wellness. The healing power of simply giving up and saying “LOLOL oh okay I am ~*batshit fucking crazy* and my brain will always be ~*a chamber of horrors*~ and absolutely nothing will ever truly be ~*right*~ or ~*okay*~ or ~*normal*~ and to me that is beautiful😌” cannot be overstated! Here is an inspirational meme about this that you can post on Instagram as part of your acceptance practice.
Oh my God you’re so welcome, I’m so happy to help in any way I can please ~*be well*~
(As a sidebar, Canva calls that font “Lifelogo” because it is a clear rip-off of the Lifetime television network logo and god everything is so dumb!
Lifetime, honey, you better log onto LegalZoom’s copyright infringement template because in the words of seminal thoughtleader Stacy Ferguson, these chickens is jocking your style!)
Anyway, the point is, ~*acceptance*~ is the starting point of the wellness ~*journey*~ so by the transitive property (I think? I honestly don’t remember and DO NOT FACT-CHECK ME you nerds! Eat shit, this is a club for cool stupids!) it stands to reason that acceptance is also the gateway to becoming as smooth-brained as possible in order to survive these times in which we live, right? Right!
And so I am here to speak plainly, openly, publicly about my own journey of acceptance. Acceptance of myself. Acceptance of my truth. Acceptance of my identity as a fan of Julia Fox. Yes THAT Julia Fox. Yes THIS Julia Fox.
Now I hear you:
But counterpoint: Shut up!
Because if something juuuuuuuuuuuuust this side of braindeath is the goal in these times—and it is—well, I can’t think of anything better suited to that endeavor than leaning into this fandom. Which is why I’ve decided to let go of the way her mere existence as a pop cultural figure makes me want to self-immolate and use the ash to poison all of Earth’s water sources like a comic book villain. No, no, not anymore! I release that negativity, and in its stead I embrace acceptance of the fact that Julia Fox is the true path to smooth-brain. Why is she the path, you ask? Mainly because:
Name a stupider thing! I don’t mean Julia herself is stupid–she’s clearly diabolically intelligent, as evidenced by the fact that she has risen to the A-list on the basis of LITERALLY NOTHING. She got invited into whatever chamber of horrors Kanye had on the books, rubbed a bunch of shoe polish around her eye orbitals before leaving the house and now we all, against our collective will, know who she is. That, my friends, is not just stupid, it’s American Dream stupid! Name another country where such abject stupidity leads to cultural superiority! You think this shit happens in France where eight-year-olds go to school till 5pm every day? You think Jacinda Ardern is out here letting zombies whose signature look is Axle Grease Eyes™ rise to the echelons of New Zealand’s cultural elite?! No! Only in America babayyyy! USA! USA! USA!
What I’m getting at is: Julia Fox the woman is not stupid, but Julia Fox the image, the figure, the cultural touchstone, is extremely stupid. Does that make sense?
Like, let’s go back to the thing that started it all. The whole reason we know who this person is is because she went to a fashion show with Kanye looking like THIS:
That is fucking stupid! She looks fucking stupid! This woman is inhumanly beautiful and yet this is now her signature look!
When this shit dropped I hadn’t yet reached enlightenment, so I immediately flew into a rage. This stupid fucking eye makeup launched her so far into the celebrity stratosphere she was soon hanging out with luminaries like Madonna! Do you know how egregious that is? Madonna fandom is hard enough as it is because y’all turn everything into a plastic-surgery symposium, but now we fans have to endure photos of her and Julia Fox draped across each other like linguine too?! We haven’t known peace since the Confessions on a Dance Floor era, we do not need this! There are parents of kids with whole-ass opioid addictions living in less anguish LEAVE US ALONE!!!
But my rage was premature because Julia’s next chapter was a photo shoot with iconoclastic fashion photographer Juergen Teller–a legend of the industry behind some truly iconic snaps like Joan Didion’s Celine ad and Kate Moss’s pink-hair series—and their collab resulted in a bunch of Black Swan-ass bullshit:
And whatever the absolute bleeding Easter Sunday Christ this is:
And I’m sorry no offense to an icon but these photos are ass!!!! This bitch daubed a bunch of roof-sealant on her face and knelt in the fucking street and we’re supposed to swoon about this seminal piece of art?!
Here she is on a fucking dirty snowbank!
Bitch these are the kind of photos your mom takes and then you look at them and you’re like “MOM. LOOK at this image WHY would I want this to be the photo WHY are you like this???” My nephew takes better photos when he steals my sister-in-law’s shit and goes running around the house screaming with his finger stuck down on the camera button, like I am not fucking doing this with either of you fucking charlatans! You know Juergen Teller’s internal monologue the entire time was just “LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL.” (But in German.) The temerity!
Anyway, with each successive stunt, my rage toward this meconium-eyed interloper only intensified. And then, this past Friday, came a turning point. It was this:
Now, in case you’re unfamiliar like I was, this is a tutorial on how to create this look:
That is a tank top cut in half, right? Like that’s obviously what that is. It is a tank top cut in half! But that can’t POSSIBLY be what it is if there’s a tutorial about it, right? Like clearly there is something ELSE going on. Maybe it’s a special fabric! Or perhaps there’s sewing involved! I do not know how to make clothes, but I am intrigued by the process, so when the Instagram algorithm served me Ms. Fox’s tutorial, I said, “Huh! It must not be a tank-top cut in half after all! Tell me!” So I clicked.
Aaaaaand nope! It is a two-minute instructional video on how to CUT A TANK TOP IN HALF. It’s not even a fancy tank top! It’s a Hanes 3-pack from Walmart! The shit we used to call “wife beaters” in less enlightened times! That she cut in half! With scissors, not even any special equipment!
I threw my phone across the room and immediately filed a civil suit alleging fraud and demanding compensatory damages. But as soon I’d submitted it, blind CC’ing the International Criminal Court in The Hague on the email, I suddenly had the aforementioned moment of pause. A lurch in my guts. A waft of air that washed over my face, a breeze that whispered “You are wrong about this.” I closed my eyes, and in the darkness that flooded in came an image, glowing like fire. It was this:
Except this time the stupid bitch in question was me. I am the bitch who’s stupid! Because I realized that what Julia Fox is doing is trolling.
She is trolling!
This is a troll!
An elaborate grift! A scheme! A gag! A SCAM. And bitch, there is N O T H I N G I love more than a scam. I love a scam! Especially when it’s women scamming men. Yes bitch! Play them for fools! Expose their shit and STACK PAPER while doing it! If reincarnation is real and I get to choose who I come back as I am 100% all-in coming back as a female con artist. Just straight up riding dicks and draining accounts and leaving them on “read” with a smile on their faces, none the wiser. HEROIC! Now THAT’S what I call anti-capitalism!
You see where I’m going with this: that is, in the end, what Julia Fox is doing. Everyone seems to think Kanye played her but um EXCUSE ME BITCH?! Julia played Kanye I beg your entire comprehensive pardon! Kanye comes out of the whole thing looking even crazier than he already did and meanwhile this woman who nobody knew or cared about previously is now *a fucking A-list celebrity* Hate the game, not the player!
Now I hear you, “A-list celebrity? lol ON WHAT GROUNDS.” Well first of all bitch don’t fucking talk to me like that in my own Substack fuck you! And B of all bitch ON THESE GROUNDS:
THAT IS JULIA FOX ON THE RED CARPET AT THE VANITY FAIR OSCARS AFTER-PARTY.
Do you have any idea how exclusive that shit is? It is the most coveted Hollywood invite ALL YEAR–even moreso than the Oscars itself, which are dumb and boring and full of cringe musical numbers! You’re telling me you’d rather sit in an uncomfortable theater seat watching lethal secondhand embarrassment like that one number Hugh Jackman did where he bellowed “The MURRSICAL is BICK!” in his weird Australian shit? No no no no no no no no no NO!!! NO!!! That shit wakes me up out of a dead sleep in a cold panic at least once a month and it happened THIRTEEN YEARS AGO.
Nothing has ever been more embarrassing. Nothing! Not even when Hathaway won her shit and purred into the microphone “It came truuuuuue.” UGH! Disgusting! I vomited for 45 minutes! The only good thing that has happened at the Oscars in my lifetime is when Travolta called Idina Menzel Adele Dazeem and that is all the way real. Fuck an Oscar!
But the Vanity Fair Oscar party? First of all every A-list person alive is there, FUCKED UP, dancing to shitty pop music and taking selfies. Um EQUALS FUN whose ass do I eat for an invite? I haven’t even gone to a party I WAS invited to since Obama’s first term but I would literally sever ties with everyone I have ever cared about if it meant I could go do the Macarena with Dame Judi Dench at the Beverly Hilton! And so would you! Are you kidding me? Quit playing in my fucking face!
The fact that this woman even got invited in the first place is an American success story on par with Oprah Winfrey or George Soros. Talk about coming from nothing! Defying the odds! Making it happen! I mean look at this shit!
That stupid eye makeup. A dress held up by a goddamn mannequin fist choking her to death. A handbag MADE OF HUMAN HAIR. This is the weirdest, stupidest shit I have ever seen in my entire fucking life and we will be talking about it FOREVER!
In 2063 the E! Network will STILL be beaming this into our brains via the inhalable airborne microchips by which we now consume all media after Zuckerberg seeded our air with them without our consent. “Top 10 Craziest Oscar Party Moments of All Time,” a voice in our ears will say, and we will glaze over like that one episode of Black Mirror and there in the liminal space of the MuLtIvErSe will be Julia Fox in her stupid fucking strangle dress and scalp purse coming in at #1—ahead of Bjork’s swan dress. All because she smeared her eye area with baby shit one time back in January. Who else is doing it like this?! Who?!
Now I hear you: yes okay, but where does the brain dewrinkling come in? RIGHT THE FUCK HERE BITCH. Listen to these fucking interviews.
Okay first of all, Julia is doing vowel work here that makes even her now-infamous “uncahjaaaahhhhhmz” incident seem like the work of an amateur. As I listen to the dulcet sweet nothings of her vowels I can actually FEEL my brain activity slowing to a near halt. It is more calming than ocean waves, more relaxing than Mozart. My EEG is flatlining. Perfect.
And speaking of said vowels, I need to issue a correction: Her handbag is not made from human hair. It actually turns out:
“This is real human haaâaäaaåaãœir…. I mean I think soooøøœ, I mean it looks like iiiiiiîíï∑t.”
If one of you pieces of shit doesn’t make absolutely certain that quote is engraved on my tombstone, even if it requires going to court to fight my family, I will haunt your ass from the beyond for all of your days. Nothing has ever meant more to me, an idiot.
And this is all before we even touch down on the claim that she cannot pronounce a German designer’s name when she just pronounced the word hair as “h∆ƒ∂ß®.” This is a performance-art pinnacle I do not think any creator in the history of American culture has ever reached. Who is doing work this audacious?! Who?! Put her in the Smithsonian you fucking cowards!
Then there was this interview moments later.
Okay she literally does not know what her book is and first of all, SAME. I have been working on my book for almost two years now and I couldn’t tell you anything about it. Not one thing! Ok maybe one thing: It is made of words. That is it! Beyond that, best I can offer is to stammer for 15 minutes without ever getting to any kind of point whatsoever. “It was like a memoir at fiiirst but now it’s just like my first book, you knoooøw?” Yes I DO know, Julia. And I feel seen. Representation matters!!!
After discovering this, a friend notified me that Julia has ALSO done a makeup tutorial for what she is out here calling “The Fox Eye”?
This tutorial is SIXTEEN MINUTES IN LENGTH and all it is is running an eyeliner parallel to your browline and then filling it in with a swoop at the end! Sixteen minutes! Nine-hundred and sixty seconds!!! Meanwhile actual makeup artists are out here A: Purchasing actual makeup; 2: Using actual skills; iii: Buying actual cameras and lighting equipment to film professional-grade videos sharing actual expertise. Julia Fox said, “Right, that, but an iPhone on low battery mode, the lamp on my endtable, a leftover grease stick from my kid’s Spirit Halloween kit, and VIBES.” PERFECT. YES. I have never felt stupider! I have absolutely no notes, because my brain has been drained of blood and deprived of oxygen. I am blank. I am empty. I am FREE.
Meanwhile 825,000 people have watched that tutorial so far, which means at worst, Bic will at some point pay her 50,000 actual dollars to squeeze all the ink from an entire bag of ballpoint pens onto her eyelids and call it a “graphic eye” while the entire makeup/beauty influencer industrial complex simultaneously joins hands and jumps in front of a high-speed train. Julia Fox is a disruptor in the beauty space! Put her on the cover of Forbes! This! Is! American! Ingenuity!!!!!!!
Julia Fox is our greatest living scam artist. Fuck an Anna Delvey. Elizabeth Holmes? She’s been SILENT ever since Julia dropped. Tinder Swindler? More like Tilda Swinton, amirite! And unlike them, her scams are pure as the driven snow, victimless crimes that beat a disgusting industry at its own game with antics that are wildly, resolutely stupid.
This is the stuff smooth-brained dreams are made of, friends. Practice acceptance. Look within, follow her on Instagram, and go dead in the brains. You’ve earned the peace, and she’s earned the clicks.
So there you have it: This is a Julia Fox stan Substack now!!!
Meet me back here next week for more smooth-brained delights, when we will return to our journey with Ryan Murphy’s 9-1-1! I was precluded from forging ahead with 9-1-1 this week because of various circumstances and technical difficulties, but perhaps it was providential, because it led me to Julia. All things work together for those who love the Lord and are called according to his purpose in Jesus’ name!
Anyway, this was fun, so maybe we’ll do a week-on, week-off thing, where every other week is a 9-1-1 with something equally stupid in between? Wait! Should I take requests? !!! Okay: If you have something smooth-brain you would like to submit, leave ‘em in the comments or hit me up on Instagram and let’s see what we can come up with. Help me help you dissociate!!!
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Okay then, that’s that. See you next week I love you bye bye!