Grupo Fantasma usually writes music about good times, but in Austin, Texas in 2019 they couldn’t keep from touching on the wall. So now they have this big, political banger that’s equal parts party and protest, bass-heavy funk under an incredulous assertion of humanity. The best part is this is just one single off an album that will be here in March. Listen up.

Which cookbook was far and away the top seller last year? Not Dining In. Not 100 Best Instant Pot Recipes.  It’s Magnolia Table by Joanna Gaines, the former co-host of HGTV’s “Fixer Upper” show. It’s sold more than 2 million copies, making it actually the second-best-selling book overall last year, but I bet you’ve never heard of it, right? Guess why: the food media does. not. give. a. shit. This WaPo critic finally wrote about it, in the context of other food people not caring, and dragged all the recipes for their Paula-Deen-esque butter content, summing them up as “[not] too challenging or experimental for most North American palates.” Where have we heard this before?  “I never saw it coming. It’s like there are two Americas.” Maybe we’d have known if we’d visited Walmart or Target during their massive, brokered rollouts of the book– or just if any media person had taken note. Maybe all that butter isn’t worth critical acclaim, but didn’t we say we were gonna at least *try* to be balanced? Well, at least we have this ethnography of a Midwestern teenager. 🤦‍♀️

Speaking of the media venturing incomprehensibly far up its own butthole, Gucci recently commissioned The New Yorker to run a cartoon advertising their new “bookstore” (also known as “cultural gathering space”) in SoHo. The results of the commission were some very funny cartoons about books-as-fashion that inexplicably had Gucci printed all over them. You can figure out exactly what the ad is for either by googling or by already being in the know, which feels like… an ineffective ad? An enforcement of the in-crowd? What I mean to say is, let’s plan a really drippy potluck at the Gucci bookstore and invite everyone we know.

That’s correct, the world’s hottest fashion designer is now doing water bottles. To be clear, they’re reusable, which raises the question of how we actually interact with Evian, the water company, after we buy them. Do we ship the bottles back to be refilled 16 oz at a time? Or do we just top them up with tap water? Does Evian’s substance simply evaporate, leaving an empty brand shell? It’s still early, but calling it now: fashion killed bottled water.