#31: Take It or Leave It
A weekly drop of things I love
Take It or Leave It is a weekly highlight series. Pretty much every Friday, I share a quick hit of things I’m loving. Most of my writing is long-form and requires time for research between essays. Hopefully, this helps fill in the gaps for you with new finds (or things you want to revisit). If not, all good. Take it or leave it ✌️
Something from YouTube
Noname on Tiny Desk performing unreleased Ghetto Sage music with Smino & Saba? Yes please. I pressed play immediately.
A song I played
I’m not really a “workout guy.” But when I do decide to “work out,” I’m playing this. The horns make me want to run through a wall.
A podcast I listened to
My friend Aaron recently recommended this podcast at book club. It asks the question: what happened to Comrade Bishop’s body? Maurice Bishop, Grenada’s revolutionary leader, was executed in a coup in 1983. The whereabouts of his remains are unknown. This podcast series seeks to solve the mystery and examines U.S. imperialism’s role in shaping Grenada’s fate.
Something I read
My homie Kayla Prewitt writes sentences I don’t know how I’ve been able to live without. In her latest essay, the second act in her “Your Heart, Online” series, she shares scary stories about heartbreak and language and record keeping and the stories she can’t outrun. If you missed Act I, you can (and should) read it here.
These are a few of my favorite sentences from Act II:
“I rarely write about the young people in my life. They are unspeakably good. I don’t trust myself to share them.”
“We abandoned the drinks to braid our limbs together, all mouth and hunger and hot tea on our lips. The textured muscle of your tongue tilled the soft pink of me. I called on the name of my long-abandoned god to have a spectator for my pleasure.”
“I am an attentive audience member because I cannot stand the thought of conspiring in somebody else’s loneliness. It is important to me that one should tell their story and feel that somebody cares to hear it.”
A TikTok video I watched
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The perfect opening line: “I knew America was a little raggedy, a little ghetto. But I didn’t realize how raggedy and how ghetto it really was.”
Something I keep thinking about
Last weekend, Elizabeth let me tag along with her to Bravocon—the Bravo fan’s three-day heaven in Las Vegas. I wrote a little about our love for Bravo TV in this essay, “The NBA is Reality TV,” but I never imagined our fandom would include us among self-proclaimed “Bravoholics” and cast members lovingly referred to as “Bravolebrities.”
Neither of us really knew what to expect. But when we pulled up to Caesars Forum in our blacked-out Lyft and fans began yelling at us to roll down the tinted windows, I realized we had entered another reality. A dimension filled with sequins, heels, and husbands in “Real Men Watch Bravo” t-shirts. Everywhere you turned, you encountered someone whose blow-ups helped get you through the early days of the pandemic.
The weekend included run-ins with DJ James Kennedy, Ariana Madix, and Katie Maloney from Vanderpump Rules, as well as Kyle Richards, Dorit Kemsley, Brynn Whitfield, and Whitney Rose from different Real Housewives franchises. We had a private dinner with Lisa & John Barlow from Real Housewives of Salt Lake City and even got to meet standouts from our favorite Bravo show, Summer House.
During one of those meetings, we chatted with Andrea, whose stage name “Andrea Denver” is inspired by the Denver Nuggets. I told him I’m a Nuggets fan and showed him my phone background of Nikola Jokić and Jamal Murray—a photo
lovingly wrote about on . Andrea excitedly dapped me up and shared his hopes that the Nuggets win the championship again this year. The NBA truly is reality TV.
I don’t know if I’ll ever get another opportunity to go to Bravocon, but I’m thankful for all the ways we were able to make the most of it.
The girls, the gays, the theys, and Alex 💅
This was dope, definitely checking out Act II based on the sentences you shared and I enjoyed that TikTok
this is the on the ground bravocon reporting we need