Welcome to Lucky No.777! For those who want to submit a question for the advice column, which gets published in the end of month newsletter, you can submit that here! All questions are anonymous, so don’t be shy bb!

7 things i currently die for:

1. Messy by Lola Young (Live for Like a Version video)

   

   I was already a fan of this song, but holy shit this video really takes it next level. I drank a CANN and then took a shower while blasting this on my speakers last night, and WOW shit slaps. The vocal choice on “‘cause I got high again" after the second verse?!?!?! Full body chills. Lola has quite the future ahead of her.

2. Tiktok Shop

   I love how I went from being someone who famously swore I’d never be on TikTok, to then having one video go viral, to now being someone who loves TikTok shop. It really is a new era. I was able to get two new sweaters for under $40 total that I received many compliments on at work, and that’s huge since people haven’t complimented me at work since my Prozac stopped working and I lost my main source of oxytocin, which has led to me wearing the same sweater rotation and target headband combo for the past year 911. I also am now the owner of a cervical neck pillow, which honestly is better than any Casper pillow I’ve ever owned. Potentially as problematic as Amazon, but for now TikTok Shop is a yes for me bb.

3. Every single hot guy Kimberly Finkle pulls on SLOCG

   

   Where are the hot, bisexual, socialist men that Kimberly is finding in droves IRL?! I can most definitely confirm they are neither on Hinge nor in NYC, so is it time to date a college student?! Kimberly has gotten with the hottest guys since Season 1 of bagging Leighton’s frat star brother Nico, and then Season 2 landing Jackson, the hot transfer. (To this day I watch videos of Mitchell Slaggert chopping down trees in his backyard shirtless because this breed of masculinity is as dead as our democracy! I said it!) This season brought even more treasures with Eli, bi king who loves to rave in a barn (the scene where he comes back to the dinner table during Parent’s Weekend saying, “we’re staying friends” has me ten feet under still) and Noah, a new prospect who is a hot, leftist, and socialist protestor!!!!!! I have attended many Free Palestine protests, and still haven’t found any of these dudes irl! Kimberly honey, what is the secret? Hinge tells me everyday that I’ve seen everyone for now. I need a plan of action that doesn’t involve making my age settings 84-85 years old!

4. Girls Gotta Eat Episode “Money Doesn’t Buy Happiness with Sahil Bloom”

   As someone who has been hella stressed about budgeting, and feeling confused about how is it that for the first time in my life I’m making decent money, and yet feel like I can’t spend any money, (hello inflation and this horrible economy), this episode was an incredibly helpful reframe. My biggest takeaway was him saying, “if someone was watching the movie of your life, what would they be screaming at you to do”. Maybe I’m also amped up on all my Rent and Jonathan Larson content, but I genuinely think we all need to take a beat and get down to brass tax about what actually matters and what actually makes our lives worth living. Do with that what you will :)

5. Black Friend by Ziwe

   

   I DEVOURED this. Every essay nailed. Her use of footnotes unparalleled. Ziwe is so fucking smart and sharp and funny, and this book was first rate. I learned a lot about her journey to making it, and also really appreciated how she wants her content to be presented in Barbie packaging, but tastes like a barbed wire sandwich. It’s Black History month, buy this book!! Even if it’s not February! Buy this book! Hardcover and paperback, you have no excuses!

6. Platonic by Marisa G. Franco

   This book is so fascinating! I haven’t even finished it yet, but had to plug because it’s so relevant to modern day times. Making friends as an adult is hard! Let’s normalize talking about this! Now more than ever we need community! We are all we’ve got in this late stage capitalism hellscape!! Let’s normalize investing in strong irl friendships, in favor of digital ones that keep us siloed and isolated. I genuinely fear for younger gen Z who are amazing at DM’s but can’t hold eye contact for longer than a sentence. Also, let’s normalize prioritizing our platonic friendships, especially in an era where romance seems to be extinct/operating at top notch dysfunctional levels (someone recently told me they broke up with their boyfriend because he couldn’t support her emotionally…for ex. when she was upset, he would make it about him. YIKES! Why is anyone dating dudes anymore?!)

7. Glossier You Doux

   

   While I still think women’s fragrance needs to be designed to last longer, like why does mens fragrance stay potent for hours meanwhile women’s is donezo after just thirty minutes? And yes, I’ve tried the trick of putting oil on my wrist and spraying the perfume on the oil so that it can linger longer!! I love Doux. It smells so fucking good and even when the world is crumbling, at least gives me a shred of hope that at least people will be like, “Emily always smelled amazing”.

7 minute essay: hiss, hiss…GLOOM!

Like the ticking Jonathan Larson kept hearing as his workshop of Superbia the Musical and 30^th birthday loomed in the dead of winter 1990, I keep hearing hissing.

While I know it’s very normal for heaters in New York City apartments to bang and clang and hiss, my hotel style wall A/C heating unit has never made a peep until this year. After fighting the building to replace my roommate’s unit which decided to stop producing heat altogether just before Christmas, having 311 on speed dial, and withholding rent, only to learn from a very kind housing lawyer that even if I took my building to court the only outcome would be a court order to repair the heat and not repayment for the illegal inconvenience, my heating unit started acting up a few weeks ago.

The heater started hissing and wouldn’t stop. I spent an entire three day weekend losing my mind to the unit going nonstop, meanwhile the repair men at my building would show up, bang on the unit with a wrench, decree “It’s fixed!” and walk away while the unit continued to hiss. I actually had a dream that the unit was leaking water. The very next day, when a different handyman decided to actually do something, he discovered that a pipe had burst and had to put a bucket underneath the unit to catch the dripping water. I’ve never once doubted my intuition and psychic connection, but the fact I knew deep down in my psyche the unit was leaking, meanwhile these helpless handymen flopped in even attempting to identify the issue, just further proves the point men are flailing at planning a birthday party (this is a reference to Amy Schumer’s interview on Call Her Daddy).

I had a full on menty b that weekend where I avoided my apartment entirely by going to the movies. After losing my mind hearing Pamela Anderson in The Last Showgirl deliver the line, “Working a job you hate? That’s hard.” I sat on the ledge of the Lincoln Center AMC sobbing. I hated feeling once again like I couldn’t go home. It reminded me of the year I lived in a brownstone in Bed Stuy with a girl I had met through a sketch class at UCB and her boyfriend, and I would cry at Shake Shack in Grand Central anxious about going home, never knowing what I was walking into.

The next day, I went to a brunch with estranged family, which broke me in half when halfway through the meal, my niece who I barely know handed me a present. A statue of liberty keychain with my name on it. I wanted to cry, but knew that I would have to wait until they left for The Lion King. Instead of going home, I wandered around the Deutsche Bank Center like Moaning Myrtle, openly weeping and wandering outside of J.Crew with puffy eyes and snot and tears all over my face praying I wouldn’t run into anyone I knew.

They finally fixed the noise, but then just yesterday the hissing came back. I woke up this morning from a really sexual dream that I can only hope comes true within the next week or I might have to jump off the terrace at work, and there it was. Nonstop hissing.

What does it mean? Is it because we’re in the year of the snake? Is it because Reputation TV could be announced at any moment? Is it confirmation that I am doing the right thing by not resigning my lease in this godforsaken joke of an apartment? I had been on the fence, but once the building gaslit us by telling us the reason our heat hadn’t been working properly was because of the curtains in my roommate’s room, I knew it would be insane to continue living here.

It’s Tick, Tick…Boom! Season. The exact time of year the movie takes place. I watched it last week for the fifth time ever and wept on the couch. How was it that he predicted TikTok? How is it that the themes he writes about in the show during the AIDS crisis are just as relevant today in the hellscape that is late stage capitalism? I keep thinking about how agonizing it must have been to have spent seven years on something only for it to go nowhere. Only to be told you just keep writing, you work on the next one, and the next one, and hope to god something sticks. I laughed when Susan complains about her temp job working word processing for 30 hours a week. I work a job I hate for 50 hours a week and every day I think about the Pixar animated short where a man at work one day has the thought “What am I doing here?!” and leaves his office immediately to live life. I want to shake my coworkers and start a revolution. Why are any of us sitting at these desks acting like everything is fine when the world is on fire?

Working a job you hate? That’s hard. Pamela’s voice keeps ringing in my head.

During the party scene in Tick, Tick…Boom! Jonathan is frustrated by the random guest who works in finance and allegedly came to the party because “artist parties have better drugs”. Jonathan looks right at him and goes, “I’m the future of musical theatre”. I am immediately reminded of how in college I would get so drunk and with my formal date’s tie wrapped around my head I’d introduce myself as “I’m Emily Via, and I’m a legend”

I ache for the confidence I used to have. I yearn for the version of my younger self that while rolling on molly at a jungle themed fraternity party looked myself in the mirror and said over and over, “You’re gonna move to New York and you’re gonna do it. You’re going to make it”

Hisssssss. Hissssssssss. Hisssssss.

Tick, tick…