MY WEEK OF REST & RELAXATION
Boogieing and misbehavin' in St Barths
Hi cutie 🥧! This week, we’re back to less-baring-my-soul, more bare-minimum (kidding, kidding - I’d never deprive you of my oversharing!)
I come to you two weeks post-Memorial Day weekend, plenty of time to recover and reflect. I spent the long weekend in St Barths, celebrating the union of two people I love dearly and I left it all sur la table. I pride myself on generally being in good health. I eat my vegetables, hydrate, I even take colostrum (it's not sexy, but it is very effective). Still, I never fail to return from travel just a little bit sick. The better the trip, the harder the fall. And you know what? I’m ok with this! I prostrate myself at the altar of a Good Time. When blessed with the opportunity to travel, I take it as a personal decree to go all out.
My body is a complicated and sometimes vindictive organism (we have that in common). Sometimes, I can literally hear her whispering to me “you’ll regret that” as I reach for that last martini/lay too long in the sun/[redacted]. My body loves to bear little grudges, she forgives but rarely forgets. Some of these physical manifestations are genetic, some nostalgic (knee scars from childhood scrapes) and some purely out of spite (I’m still paying for a tumble I took at Coachella circa 2010). Some are to remind me not to do that thing again (also [redacted]). But she can be forgiving. Right before my seventh birthday, I had a little too much fun on the playground and flew off the slide, landing face first on concrete. There are no pictures from my party because the exact size and location (upper lip) of my scab made me look like a certain German despot - thankfully that physical souvenir faded into a traumatic (but kinda funny) memory.
I returned to LA bruised, sore and sleep-deprived (killer tan though). I’d even sacrificed my body to the mosquitos (I will say, if you’re gonna get bitten, let the bugs at least be French). What my body needed was rest. But rest is hard for me! I don’t mean sleep - I adore sleep, I might’ve been a house cat in a previous life. But rest, real rest, is hard. As a childless creative, I have a non-linear schedule. This is both very freeing and a prison. Because my days don’t abide by a certain structure, I feel guilty about how and when I work vs. play. But as a writer, it’s rare I’m not thinking about work - it’s always on my mind (I tend to have my best ideas while showering and in the car, rarely actually seated at my laptop). As an actor, everything I watch, every interaction I have, every experience I live is a resource. So I was gentle with myself, and let myself enjoy the week. I watched TV (without my phone). I read a lot. I taped my auditions and gave myself a little pat on the back for a job well done. And I wrote. I got paid for none of it, so I had a little spiral here and there, but I had some gorgeous creative breakthroughs that I might not have had without that time to do nothing. I’m not looking for validation, even if this Substack has become a receptacle for my thoughts and my honesty (which I then foist upon you). But we live in an economy of such busy-ness, maybe rest is the ultimate act of rebellion. It’s all important - work, rest, play - all of which I recognize are privileges. A good life, as I’m reminded more and more everyday, is a privilege. If you have it, please enjoy it.
And enjoy we did! Peter and I kicked off our long weekend early, taking a red eye to Puerto Rico. A red eye always sounds like a good idea (time saved while you sleep), and I suppose it is if the flight actually allows for sleep. If you are however, laying over in Charlotte at approx. 4 am LA time, I wouldn’t recommend it. But you live, you learn and you swear to never do it again. I got into a creative free flow and opted to work the whole flight, arriving in San Juan a bit of a husk but very excited to kick off my holiday. Any place with colonial overtones and humid weather instantly reminds me of Malaysia, so I felt nostalgic, a sure fire way to overshoot the landing with my lunch wine. We stayed at El Convento, which has the rustic charm of Chateau Marmont, complete with a lush central patio where I spent an afternoon reading (and crying) through Bess Kalb’s Nobody Will Tell You This But Me. San Juan is color heaven, a visual respite from the turnkey nightmare certain parts of LA have become. There also seemed to be a lot of cats, which, always a plus in my book. Must visits are Cafe Caleta (more below), the jewel box-like Verde Mesa (get any of the seasonal vegetables and the lavanda-rita with mezcal) and El Vino Crudo (I’m still thinking about those warmed olives and their chocolate stout cake).
And then it was onto Saint Barths.
Landing in St Barths is a fever dream. One moment you’re ooh-ing and aah-ing as the velvety blue Caribbean and lush green hills of St. Jean come into view, the next your stomach is in your mouth as those very same hills veer dangerously close to your Pilatus plane. This sudden and vertiginous drop is de rigueur (and normal) because the landing strip at Gustaf III is so teeny it’d make a Gucci (Tom Ford) era ad blush.
This was our third time on the island and because I’ve only ever been for birthdays or weddings, the vibes are always very high. And what a wedding it was! Charlie and Jack are a formidable duo, Charlie with his exquisite and exacting taste (this is a man who closed out his thirtieth birthday with fireworks set to Relight My Fire, the bar was set high) and Jack with his unmatched joie de vivre. And what a setting to work with! Just as LA has it’s golden light, St. Barths becomes a melange of the most beautiful blues as the sun goes down. You don’t know where the water ends and the sky begins (and you don’t really look too hard because you’re simply too happy and relaxed to ask questions).
The entire weekend was a blur of joy, love, revelry - and a lot of debauchery. A daytime wedding (11 am, innovative!) followed by a raucous long lunch on the beach. Fabulous gay nuptials means a throng of perfectly chiseled bodies shimmying to “La Isla Bonita” (I did consider including photos, perhaps this is how I launch my paid tier). After hours of sea, sun and spritzes, I somehow emerged from my haze long enough to throw on red sequins for dinner, where I got to catch up with two of the most fabulous ladies on the island, my darling friend Heather and her mom Julie. The Warburton ladies are both Saint Barths mainstays (Heath first came down in a bassinet) and I couldn’t have asked for chicer or more fun dinner dates.
And then there was the disco.
If you know me, you know a good disco is my kryptonite (I’ve long harbored the fantasy of riding into a club on a horse like Bianca Jagger). Over the years, I’ve been to many iterations, attempts and (mostly bad) imitations of Studio 54, but nothing came as close to it as this. The grooms (and their planning team) outdid themselves. Everything was impeccable, no detail glossed over, this was truly one for the books. Beyond that, I don’t kiss and tell at parties, so I’m leaving all secrets on the dance floor. I’ll simply let my travel day reinforcements speak for themselves:
Weddings can be over-the-top, I know, but I say if you can do it, do it right! Life is precious and these are the moments that make it full and memorable. And in this spirit, I say go big this weekend (tell your friends you love them! Play that song extra loud, eat some ice cream). Or don’t! Remember, your self worth doesn’t revolve around your productivity. Rest, relax, do what feels good for you <3
CATTY CORNER
As part of my MDW convalescence, I binged the latest season of Bridgerton. This is perfect escapism TV for me because I would’ve thrived in this era, my days an endless symphony of tea-drinking, patisserie-eating, long strolls through beautiful gardens and gossiping. Yes, there would’ve been the whole “getting married-off thing” but I like to think I would’ve been savvy enough to have arranged my nuptials to an ambassador with foreign interests, leaving me alone months at a time so I could indulge in more of that tea drinking/long walking/gossiping I love.
The current (third) season centers around Penelope Featherington and her romance with her long time crush and neighbor, Colin Bridgerton (who, I guess, was a nerd but then did a little travel abroad and came home with a whole new perspective). This romance is complicated by the fact that Featherington is secretly Lady Whistledown, the voice behind the most salacious, gossip rag of the time (Catty Corner x 10000000), so you know their road to a happy ending is destined to be a bumpy one.
Featherington is played by the lovely Nicola Coughlan, who not only seems delightful, but carries the season! She’s also charmed her way through the endless press cycle like a pro. But there is one woman who simply refuses to be won over.
In an article called “Bridgerton’s Big Fantasy“, “reporter” Zoe Strimpel picks apart Coughlan’s appearance, cushioning her shitty rhetoric between backhanded compliments about Coughlan’s talent. I realize we live in an era of clickbait but this is a nasty thing to publish. We’re really scraping the bottom of the ugly barrel here.
I get that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But even without her Bridgerton beat, Coughlan is lovely, a real pre-Raphaelite beauty. It’s also worth nothing that she’s in her 30’s but plays a decade younger, partly because she hasn’t subjected her face to ghastly buccal-fat removal. And yes, the whole point is that she’s supposed to be a sort of dowdy over looked neighbor but let’s call a spade a spade - this is a beautiful woman. (I also think that it’s very cool that the moment she knew the most eyes would be on her, Coughlan chose to direct attention to Gaza, helping raise over a million dollars in aid; her beauty isn’t restricted to her physical form).
Because Strimpel is a menace, she published a follow up, whining about being torn apart online (“My week from hell taught me what most upsets the woke”). To this I say - get a grip! We have watched so many non-traditional Hollywood men woo women sooooo far outta their league for years, without having think pieces written on it. Anyway, if you’re a woman reading this, you deserve a little treat today.
CHILI METER RISING: DELIGHTFUL THINGS
AMFS - I finally watched Dune 2 this weekend, sadly not as God intended (on the big screen) but at home (on a small screen, with a smaller screen in hand). Terrible, I know, but I got the gist: nepo baby leaves home to party in the desert (“the spice opened my mind”), hooks up with a local woman before regressing into a toxic bro, high on his own hype, who then marries a pedigreed icy blonde before taking over the
hedgefundUniverse. Ok! Visually, it’s breathtaking, a real feat of filmmaking - and maybe it was those magnificent desert shots that got me thinking how great an Adios Motherf✨cker sounded.
I un-ironically (and enthusiastically) love AMFS. Don’t knock ‘em till you try ‘em! This is the closest you’ll get to drinking the ocean, to tasting a perfect, sunny, cloud-less blue sky. This is a drink that announces I AM ON HOLIDAY!!! (Fun fact: I once asked Peter to order me one in the crustiest blues bar in Texas. It didn’t go great).
Cafe Caleta - During our brief San Juan stint, Peter and I dined at Cafe Caleta three times, partially due to its proximity to our hotel but also because it’s really good! It has a tightly edited, ever-revolving menu, great natty wine selection and bangin’ cocktails. We ate our first meal outside during a light rainstorm, our second inside at the bar and the last looking into the kitchen (best seat in the house). The highlights of that final meal were the lobster baos, sizzling chunks wrapped in a bouncy, doughy pillow, that we washed down with Negronis. If you find yourself in San Juan, make this your first stop.
Madly Vintage Missoni halter - I’ve known Maddy for a long time. We’ve both worked and partied together, and she’s a gem all around (our birthdays are also one day apart, Pisces supremacy). When she made to pivot to vintage a few years ago, it felt like a natural fit for her Sienna Miller-Bardot-inspired style. All her picks are great but her magnum opus are these Missoni halters, old scarves that she refashions into very sexy, very cute and surprisingly boob-friendly halters. (Ps if you’re not seeing a color way you love, she regularly does new drops on her insta).
The Hacks finale - If you haven’t made it through the end of this season of Hacks a. what’re you waiting for! and b. I wont spoil it for you, but you really should hop to it. I read the pilot years ago and remember thinking it was special, one of the best scripts I’d read in ages, and it’s only gotten better season by season. Watch it and then call me so we can discuss!
Lies and Weddings - I wait for Kevin Kwan books the way I used to wait for Harry Potter sequels - eagerly, and usually at the airport (at 437 pages, they’re the perfect long haul flight companion). Lies and Weddings follows his tried-and-true formula (a plucky female heroine, a dashing male lead and his haughty-and-overbearing-but-iconic mum who wants to keep them apart) in new locales (Hawaii, Marrakesh, Venice) and as always, is peppered with KK anecdotes. By anyone else, these footnotes might be an annoying distraction, but Kwan’s bon mots make you feel like you’re sitting with your cheekiest, most in-the-know-friend, the one who wouldn’t laugh if you reached for the wrong fork but would instead top up your champagne and tell you a scandalous story about a marchioness who ate with her feet, if you can believe it.
WHO IS SHE
As aforementioned, landing in St Barths feels like a fever dream. I was still quite out of sorts when I came across “Penelope in St Barths,” in the magazine stocked in my hotel shuttle. Needless to say, she instantly locked me into the island frame of mind.
Penelope is a bodacious babe (she’s not bad, she’s just drawn that way) who promptly makes the island her playground. By the third square, you’re confronted with her pert derriére (caption: “I just love the view.”). She goes to dinner parties where all anyone talks about is the dinner party they’re going to tomorrow. It’s published in English and the translation is Google AI at best (though a French person could say the same after conversing avec moi and be very right!)
Anyway, things get going the next day when Penelope, dressed in her Talitha Getty best, pops down to la plage. Here, she meets a man (mustached, striped tee) and offers up her charcuterie basket in return for a boat ride. He (obviously) agrees. Then she’s…topless? I was really invested but this is where Penelope’s adventure took an abrupt turn. After a long (likely post-coital nap), Penelope dives into the glimmering Caribbean. While swimming, her bracelet gets caught on a piece of coral and she gets sucked through a portal into a different world. When she comes up for air, St Barths is….pink? Penelope is visibly distraught.
And just like that, the story ends. Was this commentary on climate change? A detour into something Lynchian? Unclear! I have struggled to find anything about her on the Internet. I’m now faced with the very real prospect that Penelope was the result of no-sleep deliriousness, jet lag and tropical humidity except I have photographic evidence. Whatever she was, I plan on having a Very Penelope Summer. Yes I’m happily married but I will be ~spiritually~ slutty (carefree, a little reckless, posting thirst traps). Consider this your invitation to bare cheek, have flirty picnics, and find lost treasures at the bottom of the ocean. Allons-y!
FASHION FLICK: THE PERILS OF PENELOPE PITSTOP
And speaking of Penelopes, I’d be remiss not mentioning one Ms. Pitstop.
Penelope Pitstop is an heiress and Southern belle moonlighting as a race car driver (everyone needs a hobby and she’s not a horse girl). When we first meet her, she’s fresh off a worldwide trip (dream!), living off a tidy sum she inherited from her deceased parents. She’s cared for her by her legal guardian, Sylvester Sneekly (don’t you love these names) but plot twist - he’s secretly trying to kill her and claim her inheritance. Luckily for Penelope, the Ant Hill Mob (Hanna-Barbera’s answer to the seven dwarfs) come to her rescue, time and time again.
But let’s talk about the lewk! Penelope is gorgeous and mod-chic. She has the bushiest of ponytails and an incredible fringe. Her lipstick is always perfect and her cat eye impeccable. She pulls off a skirt-pant combo and driving gloves with aplomb (also her boots are aspirational - stilettoed-yet-driving-friendly). And then there’s her car, the Compact Pussycat.
The CP isn’t just a beautiful car, it’s a car that beau-ti-fies - yes, it’s a salon on wheels. Put that baby on cruise control and coif your hair, get a mani, relax into a facial.
Despite being a racer, Penelope is a comically bad driver (if you’ve ever driven with me, you may have been Pitstopped, and no, you’re not entitled to compensation). Yes she’s got seven tiny men looking out for her but more often than not, Pitstop quite literally skates by on her own feminine wiles. Her captors are often deterred by clouds of shampoo or hair spray, or when she gives the wrong turn signal drying her nails out her window. Maybe not the best message for 2024 but I like to think Penelope would’ve girlboss-ed the Pussycat into a fleet of zero-emissions vehicles/switched to non-toxic hair products.
Personally, I love how naive and delulu she is. I know too much! Penelope’s love interest also happens to be another race car driver named Peter Perfect, so perhaps her influence on me has lasted longer than I care to admit.
FRIDAY BOP ALERT 🚨
In honor of Pride, this week’s heater is by my angel baby Nieri. X Rated is naughty, sexy, sweaty - and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll come to his show at Bar Lis this Sunday. Hope to see your sexy lil 🍑 there!