RX #3

a *lot* of music, two (!) Belgian movies, Games as a concept, and a little snack as a treat...

Lagging a bit behind the RX per week goal, but that’s only because I don’t want to recommend bullshit to you. There are some weeks where I am simply not gagged by the things I consume. You are getting the best of the best here. Also I have a lot to say this week so it’s a long read.

if you like:

fruit, sour candy, food that requires ritual, the tongue play of eating cherries

you will love:

TAMARIND

I think tamarind just broke into my top five fruits.They look like alien abortions but they taste sooooo good—like straight up candy—and the sensory experience is pure fun: crack the shell, de-vein the pulp, pinpoint the seeds, delicately bite around the seeds, then spit them out. As a kid I always thought they looked savory or tasted like peanuts but I was so wrong. They also have so many culinary applications in Thai/Indian cuisine and are great for sweetening up a sauce. I love these little freaks.

if you like:

being gay, emo music, being gay and emo, yearning homosexually

you will love:

GAY? by 12 RODS

Gadults (gay adults) often say something about queer media that annoys the fuck outta me. “I wish there were things like this when I was younger.” Before you pull up a clip of me reciting a Strange World talking point—I know I’ve said this. But I was stupid and wrong.

Here’s my problem with my old way of thinking—there were things like this when we were younger! Queers have been around forever and have been making amazing things the entire time! The problem was access. Queer shit was behind a cultural paywall. You had to know the right person, know the right site, read the right zine, etc, etc. You had to invest time, energy or resources. You had to be extremely tapped in.

Listen. Yes, I know this is a petty, semantic grievance. Yes, I know when we say “I wish there were things like this when I was younger,” we often mean “I wish there were mainstream options like this when I was younger.” But here’s my counter: is mainstream crossover potential the benchmark for Good Queer Art? Are we only as valuable as our digestibility to a mainstream cis-het audience? Many believe that their answer is no, but their consumption practices say otherwise. A side effect of Stan culture (overwhelmingly queer) and the subsequent Never Ending Stan Wars is a focus on insane commercial success, which you simply cannot achieve through the Rainbow Circuit alone. Yes, we will be your marketing team, but we’re still convincing the cishets to listen.

When Lil Nas X was blowing up and the IWTWTLTWIWYs started flying from people my age I was like… wait. What do you mean? You wanted a gay rapper and didn’t think to Google “Queer rapper?” Or, worse, you knew about Cakes da Killa, Mykki Blanco, Zebra Katz, Azealia Banks, Angel Haze, the entire ghe20g0th1k wave in the early/mid 2010s and now pretend like they weren’t simultaneously eating and feeding us?

All that said, I wish I had a project like gay? when I was younger. In an age where every savvy burgeoning artist and label knows the power of cultivating a queer audience, listening to gay?, a project made in 1997, feels like staring directly at the gay, emo sun (contrary to popular believe the sun can be gay and emo, not just the moon).

Make Out Music is a huge stand out on this album. It has such a beguiling mix that I didn’t even clock the complexity until months after my first listen. There’s these crunchy yet cloudy guitars with the faintest, pillowy yells in the background stretching well beyond human lung capacity. The entire track feels like