Sidenotes #18: Beyoncé, tiny bag holidays and Mountainhead
Sidenotes is back with some recommendation
Hello! I’m in Athens at the moment and on the flight over I figured, there’s 2,249 of you subscribers, including people who’ve joined in the past six months since I last posted, so why not send you over some recommendations of things I think you might really enjoy? As ever, no promises about the regularity of this, but the goal is to show you some things I’ve liked recently.
Mountainhead
A gauche mountain lair, a set of ambitious tech upstarts and the terrifying possibility that AI won’t kill us, the impulsive and venal men behind it will. This TV film is a ridiculous satire of life and values of our tech overlords who’ve permanently altered how we interact with one another. Written in 12 days by Jesse Armstrong, one of the showrunners of Succession, it’s the same quiet luxury clothing, nonsense phraseology and shaky hand-cam, as if we’re in The Thick Of It. It could easily be read as a spin-off of the TV show, with similar nods to rolling news stories and the macro implications of the fussy little squabbles and willy-waving competitions of a few entitled billionaires.
Without giving away any spoilers, the other day my partner wondered how Elon Musk and Grimes met and so I explained: Rococo is a famously excessive design style, all frills and embellishments, whereas Roko’s Basilisk is a thought experiment posted on some forum a few years ago, positing that: if an AI is created to positively improve all of humanity, surely part of its job will be to kill any human who stops its progress? Anyway, one day Elon Musk wiped the ketamine bogies off of his fingertips and went to tweet ‘Rococo’s Basilisk’. Ever the pioneer, he wanted to check if someone else had had the same idea. He searched the term and up popped Grimes, who in her sort of tech-greebo ponderings, had already posted it. What were the chances? Musk then slid into her DMs to point out the Venn diagram between the pair and the rest is, well, history that I’m guessing is under the wraps of several binding NDAs that pertain to not just what Grimes says about her former partner but how much she gets to see her own children. Anyway, more to the point, both Rococo’s newer incarnation as an ostentatious display of wealth - slippery grey furnishings, stratospheric glass walls, invisible minions tending to every want - and Roko’s Basilisk tumble about in this film. It stars Steve Carell (being serious Steve Carrell), Ramy Youssef and Jason Schwartzmann.
Watch Mountainhead on Sky/Sky Atlantic/NOW TV
Beyoncé
I took my 11-year-old nephew to his first gig and it was Beyoncé and honestly, this is what aunthood is made for. Take the kids out to the fun things, plonk them back with their parents, realise that even though you did just drop £187 for a child to join you, said child definitely costs more than triple that per month to keep in Reebok classics and Nairn’s oatcakes. We were on the east side of the stadium, watching a golden sun set behind Queen Bey, getting goosebumps in the sultry long June evening, surrounded by huns in cowboy hats who knew all the words to even the less-loved Cowboy Carter album tracks.
Beyoncé’s vocals are unrivalled, the dancers were tight (and disproportionately ginger, IYKYK!) the sound quality was exceptional, the stagecraft was epic, including neon and red white and blue references to old school Americana and a neat subversive flip against Trumpism at every turn. The VTs, many of them rapid-fire collages of Black American history, do a fantastic job of showing how Black music has been fundamental to American culture since day dot, including old chain gang songs and spirituals, footage of pioneering Black female blues acts like Elizabeth Cotton and Sister Rosetta Sharpe through to Tina Turner, really showing how Beyoncé is the current apex of that tradition.
I half expected a tribute to Sly Stone, who had died earlier that day, but nothing. The next day, Brian Wilson died, and considering Bey’s YaYa includes a sample of The Beach Boys’ Good Vibrations, I wondered if she’d make any further nod to his passing. I’m not alone, and when I saw someone on Reddit conjure the fantasy of Beyoncé singing God Only Knows, I got goosebumps. Again! In this heat! Oft expectation fails, and look, Beyoncé is not our town crier, she’s not TMZ, and she certainly doesn’t take requests. Yet when so much of the show IS a comment on culture, and so much of her music bubbles like a bouillabaisse of references and callbacks to huge pop moments, it’s…noted… that she won’t adlib outside of the sort of vague, Vegas-y ‘you all look so wonderful tonight’ and ‘happy birthday!’ (My god if I’d paid £950 to stand in that pit next to tall gays with wide-brimmed 10-gallon hats on, I’d sure as hell hold up an “It’s my birthday” sign so Beyoncé would wish me).
I guess for her and her entire business, it’s about delivering a show that creates a sense of time, place and feeling rather than tethering to the wider time, place and feeling. It meant I got to see the slickest show in town, but the same show people will see across the world, nothing much to set it apart. Perhaps I’m expecting her to perform an aspect of humanity, when actually, the best way for her to stay human in the face of 80,000 strangers calling her name, over and over again, is to hold that bit back. Or just not skip a beat.
Tickets are still available for Saturday 14 and Monday 16 June!
Brat and how to pack light for a holiday
I could just be coming from a place of resentment because I’m on my way to a wedding in Greece rather than Charli XCX at Lido festival. As much as I wish I could split myself in two and get to both, weddings only happen once, meanwhile brat is forever<3. The thing is, unlike Beyoncé’s majestic, state of the nation kind of performances, no two Charli gigs are ever the same. After so many years of being a pop artist but only so many of being a pop STAR, and maybe realising conforming is impossible, Charli has crafted herself as the antihero of the megastar millennial pop pantheon. In her pursuit of hyper pop perfection she deliberately breaks every rule pop stars have been obliged to follow; using obvious autotune over a backing track, no dancers, drinking wines on stage, licking her own spat out spit up - from the FLOOR! - swearing at fans, adlibbing deeply intimate worries to thousands of people from behind bee-like sunglasses concealing all but her petulant pout.
Another way her clear chaos and disrespect for the rules shows up - something her fans come to expect and admire - is in her passing the mic. Last October I saw her bring out Robyn and Caroline Polachek (and Yung Lean, sure). And I’m sure she’ll do it again, making this show like no other. Even if it rains, it’s brat. So I hope everyone stays hydrated and takes lots of footage, I’ll be knee deep in raki and commemorations. Which is pretty brat? Idk.
Anyway, I’m on the plane to Athens right now and I just couldn’t be bothered to pack more than one tiny rucksack for three days, because who wants to wait at the luggage carousel dealing with snarling competitive dads seeking to show off deadlift skills when they could be using that time to jump on a janky metro into town to look AT THE ACROPOLIS or some feral cats? Here’s how to do it:
Check the PRECISE dimensions of your carry-on luggage. Would be so embarrassing to do all of the below just to be told off at the luggage-o-meter.
TWO WEEKS IN ADVANCE, make a list of what you need, not what you want, and trim it down
Pack early, checking everything fits, questioning the distinct purpose of each item
Roll everything down, because folds somehow make things bigger?
Book a hotel with an iron and ironing board so you can freshen everything up once you’re there.
If it doesn’t all fit, carry the spare bits in an extra bum-bag/tote. Once through, go to Boots, buy something small and inconsequential and, most importantly, a massive 10p paper bag. Chuck your extra bits into the paper bag, hold it from the bottom and, as you head towards your gate, pretend it’s stuff you’ve just bought. For some reason, the cabin crew don’t care if you’ve got extra bags so long as they’re shopping bags. (My continuing disgust for capitalism, while living within capitalism and enjoying a budget airline flight, is one of my finest morals). Which makes me wonder if next time I should get a full FatFace bag purely to lump my spare into.
Accept that you will have some freeloader items that are getting a holiday for nothing. Right now, it’s a letter (tiny, acceptable) but it’s been entire pairs of shorts before! Shorts!
Don’t pack euro coins, they’re heavy! And you’ll get plenty on the way
And finally
Until next time!
Today I learned that greebo wasn't just a Suffolk word.