The Nicholist #16
Jennifer Tilly is Asian!
Welcome to The Nicholist! My weekly list of pop culture where I gush on everything that’s got me obsessed.
Jennifer Tilly in Bullets Over Broadway
Oscar nominated, baby! On a whim for movie night or because Todd Haynes’ Julianne Moore starring vehicle Far From Heaven wasn’t on streaming—and was too cheap to rent—I settled for Woody Allen’s Bullets Over Broadway (please don’t cancel me). I’d never seen it before and Jennifer Tilly seems like an actress who’d win a Razzie Award over an Academy Award so I wanted to see what Miss Tilly was giving—and as gangster side piece star-hungry Olive Neal she was giving. I love an over-the-top comedic performance that’s perceived as prestige, I live for the Oscar Supporting Actress category1, I’m obsessed when an actor snags an Oscar nomination without any other nominations throughout an awards season2, and I love an actor who does it by mostly just being themselves. Also ditzy Asian3 with questionable talent and a concerning determination to be a star? Relatable.
‘Tis The Season
It’s officially my favorite time of year.
I Read A Little Life…
for the fifth time. What does it say about me that my favorite book—one that I read every year—can be described as “torture porn?” I can agree that the novel is somewhat overwrought with its depictions of trauma. I can understand the weak reader who can’t stomach serious literature (lol jk). The brick is 800 pages long and is a battleground for one’s emotions that it ultimately ends with its reader in breathless heaving sobs. But for me, at the yolk of the book is the deepest story of love I’ve ever read.
To say A Little Life emotionally havoced me is an understatement. I felt so tethered to the book that the first time I read it I cried on and off for an entire week. I was so affected that to find solace I took note from musical theatre—where when a character’s emotions on stage get so large, so consuming that the only logical response to life is to sing…
And so—cause I like attention—here’s a song I wrote called “Jude,” inspired by A Little Life.
The Christmas Song of the Season
A Mariah Carey The Emancipation of Mimi era-tinged mid-tempo R&B song told through the perspective of Martha May Whovier from The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. Do I need to say more?
With lyrics like “Courvoisier by the case straight killa, Ice pussy I'm the Whoville thrilla, I heard there's a Grinch, Immah definitely fuck this Grinch” this holiday season Matt Rogers’ “Hottest Female Up in Whoville” is a Billboard #1 in my household.
Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros
BookTok was unrelenting on FYPing this novel and I had no choice but to surrender and give it a chance. I’m not a huge genre reader so like fantasy and dragons? Sure… But Fourth Wing got me shook because I haven’t had as much fun reading a book in like, maybe, forever.
However on to the more pressing topic: it is of utmost importance that I tell you this is the horniest book I’ve read this year—and I purposefully read gay smut in February. No one does romance like a white woman with an Army husband and six kids. They really pop off with prose like, “The strength of his length crashed into my walls and I begged for every extra inch as I savored the painfully pleasurable stretch gifted from his hot throbbing girthy cock.”4 Honestly, work.
There’s even an entire podcast dedicated to the BSA category.
Marissa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny! Iconique.
Jennifer Tilly born Jennifer Ellen Chan. Olive Neal is Asian!
This is not a direct quote. I made it up. But really though? Not that far off from the source.