Christmas (trees) in July
Part one of my interview with writer Meaghan Garvey. Plus, Drake and Courtney vs. Everybody.
VANCOUVER — There’s a little voice inside my head that tells me nobody turns to Human Pursuits for cultural analysis.
“Why are you trying to write about Drake and Kendrick Lamar right now,” it whispers. “Who cares what you think?”
I tell the voice that audiences like range, that ‘sletters are a space for experimentation, that it’s okay to be a little selfish with your writing.
“Plus what about Proper Chune?” I wonder.
I stare at the computer and try to ignore my creeping doubt. I write and delete several openings: about K-dot and Drizzy’s long-simmering feud, about the Cold War turned hot following the release of For All The Dogs and We Don’t Trust You, about my search for CD quality leaks of Drake’s diss track, “Drop & Give Me 50,” which calls out Lamar explicitly.
“Don’t you see?” I say “The gods are fighting. It’s hip-hop’s War of the Roses, it’s #Scandoval for Hypebeasts.”
The voice ignores me, talks in circles over me. It doesn’t care that Drake called Kendrick Lamar a “midget” or said “that Dot shit was weak as fuck.” It doesn’t care that this is the most energized he’s sounded since Back to Back.
“Anybody abiding by the five elements of hip-hop knows all of this already” it says. “And what about that Millie Bobbie Brown thing? Or are you so quick to forget?”
I pump the brakes and try to change gears. Coachella weekend 1 was a mess hey? Did you see Grimes’ meltdown???
A green and blue Nalgene flies past my head. “Stop aping How Long Gone!” it hisses.
Reader, things are getting weird and I still need to introduce this week’s guest. I decide to scrape the bottom of the barrel.
I log onto X and stare dumbly at the feed. Courtney Love said Taylor Swift is “not that interesting as an artist” while promoting her new podcast.
(I click on the link. The voice is suddenly silent).
She also said she doesn’t like Beyonce’s music.
(Intrigued silence).
And she thinks Lana Del Rey should take a seven-year break.
(Intrigued silence heightens).
AND SHE SAID EVERY SUCCESSFUL FEMALE WOMAN IN MUSIC IS CLONED AND THAT THEY’RE ALL THE SAME.
(Silence turns to noise; heavenly trumpets sound, heralding the author’s epiphany).
I crack my knuckles and type:
Nobody really cares what Courtney Love thinks.
But does that stop her?
No!
If anything, her lukewarm takes resonate because they deviate from the PR-approved garble spewed by every other pop star! She speaks her mind with her whole chest because she knows that’s her power source! The same as Drake!
Or Meaghan Garvey, for that matter. As an entrenched writer with bylines in The Cut, Nylon, GQ, etc., as well as her own vibes-forward Substack, SCARY COOL SAD GOODBYE, Megahan has carved out a niche telling stories nobody else can. I discovered her, for instance, when she did the very cool move of interviewing her own crazy ex-boyfriend. But her interests extend beyond male manipulators into travel, trail cams, Townes Van Zandt. Our conversation, which ran more than an hour, included tales of breaking teeth in Vietnam, keeping Christmas trees past their conventional due date, reminiscing about lost love, and maybe giving JoJo Siwa a little credit.
While I’m no stranger to long newsletters my editor has advised me to break this week’s episode into two parts, with the dramatic conclusion coming tomorrow.
Whether or not Meaghan fucks with this intro, I have no idea; but as I type the last sentence, I think she might agree, it doesn’t matter.
ES: Firstly, I should ask, how are your teeth?
MG: Oh my God. This is a never-ending fucking saga right now. My two front teeth are temporary. What lies beneath them, I dare not even consider… But I fucking cracked my tooth off in Vietnam on a bahn-mi sandwich.
ES: No. That bread is supposed to be made fresh daily. What the fuck.
MG: It was a really good sandwich, too. I have nothing bad to say about it. I finished it, it was divine. It wasn’t about the hardness of the bread. It was the pillowy aspect that my tooth sunk into.
ES: And it couldn’t get out?
MG: My tooth was capped from childhood. So it sunk into this bread and suddenly it felt like a slide whistle. I was having some other life problems happen to me on this trip to Vietnam. It’s not that I didn’t think things could get worse, but I didn’t think they would get worse in this particular mouth-way. Laughs. So I put the tooth back in. It was rattling around in there, being held in by gravity, but nothing adhesive.
I went to the dentist. I was like, “Yo, can you glue this back in real quick?” They’re like, “Oh no, no, no. You have serious problems. Your teeth are dead. You need two root canals, you need two new teeth, it’s going to be $8,000, thanks.” So I’m halfway through this process, and I have temporary teeth for the time being.
ES: How did you lose your two front teeth originally?
MG: The first one happened when I was in third grade. My teacher was this really young, cool, beautiful lady named Mrs. Newton. She had this sexy British husband, and she had a golden retriever. She was living the dream. She was coming over to my house for dinner. I was excited. I was thinking “Oh my God, Mrs. Newton is coming over.” I had my two American Girl dolls that I was going to show her. One under each arm. The doorbell rings. I run down the stairs to greet her and eat it. I fall down the entire flight of stairs. Tooth out, through the lip. I’m in a pool of blood.
ES: Oh no!
MG: And then the second one just got stuck in a caramel apple/lollipop situation.
ES: My partner has two fake front teeth as well and they started rotting a few years ago. You’re the only person I’ve met who’s been through something similar.
MG: It sucks. You realize how fragile your fucking teeth are. And now I can’t stop thinking about it. I’m walking around thinking “If I trip, I could fuck this up, and then it’s going to be another six thousand dollars.” It’s horrible.
Wait, sorry, what part of Vancouver do you live in?
ES: I tell people Kitsilano but it’s just south of Kitsilano — below West Broadway.
MG: I was in Kits for about a month, near the end of my stay there.
ES: Just walking 4th Avenue with all the hotties hey.
MG: Laughs. It was not a socially active time of my life.
ES: Yeah? Were you depressed? Down bad?
MG: No. Well, yeah.
ES: What Canadian broke your heart?
MG: He wasn’t a Canadian. I moved there with my boyfriend at the time. I interviewed him for my Substack a while ago.
ES: The crazy one?
MG: Yeah.
When the 17th person tells me “You’ve gotta see The Bear” that’s probably when I’m not going to see The Bear.
ES: That interview is what put you on my radar. I love it so much. You should’ve gotten a book deal off it.
MG: Oh shit that’s awesome. I think it may be my journalistic masterpiece. I talked to someone about making a movie out of it back then. They were like “It’s too bad Shia LeBeouf is canceled, he would’ve been perfect for it.” Like, oh my god, tell me more. But they took it to their higher-ups who apparently found it confusing.
ES: What is there to be confused about? It’s straightforward. If the “You wanna hear a story about how me and this bitch fell out?” girl can get a movie, I feel like you should, too.
MG: I agree. But yeah, I lived with him in Vancouver. We didn’t really talk to anyone else because I found it very challenging to make friends there. I tried to go to bars and it was getting nowhere. It would either be some nerdy, craft beer brewery that I did not want to spend a second of my life in or a dive that scared me cause it had people nodding off. Like, no judgment, but it was a scary vibe. And there was nothing in between.
ES: It’s still like that for the most part. We have some higher-end restaurants and bars, but it’s hard to find decent places where you can spend less than $100 to hang out. It isn’t as friendly as Edmonton, or Chicago.
MG: I wouldn’t say everyone is nice to each other in Chicago. There’s sometimes a bit of good-natured hazing. But you talk a bunch of shit and, once you get that out of your system, you become friends.
ES: It’s like FX’s The Bear.
MG: Yeah, which I haven’t actually seen.
ES: I like it but it’s slightly overrated. It’s fine. It’s not amazing.
MG: Yeah, when the 17th person tells me “You’ve gotta see The Bear” that’s probably when I’m not going to see The Bear.
ES: Exactly. Wait 10 years for it to come back around.
This isn’t a gotcha question, but you tweeted the other day about having a Christmas tree in your house until April and I just think we need to talk about it.
MG: Every year I say it’s going to be different. But I’m pretty proud of myself because April 7th is far from the worst I’ve done. People throw away their Christmas tree on January 4th. I’m not cheap, but when I buy something, I want to get my money’s worth out of it. And Christmas trees look good. It’s nice, it brings me joy. It’s a new year. You’re saying we’re just going to throw this shit away straight away? How fucking bleak is that?
So I hang on to it for a while. And then time slips away. Suddenly I have to go out of town, or something, and I’m left wondering “Am I going to throw the Christmas tree away before I leave? No, I’m not.” I’ll do it when I get back. But then it’s like, fuck, I’ve got to do this other thing…
I think the latest I ever threw one away was the Fourth of July. I invited my dad over. He brought his hacksaw and we hacksawed the tree. But because it’s the Fourth of July, my neighbor was having a barbecue with her 17 closest friends on the porch. They’re standing there as we bring this Christmas tree out in thirds. Laughs. I don’t know. I’m ashamed. I’m pretty self-conscious. I don’t want my neighbors to think I’m a dirtbag. I’ve been a dirtbag before, and now I’m not… My neighbours don’t need to see me walking a Christmas tree down four flights of back stairs. So this most recent time I broke off all the branches. The tree was dry so it was pretty easy.
ES: Are you watering the Christmas tree the entire time it’s in your house?
MG: Up until that point I was, but then I went to Vietnam for three weeks. I can’t tell my sister to water the Christmas tree and feed my cat.
ES: I would think she’d just take the initiative. It’s sitting there…
MG: So I break off all the branches. Those fill three garbage bags, which I can move pretty surreptitiously. And then all I have is the trunk.
ES: You realize you’re describing a mafia-style hit right? Laughs.
MG: I know. I live on the shore of Lake Michigan. My friend was like, “Just throw it in.” I couldn’t do it; it’s like littering. So I waited until garbage day and then when no one was down there I put the trunk next to the garbage cans.
ES: Is that the most incriminating thing you’ve ever thrown out?
MG: I think so.
ES: One time I came out of our house, and saw that one of our neighbors had dumped a bunch of trash in the bin without a bag. It was a Canesten applicator, a DoorDash McDonald’s order, and a bunch of empties.
MG: In my party girl days I used to have this habit which I guess could be referred to as “The 4 AM Calzone.” I’d come back from the bar and there’d be one place that was still delivering food… It was this shitty pizza place and all they had was calzones. I’d order this fucking calzone, but by the time they would deliver it, I’d be passed out. My neighbor would place it in front of my doorway, in a way that I was almost made to feel ashamed. Like, “Here’s your calzone: ready for you bright and early when you wake up.”
ES: Unfortunately I’ve been on the other side of that interaction. Our neighbors ordered a bunch of A&W. Burger, fries, everything. They fell asleep, and because it’s Vancouver, their meal turned into crow food. It was spread out all over the lawn and the street. It seemed aggressive to pick up the leftovers and drop them outside their door, so I took a photo and texted it to them, like “You may want to come get your food.” But they didn’t. They were 22 and didn’t care.
MG: You’re definitely that guy.
ES: I’ve become everything I didn’t want to be. I’m like the dad of our little complex, I’m taking care of the trash. I’m messaging people about moving their cars. It’s too much responsibility.
MG: That’s a rough one. I’m the youngest person in my complex, which is probably why I was worried about the Christmas tree. I need to be mature here.
