A Straight Woman Hosting A Dyke Dating Show—AGAIN?
+ Porsha Williams winning hearts, Mamdani on the mind & rewatching Sister Act 2
This week, I have a whole lot to say about the straights taking over, Mamdani Mania, how long it takes to read an 831 book, and why Porsha Williams is the queen of Atlanta (sorry, Juicy) and hearts everywhere! The Cinehunni Diaries is a yapping and reading paradise, so subscribe for $10 a month and share it in your group chats! Read to the end for a Cinehunni surprise!
The Weekly Bits is long on purpose (might get clipped in your inbox so open in a browser) and there are lots in ‘em! So read it on your commute, at your desk while procrastinating, or let it sit in your inbox and read it throughout the week!
There WILL be typos (not a threat, just a fact)
Happy Pride! It’s basically over, and it has felt like the least pridey Pride, and personally, I’m okay with that. I DO care that it was Mamdani’s first Pride while being in office, and while he did not perform as Madonna—I still was very happy!
I Kissed a Girl is back and it’s going to be the final season, and while I’m happy that “representation” is on TV… why are we still having allies host the shows instead of some popular queer folks? There are more than enough famous, popular queer folks who can host these shows. Idk, maybe it shouldn’t bother me but…it does. There are like 3 reality dating shows that feature mostly queer women (Queer Ultimatum, I Kissed a Girl, and Coming Out for Love), and two out of the 3 are hosted by straight women. I know what you’re thinking, HOOCHIE DADDIES DOES NAWT COUNT because they aren’t competing for love, just to be the ultimate hoochie daddy—DIFFERENT PRIORITY.
Like, go allies but also. Stop.
LISTEN TO ME. I have NEVER wanted someone to fail more than the group “One Baddie After Another” on Pop Culture Jeopardy. I cannot STAND them. The white guy is smug, and the Black guy feels like the type to laugh and take part in jokes about Blackness that his white friends make (I’m completely correct about this btw, because it just happened on an episode I watched). More on that next week after I finish
THERE IS A HEATWAVE THIS WEEK!
So stay hydrated with your water stacks (look it up) and wear cotton panties. I like these from Marks & Spence and Tomboyx has cute boxer briefs. These aren’t ads I just want everyone’s bits to stay cool and comfortable. This heatwave also reminds me of how I know I couldn’t be on Love Island. You want me to sit in the heat, in a full beat, get ate up by bugs, avoid the AC, AND do activities to fall in love? No.
Everyone has fallen in love with the nun podcast Dominican Sisters Open Mic, and as someone who is historically obsessed with nuns, so have I. This is new to me though, because I love nuns in like—a naughty, religious kink kind of way—but I love the Dominican Sisters of Mary in a sweet, non-naughty, listen-to-them-while-I-make-a-kink-free-morning-coffee kind of way.
Side note: If you ARE interested in nuns in a naughty AND cinematic way, have I GOT SOME FILMS FOR YOU BABES! Interno di un convento or Behind Convent Walls (1978, Italian & very good), Benedetta (2021, it’s fine), Visions of Ecstasy (1989, gets the job done), and Las Hijas del Fuego or The Daughters of the Fire (2018, Argentinian, not necessarily nuns but one hell of a scene at an altar)
The BET Awards was this weekend! Did I watch in real time? No. Why? I don’t have a Paramount+ subscription, and I couldn’t find it elsewhere to save my life. Janet Jackson made an appearance, and Queen Latifah was part of Lauryn Hill’s tribute, which started off with Tanya Blount singing “Joyful, Joyful”. THIS MEANT A LOT TO ME AND ANY BLACK KID BORN BEFORE 1990.
Tanya starred in Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit with Lauryn. They have a beautiful moment singing “His Eye Is On The Sparrow” — but Tanya singing “Joyful, Joyful” as an homage to the CORE MOVIE MEMORY OF A MILLION BLACK MILLENIALS gave me shivvvvers!
I have been spending far more time on IG recently and I’ve been keeping up with the babes that I dig (my fiancé and Mamdani are the only two people I have notifications on for btw), so can we talk about Leigh Soriano a.k.a OldFashionedHussle doing a collab with creators (well deserved) ‘cos when I say I love a storyteller, SHE IS WHAT I MEAN.
Drake is a girly pop and he’s throwing a party for everyone named Janice ‘cos of his song Janice STFU. It’s insane behaviour (with a U ‘cos Canada) and EYE LOVE it. Someone write a song about Shelli’s so that I can get tipsy and eat crab legs on a boat for free. Also, the song samples 2010’s I Follow Rivers by Lykke Li, and it used to play on repeat while I worked the night shift at The Gap. MEMORIES!
We should get into what I’m not watching and won’t be shamed into watching: Love Island. Babes, I have never watched a US season AND I haven’t watched the series generally since season 5 when Amber and Greg won (Amber has since come out as a lesbian btw), and the only reason I know Olandria is because her ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS FACE IS (RIGHTFULLY) EVERYWHERE
Also, Knicks in five!!! I can say that because I am marrying a New Yorker, and shout out to Jordyn Woods—designer, it girl, lucky charm—and THEE bag making it into the literal Guggenheim. P.S I used to steal from Stop & Shop in college soooo, that’s also a little NY-flavored Shelli tidbit for you.
Newness x Thots
Is God Is comes out on Blu-ray on July 28! Have we been so annoying about going analog that we’re forcing physical media to make a comeback?! GOOD JOB TEAM! If we can somehow force Jenny Bicks and Paul Feig to give me seasons 1–3 of Welcome To Flatch on DVD, we’ll have really done a great job
Elle comes out this week (July 1, Prime Video) I saw it, I like it, but more on that next week when you’ve had a chance to take it in. Clueless, Jawbreaker, Wish Upon a Star would all like a word though, so keep that in mind.
What Eye Watched
Office Romance was cute, and it was even more perfect because, spoiler alert, shout out to partners who lean into your kink and play along. Also, my best friend was right…I think Brett Goldstein wrote this movie just so he could make out with J.Lo. But also, do not fuck people you work with. And also, GAY SISTER FINGER BANGING EVERYTHING SHE CAN IN PRISON GETS A STAR.
I’m reading Rooting Interest by Cat Disabato, and I promise to be done with it by next week. Also, shout out to my Emma for announcing her new book with 831!
CAN WE TALK ABOUT PORSHA WILLIAMS FOR A SECOND?! GREAT. I wouldn’t call myself a Housewives fanatic (I do love a cracka), but I know enough, and one thing is not up for debate, and it’s that Porsha deserves everything! The Porshasexual Princess who puts the silent P in LGBTQ+ was just on Ziwe, and if you think that was a time, you need to watch her interview with Carlos King. It’s so intimate without telling all her business, and intense without getting traumatic. She drops the most delishhhhhhhh gems, and I love it, I love her, and if you know someone who can get me on the GoNaked PR list, I’ll book my braid-down IMMEDIATELY.
Can we pretty please talk about this? I cannot stand remakes, and too many sequels freak me out (like Practical Magic 2 and me might have to fight, but who knows), but I don’t mind paying homage, and I feel like this is how you do it. I really hope Alyse Marie gets this done!
I finally watched “Wuthering Heights”. I actually started watching it on a plane last week, and turns out it is not horny enough for me (I WILL give it up for 1:29:21), but far too horny to watch on a plane full of people and dogs. HOWEVER, the idea of getting all solo touchy feely atop a mountain with intense breezes while wearing a cute bustled skirt DOES INTRIGUETH ME ALOT(ETH). Saltburn remains undefeated in the Emerald Fennell Cinematic Universe
I watched Happy Gilmore 2 (idk why but now my algorithm is fucked), Obsession (OMG HELP), and the World Cup (The Netherlands is my team and I’m in need of a Summerville jersey). I re-watched The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (why wouldn’t I) and Survival of the Thickest (Season 3 is the final, and that makes me sad), and am finally finishing up Pluribus.
My week told through a film…
Speaking of nuns, Guess what bitches, I started going back to church a few months ago and it’s been a cute time! If you don’t know, I grew up religious, father is/was a pastor but the dyke of it all mixed with daddy issues turned into religious trauma and i skidaddled for a while. Anyway, It’s been…nice. I don’t talk much when I’m there. I go, mind my business in the back row, and then take the vibes with me when I leave.
But this Sunday was a little different. I was in church on Pride. I actually didn’t realize it until I was sitting there and remembered that about twenty minutes north there were like, idk, thousands of people celebrating all things queer (and probably like 20 being haters ‘cos what’s Pride without a little bit of hate!!!)
It made me think of all the times I sat in church, both before and after I came out (well…forced out, shout out to an ex and an aunt), and was so wildly uncomfortable in my queerness. The times where I couldn’t name it but knew the damnation being yelled from the pulpit was for me, and the times where I could name it but knew that I was just being tolerated.
I thought about films like Pariah and The Miseducation of Cameron Post, stories about kids trying to become themselves while being surrounded by people preaching love with an asterisk. They understand what it feels like to have a large part of who you are treated like something that needs to be prayed away instead of just loved.
Thinking of those films years later, while sitting in a church that I chose to go to, in clothes that I chose to wear, while in a relationship that I don’t hide being in, on a day where so many queer people in the city are beautifully wrapped up in—or on the road to—accepting themselves, felt validating and really fucking good.
It also made me think of Disobedience. I know I talk about it ‘cos it has one of my fav sex scenes (there is spitting involved) but believe it or not, I like it for way more than that. See in this film, Ronit (Rachel Weisz) is grown. Just like me, she’s built a whole ass life away from the church and community that rejected her. She didn’t have to come back to deal with her father’s death, they weren’t close, but she chooses to anyway. The film isn’t really about whether her father accepted her or acknowledged the damage he did (or allowed others to do to her)—it’s about how she moves and wraps up the chapter when she understands he never was going to.
I think about my father a lot when I’m in church.
Our relationship isn’t great right now, but that’s not the whole of what saddens me. It’s not that I know he’ll never truly accept who I am or acknowledge the hurt he’s caused. It’s that our core memories are behind us.
They’re good memories, and I’m grateful for them, but none of them were made while I was living as my truest self. He never really got to know that version of me. Or maybe more accurately, he chose not to.
So this Pride, while sitting quietly in the back row of church wearing my queer little bracelets and getting a text from my whole ass fiance, that’s what came to mind.
Babes—DID YOU SEE THIS?!
Everyone should be subscribing to National Theatre at Home. It’s $12 a month (this is not an ad, I just love it) and it’s incredible. I watched Ncuti Gatwa in The Importance of Being Earnest, and it was so fucking good and felt like I was there. Also HILARIOUS.
Also, there are exactly 5 shows on Prime that are worthy of you keeping your subscription at least through the summer and its heatwaves: Swarm, Delores Roach, Fallout, Overcompensating, The Girlfriend, and Wilderness. After that, you can cancel your membership and start walking to Walgreens for your toothpaste.
Colman Domingo on Good Hang = Perfection.
On A Scale of One To Gay….
Listen, House of the Dragon is back out and no I have not watched it. Why? I need at least 3 episodes to be out so that I can fully form my thoughts while also holding out hope for scissoring of some sort to happen in one of the towers. Also, it constantly reminds me that I need to re-dye my hair and I don’t want to think about that right now ‘cos money.
Also, the only toxic relationship I ever want to stay toxic is back in full effect on The Vampire Lestat. I feel like this season was made just for me because it started in Detroit—maybe they didn’t send me screeners because I’ve openly talked shit about the Eastside over the years… EYE STAND BY IT BTW.
I was sitting on our couch yesterday, screaming to my fiancé about how I’m in my Layla (Secret Lives Of Mormon Wives) era. That just means I’m trying to be more vocal about how I feel and what I want, but am sometimes going TOO hard with it and need a little light “hey, slow down” tap at times. Then they told me that Layla came out as bi. Like, two hours later, I went and did some research, and saw she addressed it on Jay Shetty’s podcast. So yeah, like, sure, why not end Pride Month on that note.
Cinehunni Selects
This week’s theme? “Wanting Love A Little Too Much—AND DOING INSANE SHIT THAT YOU SHOULD NOT BE AND LIKE OMIGOSH PLEASE STOP AND BE SINGLE FOR LIKE TWO SECONDS!”
We saw Obsession this week, and now I just wanna tell you to go watch all these movies about relationships.
I Write, You Read
Every week, I’ll leave you with a pop culture quote that stuck with me a whole lot, this week:
Am I really going to have to say this out loud to you? This is so hack. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault. One Oprah style, “It’s not your fauuuullltt!!!” The way I am has nothing to do with you. You are not responsible for other people’s problems—you never have been.
If you correctly guess where this is from AND share this to your IG/Threads (@ me!) I’ll send 3 of you a present from The Cinehunni Dispatch!
It’ll be a surprise DVD, a postcard, a film-inspired crafting moment, and a special note from me + more! I miss snail mail so….YAY!
See ya later Hunni!,
<3 Shelli