The Friday Dispatch: June 13, 2025

I have bruises on my toes...click to learn more

Happy Friday! Well. NOW. As you read this, I’m probably throwing last-minute additions into my Warped Tour bag (best guesses: Band-Aids, antacids, earrings I’ll forget to wear, holographic scrunchie) while my brother (& Dottie) snore on the couch.

As I write this, though, it’s Sunday morning, and I’m waiting on someone from Reddit to email me a video they took in the mosh pit at Webster Hall last night!

We went to see Sleigh Bells at Webster Hall, and boy howdy, it was one of THE best concert experiences of my life (definitely top 10, maybe top 3¹ for Indoor Concerts). It’s sort of weird: back in March, I wrote about the new Sleigh Bells album + the tickets I bought for this concert, but before that I had never thought “Ah yes, I am such a big Sleigh Bells fan.” I’ve been listening to this band since high school, when my friend Cassie—not on school grounds, mind you—wore a T-shirt² that said “SLAY FUCKING BELLS” on it and I said “Hey what’s that?”

I listened to Treats, then Reign of Terror (which I bought on vinyl!), etc. etc., and somehow I became a really big fan of Sleigh Bells without noticing. Song-for-song, their second-most-recent album Texis might be my favorite, at least in part because it came out when I was in my last in-office job, and I would listen to it on repeat 4-6 times³ a day while thinking, “I hate being in an office, I hate it I hate it I hate it.” Telling Myles all of this, he described their music as an endemic part of my life, and I think that’s a good way to put it. There was a slow creep in, and now they’re just a part of my own personal auditory ecosystem.

All of this to say, I’d been listening to Sleigh Bells for 15 years but never saw them play live! If you’ve made it through these paragraphs and still haven’t heard a Sleigh Bells song, go ahead and listen to this one, Rill Rill, from their first album.

And then watch this video of Alexis Krauss, from Sleigh Bells, coming down into the crowd⁴ and SINGING and DANCING at ME and MYLES and a GUY IN A COOL LIMP BIZKIT/TACO BELL SHIRT!!!! To RILL RILL!!! AUUUGHHH

[Wait, first, helpful guide]

Okay, NOW the video. I am in a black tanktop and half-ponytail and bow, and I get pushed into the li'l pit at 0:05 seconds and then the audience and Alexis basically bounced around and screamed and cheered and danced and hugged for the remainder of the night.

I also want to plug the opener for Sleigh Bells, an artist named Sophie Hunter. Do you ever hear a song or see a movie and think “Okay, this is not for me, but this is VERY MUCH made for a specific one of my friends?” That’s how I feel about Sophie Hunter.

I think maybe the best way to describe her is “if Crazy Ex Girlfriend had a rap spinoff.” She has vocal talent AND clever lyrics AND a good flow, all with a good fun stage presence; many of her songs are about being sexy in a thong AND also seeking treatment for severe mental illness. It doesn’t necessarily line up with where I am in life right now (thongs hurt!) but I think there are a lot of people her work WILL resonate with, so I am boosting it!

Here’s the song of hers I liked most live, called I Am The Problem. “I can't keep a lover or a friend or a tour date” is an absolutely fantastic line. Also, her song Bionicle has another banger, which is "Shakespeare was a woman and that woman is Jack Harlow." HA. YEAH!

This concert was a segment of a really good weekend! There were lots of activities, there were lots of friends and nice strangers. And clowns!

I was so sure I had mentioned ha ha ha ha ha ha ha in this newsletter previously, but I thought it was, like…December. Nope! In MAY 2024, I included “tickets to Julia Masli’s show ha ha ha ha ha ha ha” in a “What I Did Not Buy This Week” list. Well, over a year later, a cosmic wrong has been corrected!

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha is a clown show. I don’t want to tell you about it. You would still very well enjoy it with prior knowledge of what might happen and what certainly will happen. But I think its charm comes primarily from the “figuring it out together” element of the show, so please, go in as dumb as you can! I WILL tell you, Myles and I BOTH lost a sock to this show. I almost didn’t wear shoes that required socks, and then, an internal message told me Hattie, you should wear socks tonight. I was rewarded by sacrificing my sock! And thank goodness I could.⁵

If you’re in NYC through the rest of June, go to the Public Theater and ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Please. I have a promo code! It’s HAHAHEHE. This should give you $30 tickets. Type it in when purchasing tickets here (the Public Theater website).

Happy Annieversary!

One year ago today, I debuted a show that I wrote/rehearsed/learned in a little less than one month. I Was Never Cast In Annie was an idea. Then, it was a pitch. Then it was a script, and then it was a musical!

It was also my return to the stage after almost four years of not performing (unimportant/largely uninteresting reasons). IWNCIA is a lot of things—my first solo show, my first time on the UCB stage, my first time as Annie—and the thing I like most about it is that it kicked off a lot of big changes in my life, all of them good. I’ve performed ~10 live musical parodies in the last six months, and two sketch shows, and a handful of bit shows/special guest appearances/etc. All because I said, “You know, I think I would look pretty good in a red wig, and I KNOW I look good in a bald cap.”

General Housekeeping

Ok, so speaking of big life milestones. Next week (6/20) will be my last Friday Dispatch for a bit—mid to late July, probably! I am getting married and then we are going on our honeymoon and no offense to the whole world, but I do not want to send emails on my honeymoon.

But that doesn’t mean you won’t RECEIVE emails! I would not leave you to languish with no summer reading. Here are three things you can look forward to in the tail end of June and early part of July.

• WIDNBFMW (What I Did Not Buy For My Wedding): This is like “What I Did Not Buy This Week,” but ALL wedding stuff. Would you like to see some dresses I vetoed? Some unhinged wedding topper choices, perhaps? I’ve got it.

• A full-length Q&A interview with my friend Jake Gorr, my collaborator on the Reporter Quarterly zine, in which we discuss our approach to the project, our personal histories with poetry, and how we navigated a project which straddles intimacy and public perception (WILL THERE ALSO BE A SHOP LINK IN THERE TO ORDER THE ZINE??? HMMM I GUESS YOU HAVE TO WAIT AND SEE)

• A new installment of my “Here’s What I Learned” column—I am 90% sure it will be “Here’s what I learned from going to dance camp with my mom on my 30th birthday,” but you MIGHT get a different topic⁶ if I have a wild hair.

Some Etcetera

• Do you have extra art supplies? Are you in need of more art supplies? In either case, I want you to know that QNS Collaborative has a project called “Spare Arts.” There are four art supply stations throughout Queens where you can pick up free supplies and craft kits! If you want to support QNS Collab, and this project, donate here. To keep up with the awesome workshops and meet-ups QNS Collab is hosting, follow them on social media, and if you go to an art event keep your eyes peeled—I donated the leftover fabric from my wedding dress alterations, so maybe you’ll craft something with it!

  Here’s where you can find Spare Arts around Queens:

  • Astoria Bookshop

  • Astoria Food Pantry

  • Pancakes Records

  • ArtStrong NYC

• I REALLY love the “summer punch cards” that

  Jenna O'Brien
  put in this edition of
  Feeling! Magazine
  . It’s like a cute/fun version of my boring ol’ tracking notecard. I think I will make one of these to incentivize myself to go for my “stretch goals” this year (that “100 writing submissions” goal on my Bingo board is staring me down).
  Download the punch cards (and Jenna’s incredible repository of printable zines) today.

  

• Brian Wilson dies the same day Sabrina Carpenter announces her controversially dog-themed album…Close enough, welcome back Pet Sounds <3

WIDNBTW

Happy Friday, and as always, thank you for hanging out with me! Here is What I Did Not Buy This Week:

• These incredible clown tights, which I have no doubt I would wear everywhere⁷

• Anything from the new Sanrio Ballet Kitten collection, though this My Sweet Piano keychain is a perfect marriage of theme and character

• A graphic novel about The Bees, Lithuania’s first all–women rock band. This looks up my alley!

• A new Day Designer planner, for the first time in YEARS! I am switching to a binder system?! Will it work?!?! IDK please pray for me!

• A street vendor Labubu…Where is the fun if they are not blind-box items?

  

• The delicious-sounding “Margarita That Studied Abroad” at 30 Love (next time! I had the matcha mojito, it was a dream come true)

• New yipick. I mean, lipstick.
  

1. For purposes of emotional arithmetic, I am excluding ALL Regina Spektor shows from this ranking

2. According to a random blogger online, the first time Sleigh Bells sold this shirt was when they were on tour opening for Hot Chip and LCD Soundsystem. Frothing at the mouth b/c I want to see THAT particular tour SO BAD.

3. With one exception: In the two weeks after Beyoncé’s “Break My Soul” came out, I listened to it at least 30 times a day. Other than that it was 100% Texis.

4. It was a GREAT crowd and I love all of the people I met, who stepped on my toes a lot, and now I have really weird bruises under my toenails. DM for pics ($) (kidding) (am i?$)

5. Weirdly foot-heavy edition of the Dispatch! And, weirdly footnote heavy.

6. Here’s what I learned during a two-week writing residency on a farm!

7. My friend Chloe once said I wear opaque tights more than anyone she knows, and I think that’s true!