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I get an attitude at the end of every August. No one is in New York City, there’s nothing to do except watch tennis and wait for September. The winding down of summer does not sit well with my spirit. I become irritable, impatient, restless — there is just so much time to wait until we get more summer. Summer is sticky, sloppy, deliriously reckless. Fall requires plans, spring needs opportunity. Summer is maximalism, freaky, fun. A few days ago Peyton reminded me that, on an episode of our podcast “Lemme Say This,” I correctly predicted that the Bennifer divorce announcement would come before September. Wasn’t it obvious? You can’t go into the autumn in a marriage held together with scotch tape and some songs. After spending the summer mostly apart, Jennifer Affleck (née Lopez) finally filed for divorce. The filing came at the end of August; the date of separation was listed as April 26. “Oh, it was a summer,” Jennifer Lopez captioned an Instagram carousel posted on Saturday.  The slides are these:
Jennifer Affleck née Lopez and soon to be née Affleck will not go gentle into that good night. Ben Affleck might’ve dumped her, but she will get the final say. There’s something of a media tour about their marriage happening in the tabloids now. The perspective is very J.Lo-friendly: “He’s very moody and dark at times,” a source told People about their tumultuous marriage. “Jennifer appreciates life in another way. She’s very grateful for everything.” (I know the voice of Benny Medina when I see it.) A source close to the first Jennifer Affleck, Jennifer Garner, confirmed the same thing in that People report. “[Ben] doesn’t have good coping skills. He gets easily frustrated and tends to be moody,” they said. “When he’s relaxed and in a good mood, it’s amazing to be around him. But more often, he’s upset or frustrated.” (So what I’m hearing is that he’s me as hell.) It’s a bit … much. The Lopez-Afflecks tried therapy, per Us Weekly, but “[J.Lo] came to the realization things weren’t going to change and they were incompatible.” (The source told Us that she loves luxury and nice things and he apparently doesn’t. So explain his $280,000 sneakers.) J.Lo has been hanging out with Affleck’s daughter Violet throughout the summer, but People reports that Affleck is not in touch with Lopez’s twins as if it’s somehow cruel and unforgivable. The only clarification from Ben Affleck’s side is that he doesn’t know Kick Kennedy, the daughter of RFK Jr. and cousin of Jack Schlossberg that Affleck is supposedly seeing. “Everything about him and Kick is untrue,” Affleck’s rep told E! News directly. A second source said they might not even know one another. Is Ben Affleck tacitly accepting J.Lo’s carrying on? It seems that way. J.Lo carried on throughout their marriage, and she will continue to carry on now that’s over.
She’s not playing spurned or heartbroken; she’s a Leo so she’s playing healed. J.Lo is a “blessed mama,” who is “in bloom and unbothered, out of reach and at peace.” She made a frankly ridiculous three part ode to the love of her life-of-three years. There was only one moment of real introspection in that project, a throwaway line about how no one was clamoring for new music from her. But at what point does she opt for introspection or sympathy? The thrill of Bennifer was how playful and corny (the 52 What It Do, posting that montage for Father’s Day, or was it Ben’s birthday? The lovey-dovey newsletter announcing the Vegas wedding) it felt from someone who otherwise presents as an extreme brand manager. I don’t think we’ve heard the last about this divorce. How could we? We are one J.Lo misfire and somber introspective Ben Affleck magazine cover (maybe not till The Accountant sequel) away. Oh, it’s about to be a fall. Career in shambles, marriage in shambles, glossy nude lip so sick of the drama she put on her out of office — and still J.Lo spins a narrative out of a shitstorm. Remember The Last Dance, the Michael Jordan doc from a few years ago? I can’t stop thinking of J.Lo and thinking of this clip: a divorce wasn’t going to fuck her summer up. 
Babygirl, the Nicole Kidman-Harris Dickinson movie, is getting great reviews out of Venice. (Alison Wilmore for Vulture, Miriam Bale, Kyle lmao) Can Brat Summer turn into Brat Fall? I don’t know but the tension in this profile is soooo funny to me. Shoot is iconic. (NYMag) Oh Brittany Mahomes (wife of Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes, friend of Taylor Swift) is not beating the Trumper allegations. (PopCrave, People) Nikki Glaser is hosting the Golden Globes — can’t get worse than the back-to-back disappointments of Jerrod Carmichael and Jo Koy. (Variety) I did a fun little video as part of the Substack Originals series:  That’s all this week! Thank you for reading. This weekend I will be blasting my AC and watching the US Open. I watched The Deliverance on Netflix this morning, the Lee Daniels movie in which Glenn Close says “I can smell your nappy pussy.” It’s no ThePaperboy, but a must-watch if you ask me.
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