I don’t know why, but I was a little happy about the news that Natalie Portman and Devendra Banhart weren’t dating anymore, because the two of them were just a little too high on my "smug meter," if you catch my drift. Like, he’s this freak folk/ performance art weirdo with a scary, Manson-esque beard, and she’s beautiful and smart, and went to Harvard, and stars in indie films and designs vegan shoes, and it’s all just a little too much to take. I kept seeing pictures of them doing cool stuff around the West Village all summer, looking cooler than thou, and being reminded of art school kids in high school and college, who wear all black and smoke cigarettes and make references that they know you’re not going to get and then laugh when you don’t. I know it’s petty, but just looking at photos of these two together made me think they were always talking about Proust or how to end world hunger, and the cumulative effect was just a big STOP IT. Like, enough already. We know you’re cool, and you make movies and videos and have inside jokes about how nobody else "gets it," ok? Just cut it out. The rest of us are just trying to remember to floss, and we haven’t found the portal into your freaky Williamsburg dimension. Also, Devendra Banhart looks like he smells, and I find this problematic.
In case you’re wondering, I also feel this way about artist/ freaky guy Matthew Barney and his paramour Bjork. Those two would for sure be having a conversation, and you’d be on the outside of it, going "what are you guys talking about? What’s flensing?" And then they’d snicker and laugh at you.