Ode to Scorpios
a belated birthday post for Satan's favorite sign
If astrology isn’t your thing, i simultaneously understand and reject that, but i promise this post should still be fun for even the lay-star denier. take astrology or leave it, i am here for the memers and the dreamers alike.
It only feels natural to pay homage to my roots this far into my newsletter, which much like myself, was born into the world in Scorpio season. In a way, we can consider this the belated-1st-birthday-post to I Might Be Right! The Big 1! Although I’ve been something of an absentee mother, I like to think the times I have chosen to be involved and invested are like when estranged parents randomly decide to take their kid to Disneyland for a day. It’s always eventful even if you have to wonder afterwards when they’re coming back.
It is my nature to become sentimental about things only once I can view them in retrospect (similar to rewatching Sofia Coppola films.) We’ve been through a lot together in the last year, me thinks. The highs, the lows, the weird middle where we talked about a so-so Olivia Wilde movie for an unacceptable amount of time (stream it on HBO Max.) For those of you that came in from the jump or somewhere along the way, I’m eternally grateful for the goofs, the gaffs, and the laughs we’ve shared.
Consider this a fun little self-indulgent check-in before we join hands and scream into the ether for the bulk of awards’ season.
I wanted to delve into what I consider the Scorpio Hall of Fame: the stars we know may know and associate with the sign, in all its polarizing glory. You cannot tell me there isn’t some detectable yet undefinable through-line for this group of individuals. This list is neither comprehensive nor objective in its content, but this is my newsletter and I’ll lie if I want to so let’s call it The List™.
Stanley Tucci
I don’t know who let this man in on one of the best kept secrets of modern stardom— the fact that we all find him unreasonably sexual— but Stanley Tucci has been riding that vibe in true Scorpio fashion ever since. I wanted to take a moment to appreciate my favorite Birthday twin (sorry Demi Moore) for the slutty, bald, gay passing Italixn straight man that we all know him to be. Albeit for every fun little mixology quarantine video we got of him I couldn’t help remembering the time he nearly left his dying wife for Edie Falco during her Carmela Soprano stint. What a scandal! Maybe his staying was a testament to trademark Scorpio loyalty, obvious guilt, or the perennial secret third thing. Either way, I see him, I hear him, and every year that I blow out my candles, in a way, I’m blowing out his too. 🙈
Martin Scorsese
Someone said Martin Scorsese (and Paul Schrader) would write two and a half hours of the most sociopathic, vile shit you’ve ever seen and then end it with the dedication “for my dear friend, Tony” and if that isn’t the kind of feline affection I have expressed to nary every person in my life then I just do not know. Marty has that Scorpio penchánt for pettiness that seems to pervade even the most innocuous of moments. Despite having achieved a point in his career where he is well celebrated, in every interview Marty gives he reaches a moment where he gets to— as someone on Twitter put it so eloquently— set fire to one of his enemies. I think it’s important to toast, too, those little moments to get the full range of Marty.
Björk
I refuse to believe, for religious reasons, that the scene from The Northman is acting. My spirit tells me this woman showed up to set ready and Robert Eggers simply started rolling. Everything about Björk feels like she is a witch with a vendetta! Did y’all never see the way she fucked up the reporter who had the gall to approach her child? That journalist, I have no doubt, wakes up in a cold sweat every so often and swears she can still feel the ghostly chill of an Icelandic left-hook barreling towards her like a proverbial iceberg. Getting whopped like that has lasting power. Björk is a triple Scorpio, and it shows.
Ethan Hawke
I have a fairly distinct memory of being in middle school, watching Reality Bites on cable, and needing to know immediately what Ethan Hawke’s sign was. Lo and behold, a decade and some change later, he has made our list. There is something about Ethan in the context of his Scorp-nature that captures the overly intellectualized yet somehow still hyper-romanticized roles he inhabits. But to me, Mr. Hawke officially earned his seat in the Scorpio Hall of Fame when he made his son switch seats with him at an NBA All-Star game so he could flirt with Rihanna.
Frank Ocean
It takes a special kind of toxic relationship that only Scorpios are capable of invoking to keep fans on the hook the way that Frank Ocean has. This man has repeatedly hit and quit us. Bread crumbed us into oblivion, one might say. Gifted us with two of the most incredible albums of the 21st century, four years apart, only to disappear for six more with nary a single every blue moon. And realistically, what did we expect? This man wrote an entire album about how he’ll always love and cherish someone he ghosted. This is the kind of self-induced drama, delusion, and pain I live for! If he sent me a text at 3AM after not speaking to me for years….what choice do I have but to reply?
Julia Roberts
She may be the end-all-be-all of Scorpios for me. I cannot think of anyone whose career in stardom is as much equal parts Talent™ and gluttonous salaciousness. Her love life and the way the world was enraptured by it is a good indication of that. It’s possible Ms. Roberts’s fatal flaw amid all her immense beauty and skill was letting the world know just how much of a true-to-form Scorpio she is. See: meeting Kiefer Sutherland on the set of Flatliners, getting engaged to Kiefer, leaving Kiefer three days before the wedding for his BEST MAN, Jason Patric, breaking up with Jason, etc. The list goes on. God forbid Julia ever has to go through a 12 step program, the list of people she probably owes an apology is less of a grocery list and more like the closing credits for LOTR: Return of the King. Out of solidarity, I stand by her.
Honorable mentions: Ryan Gosling AND Rachel McAdams, SZA, Tracee Ellis Ross, Gabrielle Union.
Scorpios it’s important to acknowledge but whom I would vote off the island and make hand in their fish if I could: Leonardo DiCaprio, Drake, Katy Perry. Small mention here for Winona Ryder, whom I have historically loved, but in good conscience cannot condone her comments defending J*hnny D*pp.
Thanks for reading, happy 1 year, here’s to more <3