The Queen Is Alive but Alt Rock Is Dead
There was a sitcom-level misunderstanding
What am I to think about the life and many purported deaths of Queen Elizabeth II, my elegant stick-wielding yummy mummy, particularly now that I have a lot of money riding on my Jubbly pudding recipe?
Well, we know she is (or was up until recently?) a 95-year-old woman with Covid. Today, the New York Times reported that the Queen canceled her virtual appearances for the second time since announcing that she tested positive for the virus on Sunday. Thank god she’s still performing “light duties,” including her weekly scheduled call with British P.M. Boris Johnson, where they remotely record a bitchy Meghan Markle movie recap podcast for an audience of none while eating Nando’s takeout (This week it was 2013’s Random Encounters. They had some pretty hateful things to say.)
There has been quite a bit of confusion over Lilibet Senior’s bodily state of affairs ever since February 22, when wartime newswire Hollywood Unlocked reported that she had died while pouring herself into vintage Hervé Leger for British Vogue editor Edward Enninful’s wedding. Hollywood Unlocked CEO Jason Lee stood by his reporting, Notes Apping in a since-deleted Instagram that he’s never lied, never been wrong, trusts his sources, and would be at the Donda 2 concert later that night.
Buzzfeed News has since reported that there may have been a highly slapstick, almost unbelievable misunderstanding about which queen died, leading to Hollywood Unlocked’s exclusive report, which is still up on their website. Buzzfeed posits that Hollywood Unlocked may have gotten news that Queens of the Stone Age singer Mark Lanegan died while preparing for the wedding, which many other alt-rock types from the 90s were to attend, and misinterpreted that as an official statement from Buckingham Palace. A phone call from London to Los Angeles does have a lot of physical barriers impacting its clarity (the southern tip of Greenland, the Rocky Mountains), and perhaps that’s how messages got garbled.
We’re praying for everyone involved, particularly Hollywood Unlocked CEO Jason Lee, who is the only person in this industry with any moral courage.
