On Saturday I attempted to upgrade the backend here at Celebitchy. I thought I knew what I was doing and I did it right! It’s just that one of the databases broke through a fluke, the site had to be restored from a backup and it was a lot of stress. We were back by Sunday morning, no harm no foul. Plus I watched a couple of cute Netflix movies while eating my feelings (The Christmas Chronicles and The Tribe) and I got to see the new Ariana Grande video for “thank u, next!” I watched it a few times, it was super cute and I enjoyed it. As you know, I’ve turned into an Ari stan since she dumped Pete Davidson and owned that narrative. Honestly I didn’t immediately recognize the four early 2000s movies the video is referencing, even though I’ve seen three of them. (I haven’t seen Bring it On yet!) The Washington Post has a handy explainer video along with the scenes that she’s referencing from Mean Girls, Legally Blonde, 13 Going on 30 and Bring it On. That’s below. In case you can’t watch the video at work, THR has a breakdown too. Everyone is talking about this cute video, dissecting the references she’s making and bringing it back to Ari’s theme of owning her personal story. She is her own brand and she is amazing! Here’s that video with the breakdown of the references, the actual video is above.

While I enjoyed the hell out of this and don’t mind having this song running in a loop in my head, of course this was all planned for maximum exposure and to get us talking. Friday used to be where stories went to die, but now it’s how something gets talked about all weekend. It worked too, thank u, next broke the YouTube record for most views in 24 hours. Plus there’s a lot to unpack. Ari half admits she dumped Pete (she wrote “sorry I dipped” in the burn book next to Pete) and she references his BDE with the word Huuuuge under his page. (That’s at 1:05.) Then, she has a conversation with Jennifer Coolidge at the hair salon in a scene that’s straight from Legally Blonde (Coolidge played Paulette in that movie) where Ariana said “he was really cute and it was really big” and Coolidge says “I’ve only gone out with one guy who had a really big front tooth.” Then they do the bend and snap from Legally Blonde. Plus it’s got Kris Jenner in it!

These are not my teen movies, I grew up in the (late!) 80s but especially for the people who loved and watched these films as teens, Ariana just nailed it. The director of this video, Hannah Lux Davis, told Cosmopolitan she was obsessed with Mean Girls and that she worked with Ariana to work in other movies from their youth. She also revealed some Easter eggs in the video, like that the cheerleaders wore uniforms that said “Lovers” instead of “Clovers.”

I’m going to start teaching Zumba soon, and I just found my cooldown and stretch song. I’m going to do the arm swing thing (Mean girls Christmas performance) followed by the bend and snap (cheerleaders!) at the refrain. I’ll have to use the clean version though. Sometimes people bring their kids with them.

In other Ariana news, she tweeted “True love doesn’t exist” and then tried to take it back, deleting it and writing that she was hungry. She also wrote that on the day she came up with “thank u, next,” she went to Tiffanys with her friends, drank champagne and bought everyone rings. That sounds like an awesome way to get over a breakup.

well …………. ‘twas a pretty rough day in nyc. my friends took me to tiffany’s. we had too much champagne. i bought us all rings. ? it was very insane and funny. & on the way back to the stu njomza was like ‘bitch, this gotta be a song lol’. so we wrote it that afternoon. https://t.co/CoczmPj1Fo

— Ariana Grande (@ArianaGrande) December 1, 2018