The Brunch round-up for October 25: The week and how it made us feel

Before you hate on romance chatbots, please do a quick sweep of the IRL dating pool. Then, hurry. Because everyone’s snatching up the cool chatbots. Of course, you can customise your bot to be whatever you want it to be: A merman, a goddess, a Chris Pratt-Chris Evans hybrid. The bad news? The better avatars cost more.

Most promo screenings ask audiences to show up in theme colours. But one LA movie theatre decided to hold a free screening of Bugonia only for those who were bald or willing to have their head shaved. The Yorgos Lanthimos-directed film stars (who else but?) Emma Stone, who gets her head shaved by conspiracy theorists. What if you went through with it, only to end up hating the movie? That’s a hell razor!

Hug your nearest Millennial, it’s about to get emotional. Mumbai’s OG live music venue, Blue Frog, is all set to reopen. When it launched in 2007, it was the best thing to happen to India’s indie scene. Homegrown artists could perform across genres with proper stage design, production and acoustics. We watched Zakir Hussain, Anoushka Shankar, Indus Creed, Midival Punditz and Karsh Kale there. This Frog, it’s really a Prince.

Everywhere you look, there are Korean and Japanese comfort reads with magical cats, cosy bookshops, and quaint restaurants that change your life. There’s even a term for it: Healing fiction. It’s pissing off lit snobs. But if we can have trauma porn, why can’t we have tales of a memory-cleansing laundromat, or a store that sells good dreams? Choose well, readers.

That growling noise your tummy makes when you’re hangry? It’s the air bubbles being forced out because there’s no food inside to process. But that’s not the fun part. The process is called Borborygmus, and that’s officially our favourite new word. Don’t use it in a sentence. Go eat something first.

Heading to Japan? Here’s a pro tip that will make your trip even more kawaii. If a restaurant has over four stars, don’t bother. Locals don’t give a rating above three, no matter how good the restaurant is or how much they love the food and service. So, anything with four or five stars has probably just been boosted by tourists. Who knew that being mid was so rewarding?

Ah Shakespeare! Timeless plays. Endless reinterpretations. Here’s the 2025 update: A theatre in Estonia has staged Romeo And Juliet with all parts played by cars and monster trucks. They call this a “tragedy of motors played out on a junkyard with the picturesque backdrop of a sand quarry”. Mercutio dies in a car flip. Buses fight. There’s hardly any dialogue. Seriously, Shakespeare would have loved it.

Social anxiety’s scared of him. Content creator Herman (@DailyRejection) actively seeks out situations in which he might get rejected. He’s asked people for lemons from their tree, to borrow a cone from a construction worker. The twist: Not everyone says no. He’s attended a stranger’s wedding, guested on a radio podcast. Our takeaway: Shoot your shot, and turn rejection into content.