After several grueling months on the awards show circuit (not to mention the years spent on a film’s actual production), it all pays off at the Oscars, where Hollywood’s A-listers finally get to meet Cheer’s Jerry Harris. The Netflix breakout—wasting no time making the most of his newly minted stardom—served as a red carpet correspondent for Ellen DeGeneres at last Sunday’s ceremony. And judging by the video, he left a number of celebrities visibly awestruck.

Lin-Manuel Miranda warned Jerry not to drop any spoilers. Frozen star Idina Menzel asked Jerry for one of his (surely soon-to-be-trademarked) “mat talks,” while Best Supporting Actress winner Laura Dern gave Jerry her own. And Harris bonded with Best Actress winner—and former cheerleader—Renée Zellweger, whose drawl gained at least three extra vowels in her fellow Texan’s presence. Still, perhaps none were as overwhelmed as Little Women director Greta Gerwig, who told Harris she loves to watch him while pumping breast milk, leaving the unflappable Jerry, perhaps for the first time ever, visibly rattled.

Caleb Landry Jones and Kaitlyn Dever Make Their Musical Debuts

Richardson-raised Caleb Landry Jones has been writing music since long before he broke out as an actor—but as any musician can tell you, it always helps to cut your teeth in a few Oscar-nominated films before you actually release an album. Jones’s official debut, The Mother Stone, is due on Sacred Bones on May 1 largely thanks to director (and fellow musician) Jim Jarmusch, who gave him early encouragement and hooked him up with the label. Its first cut, “Flag Day/The Mother Stone,” is a seven-plus-minute psychedelic romp that’s full of woozy strings and Tin Pan Alley horns, eventually giving way to nitrous-huffing psych-rock that resembles the Beatles at their most woozy. It’s all accompanied by a video starring a naked man in full eighteenth-century regalia. You can take the boy out of Texas, etc. etc.

Booksmart star Kaitlyn Dever also made her musical aspirations official this week with the debut single from Beulahbelle, her folk-pop duo with sister Mady. You might already be familiar with the music of the Dallas-raised Devers (whose dad, Tim Dever, voiced Barney the Dinosaur—a good thing to know in case this ever comes up in bar trivia). Beulahbelle landed a couple songs on the soundtrack to the Charlize Theron film Tully in 2018. But the new “Raleigh” is its first official single, accompanied by a video that the sisters codirected, coproduced, and costarred in. It finds them intertwining their harmonies while acting out some modern-dance-inspired mirror moves around a bedroom that’s engulfed by what we’ll choose to interpret as a dense, low-lying fog, in tribute to their North Texas home.

David Lowery and Wes Anderson Release New Trailers

Two of Texas’s finest filmmakers also doubled up this week with trailer debuts representing their wildly divergent fantasy worlds. First up, Irving-bred director David Lowery follows 2018’s The Old Man & the Gun with The Green Knight, a take on the Arthurian legend of Sir Gawain that stars Dev Patel as King Arthur’s rebellious nephew, who’s on the hunt for the green-skinned creature of the title. The teaser features plenty of psychedelic imagery, ominous skulls, and especially foreboding puppet shows.

Meanwhile, Houston’s own Wes Anderson is finished tinkering with his latest whimsical diorama, which is set in an imaginative world where people still read newspapers. It’s called “France.” Anderson’s The French Dispatch boasts a huge, all-star cast that can’t even be read aloud here, lest the trailer run the same length as the movie—but suffice it to say that if the likes of Elisabeth Moss and Edward Norton are relegated to the “also starring” section, then the director’s perfectly framed teacup overfloweth.

Kacey Musgraves and Erykah Badu Release Their Own Signature Smells

This competitive week also found two Texas musicians entering the increasingly crowded scent marketing space. Last Thursday, country star and Golden native Kacey Musgraves introduced her fans to the Slow Burn candle, whose aroma of “incense, black pepper, and guaiac wood” is meant to evoke the feeling of her song of the same name—an ode to relaxing and taking your time that sold out almost instantly. It’s since been restocked for preorder but, antithetical to the song, you should probably hurry.

Not to be outdone—or chagrined in any conceivable way—Dallas’s own Erykah Badu announced her own line of incense, one that she claims smells like her vagina, thus continuing a recent trend of celebrity-genital-scented merch that probably began with Gwyneth Paltrow’s own candles. The self-descriptive candle will be available later this month through the singer’s website.

THIS WEEK IN MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY

It was another relatively quiet week from McConaughey, whose idle thoughts drifted to the past, and not to how he can get in on this scented candle craze. With only a couple of things on his calendar so far—including hosting a private Star Wars screening for high school students through his Just Keep Livin Foundation, and ringing in an official Yeti sponsorship of Austin FC—McConaughey seemed to spend most of his time this week reminiscing with his phone. He shared slightly backhanded “#goodluck” well-wishes to all the nominees on Oscar night by reminding us that, hey, he’s already got one. He tweeted a video left over from the Super Bowl, where he wished Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder a “Happy Thanksgiving,” an apparently joking reference to Snyder’s now infamous January flub. He kicked back and tended to his honeycomb.

But even an idle Matthew McConaughey gathers headlines, as he did with his cyber-”reunion” with How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days costar Kate Hudson. To commemorate seventeen years since the film’s release—or just to kill some time—McConaughey shared a still of the scene where Hudson’s character discovers he’s let their “love fern” die. McConaughey captioned it “that damn fern” and tagged Hudson, prompting her to repost it on her own account with the rejoinder ”that damn fern…? That damn fern?!?! YOU LET IT DIE!” Hudson then added a little red heart emoji to convey that she was only kidding, that this was just a bit of playful banter in the spirit of their—beloved? Let’s go with beloved—characters, and that she was sending love across the digital transom to the actor.

Anyway, hopefully McConaughey starts working on a new movie soon or something, before he starts getting all nostalgic for Sahara.