The Bear, Babes, and Kinds of Kindness.

Week 190.

Hello hello! Happy July! Everything is so BAD. I’m trying to write about it but I can’t get my thoughts out. Maybe I’ll get there eventually but until then I’ll be reading rom coms at an alarming rate and dissociating. Here’s a recap of my week:

Things I Read

Books

If you’re looking for a book to read, try this list of contemporary romance recs, this list of other fiction recs, or this list of non-fiction recs. I also track everything I read on Goodreads.

• Such a Bad Influence by Olivia Muenter: This was one of my more anticipated reads of the year, because Olivia is one of the hosts of a podcast I love called Bad on Paper, so I’ve been hearing about this book forever. It’s a thriller, about a girl named Evie who has grown up online and is one of the internet’s most followed influencers. One day she disappears, and the book is told from the perspective of her sister, Hazel, as she tries to find Evie. I used to read a lot of thrillers and murder books, and now that I have the job that I have I read a lot less. This was perfect because it’s not about violent crime, law enforcement is involved but they are not the heroes, and I am obsessed with reading about influencer culture. This is suspenseful but it’s not scary, and I read it really fast because I wanted to figure out what happens. Then the ending is perfectly surprising and twisty without feeling too absurd. This has a lot of interesting things to say about influencers and snark pages and the internet in general, but sometimes it felt to me like it was trying a little bit too hard to make a point about all of that. Overall I’d recommend this if you like thrillers or if you are very online, would be a great thing to read at the beach.

• Beach Read by Emily Henry: Speaking of something that would be great to read at the beach! When I finished Funny Story a few weeks ago I decided I wanted to go back and read this again because it’s been years since I first read it. I listened to the audiobook this time, and I finished it in like three days. This book is so good. It’s just SO GOOD. It’s about a disillusioned romance author named January, who moves into her dad’s old house and finds that her new neighbor is Gus, a literary fiction author. The two of them make a bet to write books in each other’s genres, and whoever sells their book first wins. I just think this is a perfect romance novel. The romance is so good, the banter and the tension, but also they both have full lives outside of each other and are going through their own stuff. I can’t say anything else, I just love this book.

Articles

• What the Supreme Court Doesn’t Get About Homelessness: The Supreme Court is doing so many bad things, it is genuinely hard to wrap my mind around how bad things are and how hard it will be to fix any of it. Hard to overstate how much they have fundamentally reshaped the way our government works in the past couple of weeks. It is all so, so bad, but I cannot stop thinking in particular about how cruel the Grants Pass decision is. The question in this case was whether or not local governments instituting civil or criminal punishments for camping on public land constitutes cruel and unusual punishment for unhoused people. “lol no, go ahead” says SCOTUS. My friend Jerusalem wrote this great article that explains how policies like this are based in a fundamental ignorance (usually purposeful) of what causes homelessness and what can fix it. “Elected officials want an easy way out of this catastrophe, and when your only tool is a police officer, everyone looks like a prisoner,” she says. We as a society have come to rely on police officers to fix all of our societal ills, and this is simply not something that they are capable of (or frankly at all interested in) doing. Throwing unhoused people in jail because they have no where else to go does exactly nothing, not one single thing, to fix the underlying issues that have lead to increased unhoused populations over the past few decades. Do you know what fixes homelessness? HOMES. More affordable homes. I once had an unhoused client tell me that if someone just cut them a check for the same amount of money it costs to keep arresting and jailing them, we would never see them in the criminal system again. Criminalizing poverty does nothing to *fix* poverty. All we are doing is wasting time and wasting money and causing harm to already extremely vulnerable people. If we cannot call throwing unhoused people in jail for sleeping outside “cruel,” then I don’t know what that word means.

Things I Watched

TV

If you’re looking for a show to watch, try this list.

• The Bear (Hulu): I love this show so much and I thought season 2 was one of the best seasons of television I’ve ever seen, so I had very high expectations for season three and, if I’m being honest, I was a little dissapointed. This was the first time they’ve made a season of this show already knowing there would be another one after and I think you can tell. I don’t feel like the plot progressed very much and it just felt unfinished to me in a way the first two seasons did not. That being said, I do still think this is excellent and I still watched it really quickly. I love how this is shot and how it’s edited. I thought the first episode was really beautiful, and I love when the side characters get their own episodes (my favorite episode of the season is the Tina episode). It was nice that all the big cameos made appearances again. I just wish things had progressed more! Hopefully season 4 sticks the landing.

Movies

• Kinds of Kindness (theaters): Yorgos Lanthimos is such a FREAK. This is his newest film (most recently he directed Poor Things) and its an anthology of three separate stories that all center around the theme of people going too far to find something they’ve lost. This mostly stars Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons, and the side cast is made up of Margaret Qualley, Willem Dafoe, Joe Alwyn, and a couple others. I liked the first story the most, and the third one the least. I really love Jesse Plemons, and I think he’s so great in this. This is quite long (almost three hours), but since it’s three distinct stories I felt like it moved pretty quickly. I don’t really know what to say about this…it’s just very weird! If you thought Poor Things was too weird this will probably be too much for you. I do love that Yorgos continues to be a freak even as his work has become more mainstream. Give more people more money to make weird stuff!

• Am I Ok? (Max): This was fine, I guess. It stars Dakota Johnson as a woman in her 30s who realizes she is gay, and then struggles to deal with that while also going through a rough patch with her best friend. There are parts of this I really liked, but overall I think it’s poorly paced and it didn’t always hold my attention. It’s a quick 90 minutes but it felt longer, and there were long stretches where I felt like nothing happened and then when something important did happen, it went by too quick. I will say, I really like Dakota Johnson in this kind of movie. One of my favorite things she’s ever done is a movie called Cha Cha Real Smooth, which is on AppleTV+. This is not really the same at all, but it just made me think about her in that movie vs. something like Madame Web. Watch that instead! It’s so good.

• Babes (rented): I loved this movie!! It stars Michelle Buteau and Ilana Glazer as life long best friends Eden and Dawn. Dawn is married and has just had her second child when Eden accidentally gets pregnant after a one night stand, and the movie follows them through Eden’s pregnancy as she leans on Dawn for support and Dawn struggles to cope on top of everything else going on in her life. This feels like a spiritual successor to Broad City in many ways, Ilana is doing a lot of the same things here as she did on that show. It’s so funny, it really made me LAUGH. It’s also gross, it doesn’t shy away from the realities of pregnancy or parenthood and I appreciated that. And it also has some really lovely moments about family and friendship. I really liked this! A quick 90 minutes and I had a great time.

• Gone Girl (rented): I saw a tweet yesterday that reminded me that Amy Dunne disappeared on July 5th, so then I had to watch this. This is my favorite David Fincher movie, I think it’s one of the best book to screen adaptations ever made, just a five star movie in every way. I think Ben Affleck is great in this, as is Carrie Coon. And obviously, Rosamund Pike is a revelation in this film. The Cool Girl monologue is one of my favorite movie scenes of all time. This movie just rules. I will never forget where I was when I read this book and I realized what was going on. Gillian Flynn basically created a genre when she wrote this. A masterpiece!! I love this movie. (I also must say, Nick is a perfect example of why you should never talk to cops. Say “I want a lawyer” and shut up!!!!)

Things I Bought

You can read about my full skincare routine and favorite products here. If you need a sunscreen recommendation, try this list.

• Henry Rose- Jake’s House: Remember when I said I’ve been getting into perfume and it’s an expensive problem? I bought a Henry Rose discovery set during the Sephora sale earlier this year, and honestly did not like most of the scents. But I did LOVE Jake’s House, so much so that I bought the full size bottle. This is my new daily perfume, it smells so fresh and clean. This lasts a really long time on my skin, well through the work day. I love it.

One Last Thing…

Best thing I’ve baked recently is this blueberry muffin cake. SO GOOD.

That’s it for me! I hope you all have a good week.

TTYL,

Emily