This week’s topics, loosely speaking, include: Elizabeth Holmes, Non-GMO vape pen startups, Kerry Washington’s lip quiver, and bad fanfiction.
THE WEEKLY WHINE (kind of)
2022 is the Year of Lying. Luckily I love to lie!
Not a lie: I wrote most of this in the Seattle airport on my way home from my glorious trip to Alaska. Why were you in Alaska? is a great question that I’m still not 100% sure I know the answer to. I have so much to share about my trip to The Last Frontier that I can’t wait to share in my next newsletter.
This week is a round-up of the culture I’ve been consuming, most of which revolves around some good ole fashioned fraud.
Not a lie: I am a great liar. I didn’t spend two consecutive summers in high school doing intensive Shakespeare workshops to not know how to lie. Last year, I visited a friend in San Francisco and went to a housewarming party where I told every new person I met a different story about who I was. I was visiting from Boston or London or Tulsa, Oklahoma; I was getting my PhD from Berkeley in Quantum Physics or leading LGBTQ+ outreach at Raytheon or working on a line of cruelty-free, non-GMO vape pens. Why would you do something so annoying? I was just doing a bit!
#ColinLifeHack: recreational lying is a lot more palatable when you refer to it as “doing a bit.” When this newsletter is inevitably used against me in a trial and my lifelong fear of being framed for a crime I did not commit comes true, I hope the investigators will understand that I was simply doing a bit.
I bring all this up because lying is in vogue right now. While I exclusively deal in harmless lies (investigators – I’m being serious!), our cultural appetite for criminal deceit and fraud is at an all-time high. From Elizabeth Homes to Anna Delvey to whatever the WeWork guy’s name is, we are being fed countless adaptations and interpretations and dramatizations of real life grifts.
Here’s a quick breakdown of our “Live, Laugh, Lie” content:
THE DROPOUT: Adapting the Elizabeth Holmes story at this point is a huge risk. It’s been recounted to exhaustion— just ask for the copy of Bad Blood on my dresser that remains unopened three years after I bought it. Luckily and perhaps surprisingly – The Dropout is excellent. I have long been Amanda Seyfried hive (I saw Dear John and Letters to Juliet in their opening weekends, thank you VERY much) and she delivers a career-best performance, nailing Holmes’ strange voice and odd-but-threatening demeanor. But it takes more than a good impression to make a good scammer show (just ask some of the other girlies on this list!) and this limited series does a great job of chronicling the spectacular rise and fall of Theranos. The narrative is straightforward and clear: we get quick, effective glimpses of post-fallout Elizabeth being deposed but for the most part, we follow the story chronologically. The pacing is so good that even if you’ve read everything there is to read about Theranos, you’ll still find yourself on the edge of your seat wondering HOW is she getting away with this??? It captures the gravity of what Theranos did wrong while not losing sight of the absurdity of the whole situation – you’ll never hear the song “How to Love” by Lil Wayne the same way. Well, you probably don’t hear it much but I occasionally revisit Demi Lovato’s flawless cover and you probably should too.
INVENTING ANNA: Nearly everything The Dropout does right, Inventing Anna does wrong. For starters, the show is more interested in the journalist breaking the Anna story than Anna herself – which is a shame because Julia Garner is perfectly cast. This show makes me sad more than anything: its combination of skilled writers and talented actors seems like it can’t go wrong and yet somehow they’ve made a wild story seem so… boring. You catch glimpses of a better show within Anna: the best parts are the flashbacks to Anna lying her way into glamorous trips and yachts and huge bank loans. But just as the grift picks up we are brought back to the poorly lit apartments and offices of the present day, where we see a harried reporter trying to crack the case and for some reason focus on her not-particularly-compelling personal life??? It’s a shame that Shonda Rhimes’ name is all over this show because I kept wondering if I should just quit and rewatch Scandal. Early seasons of Scandal were really something else: Olivia Pope’s “white suits” speeches? The love triangle with Jake and Fitz? Kerry Washington’s lip quiver?? You can’t beat it. I guess Shonda is better at giving us fictional scandals than real ones.
WECRASHED: Of the three major ripped-from-the-headlines shows out this spring (sorry to Joseph Gordon Levitt but I could not be less interested in the Uber show), this is the one I was least familiar with. I didn’t have high expectations here, mostly because even the sight of Jared Leto annoys me, but I was pleasantly surprised! Anne Hathaway, as the wife and co-conspirator of WeWork’s CEO, finally has a role worthy of her talent after a string of flops. I feel like it’s been overshadowed by the other two scammer shows but it’s worth a watch! Although, I did work out of a WeWork in my last job so I am slightly triggered by all office recreations and mentions of free beer.
BAD VEGAN: As a bad vegan myself (I’ve decided that Flaming Hot Cheetos are vegan even though they’re not), I was excited to see this title pop up on Netflix. I recall reading about this scandal a few years ago but it’s even crazier than I remembered – a vegan restaurateur in NYC falls in love with a skeevy guy who convinces her that he can make her and her dog immortal. She ends up giving him millions of dollars to make this happen, most of which she borrows from investors or steals from her employees payroll. The titular Bad Vegan is the featured talking head throughout, which prompts a fun game of “should we believe what she’s telling us?” Each reveal gets progressively more shocking, to the point where you have to google the story to see if it actually happened. My only qualm is that it probably could have told in a movie vs. a four-part “series” (why is everything a series now!!!) but I had a great time.
WHINE WITH ME
A non-exhaustive list of what I’ve been watching / reading / listening to
WATCHING
Everything Everywhere All at Once: I could write a whole newsletter just about this movie, which is so fantastically original it makes you angry that most of the movies out today are all based on IP. There are a lot of movies that, despite what people say, you can just wait to see until they end up on streaming – this is not one of them!!! Go see this as soon as you possibly can, you will not regret it. GO SEE IT!
The Lost City: Speaking of original – what a thrill it is to see a blockbuster with capital-M, capital-S Movie Stars (Sandra Bullock, Channing Tatum, and Brad Pitt) in a movie that’s not a sequel or prequel or reboot or a tangential part of some Disney franchise. And it’s FUN!!! I highly recommend going to see this in theaters, especially if you can get a little stoned beforehand or sneak in a bottle of rosé.
Severance (Apple TV+): Okay the less I say about this show, which just ended its first nine-episode season, the better. I went in knowing literally nothing (other than Patricia Arquette was in it with a severe bob) and it has blown me away. Drop everything you’re doing and watch this because once you start, you may be physically incapable of stopping until you finish. Truly one of the best seasons of TV I’ve ever watched — can’t recommend it enough.
Single Drunk Female (Hulu): Weird title but great show! It’s a half-hour dramedy about a twentysomething moving back home while trying to get sober. Proof that it’s worth watching: it’s executive produced by two experts of the form, Girls’ Jenni Konner and Russian Doll’s Leslye Headland.
READING
Don’t Cry For Me by Daniel Black: A father tries to make amends with his long-estranged gay son through a series of letters written in the final days of his life. It’s not exactly a light read (as many of the others on this list are) but it’s not too dark/hard to read — it’s a compelling look at generational trauma and homophobia in a Black family in the American south.
Reckless Girls by Rachel Hawkins: A fun, quick read following a group of rich, beautiful twentysomethings sail out to an abandoned and potentially haunted private island in hopes of an Instagrammable adventure. Of course, the trip ends up being less Love Island and more Lord of the Flies.
The First Husband by Laura Dave: If you read and loved last summer’s blockbuster novel The Last Thing He Told Me like I did, I highly recommend this earlier novel from the same author. It’s a great tale of marriage and break-ups and the merits of starting over that can easily be read in one sitting.
A Man Called Ove by Fredrick Backman: After reading and loving Anxious People, I’m making my way through some of Backman’s other novels. This one is his most well-known and I liked it a lot! Didn’t love it in the same way as Anxious People but it definitely made me cry. Apparently it is being turned into a movie with Tom Hanks???
It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover: Ok, y’all…. this book has been recommended to me MANY times from friends and Instagram and TikTok so I had high expectations but I am genuinely not sure what you all saw in this!! It read like mediocre fanfiction: not rooted in any sort of reality (what 25 year old in present-day Boston owns their own shop with no experience and is ready to get married??? ) and zero character development outside of the central relationship plotline. I read a lot of romance/rom-com novels and nothing frustrates me more than one-dimensional characters who only exist to date each other. The main character here had no specific, identifiable personality traits or friends or hobbies or interests – the only things we knew about her was that she owned a flower shop (and her name was LILY BLOOM lmao) and that every guy who meets her is instantly in love with her. The book does handle some really intense/dark subject matter (abusive relationships, trauma) well but it ends with that, unfortunately.
LISTENING
Crash, Charli XCX: A perfect album that I can’t stop listening. Yuck, Crash, and Lightning are among the many, many great songs that I am so excited to dance along to in gay bars all summer long.
As It Was, Harry Styles: This song just SOUNDS like a long walk on a blissfully warm-but-not-hot spring days – flowers are blooming, leaves are growing back on the trees, sun is shining on your skin, and the song you’re listening to is so good you can’t help but sing out loud just a tiny bit.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading! Next week we’re heading up north to the final frontier. See you then! XOXO
LIVE LAUGH LIE!!
hiii okay, so I never read it ends with us, but I've read ugly love by the same author and LOVED IT!! I think it was because I didn't hear about it, so i opted to read that one instead of IEWU. Nevertheless, I would like to formally submit my application to share some good book recommendations to you ahah. also new song recommendations: love me again by raye & jess glynne & haircut by ryan beatty.
p.s. i hope you and your loved ones are okay with everything that happened in NYC today ❤️