Greetings from Paradise!
No not that paradise, the other one! Oh, no, not that one either.
Between Costa Rica and Mexico, I’ve been in a lot of paradise-presenting spaces this year but this time (my life is a constant challenge, thank you very much) I’m talking about the dreamy beaches of the Outer Banks, North Carolina. OBX, as they say. The “they” there being my family, with whom I’m sharing this paradise with for the next two weeks. You know what they say: you’re never too old for a family vacation, especially if it involves someone else paying to rent a beach house. The “they” in that one is me.
I love the beach so much that I’ll honestly take whatever beach you give me. As long as I can lay down my towel on the sand (or set up my beach chair because I need back support while I read xoxo) and swim in the ocean, I’m happy. I’m actually never happier than when I’m at the beach. I’m not religious or spiritual really at all but I do believe in the healing, transformative powers of the beach. I’d try elaborating on it but for now I’ll just share the words of my fellow beach worshiper, Real Housewives of New York alum and Skinnygirl girlboss Bethenny Frankel:
Of course, I prefer to have enough quiet that I can sit and read for hours. I’m really not the type to bring my speakers and blast music. I’m a benevolent beachgoer, kind enough not to subject my unconsenting neighbors to my summer ‘playlists’ that are usually “august” by Taylor Swift on repeat.
I’m also not the type to pound white claws in the blazing sun for sport. Although, to be clear, I won’t be pounding White Claws in any temperature. As a seltzer purist with the LaCroix hat and Polar t-shirt to prove it, I’m on the record as being anti hard seltzer. Some nerve White Claw has calling itself ‘Seltzer’ when it’s barely carbonated and tastes like nothing. And before you say but the black cherry is actually really good! NO, it’s not. It’s really not. I’m sorry but this has all gone too far and I must put my foot down!
Anyways — the beach here is just easy. It’s quiet but not dead; the water’s cold but not freezing; the weather’s hot but not too… well actually it’s very hot this year but still! Best of all, I can walk to the beach in a matter of minutes. It’s heaven and I never want to leave!!! And although I love my family very very much, I safely never thought I’d call a family vacation “heaven” so I think that speaks to the healing powers of Ms. OBX.
It’s my favorite type of vacation – staying in one place. Something I’ve been very bad at lately elsewhere in my life. (Great segue, right?)
On The Road Again!
After being in and out of the city, state, and country all spring, I wanted to stop packing and repacking my suitcase and actually live in New York for the summer. And yet… I seem to have spent a lot of time in a lot of places that are not New York, the city in which I live.
In order to get to the Outer Banks, I spent twelve-ish in the back of my dad’s pick-up truck (the back seat, I should clarify, not the bed of the truck!) on an overnight drive from my hometown outside of Boston. From the moment we pulled out of the driveway of our house, my dad had on his fancy over-the-ear, noise-canceling headphones to listen to his audiobook as he drove, which I really admire.
Somehow, this was not even my first double-digit-hour road trip of the week. Thank god the only motion sickness I get is the emotional kind Phoebe Bridgers sings about. (Depression.)
The weekend before I sat in the backseat of a Ford F-150 going down the east coast, I sat shotgun in a Prius going up the East Coast.
I really was trying to stay in one place for most of summer but the universe had other plans for me! The universe in this case is my friend/former roommate/angel of a person Lydia, who told me (during a hang at the beach, naturally) she needed to go back to Atlanta for a friend’s engagement party and was going to drive back to New York since she had left her at her mom’s house and then said “wait, Colin, you should totally come with me!”
Whether or not she really meant it, once I learned that flights were decent and her dad had a salt-water swimming pool and I’d be able to cross off at least five states in my very-real-but-ultimately-very-unrealistic pursuit of visiting all 50 states before I turn 30, I was in. Luckily, living together in a tiny four-bed-one-bath (one where the shower doesn’t work if someone’s using the sink, but that’s beside the point) means you get to know each other very well and therefore can read when an invitation is genuine. Also because I kept asking “Are you sure? Because I literally will.”'
While in Atlanta, I spent a lot of time in the aforementioned salt-water pool, ate at a great french restaurant that happens to be right above a strip club, and served as Lydia’s plus-one to an engagement party for one of her close friends from high school. I came to said party knowing no one but by the end of the night, I’d befriended the bride-to-be, the groom-to-be, the groom-to-be’s twin brother, and even the groom-to-be’s twin brother’s girlfriend who manages an Orange Theory. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s really easy to befriend twins when you yourself are a twin.)
I made some new friends but also saw some old ones. I got to see my dear friend and friend of the newsletter Lucie (my partner-in-crime at the timeshare meeting from hell in Costa Rica, if you’ll recall) since she started med school in Atlanta literally five days before I arrived. My trip was so last minute that I truly forgot Lucie would be there – like, I did not put two and two together until we drove by Lucie’s new school and Lydia happened to point it out – so I was thrilled to be able to see her, especially right before med school really picks up. I’m so proud of her !!! Since we were in high school, and probably before, she’s wanted to go to med school so it’s really really special to see her actually out there living her dream. Also, she said she reads my newsletters “sometimes” (deeply hurtful, rude, cruel, etc.) so who knows if she’ll ever see that!
Lydia and I decided to use this road trip as an opportunity to visit another old friend, the beloved, enigmatic Cotlon, in Memphis, Tennessee.
Colton also lived with us in the cursed-but-cherished four-bed and then was my sole roommate in my first post-college apartment. We were great roommates because we had opposite schedules and similar names, which means we each regularly had the apartment to ourselves and that we could have a Col Me By Your Name-themed housewarming. He’s also just generally the best.
We lived together for a little over a year until COVID hit and Colton (prepare to swoon and/or roll your eyes) reconnected with his middle school girlfriend via Instagram DMs, moved out of the apartment, and drove all his stuff back to Tennessee to live with his family and, more importantly, rekindle his adolescent love affair.
Cut to almost two and a half years, they’re living together in a beautiful apartment in Memphis and we’re all technically roommates again since Lydia and I are sleeping in the guest room. Also: Guest room!!!! Why do I choose to live in New York???
We were only in town for about twelve hours so we spent the majority of the time at the cocktail bar he now works at — named Cameo, like the app where you can pay $30 to have celebrities like Nikki Blonksy from the Movie Hairspray wish you a happy birthday — catching up on the last two-plus years of our lives as a woman at the back of the bar sings a very loud but ultimately pretty good rendition of “I Have Nothing” by Whitney Houston. It was karaoke night but I also wouldn’t be surprised or upset if this was just a nightly occurrence.
So that’s how I ended up driving from Atlanta to Memphis to Brooklyn, through hours and hours of highway across Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia.
Throw in an Amtrak from New York to Boston and I think I went to like 15 states in one week. In the process, I gained a lot of perspective. Mostly the perspective of: wow, things kind of look the same everywhere, don’t they?
I finally relate to the trope where musicians on tour forget what city they’re in. I was basically on tour but instead of performing and meeting fans in each city, I just got a Diet Coke and a bag of mixed nuts at a gas station off the highway.
Are you judging me for saying my gas station snack is mixed nuts? Ugh. The perils of being honest!
xoxo
WHINE WITH ME!
It’s been a minute since we caught up on culture, so here’s a quick rundown of (some of) what I’m listening to / watching.
RENAISSANCE, Beyoncé
Bey has famously opined that “people don’t make albums anymore” and thankfully she is out here trying her damndest to keep the art form of the capital-A Album alive. RENAISSANCE is meticulously crafted as a front-to-back experience, with each song building off the one before it: samples, melodies, and vocals linger from one song to the next like guests across rooms at a house party.
It’s cohesive and consistent but never one-note. There’s a distinct mood or vibe or (as it were) an ENERGY that radiates off this album. It’s iridescent joy. At first I wanted to say it sounds like the way light refracts off a disco ball but, in reality, this album is about the light we refract off ourselves. It’s a celebration of going back outside after extended periods of isolation, armed with the courage and confidence we need to bring our best and baddest selves back out.
So maybe a better metaphor is when you wear sequins or something shiny on your night out, and you can’t help but smile at yourself as you see how it catches and reflects the light as you dance. You’re celebrating how you are, as Bey would say: UNIQUE! That’s what you are!
Surrender, Maggie Rogers:
Another ode to joy! Rogers calls it “feral joy” and I can’t argue with her after hearing “Shatter” which has her essentially screaming her lyrics at the top of her lungs as fast as she can. And it mostly works!! I don’t know that this album reaches the heights of her previous album, Heard It in a Past Life, just yet but I really do love “Horses” and “Anywhere With You” and am dying to see them performed live.
Anything and everything Tove Lo has released this year.
Tove Lo (pronounced Too-veh-loo, somehow) does not miss. It would be enough if she released “How Long” — with one of the best, most infectious choruses of the year — and called it a day but she then followed that up with bangers of equal-if-not-greater proportion like “No One Dies From Love” and the just-released “2 Die 4.” But she didn’t want to just corner the market on bangers so she gave us “True Romance”, a devastating synth-tinged ballad with aching, haunting vocals. She is giving us everything we could possibly want and it’s about time we started acting like it.
MUNA:
Speaking of “does not miss” — I could write 1,000 words on how much I love every song on MUNA’s latest, self-titled album. I’ll spare you and just plug my two favorites: “Home By Now” might be my favorite song of the year, an ingenious take on post-relationship what ifs while “What I Want’ is a burn-everything-down-including-myself banger.
“Sticky” by Drake:
OK, yes, Beyoncé did it better but I can’t get this song out of my head. It’s playing on a loop in my mind at all times. My friend Steph was beating the drum for this Drake album from day one and I initially rolled my eyes when she said it was for the girls and gays. But she was very, very right. It’s silly and fun and, fuck, I’m singing it in my head right now. You know how sticky it GETS!!!
Not a new song by any means but I recently rediscovered this hidden electropop bonus track from Pure Heroine about falling in love in the heat of summer. For my Melodrama heads — it’s basically “The Louvre” with Pure Heroine production.
WATCHING
Ultimate Girls Trip Ex-Wives Club on Peacock:
I have only watched a few Housewives series – Potomac, Salt Lake City, and New York – so I initially wasn’t planning on watching Ultimate Girls Trip, an “All Stars”-type Housewives spin-off that sees woman from different franchises come together for a week of fun (AKA incessant fighting). In this case, the cast is full of ex-wives, fired housewives across the franchise. I am SO glad I heeded the call to watch because it’s a blast. A delusional, messy, claustrophobic, drunken, jealous, covid-stricken blast.
Proof we’re in the Golden Age of Television? You used to only be able to find a complicated yet despicable antihero on SHOWTIME or AMC but now even the Housewives franchise has one. We’re watching a Shakespearean fall from grace in the form of one Dorinda Medley, a RHONY alum who became a fan favorite early thanks to her one-liners (“I’ll tell you how I’m doing: Not well, bitch!”) and her ability to remain sane amidst the craziness of the Ramonas and Luanns.
Here, she’s lost any remaining sanity and sympathy, drunkenly lashing out at anybody and everybody and frequently hitting below the belt. She’s angry and she’s mean, making all her houseguests cry and then making fun of them for crying. She’s completely delusional, refusing to accept that she was fired (she claims she’s ‘on pause’) while engaging in the same toxic behavior that got her fired in the first place. She’s not doing well, bitch.
She’s pretty infuriating to watch but the good news is that her bad behavior makes everyone else extremely likable in comparison. To the point where I found myself actively rooting for infamous Housewives villains Brandi Glanville and Vicki Gunvalson. If there’s any justice in this world, we’ll get some sort of reunion or follow-up with these same housewives. Andy Cohen, if you’re reading — PLEASE!!!
Marcel The Shell With Shoes On:
I cry at everything these days but I cried so much at this sweet, surprising movie that is technically about a sentient shell and his Nana Connie being tiny in a human-sized house. What it’s really about is grief and heartbreak and persevering in spite of it all. There’s a part I can’t get out of my head where Marcel asks his grandma “I’m afraid, what if everything changes again?'“ and Nana Connie replies with a smile, “It will.” Nana Connie’s right!!!!
The Deep End on Hulu:
A four-part Hulu docuseries about Teal Swan, leader of a highly controversial maybe-cult somewhere in Utah. I don’t want to give too much away but if you like true-crime / cult content: run, don’t walk! (and then message me so we can talk about it)
The Bear on Hulu:
Let me be the 100th person to recommend this to you and promise that it is as good as everyone says it is. Set in the high-stakes world of a restaurant kitchen, The Bear follows a chef who returns from the world of fine dining to run his family’s Italian Beef sandwich shop. It’s intense in a way that will suck you in and keep you fully engaged without ever being too stressful. Every performance is awards-worthy but the MVP for me is Ayo Edebri as Sydney, a young chef who can’t help but try a bit too hard to do a bit too much. I still don’t really know what Italian Beef is, though.