'American Nightmare,' That Nick Viall Interview, Stanley Cups and More
Recommendations from guest editors Emma Gray & Claire Fallon of 'Rich Text'
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Happy Friday!
Today we have a special edition of the newsletter featuring guest editors Claire Fallon and Emma Gray of one of my favorite fellow recommendation newsletters
. They so kindly featured me in their latest issue (read that here!) in addition to welcoming me onto the newsletter’s companion podcast to talk about “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” season finale a couple weeks ago (listen to that here!). Claire and Emma have great taste, so definitely check out and subscribe to their Substack!A little more about them: Claire Fallon and Emma Gray are award-nominated podcasters and journalists. They co-host the podcast “Love To See It” (a NYTimes pick!), and co-author Rich Text, a newsletter about their cultural obsessions, from prestige dramas to reality TV to millennial fashion.
Below you’ll find recommendations from Claire and Emma in each of the usual categories but more in the style of their newsletter, as well as a few extra picks from me. If you’re looking for some “Vanderpump Rules” content, keep scrolling to read the Lala-focused recap I wrote for Betches (where I’ll be writing all season long!), as well as the latest episode of my podcast unpacking what the premiere told us about where this season might go.
Have a great weekend, everyone!
Read
‘s PicksI know I’m extremely late to the party, but I finally gave in to the “Fourth Wing” and “Iron Flame” craze, and devoured both of these (extremely long, extremely gripping, extremely sexy) Rebecca Yarros novels in record time. Fantasy isn’t my normal genre of choice, but after my friend read the first book IN ONE DAY and I saw my literary agent posting about it on Instagram, I figured I’d give it a try. If you need some literary erotica + a fast-paced plot, jump on the bandwagon with me.
Kyle Chayka’s New Yorker essay on “How The Stanley Cup Went Viral.” Pay attention even a little and you’ll notice those 40-ounce, steel-lined Stanley cups everywhere. They’re on the subway. They’re in my workout classes. They’re in the stylish hands of all the girlies on TikTok. Chayka explores the way that legacy brands are attempting to cultivate “their moments of ubiquity” in the Very Online era. He also smartly observes the way that we tend to measure a product’s status these days: “Perhaps TikTok is the airport of the Internet,” he writes. “The Stanley’s prevalence in the digital public space is both a conduit for and evidence of its covetable status.”
Leslie Jamison's recent essay on divorce and motherhood in the New Yorker, "The Birth of My Daughter, the Death of My Marriage." It was adapted from her upcoming book, "Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story," which I have already devoured. The essay is the perfect introductory taste of her poignant and perceptive book-length reflection on motherhood, daughterhood, marriage, splitting up, and the many ways we try to fill the aching emptiness so many of us have inside. Jamison never misses a sensory detail (almost to a fault) — the maternal smellscape of pee-soaked diapers and peeled clementines, the sweaty chill of a winter flu, the disorientation of another night wakeup with a wailing baby in too-big pajamas -- and she captures the emotional highs and lows of motherhood as well. Comedy isn't Jamison's natural register, but sometimes she's even darkly funny: "Of course I’d heard babies were always waking up. But this now seemed like a joke. How did anyone get them to sleep in the first place?" she writes. THAT'S WHAT I'VE BEEN ASKING FOR YEARS. As a mother, with all my own struggles as a mom, wife, and daughter, this essay felt almost painfully visceral to read — but I also couldn't stop.
I'm also partway through Naomi Klein's "Doppelganger," a book by the acclaimed "Shock Doctrine" author about the destabilizing experience, during the pandemic, of being increasingly confused and conflated with Naomi Wolf, the prominent feminist writer who has gone down the rabbit hole and become a major vector for Covid conspiracy theories and other dangerous misinformation. The concept of the book is appealingly specific and weird, and in Klein's hands it quickly transcends the personal and becomes a pitch-perfect portrayal and analysis of the strange times we live in, rife with media distortions, political extremism, identity slippages, and a general sense of uncanniness and alienation.
Gibson’s Picks
Nancy Meyers’ production designer explains how he got involved with “Vanderpump Rules” stars Ariana and Katie’s sandwich shop, Something About Her. (Bethy Squires for Vulture)
How Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are causing a hilarious MAGA meltdown. (Jonathan Weisman for The New York Times)
Watch
‘s Picks"The Curse" on Showtime, the unsettling new show from Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie, which stars Fielder and Emma Stone as Asher and Whitney, an ambitious couple trying to make it as HGTV home renovation stars. They've chosen to film in Española, New Mexico, a neighborhood that, as Asher tells his father-in-law, no one will see coming, because they invented it. In other words, they're planning to rapidly gentrify the area, and then benefit not only through the success of their show and home design business, but through the rise in real estate prices. Whitney, a tightly wound progressive poseur played with exceptional finesse by Stone, frets about ensuring they're not harming local populations, but her efforts are superficial — short-term partnerships with businesses that are more invested in show advertising than creating local jobs, and efforts to secure just the right Native consultant to give their work a seal of approval. Asher is a bumbling sidekick without the sex appeal or charm to even merit screen time on the show they're making (as one harsh focus group points out). And when a curse is placed on them, everything starts to go sideways. Like Fielder's recent (incredible) show "The Rehearsal," it plumbs dark comedy and and excruciating human drama from how it portrays the very process of making a TV show — the inauthenticity and the inadvertent authenticity, the desire for fame mingled with the fear of exposure, the greed and narcissism, and the slippage between who we are and who we pretend to be.
Also, Jacqueline Novak's comedy special on Netflix about the blowjob, "Get on Your Knees," which I finally got to see now that it's on streaming and not just selling out theatrical runs across the country! We discussed it recently for a
podcast, and it really is the essence of a rich text: Novak talks fast for 90 minutes, and she has a lot of philosophical insights to offer and jokes to make. I laughed — a lot — and finished the episode with an entirely new way of thinking about the word "penis," the act of the blowjob, and the experience of being a ghost. ‘s Picks“American Nightmare,” Netflix’s three-part docu-series about Denise Huskins and Aaron Quinn, a couple who were the victims of a 2015 home invasion, and for Huskins, kidnapping and rape. The police not only initially insisted that Quinn had killed Huskins and refused to look into other leads, but when Huskins emerged a couple days later alive, they insisted she had made up the entire ordeal. I watched all three episodes in one sitting, and I was left feeling absolutely enraged at the way that the couple was utterly failed — and victimized — by the police at every turn. The gaps in law enforcement and our criminal justice system definitely aren’t a hot take, and most people impacted by them are not white and relatively wealthy like Huskins and Quinn. But their story feels important and indicative of the ways that law enforcement officers are as enthralled as anyone by a good narrative — even if it’s not a true one.
I was also gonna shout out Jacqueline Novak’s “Get On Your Knees” (no biggie, but I was in the audience for her Netflix taping), but since Claire beat me to it, I’ll go with “Death and Other Details,” a Hulu whodunnit starring Mandy Pantinkin as a washed-up, British detective. I love a good mystery, and “Death and Other Details” draws on classic tropes, like the locked-room mystery. It also features one of my favorite Broadway actors, Lauren Patten, in a supporting role. A delight all around!
Gibson’s Picks
I just finished the new second season of Netflix’s “Love on The Spectrum,” which is as charming and heartwarming as ever. It follows a group of unconnected people who are on the autism spectrum as they navigate romance and dating, and it does an incredible job at telling their stories. Some are carryovers from the first season, while some are new introductions. When I tell you I cried at the final scene of the season…
I’m only a couple of episodes into “Dance Life” on Prime Video, but it’s already giving me everything I need. It follows the students and teachers at an elite, hyper-competitive Australian dance academy, so it’s basically “Cheer” for dancing (before that show was rocked with multiple scandals that have unfortunately tainted it). Some of the people they feature in this are absolutely iconic.
Listen
‘s Picks“Search Engine’s” two-part series digging into the question of why there are so many chicken bones seemingly littered across the streets of Brooklyn. This is something my dog-owning friends constantly complain about, and that I had wondered about myself, but never took the time to look into. Which is really the exact joy of “Search Engine,” a new-ish podcast from PJ Voght (formerly of “Reply All”).
Nick Viall’s interview with Tom Sandoval and Tom Schwartz on “The Viall Files.” I was truly shaken by how badly Sandoval came off in this interview. He was repeatedly thrown fairly softball questions, and had Schwartz jumping in to try and reroute him for the full 90-minutes, and yet he still came off as a defensive, hard-headed, self-victimizing, whiny mess. If you were wondering if Sandoval had learned anything from the Scandoval fall-out, my sense is… not really.
‘s Picks"Ghost Story," Tristan Redman's much-praised 2023 Wondery podcast about a murder mystery tucked into his wife's storied family history. It's a true crime podcast, a family drama, a feminist historical revision and a truly creepy supernatural spine-tingler — by the end, even I, a skeptic to the bone, felt quite spooked — and it is meticulously paced and narrated, with each new revelation and cliffhanger arriving at exactly the right moment. I have to admit that I was gripped by the reinvestigation of the lurid crime at its heart, the murder of Dr. Naomi Dancy in 1937. (She was the great-grandmother of Redman's wife, Kate Dancy, who happens to be Hugh Dancy's sister.) But I equally enjoyed the episodes that uncovered more about Dr. Dancy herself, piecing together the story of a long-forgotten but great woman who worked as a doctor and brought care to underprivileged women and babies while her husband was the primary parent at home. If you missed this one, fix that immediately.
I've also been listening to "Astronaut" by Griff, a new song from the English singer-songwriter who won my heart with her previous single "Vertigo." It's a wistful ballad that plays archly with the idea of a lover wanting "space," offering them the most literal version.
Self-Promotion
Recapping “Vanderpump Rules” all season for (Betches)
As the first step in my freelance writer era, I’m excited to share that I’ll be writing up my reactions to new episodes of “Vanderpump Rules” all season for Betches! They won’t be your typical exhaustive recaps, but they’ll be more centered around my biggest takeaways from each episode. My write-up about the premiere was all about the maneuvering we see Lala Kent making to reach out to Rachel and why — read it here!
Unpacking the “Vanderpump Rules” premiere with Kate Casey (“Gabbing with Gib”)
In addition to a listener mailbag episode this week, I also welcomed on “Reality Life with Kate Casey” host (and the author of another incredible newsletter
!) to do a deep dive into the season 11 premiere of “Vanderpump Rules” which, while maybe underwhelming and devoid of much drama, told us a lot about where this season is headed and how they could best shake it up in the episodes ahead. Listen here!Currently
I’ll be spending the weekend with my family as we eat our way through the city and go wedding dress shopping with my sister. :)