Hi! You're reading a monthly newsletter in which I, perpetual opinion-haver Laura Reineke, share with you some Stuff that I endorse. Got stuff you think *I* Should? Reply to this email or holler at me on Twitter @ohonestly. Thx for reading. Love u.
👋 Know About Me
Been feeling a little off-brand lately. Getting emotionally invested in the success of the Washington Capitals hockey team - a SPORTS team! - is an understandable side effect of producing a podcast about them, I guess, but I'm also suddenly obsessed with sneakers? Like, following the big new releases and making Pinterest boards of the ones I want?? And I've been shockingly social during my working weekdays in a way that is unfamiliar and overtiring. At least it's summer now, which means I can always retreat to the comfort of complaining 24/7 about the heat. Anyway, I've got loads of good stuff to recommend to you this time. Enjoy!
Noms n white nails
🔗 Read Online
What's the Deal with the Food at T.J. Maxx? - Exploring the wildly successful method of contrived scarcity behind those messy shelves. (Maggie Lange/Bon Appetit)
“As an Added Bonus, She Paid for Everything” - The first of two recent stories about a woman named Anna Delvey, who shamelessly conned her way through New York City's party scene, comes from a writer who was, for a time, Anna's closest friend. (Rachel Deloache Williams/Vanity Fair)
The Rage of the Incels -"As women gain the economic and cultural power that allows them to be choosy about their partners, men have generated ideas about self-improvement that are sometimes inextricable from violent rage." (Jia Tolentino/The New Yorker)
Old people can’t open new tabs and it’s fueling our descent into hell - Millennials can be quick to mock and meme-ify the elderly for whom the internet is a scary place. But as this piece points out, "as bad actors get better and better at fooling them, it’s going to become everybody’s problem." (Kevin Munger/The Outline)
I'm Not Black, I'm Kanye - A probing meditation on gods, fame, isolation, community, and the freedom to self-destruct - or not. (Ta-Nehisi Coates/The Atlantic)
The Cultural Vandalism of Jeffrey Tambor - How do we enjoy art when we discover that the people who made it are monsters? If we can't, whose fault is it? A smart take on an increasingly complex subject. (Matt Zoller Seitz/Vulture)
Whey Too Much: Greek Yogurt’s Dark Side - We need to talk about acid whey. (Justin Elliot/Modern Farmer)
Everything Is Yours, Everything Is Not Yours - A refugee of the Rwandan massacre looks back at the Oprah Winfrey Show segment that reunited her family - and split her into even more pieces in search of a home. (Clementine Wamariya/Medium)
Vincent Peone, 2018
🗣️ Quote
“The signature of a truly enviable woman is the tenacity and continuity of her women friends.” - Wendy Wasserstein
🎧 Listen To
You Can't Do That #11: "Fizzing Like A Rocket Pop" - If you haven't listened to our hockey podcast because I'm not a host - well, first of all, that's weirdly sweet of you. If that IS the case, though, listen to this episode! Danielle and I hopped back on our mics to ask our pod squad some clarifying questions about the Capitals making it to the Stanley Cup finals for the first time in 20 years.
SpongeBob SquarePants (2017 Cast Recording) and The Band's Visit (2017 Broadway Cast Recording) - The Tony Awards are next weekend, and the nomination of these two vastly different shows for Best Musical has me feeling pretty good about the future of musical theater, actually. As I said on Twitter, "Musicals can be BIG and SILLY FUNTIMES! Musicals can be INTIMATE and WRENCHINGLY REAL! We can have it all!!!!" Both original scores are worth a listen before the big night (and after).
📺 Watch
Killing Eve - It's been ages since I've binged a TV series without simultaneously keeping a tiny list in my head of plot improbabilities and tone issues and other personal nitpicks*, but this one shut my brain right up. Jodie Comer gives one hell of a performance as a terrifying, exuberant assassin opposite Sandra Oh as the investigator tracking her. A second season is coming, but tbh these first eight episodes are a perfect treat as-is. (Amazon Prime)
*(The last one was Better Call Saul, which you should absolutely catch up on before it returns for its fourth season in a few months.)
John Mayer, "New Light (Premium Content!)" - I don't know how to describe this music video. The song is whatever, but this video is a whole other thing. I do know that if I had to tag myself as one of the John Mayers in it, I'd be the John Mayer doing praise hands in front of a green screen of the Grand Canyon.
Nailed It! - You know how competitive cooking shows can be a lil intense? This one, in which bad amateur bakers are tasked with recreating Instagram-worthy confections, is the opposite. Just a buncha well-meaning folks failing in the kitchen and having a good time about it. Nicole Byer is a perfectly boisterous host, chocolate king Jacques Torres is a delightful judge, and each episode is a bite-sized half hour. Eat up. (Netflix)
🗣️ Quote
“Nature is no more innately female than it is congenitally evil. It seems that way (climate change, apocalypse) when man attempts to govern it too long. He begins to see himself in it - to personify it, for better or for worse - because the worst truth is that it does not see him at all.” - Sarah Nicole Prickett
Karaoke posing
☀️ My Forecast
Consuming an embarrassing amount of iced coffee, rewatching old episodes of Taxi, and continuing to whine about the seasonally-appropriate-but-still-personally-offensive heat.
Thx for reading,
xo Laura