Spooky movies & hotel hatin' [Like You Know Whatever]

Hi friends!

How are you?? I’m doing pretty well. I am writing this from my home in Los Angeles, but by the time I send it to you, I will be at a boutique hotel in Brooklyn. My husband and I usually prefer to stay in Airbnbs when we come to New York, but this time it was hard to find one available in a neighborhood we like, so a hotel it is!

I know that it’s very cool right now to hate on Airbnbs and rave about hotels, and there are definitely some very valid arguments against them, but nine times out of 10, I’m still going for an Airbnb. Even with all the fees, they’re almost always a cheaper option, they have more space, they have more character, you always get a kitchen, and you might even have private outdoor space, which I can never afford at a hotel. But probably the biggest reason why I prefer Airbnbs is because they’re typically in real, walkable neighborhoods where actual people live. So often, hotels are either off of a highway, near a convention center, or in a downtown business area where everyone disappears after 5pm and on the weekends. Plus, with new Covid and environmental protocols, a lot of hotels aren’t even doing the daily room cleanings and towel replacements anymore. So, what are you paying for? To sit in a box that’s 90% bed and not be able to open a window? Blegh. Not my jam.

Aren’t we all glad that Mercury is out of retrograde? It hit me hard this time around. Our car’s air conditioning system went out, which is a big deal at this time of year in southern California. For me, that was one of those things that I didn’t realize how bad it would be until it happened to me. I always thought, “So what, the a/c doesn’t work? Just open your windows, you’ll be fine.” Well, on a 90-degree day, opening the windows is not going to cut it. Plus, if you’re driving in traffic or on the freeway, you don’t really want to be breathing in everybody’s exhaust or getting your head blown off with the wind, anyway.

So, my husband made an appointment at our dealership, and I took the car in last week. I brought my work laptop with me to the appointment, because I honestly thought that it was going to take like an hour or two, and I could get some work done in the lounge while I waited. Well, long story short, the dealership ended up keeping the car for almost a full week to give it nearly $3k worth of repairs. Ouch.

I have to tell you, I hate the woman I become at the mechanic. Just a total ditz airhead bimbo who barely knows her own name. I just don’t care about car stuff, okay??? It’s BORING! No, I don’t remember the last time we got our tires rotated or replaced, because my husband took care of it. I know that’s terrible, but does the feminist cause really need me to be able to change my own oil? Is handiness truly the best way I can contribute? I tend to think my lane is more “being an unruly woman in comedy,” but let me know.

Alright, let’s get into Some Things:

- NYX Lip Lingerie XXL Long-Lasting Matte Liquid Lipstick. Holy crap y’all, when they say this lipstick is long-lasting, they’re not freakin’ kidding. The first time I wore it out, I ate dinner at a friend’s place, including a salad with an oily vinaigrette, then went to a comedy club with a two drink minimum, then had a nightcap at a bar afterwards, and when I got home it hadn’t budged AT ALL. It’s practically magic! Plus, it comes in a trillion different colors, and at $10 a pop, it’s pretty damn affordable for a lipstick of this quality. God, I love a good drugstore makeup find!

- Terro Liquid Ant Baits. Like many people in Los Angeles, with the hot weather of the past few months, we had an issue with ants popping up in our bathroom, and it was NOT cute. Most of the time there were just a handful of them dicking around in the sink or the shower, but it’s still a huge bummer to have insects crawling around the space you go to get clean. I am also a huge wuss around insects in general, and have been known to scream if I see one or worse, one crawls on me. *shudders* So, these ants were really killing my vibe. One time, I was all ready to take a shower, and when I turned on the faucet in the tub, about a dozen ants EXPLODED out of it along with the water, inches from my feet. Super disgusting!!!

I asked social media what to do, and a couple of different people suggested the Terro ant baits. I read up on how to use them, and I’ll admit I was a little hesitant to put them down, because they supposedly caused ants to swarm the baits in large numbers (after which they would live just long enough to bring the poison back to their nest and murder all their friends). But finally, one Saturday, I’d had enough, so I put out six of them. OMG, y’all. It was an ant rave in my bathroom for the next 12 hours!! Legit, Ant Woodstock ‘99 in our en suite. I have never seen so many ants in my life! Rivers of them, flowing from bait to bait! It gave me so much anxiety to be that outnumbered in my own home! But then, the next day, the scene was much more chill, and the day after that, only a couple stragglers were around. But on day four? Hallelujah and praise the extermination gods, because there was not one single living ant in that bathroom! And it has stayed ant-free since (knock on wood!). So, if you ever have an ant issue, mentally and emotionally prepare yourself first, and then use these baits!

- Inventing Anna (Netflix). I wasn’t interested in watching this show when it first came out, as I had read the book My Friend Anna by Rachel DeLoache Williams and thought I pretty much knew the story of fake heiress and scammer Anna Delvey. But then, one night, my husband was out and I was bored, and I needed a show to watch that he wouldn’t be bummed about missing, so I threw Inventing Anna on. It turns out, the show is actually a much better show than I expected, and my husband probably would have enjoyed watching it with me, but oh well. This show is so much juicier and more fascinating than Rachel’s cash-grab book, which was mostly about their Morocco trip. (She’s a victim and I feel bad about her credit card debt, but c’mon. Let’s be honest about what that book was.) Anna Chlumsky’s storyline as the journalist profiling Anna in prison is also much more interesting than I ever thought it would be, and Julia Garner is SO perfect as Anna. She really nails that bizarre accent. (And one time a friend and I saw her at a vintage shop in Palm Springs! Stars: they’re just like us!) If you like scammers and gossip, this is a good one.

- Scary movies. My husband and I have been getting into the spooky season pretty hard, at least as far as our choices in movies have gone. We like to call them “spookies,” as in, we’ll ask each other, “Do you want to watch a spooky tonight?” Here are the ones we’ve watched this season so far, with my commentary. No spoilers! We rented almost all of them on Amazon Prime, with the exception of:

• Barbarian (in theaters). I was told many times by friends not to read anything about this movie before seeing it, so I won’t go into detail here. I’ll just say that it is QUITE scary, and really takes you on a ride! I would actually like to read the screenplay, because the structure was pretty interesting. After we got out of the theater, my husband and I got dinner at Tender Greens, and darling, I could barely enjoy my steak Cobb salad, I felt so rattled. It’s the kind of movie where you spend the whole time in anxious anticipation of something creepy happening, and that was a little hard to shake off. So if you enjoy a genuinely scary movie, go for it!I also find it interesting that the writer/director of Barbarian is from The Whitest Kids U’ Know. Why is there so much crossover between the sketch comedy and horror communities? There’s Jordan Peele, Josh Ruben (CollegeHumor/Werewolves Within), and now Zach Cregger. Plus, I personally know a couple people from my own time in sketch comedy who have made low-budget horror features. I guess both horror and comedy involve manipulating people’s emotions to some degree, but not in the same way at all? Curious.

• Nope. Speaking of Jordan Peele: am I the last person in America to see Nope? I wasn’t able to catch it while it was in theaters, and to be honest, the mixed reviews I’d heard weren’t really selling it for me. But I love, love, LOVED Jordan Peele’s two previous movies, so I finally watched it one evening when my husband was out with friends. That could’ve been a bad idea, but the movie didn’t end up being very scary. Here’s the thing: to me, Nope is definitely the weakest of Peele’s three films, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. In fact, I’d say it’s better than a lot of the movies on this list. It was beautifully shot, but I was left with a lot of questions. Like, what was the point of the Gordy’s Home stuff? Why did the filmmaker guy make that choice at the end? And other questions which are too spoilery for this newsletter. What did you think of the movie?

• X. We were intrigued by the trailer for Pearl and so decided to watch X first, since that’s where the character of Pearl originated. Honestly, it was not my favorite. This may sound ageist, but gross old people stuff just yucks me out. I wouldn’t recommend this one.

• Orphan: First Kill. I find it so interesting that they decided to make a sequel to Orphan 13 years later. Did the original even do that well? The twist in the original is iconic, perhaps only rivaled by Malignant for sheer dumb weirdness. First Kill doesn’t try to recapture that lightning, but it does have a pretty good twist of its own. Julia Stiles is also wonderful in it. Overall, a decent horror flick! Scariness is pretty low, though.

• Master. I was initially drawn to this indie horror film that premiered at Sundance this year because it was filmed at my alma mater, Vassar College, which is full of old, historic buildings and big old trees and is honestly not a bad place to shoot a horror movie. A big theme in the film was racism in academia, which I also thought was super interesting, considering Vassar has not been impervious to such claims itself (just ask Kiese Laymon). And while the movie definitely explored some unique territory, and Regina Hall and Zoe Renee were wonderful in it, I don’t know that it was a complete success at what it was trying to be, which was perhaps too many things at once. Either way, I would definitely watch another film from writer/director Mariama Diallo.

• The Rental. Dave Franco made his feature directorial debut with this movie, which he co-wrote with Joe Swanberg. Like Barbarian, it is a horror movie that exploits the vulnerabilities of staying at an Airbnb (and boy, am I glad we’re staying at a hotel this weekend! After all, nothing creepy has ever happened at a hotel, right?). I thought it was just okay. It was well-plotted, but for me, there wasn’t enough resolution at the end re: the killer’s motivation. Alison Brie was really great in it, though.

• Happy Death Day. Finally, a decent horror-comedy! I know this movie’s five years old, but I just saw it for the first time recently, and it was so much fun! It’s a time loop (Groundhog Day) scenario, where the main character keeps reliving the same day over and over again, always ending with her murder, which she is determined to solve/stop. It’s a bit slashery but not very scary at all, so this would be a good pick for you scaredy cats out there. Actually, the next three movies are good scaredy cat picks, too!

• Jennifer’s Body. My husband and I have officially been together so damn long that we don’t even remember whether or not we’ve seen certain movies together. I know that I saw this one in the theaters when it came out, and I know that we were dating at the time, but did I see it with him? I have no memory. Ah, well. At any rate, I do remember not liking this movie very much when it came out. Upon second review, yeah, it gets kind of repetitive, and holy cow, are there a lot more homophobic and ableist slurs than I recall (an unfortunate byproduct of it being released in 2009), but overall, it’s a pretty fun movie. I don’t know that it belongs on the Criterion channel, though. I still think Young Adult is Diablo Cody’s best script.

• The Stepford Wives (2004). This is another movie that I remember thinking was kind of a dud when I first saw it in theaters, but upon watching it again, I actually found it to be pretty fun! I did not remember that there was a gay couple as part of the ensemble cast in this movie AT ALL, which, despite falling into uh, a few stereotypes, was really quite progressive for 2004. I also did not remember that Faith Hill was in this movie, or that Jon Lovitz played Bette Midler’s husband? lol. I wanted to rewatch it because I heard of some comparisons between it and Don’t Worry Darling. There is a little bit of creepiness, so I guess it counts as a spooky, but it is definitely the least scary movie on this list. And it’s streaming for free on HBOMax! Go watch it, ya wussies!

• My Best Friend’s Exorcism. I read this book back in 2017 and remember thinking it was just delightful. I recently looked it up on my Goodreads and I had, in fact, written, “I hope they make it into a movie.” Well, well, well! I don’t remember too much about the book, but I do think the movie is a little different from it. The book focuses mostly on the friendship between Gretchen and Abby, whereas the movie focuses more on their friend group with Glee and Margaret. At any rate, it’s a pretty cute movie (if you can say that about a story where a teenage girl is possessed by a demon) and not too scary at all, plus, it’s streaming for free on Amazon Prime. Not a bad way to spend 97 minutes.

Okay, that’s all I have to say this week!

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Until next time—go watch a spooky.

Love,

Liz

XOXO