Dropping Hints That I Want To Talk About the Karen Read Trial

The Friday Post. (On Sunday)

Karen Read during opening arguments at Karen Read's second murder trial on April 22. (Staff Photo: Stuart Cahill/Boston Herald via Getty Images)

Hello from Los Angeles¹, where I am walking around Silver Lake with an iced coffee and describing it as “so Haim.” I have been to Erewhon every day that I’ve been here — what a glamorous place to feel constantly in the way.

On Friday night, I bailed on my plans to stay in my hovel of a hotel room to watch A Body in the Snow: The Trial of Karen Read, a four-episode doc series about a murder trial in Massachusetts. Usually, true crime isn’t for me (it gives the rudest person you went to high school with a reason to be self-righteous), but after a friend gave me the broad strokes over dinner, I decided to press play.

No spoilers here: Imagine your BOYFRIEND² was found DEAD in the SNOW after a HOUSE PARTY and they say you DID IT and refuse to investigate the people AT the house party who all have BOSTON ACCENTS. (And a DOG and a SNOW PLOW driver and flirting via TEXT figure prominently in the narrative.) I honestly cannot imagine a better use of my time, and I thank my friends for letting me recount the entire case on the way to Disneyland!³ You haven’t lived till you’ve heard an Alec Baldwin lookalike read his texts with Read aloud, including the line that he had a crush on Read “from jump.”

Karen Read, the woman accused of backing her Lexus SUV into her boyfriend, casts quite a spell. She taught finance as an adjunct professor at Bentley College before her life was interrupted by this murder trial. She is white, petite, has long hair with golden highlights, and is conventionally attractive. But she has a quality that reminds me of Annette Bening in The Kids are All Right, or Billie Piper in I Hate Suzie, or Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich — an inability to present herself any other way. She was screaming into her boyfriend’s voicemail the night he died, and spent subsequent weeks flirting with one of his friends over text. In the footage from her trial, she hears the state’s witness get tangled up in their transparent lies and can barely contain her satisfaction. It’s not a crime to be obnoxious, as some consider her. It’s also not a crime to be smug! Read has my favorite character trait, that exceptional candor that can veer into self-sabotage. There’s a convo about the series in the Hung Up chat. The series itself isn’t extraordinary but I’m fascinated by the whole case.

What the paid list got this week
A thoughtful consideration of the movie Sinners, particularly that Michael B. Jordan plays one twin hotter than the other twin. You know the one I’m talking about⁴!!!

More more more
Of course I devoured this timeline of all of Justin Timberlake’s old relationships. Did not realize he and Jessica Biel dated twice! (Gossip Time)

Are you watching The Studio? I want to love it, but every episode but the pilot has left me wanting. It’s too mannered! I have more specific quibbles, but nothing in The Studio approaches the sharper edges of a more insider-y episode of Curb, or any of The Other Two.

Pedro Pascal called J.K. Rowling a “heinous loser” — well yes! (EW)

I really liked this Amy Nicholson review of Sinners: “He wants the audience free to be moved by whichever emotion personally resonates with them — desire, fear, pleasure, disgust — and in that way, “Sinners” works more like a pop song than a grand statement, the kind of deceptively simple high-level craft that few people can pull off.” (Los Angeles Times)

The Met Gala is a week from tomorrow. I think about this Cut report on how the themes are selected and the team behind the event (and the fundraising) quite often. (The Cut)

“Boy, I crushed my whole heart trying to fit my soul into your arms” — what a line!

That’s all this week! Thank you for reading. There will be a Last of Us chat up shortly!

1. I feel very unmoored in Los Angeles. It is a hard city for me to navigate (when I’m on the east side I’m always five minutes late to get to something on the west side; when I’m on the west side I’m always 10 minutes late to get to something on the east side). Is it because of my Virgo moon that I can’t fathom driving on a city not arranged on a grid?

2. Boston cop John O'Keefe.

3. Me at Disney:

4. Smoke 😮‍💨