It hasn’t been a good summer for billionaires. It turns out that expensive pursuits like visiting the Titanic in a tin can piloted by an off brand joystick or buying Twitter are not the best ways to keep yourself, or your reputation, alive. I understand the class warfare- soon with more war- the meme filled TikToks, and the pro-Orca merchandise, but I have a confession: If I was a billionaire, I would be exactly this kind.
I could lie to you and pretend that if I had a billion dollars I would feed every child and buy the world a puppy but let’s be real. I would immediately build a spaceship and go to Mars. While I was building it, I would absolutely tour the Titanic. And I would for sure assume that I am smart enough to run the world’s largest social media platform as my fifth job with a business plan that I sketched on the back of a napkin and two hundred men on H-1B visas with cold, dead eyes and a sleeping bag in the office.
One of my best and worst qualities is that, all too often, I have the confidence of a mediocre white man. Give me a billion dollars and I will own every LEGO set ever made to fill the mansion I bought solely for the purpose of displaying my LEGO sets.
I know who I am.
You may pretend you’re better than me, but you’re not. None of us are. Which is why billionaires should not exist in the first place. Unless they made Star Wars or Jurassic Park. I call this, The Lucas Exception. For the rest of us, we are only human, which has never been a particularly great thing to be.
So let’s eat the rich. Or at the very least, let them build more submarines.
What to do
Watch:
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (theatres)- Do not listen to anyone who tells you that this movie is not good or not making enough money. Those people are morons. This movie was a blast. It was Indy being Indy in the best possible way. Harrison Ford is more spry at 103 than you or I will ever be a single day in our lives. This was the Indy I know and love and I will brook no argument to the contrary.
Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse (theatres)- MILES MORALES IS BACK and as adorable as ever. The people who make these movies should make all of the movies. After the movie, buy my favorite Spidey comic ever, Spider-Man Noir, although you may want to get it on Kindle. It was $17 when I bought it and now it is NINE HUNDRED DOLLARS. You can have mine for $899.
Shiny Happy People (Amazon Prime)- The Duggars. Oof. It’s a terrible story but a great documentary and it goes into a lot of the background of what is going on with these people. If you’ve never heard of the Joshua Generation, you’re living in their world so you may as well find out.
Read:
THE FIRST LIVESTREAM FROM MARS!!!
Who would have imagined that children whose entire lives were exploited on the internet are mad now?
Troubled Blood by Robert Galbraith- Book 5 in the Strike series is 900 glorious pages of murder and intrigue. I couldn’t put it down.
Listen:
Scamanda (podcast)- I’ve listened to a lot of podcasts about a lot of grifters and this chick is the absolute bottom of the barrel.
Spellcaster: The Fall of Sam Bankman-Fried (podcast)- Another grifter, terrible, but not as bad as Scamanda. If you’re shocked that a crypto king is a con artist, I have some unicorn poop to sell you in this back alley.
TikToks:
Groundhogs doing adorable crimes.
FIDDLER ON THE ROOF IN JAPANESE. I REPEAT, FIDDLER ON THE ROOF IN JAPANESE.