Tom Holland's Bero

Surprise, bitch. I bet you thought you’d seen the last of me.

For my New Year’s resolution I challenged myself to do something that scares me. So I bought a statement hat. Unrelatedly, I am making my Norma Desmond return to Substack!

I know you’ve missed me. Like a bat signal, I have heard your calls. First they came for J.Lo’s Delola and I said nothing. But I could not sit idly by and watch Tom Holland do press for his non-alcoholic beer brand without saying a peep.

In all honesty, I’ve been reading some of my old posts and laughing!!! God I was good. Those essays are some of my favorite things I’ve produced, including at the Lena Dunham Writing Factory.

So on Tuesday after a screening of the original Suspiria at IFC, I got my friend Kyra to share a can of Bero’s Hazy IPA at the clubstaurant Jeans and return to my roots.

I first heard about Tom Holland’s non-alcoholic beer brand Bero (pronounced like zero, get it?) from his January Men’s Health cover story, which is a magazine that I just made up. The headline of the article is “Another Round for the Rizzmaster.” Huh? I don’t exactly know what qualities a rizzmaster possesses but I know Tom Holland does not have them. I feel like being on the cover of a men’s magazine pretending to fix cars and do pull ups on heavy machinery is a bit too try hard? I asked ChatGPT who the biggest rizzmasters in Hollywood are and HE (yes ChatGPT is a HE) gave me Ryan Gosling, Idris Elba and Michael B. Jordan. Real men!

This isn’t to say Tom Holland isn’t hot — he is, in a very plucky, plucked way. The word I’d use to describe him is not rizz-y but charming, in the way that a chorus of Newsies is charming. Everyone remembers Tom for his Umbrella drag performance on Lip Sync Battle, which does not move me like it does you guys, but he is undoubtedly talented. And that’s unfortunately why he’ll remain forever rizz-less: he’s too talented. He’s too much of a musical theatre gay.

Which is fine. In fact, Tom Holland’s asexual charm makes him the perfect Spiderman. I have long held that Spiderman is the gayest superhero of them all, besides Peter Pan. Shooting webs from your wrists as a way to get to places? Gay men love to travel! And think of everyone who has played him: Tobey Maguire (5’8), Andrew Garfield (5’10), Tom Holland (5’6). They all have this twinkish, nerdy, autistically-boyish lust for life that make them lovable and not, decidedly, sexy. And what about the spandex suit? It is no wonder Spiderman is a first choice Halloween costume for gay thots on Instagram.

Whomst are you fooling here?

Why non-alcoholic beer? Tom told Men’s Health that he got sober after doing Dry January in 2022 and never stopped (i.e., the most rizz-less way to get sober). But he missed pints with the lads and could only find N/A versions that tasted like water. So he made his own. Bero uses a special yeast that absorbs sugars slow enough to not get turned into alcohol. They have an IPA, a wheat beer and a pilsner.

I kind of feel bad for Tom? He recently returned from a three-year show business hiatus and is now in his Fiona Apple “this world is bullshit” bag. You know a part of him wants to be a serious actor, and yet, he is damned to a life of tricks. A good way to measure his rizz-lessness is the fact that he is engaged to Zendaya and yet no one knows or cares. He says he doesn’t walk red carpets with her because the spotlight should only be on her. But come on: you want to be the rizzmaster? Tongue her at the SAG Awards! Grab a tit at the Critics’ Choice!

In Tom Holland I see the physical embodiment of a flip. Over an Edge Hill Hazy IPA at Jeans, Kyra and I came to a theory of the flip as an aesthetic experience. As first argued by the post-structuralist philosopher Charles Frink, a person I just made up, the flip acts as a stand-in for erotic desire expressed as a tumbling pass. The face it is meant to elicit in the viewer — the “wow” face — is itself a facsimile of the “O” face. It is not meant to pleasure but to impress, a feat of human endeavor distended from its original use value (hard-working circus performers). And in a postmodern sense the flip is meaningless, landing you exactly where you started; an ouroboros, a nothing. Its only purpose is masturbatory, not needing a partner to complete the task — except, of course, to gaze upon the flipper.

So what does it all mean? Jeans, the 6’5-blue-eyed bar in NoHo, was an interesting place to ponder this. Jeans is a hotspot for PR girls wearing leather jackets to have burgers and martinis and meet hot Australian men in a neighborhood where there are only luggage-brand flagship stores. None of this sounds like it would match Tom Holland’s vibe; it’s all too How Long Gone. But, randomly, his non-alcoholic beer actually seemed to fit here (Bero is also stocked at SoHo Houses across the country). The label is sleek with a slight serif and makes no mention of its celebrity founder. There’s a minimalist, quiet luxury to the can, like if The Ordinary cosmetics got into the drinks space. It looks a bit… soulless. And isn’t Tom Holland’s whole deal that he’s totally quirky? Why not lean into that? I fear he’s a bit too desperate for the rizz.

I am not someone who likes beer — why would I drink bread? — but I found this to be charming and inoffensive, sort of like Tom Holland himself. Bero lacked the bite of a real beer but had those notes of bitter lemon you’d expect to find in an IPA. As a sober substitute, it worked. In fact, as I stumbled into Jeans’ red bathroom, I fooled myself into feeling drunk enough to Slack my boss to kick rocks for giving my Sweetgreen to Melanie Lynskey during her Golden Globes’ final dress fitting. But then I remembered that I was fine, had no boss, and I could walk to the health foods store to buy a raw, vegan chocolate mousse made of coconut oil and wood shavings. I think I like this little life…

Look how cute I am with my Bero!

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I hope you are maybe excited about me doing this again :) I’m not sure how frequently I will be posting given my commitments at Mrs. Dunham’s Academy for Delinquent Novelists. But to paraphrase my hat-owning friend Nicole Scherzinger:

This time I'm staying I'm staying for good

I'll be back

Where I was born to be

With one look

I'll be me!