i tried to a handstand in my room and fell on my dresser
my mom told me to stop being a goofball, so i told her that helen keller isn't real
HAPPY NOVEMBER 13TH, EVERYBODY.
Come one, come all to a breathtaking and magnificent journey through a world full of bumper-to-bumper traffic and roadkill while you have a full bladder ready to b u r s t. That’s right, folks. I saw a dead deer yesterday. Did it traumatize me? No. But did it give me a war flashback to the last time I saw a dead deer? Yes. So did it traumatize me? Yes. Although, let me explain why we were more shocked than we would’ve been if things weren’t said to us incorrectly.
My friend Natalie was in the passenger seat directing me with the Waze app. If you’ve ever used the Waze app, it lets you know when construction is coming up or if there’s a cop hiding in the shadows or if there’s roadkill in the next half mile or if there’s a McDonald’s nearby. But this time, it told Natalie that there was an animal in the area — NOT ROADKILL, AN ANIMAL FROLICKING IN THE PLEASANTVILLE FOREST — so Natalie says, “Oh, there’s an animal in the area!” to which I said, “Well, I sure hope it’s not a dead deer or something.” And then INSTANTLY a full-bodied dead deer with its legs in the air showed up to our right. And then INSTANTLY after, Hey Ya by Outkast started playing on the car speakers. And if that doesn’t tell you how the rest of this week is gonna go, I don’t know what else to tell you. You just don’t get it.
I think I’ve only seen five dead deer in my life, all on the side of the road in upstate New York. Something about the vibe up there is spooky. One time I was driving through the Fort Ticonderoga area of Ticonderoga, NY to get back to Vermont, and there were just dead cats on the side of the road every mile. I never took that route back to school again. Maybe I should stop driving through Revolutionary War battles while they’re happening, and I won’t keep seeing dead things.
But anyway, I saw dead animals when I was driving yesterday —
— which is a PERFECT transition into telling you all that I was driving yesterday after not driving for days, weeks, months, years, perhaps even decades. I drove to Hudson, NY to see Stair Galleries where they were showing a collection of Joan Didion’s belongings before they were all auctioned off —
— which is ANOTHER PERFECT transition into telling you that I was in the same room as Joan Didion’s tHinGs yesterday. Her typewriters, her portraits, her library, her notebooks, her chairs — all of these things in one room. You know how people like to go tour the White House because they get to be in the same room as things that were there when people like Abraham Lincoln lived there? And it gets them all excited because it’s like another connection to someone you never got to meet? Well, that’s how I felt being in the same room as Joan Diddy’s things, even if they weren’t in the home she resided in. Actually side note: how funny is it that the Lincoln Memorial just was not there when Abraham Lincoln was the President? Like … what was there? The William Henry Harrison Memorial? What a waste of money that’d be to build a memorial for THAT guy, am I right? That joke is for my political followers. Shout out to you guys — you make the hard work count. Anyway, every last word of that paragraph is how I feel about seeing Joan Didion’s little cutie little items. I won’t lie: If it wasn’t an auction, and a collection of her first print books that she owned were $300, I may have to figure that out. Those would have to be mine, that scenario. That woman had empty notebooks that she once owned going for $4,000 in the online auction. People will spend real money on things that were owned by someone famous. Remember when someone paid over $40,000 for Justin Bieber’s hair? I do! Remember when someone paid me to write articles for their magazine? Me neither.
This week, Twitter owner and professional moron Elon Musk allowed people to pay $8/month to have a verified Twitter account, and girl did it cause some problems. Twitter users were changing their names to real brand names and celebrity names and former president names and tweeting some very … let’s just call it hilarious but controversial stuff. Here are some of the highlights:
But my favorite one was when Doja Cat realized that one of the rules of the verified accounts is that you can’t change your name once it’s there:
Doja Cat’s tweet went viral, so Elon thought he was being cool and chill and fun by granting her wish. But I will remind us all that he is in fact a moron:
I saw some tweets from people saying that this could actually become a very dangerous thing like if people started tweeting about nuclear weapons and things like that while impersonating a person like, I don’t know, Kim Jong-un. And I totally get that. So maybe people like Elon Musk shouldn’t be allowed to run things? And maybe Doja Cat should run things? And maybe I don’t want George Washington following me on Twitter. What do you mean he’s dead? His verified Twitter account is literally following me on Twitter.
Okay, my final thoughts for today are about a movie I saw this week that made me cry all the way back to Bushwick.
Aftersun, written and directed by Charlotte Wells, is a story about a woman reminiscing on a trip her young father took with her to Turkey 20 years earlier. When I tell you that this was one of the most beautiful and devastating movies I’ve ever seen, I absolutely mean it. I feel like it’s difficult to write something original about a parent and child after all of the movies about that type of thing have been around for so long, but this one did it. Even for the ones who don’t have an estranged relationship with a parent, everyone can relate to this story. Paul Mescal plays a 30-year-old father to an 11-year-old girl, and even though I don’t have children (that I know of), I was able to understand the anxiety and sadness his young character was feeling the entire time. And I could even relate to the 11-year-old girl who could tell when something was going on, even if she didn’t fully understand what it was. We don’t give 11-year-olds enough credit, and I’m not afraid to say it. Kids can always tell when adults are struggling. And to be a 30-year-old single father has to be tough when you still feel like a kid yourself.
Without spoiling anything, this is one of the best movies I’ve seen in the past year, and if you feel like you need to cry out some irrelevant anxieties or sadnesses that you’ve been feeling, go see this movie. And even if you’re having the best, mostest happiest day of your life, go see this movie. And Paul Mescal — if things don’t work out with Phoebe Bridgers, my Irish accent has gotten really good as of late. You’ll feel right at home.
One thing that Elon Musk has tried to fix about the Twitter verifications is putting in the real people’s profiles that they’re the official version of their account, so here’s a tweet from one of them:
movie rec: Aftersun, you dummies
book rec: The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, you dummies
music rec: Downtown by Macklemore on repeat for three hours
half-marathon running superstar person you should know: Owen Meyer congrats Owen u friggin did it (again)!