let me tell you something ... maine smells so much better than new york city

and still i rise ... and survive the diabolical stench that poisons us in the big apple ... what a beautiful city

Aug 07, 2023

Summer is the busiest time of the year. Whomstever is telling you that Christmas is the busiest is mistaken. Things are always happening. Your calendar hasn’t gotten a break since Memorial Day weekend. And sometimes that’s fun. For example, I was in Maine this weekend — Peaks Island. It smelled cleaner than anywhere else I’ve ever been. New York City truly smells so, so bad, and it’s noticeable when you’re there but it is way more noticeable when you are not there. But Peaks Island, Maine! Fresh air. Clean water. Oysters galore. And even though it only lasted a weekend, it was a nice little vaycay.

I don’t think I’ve had a real vacation in years. My family didn’t do that too often. If we were traveling somewhere, it was because we had something to do there — a wedding, a college visit, I don’t know … other stuff. This weekend was a birthday and then nothing; we were just lounging around and biking all over an island and swimming in freezing cold water and jumping off docks and praying there were no Great White Sharks below us. That’s right, everybody. There were sharks in our area. The apps informed us. Two Great White Sharks named Anne Bonny and Penny were swimming around searching for little girls named Kerry who grew up near Lake Michigan. I was very privileged to live near a lake that felt as big as an ocean but had the luxury of being fresh water so that no scary sharks could take over. And people love to say that lakes can’t have waves, but I’ll tell ya: I have seen waves off of Lake Shore Drive. I have run a 5k next to the lake and seen people taking selfies get hit by those waves. And I have just continued running because that is none of my business.

While I did jump off a dock and swim in the ocean this past weekend, I thought about Anne Bonny that entire time. The apps had photos of her from when they put their tracker on her, and she is absolutely terrifying. Penny looked like she beginning to get a taste for blood, but Anne Bonny looked like she’d been tasting blood for years. Anne had a motive; she wanted you to suffer.

One time I was in Cape Cod and my friend and I were walking on the beach in the dark when suddenly, a large sign brightened my path. The sign had a huge drawing of a shark with its mouth open and large red words that said BEWARE: GREAT WHITE SHARKS IN THE AREA. My imagination got ahead of me and tricked me into thinking I was walking right on the shore and that a Great White Shark could catch me with only my toes in the water. That night, I had a nightmare where a shark was using a large wave to get to the sand and then when it got to the sand it started sprinting on all fours. It kind of looked like this:

Well, hold on, not exactly this. It might’ve been this:

But, like, it wasn’t doing splits. It was more this:

It was this kinda of scary-ness but not so bootylicious. It was this one:

This is it but like HORRIFYING. You get the picture. And then the scary teeth and everything and it was just sprinting at me. The dream was so spooky and felt so real that now I’ve convinced myself sharks could do this if they really wanted to. I don’t love that.

Those teeth are just absurd. I want to respect sharks — I really do. But I tend to judge books by their covers, and sharks are books. They’re so scary, and I would respect them more if they looked like this:

Very simple. Just look like this, and I won’t even think about if Anne Bonny is on her way to rip me to shreds.

Other than thinking about sharks as I sit on this Amtrak from Boston to New York, I am also thinking about how I have become Team Taylor again. And yes, I do mean Taylor Swift. Taylor just had the North American run of her Eras Tour end, which is on its way to making $1 billion. And from that, she gave away over $50 million to her entire crew, including the truckers who each got $100,000 adding up to $5 million, and another $45 million divvied up among sound techs, caterers, stagehands, backing musicians, dancers, etc. That’s … incredible. You can’t hate someone who does something like that. Team Taylor, am I right, everybody? Come on, let’s say it together: Team Taylor! Can I get each of you to sign a document saying you said that? No? Okay, that’s fine, haha. I was just kidding anyway. Definitely not Team Taylor! Haha, unless … no, no! No way! Love Story is absolutely NOT my karaoke song, why would you say that?! Haha. Yeah, just kidding about the Team Taylor thing...

Cutting this week’s newsletter short tonight. Here are some photos from this weekend to make up for it!