today may be my mom's birthday, but i got three hours of sleep last night and feel really great so we're both celebrating things today

actually after writing that i instantly felt horrible but my editor (me) says there's no time to edit anything

Oct 22, 2023

QUICK! Everyone, say the number one thing you would do to make my mom’s 55th birthday today feel like her 54th — I’ll go first:

I would say, “Happy 54th birthday, Mom!” Hard to beat, but it works every time.

Today is my mom’s birthday — Michele with one L, for her top 1% Spotify fans. She is 55, but she looks 45 … is that actually a compliment it was supposed to be but I don’t really know. But she’s 55 and thriving, and I’m very happy for her. And hopefully today she is also happy for me because I am wearing such a #fallfit and look really cute honestly.

Something I wanted to address today is that I haven’t posted anything about Cher in this newsletter in maybe … 27 newsletters. But that streak ends TODAY. Why? Because I just noticed her Twitter bio for the first time, and it is bananas:

A few things to list here:

stand and B counted
sit and B nothing
don’t litter
chew gum
walk past homeless people without smile
doesn’t matter in five years
there is only love and fear

Now that we can understand it a little better, listing it actually kind of makes it feel like the Ten Commandments, but … seven. THE CHER COMMANDMENTS.

How did “chew gum” and “don’t smile at homeless people” connect in her mind? Sit and be nothing and chew gum because it doesn’t matter in five years! Don’t litter because there is only love and fear! Stand and be counted and walk past homeless people, but DO NOT under any circumstances smile at them. She makes more and more sense to me every day.

I’ve been having a really difficult time lately trying to think of things to write about because of the violence that is being done to Palestinians, but it has made me look at social media in such a different way. The way news outlets and everyday Twitter users and Instagram users and TikTok users handle serious news, as well as unserious news is very similar. I’ll be scrolling through, and it’ll go from a headline that says:

CARDI B WORE A RED LIP AND WE ARE ALL IN

to:

ISRAEL BLEW UP A HOSPITAL IN GAZA: HERE’S HOW WE ALL JOIN THE IDF

to:

TAYLOR SWIFT STEPPED ON A CRACK AND BROKE HER MOTHER’S BACK, AND WE ARE LIVING FOR IT

to:

SEVEN NFTS TO GIFT YOUR NEIGHBOR FOR THANKSGIVING

And all of those headlines are from, like, Teen Vogue or, honestly, The New York Times back to back to back. And these types of posts feel like they’re belittling the actual news. And when those types of headlines all come from the same news source, it makes me not even want to read about the stuff we need to know, like how to help Palestinians.

And I know there’s so much more to it. Many news outlets are owned by people who won’t let them talk about things truthfully, or Joe Biden will continue to support a country that is committing a mass genocide because the United States is their top trading partner, with annual bilateral trade of nearly $50 billion in goods and services. But I had to look that one up because that information is not in between the headlines that literally won’t go away.

It’s so exhausting! Why can’t I just have a Cher tweet and then an unbiased, informative piece on why people are so pro a country that isn’t even trying to hide how evil they’re being? That’s really all we need on there. I don’t ever wanna hear about NFTs again.

Sometimes, I can’t figure out if it’s just me who’s having a hard time paying attention to certain subjects because of the way the media handles them or if this is something so many people relate to. It feels like communication gets more complicated every single day. But if we all spoke in blank verse like Cher, the world would be a better place to communicate.

I do promise that Circle Back will be funny again soon. While comedy has always been my priority, there are full-time, very successful comedians right now who are expressing dangerous opinions on the internet that make me want comedy to never exist again if this is the way they’re going to use it. So, I hope you understand. And I hope my mom understands that I didn’t mean to make her birthday post about Palestine. I will send her many Baggus as an apology.

Final thing I will say so that this ends on a fun note will be a story about Michele with one L for her lil ol bday.

I love to tell people that my mom gets her humor from me, but I very obviously get it from her (and Carol Burnett). And since it’s her birthday, I will tell everyone my most embarrassing story.

Every time I get a new zit or something that has to do with being a normal person happens to me, my mom wishes me a happy birthday. Well, she wishes the zit or whatever a happy birthday. It’s fucked up, I know. She’s a monster.

But about 15 years ago, my family and I went to Disney World for the first (and for me, the last) time. Sean and I were so PUMPED to be there — the weather was incredible, we stayed in that Rock n Roll Disney hotel or whatever it’s called, and we had been dreaming of this week our entire lives.

On the first day in one of the parks, we were walking around and seeing all the sites, and I was in my new jorts and looked cute as hell when I suddenly started feeling really … weird … really … adult. So I told my mom I needed to use the bathroom, and she said she did, too. We were in stalls next to each other — this is relevant to the next scene. I pulled my jorts down to discover that someone had been killed in there when I wasn’t paying attention. Blood. Everywhere. It was my first period.

I started waving under the stall into hers, and her response, which was totally understandable, was to yell back at me to stop. But then when I waved a little more dramatically, it clicked in my mom’s mind. She ran out of her stall, opened mine up (people were very much standing there in the bathroom), saw me with my bloody jorts, had a big smile on her face, and sang happy birthday in front of the entire Disney World. SHE SANG THE WHOLE SONG. I am standing there, devastated that my whole trip to Disney had been ruined (it didn’t have to be, but I had already decided it was), and she is having the greatest motherly moment of her entire gotdamn life.

It humbled me, as a 12-year-old. I was so embarrassed, and I put a hex on her from that day forward. So now that I’m 26 and understand that no one had been killed in my pants, and my mom complains about hot flashes, I go back to the day I put a curse unto her. And I smile. I smile and say ha ha ha Michele with one L. Oh, it’s 30 degrees Fahrenheit out, and you’re sweaty? HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MICHELE WITH ONE L (her government name that I am legally obligated to call her), hApPy BiRtHdAy tO yOu.

So, that’s my story, and I’m stickin to it. And I love you, mama. I can’t wait to meet you one day.