Michael Estrin's Blog, page 16
April 26, 2023
Scenes from an Italian deli | Cluck’n Good | $20
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Scenes from an Italian deli
Photo by Eaters Collective on UnsplashThe sandwiches at the San Carlo Deli are legit, but I come for the characters.
Consider The Idiosyncratic Sandwich Connoisseur. Her order is a case study in precision, weirdness, and veiled threats.
“Squeeze every loaf you got, so I get the softest one,” she says. “Don’t you dare put the mayo directly on the bread. Put it on the meat, or you’ll fuck everything up, and we’ll have a problem. I want mustard, but I don’t want to taste mustard. Just wave the mustard bottle over my sandwich—not the bread, damn it, over the meat! One more thing. I need an even number of pickle slices. Odd numbers are bad luck.”
Then there’s the local neighborhood watch, which consists of four old dudes who, as far as I can tell, come here to shoot the shit and eat sandwiches.
“Someone stole a couple bottles of booze from Vons,” one old man says.
Two of the old men in the neighborhood watch look horrified. Stolen booze is right up there with the Lindbergh baby kidnapping and the Black Dahlia murder as far as they’re concerned. But the last member of the group is horrified by the real crime, which in his book, is life insurance.
“Do you know how much I pay in life insurance?” he asks. “Seventeen grand a year. Seventeen fucking grand a year so I don’t die. You believe that shit?”
Nobody bothers to explain how life insurance works. Instead it’s back to crime prevention.
“They should have a cop watching the booze,” says the third old guy.
“Too expensive,” says Mr. 17K, but it’s not clear if he’s referring to the cop, or his premiums.
“They should put up one of those locking gates,” says the third old man. “To protect the booze.”
“But then they gotta open the gate whenever someone wants booze,” the first old guy says.
“But it works, and it’s cheap” says the third old guy. “You can’t argue with that.”
The words you can’t argue with that are a challenge. But the first old guy doesn’t say “challenge accepted,” like the kids do these days. Instead, he just argues.
“Are you kidding?” the first old guy asks. “They don’t wanna put up a gate because it’s bad for business, slows down booze sales. You don’t want to do that. Not in this economy.”
“Not in any economy,” the fourth old guy chimes in.
“Right, in any economy,” the first old guy continues. “So they lose a few bottles of booze now and then, so what? They’re insured!”
“Too much,” Mr. 17K says.
“So what if the world is going to hell in a hand basket?” the first old guy asks. “Vons gets its money one way or another. That’s what it’s all about. The bottom line: money, honey!”
Speaking of money, I need to pay my check and get back to work. I toss out my trash and head up to the register. There’s an old woman ahead of me in line. She speaks with the cashier, a slightly younger woman who looks to be about sixty. They speak in Italian. The conversation is animated, and I have no idea what they’re saying. But then I hear the following words in English: “Warrant out for his arrest.”
Does that mean there’s a suspect in the case of the missing booze?
I look over at the neighborhood watch guys to see what they think. But they’re not interested in what the old woman has to say. Their sandwiches are ready, which means it’s go time.
Speaking of “go time,” please don’t go anywhere without sharing Situation Normal. You can “restack” this post on Substack Notes, or hit the share button and see what happens👇
Cluck’n Good?I love ice cream. I don’t scream for it, but I love it. If I had to pick a last meal, it would absolutely include ice cream, ideally from McConnell’s, assuming whoever is organizing my last meal, and presumably executing me the following day, is willing to drive to a McConnell’s location. But don’t get me wrong. I’m not an ice cream snob. Every ice cream brand is a good ice cream brand because there’s no such thing as bad ice cream. But there is such a thing as a bad ice cream flavor. Case in point👇
A sign for “chick’n & waffles” ice cream at my local Baskin-Robbins.When I saw that sign, I was tempted to go inside and ask for a sample. But the thing about free samples is that they aren’t really free. Try any flavor you want—hell try them all—but there’s no way you’re leaving the store without buying a cone or a cup. The ice cream tycoons know this, and anyone who thinks they can beat the ice cream tycoons at their own game is a fool.
Since I’m trying to cut back on sweets, and since I don’t consider myself a fool, I didn’t go inside. But I did go home to consult Google. According to a Baskin-Robbins press release,2 the new Chick’n & Waffles flavor contains no actual chicken. What a relief!
No meat? No problem. This unique ice cream has been expertly crafted to mimic the taste of fried chicken, but the best part is, it contains 0% real chicken and is 100% delicious.
Unfortunately, the press release didn’t explain what they use to make the “chick’n.” But Baskin-Robbins did say that Chick’n & Waffles is a flavor of the month, so maybe we can expect some other savory ice cream experiments throughout 2023. Personally, I can’t wait for linguine & clams ice cream, or maybe a shrimp fajita sorbet.
Food fads like Chick’n & Waffles ice cream come and go, but Situation Normal is here for the long-haul. Make sure you’re here for the long-haul too by subscribing👇
$20 worth of free adviceBetween payment apps, crypto, and whatever else Silicon Valley dreams up, cash money is under threat. Personally, I like cash, and I’m not just saying that because cash is king, and I’m a loyal subject. I like cash because it’s paper, and you can write weird notes on paper. Exhibit A👇
If you’re having trouble reading the note, it says: “I sucked dick for this. Stay in school. The struggle is real.” Quibble with the content of the message if you like, but try putting that message onto a Bitcoin, or into the memo line of your Venmo transaction. That just doesn’t make sense, does it?
ICYMII interviewed Tami Rose to find out what it’s like running an adult novelty store in Mississippi. The responses to my interview with Tami were overwhelmingly positive. This time, I didn’t get any crap for writing about adult entertainment—something I can’t say about my profile of Sophia Locke, or my essay about attending a porn convention. I’d love to believe that the positive response is a sign of progress, but I’ve written enough about adult entertainment to know that sex toys are more palatable than sex workers, to some people anyway.
If you ❤️ Tami’s interview, you’ll ❤️ NSFWOnce a month, I write about adult entertainment in this newsletter. I try to approach those pieces with humor and humanity, and my hope is that the situation normie community will learn a little more about a topic that’s as popular as it is misunderstood. I take the same approach with my Porn Valley mysteries, but writing a novel allows me to take certain liberties in terms of style and story. As my friend Bob put it, “Not Safe for Work is a slacker noir you could tuck neatly between Fletch and The Big Lebowski, with a dash of Boogie Nights, of course.” I paid Bob $20 to say that, so please help me recoup my investment by purchasing a copy of Not Safe for Work👇
Stick around and chat!OK, it’s that time again. I’ve got questions, maybe you’ve got answers.
My local neighborhood watch seems stumped. Any ideas for preventing booze theft?
Would you try Chick’n & Waffles ice cream? Explain.
Imagine Baskin-Robbins hires you to consult. What savory flavors would you pitch them?
What’s on the menu for your last meal? Also, what crime did you commit, if you can say?
Have you ever come across a note written on cash. What did it say?
Until Sunday…And remember, you’ll need a ticket to read that story👇
1If you can’t afford Situation Normal, but really want to read every story, I’ve got you. Just email me and I’ll comp you a subscription. No need to explain & no stress, OK? Seriously, I’m happy to do it!
2
April 23, 2023
Meet Tami Rose: The Woman Who Sells Mississippians Their Sex Toys
Hello, situation normies! Welcome to another edition of Smutty, a special section in Situation Normal where I put on my old trade reporter hat to bring you dispatches from the world of adult entertainment. Smutty stories are free, but I’d really appreciate it if you showed your support by picking up a copy of Not Safe for Work—a Chandleresque mystery disguised as a stoner comedy that’s very loosely based on my experience covering Porn Valley.
Meet Tami Rose: The Woman Who Sells Mississippians Their Sex ToysIt’s safe to say that Tami Rose sells more sex toys than anyone else in the state of Mississippi. Her store, Romantic Adventures, isn’t just the only adult novelty retailer in Jackson, it’s the only store of its kind within one hundred miles of The Magnolia State’s capital and most populous city.
On the one hand, Romantic Adventures sticks out like a sore thumb in a place like Mississippi. “We’re the buckle of the Bible belt,” Rose told me, adding that she’s used to pushback from local law enforcement, religious leaders, and certain elements in her community. But on the other hand, Romantic Adventures is a very popular store—a fact Rose seems to take with a mix of pragmatism, humor, irony, and frustration. “I do more $1 million a year in sales,” Rose said, “so someone here likes me.”
Back in my trade reporter days, I would’ve focused on the bottom line at Romantic Adventures, and maybe written a little about the legal challenges of operating an adult novelty store in a conservative state. Those kinds of stories were standard for my beat back then. But these days, I’m more interested in the human stories you find in the adult entertainment industry. That’s why I called Tami Rose and asked her to tell me everything. Lucky for us, Tami is a hoot, and she loves talking about her unique place in the world.
The conversation with Tami Rose has been edited for clarity and flow. My questions are in bold. Tami’s responses are in plain text. Please enjoy!
Tami RoseHow did you become the owner of Romantic Adventures? What’s the story?
I was a licensed massage therapist, and I owned a day spa in town. Unfortunately, The Great Recession did us in. Actually, that was bad, but the [Deepwater Horizon] oil spill in the Gulf was even worse. I watched 12 spas in town close before I closed my spa.
The man I was dating at the time owned Romantic Adventures. I needed something to do, so I just showed up. I was free labor. I started working the desk, and within a week, I spotted a big business problem. There was a bookkeeping mistake that was costing the business about $100,000 a year.
That’s a lot of money! What was the mistake?
In a word: fuzzy handcuffs.
Fuzzy handcuffs found on the Romantic Adventures websiteI think that’s two words.
Yeah, that’s true. Fuzzy handcuffs were the red flag. To be fair, point-of-sale systems can be complicated, and ten years ago they weren’t very user friendly. Anyway, nobody working there at the time knew how to run the point-of-sale system, so they were making this cumulative mistake and didn’t even realize it.
The problem was that they had entered the cost for a particular item, like fuzzy handcuffs, but they didn’t update that information. So the cost would go up, because costs almost always go up, but they didn’t raise the price. Basically, the margins were shrinking, and they didn’t even realize it. They were actually selling fuzzy handcuffs at a loss.
Now, that I own the store, I handle all the pricing myself. I keep the margins the same, so if I can get a product for less, I pass the savings on to my customers. But I keep a close eye on those margins!
I realize they were the red flag, but if that’s the item that alerted you to the problem, fuzzy handcuffs must be a popular seller, right?
Oh my god, yes! I’ve sold so many fuzzy handcuffs over the years. You know the scene in Star Wars where they’re getting smooshed in the trash compactor?
Yes, I sure do.
That’s my recurring nightmare. I’m in the trash compactor on the Death Star. Only instead of, you know, space trash, I’m buried up to my eyeballs in fuzzy handcuffs, and the walls are closing in to squash me.
How did you go from free labor and spotting the fuzzy handcuff snafu to owner of Romantic Adventures?
I bought out my ex. We tussled over the price for about two years, but he wanted out, and I knew it. His brother was a dreamer and a serial entrepreneur, and my ex was an engineer. I guess they thought this was easy money, but they really didn’t think about the people factor. He was ashamed of his business, and that showed up in the way the store ran in those days.
It sounds like you have tons of passion for your business and zero shame?
Absolutely. The secret is, you have to love people. I love people. And as a former massage therapist, I’m used to people telling me their deepest secrets. It’s normal for me to have those intimate conversations, even if the person I’m talking to is ashamed of the topic.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve spoken to women who don’t know where their clit is. I’m just really comfortable having those conversations. I don’t judge. I’m here to help, to educate. But I also hire a diverse staff. Nobody is a carbon copy of me here. My staff includes men, women, and trans people. We are different races, different sexualities, different body types. I hire that way because I want to make sure that whoever comes in the door can find someone they feel comfortable talking to.
Can you tell me a little more about your customers?
Oh boy. Where to start? We get all kinds of people. But I think what you’re getting at is that the typical customer in Jackson, Mississippi is a little different from the typical customer in a big city like New York, or Los Angeles.
Yup. That’s what I’m getting at.
Believe it or not, we have some folks who sit in the parking lot working up the courage to come in. They’re embarrassed, or ashamed, I guess.
A lot of people come in and do a lap, but then they go right to what they’re looking for, as if they didn’t want us to know that’s what they came here to get. That’s fine. We’re not judging. But if you do this every time you come in, who are you kidding?
There’s a lot of shame in this community when it comes to sex. Some of that is small towns. Some of that is religion. But a lot of it comes from the fact that we just don’t do sex education in this state. That’s a problem because sex is part of life, and so many people here don’t feel like they have a place to go with questions about their bodies and what gives them pleasure.
And Romantic Adventures is that place?
I hope so! But we’re different from stores you might find in a big city. For example, our store is in a building that used to be a roadside motel, so there are two wings. It just didn’t make sense to remodel and connect the two wings, so instead I created a women’s section and a men’s section. Customers are free to go anywhere they like, but most of the couples who come in split up to shop. The wife will send her husband in one direction, and she’ll go in the other direction. Then they’ll meet at the register. That’s Mississippi for you!
Inside Romantic Adventures. Photo courtesy of Tami Rose.What’s the biggest misconception you hear about your store?
The biggest misconception is that the people who shop here are super-freaky. They’re not. They’re average, everyday people. And here’s the thing: we’re all getting older, OK? We’re one of the fattest states in the country, and our country is one of the fattest nations in the world. We don’t do sex education. We have lousy healthcare. These issues impact people’s lives in every way, and that includes their sex lives. People assume my typical customer is super-freaky, but the reality is they’re just regular people dealing with a lot of the issues I mentioned. They shop here because they’re trying to make their sex lives just a little better.
I imagine you talk to other retailers, as well as wholesalers and manufacturers. Are the sex lives of Mississippians different from the sex lives of Californians or New Yorkers, or are people pretty much just people no matter where you are?
It’s interesting. We are the hospitality state. There’s a ton of swingers events here. We see swingers all the time. San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles rock fetish very strong. I love fetish! I’m Portuguese, and I come from a family that made leather. I love leather! But I don’t sell much leather because fetish isn’t a big thing in Mississippi.
I sell a lot of supplements. A lot of customers come in on a Friday or Saturday night to buy supplements to help them perform. Then there are the swingers. They buy a lot of supplements because they wanna go all night. When I started in this business, I thought that of all my customers, it would be the swingers who would be open to kink and fetish. But that hasn’t been the case. I tried sell them leather, or S&M, but I got a lot of, not for me, thanks.
I’m sure there are super-freaky people in Mississippi, but they’re making their own stuff, or buying it online. They’re not coming here because I just don’t have enough demand to stock what they’re looking for.
Aside from supplements, what are some of your best sellers?
The category that’s seen the biggest increase recently are male “masturbators.” The category ranges from the handheld classics like the “pocket pussy,” all the way to full-on sex dolls. There are also automatic masturbators that do all the work—well most of it, anyway—for you.
Male masturbators courtesy of the Romantic Adventures website.For women, there used to be this media cycle where a magazine like Cosmo would write about a particular sex toy, and that’s what everyone wanted. But these days, TikTok is way more important. That app is like nothing I’ve ever seen in terms of driving sales. Everyone wants the Rose vibrator because there are so many women raving about it on TikTok. It helps that the women talking about it on TikTok are saying things like, I used it, and in thirty seconds, I had the best orgasm ever. That’ll get a woman’s attention. Of course, I like the fact that it’s called the Rose because I’m Tami Rose.
The Rose by INYA, courtesy of Romantic Adventures websiteBut there’s usually a larger cultural trend behind a best seller. Back when Fifty Shades of Grey came out, we had all these submissive men come in and say, my wife sent me here for… Only they didn’t know what to call them.
What were they asking for? I never saw Fifty Shades of Grey .
Ben Wa balls. Every adult novelty store in the country had exactly one set of Ben Wa balls at the time. They were sitting on the counter collecting dust. But then Fifty Shades of Grey hit, and suddenly everyone wanted Ben Wa balls! I couldn’t find enough Ben Wa balls to meet demand.
What did you do? How did you source all those Ben Wa balls?
Well, at the time I had an engineer in my back pocket. I had my partner draw up specs, and I thought, these are basically ball bearings. So I called up some manufacturers in Detroit, sent them the specs, and asked how much? They quoted me a great price for barrels full of them. We bought the ball bearings and repacked them as Ben Wa balls.
Have you ever been wrong about a product? Like, you thought something would sell really well, but it ended up being a flop?
Oh god, this happens all the time! One of my vendors had a party in New Orleans where we had a jazz funeral with a casket full of sex toys that didn’t sell. That was a lot of fun, actually.
We had a product once that turned a regular bath tub into a Jacuzzi tub. It wasn’t necessarily a sex toy, I guess. But it was a sexy thing, and I thought, I’d love a Jacuzzi, I’ll bet everyone would.
But they didn’t?
Nope. Maybe it was the packaging. In retrospect, it looked more like a piece of plumbing equipment than a sex toy. So maybe people just didn’t get it. Or, maybe people don’t like a Jacuzzi as much as I do.
It must be challenging to put aside your own ideas of what’s sexy and buy inventory that’ll meet the needs of, well, everyone.
Everyone has blindspots and biases, including me. When I first bought the store, I had a manager who thought she knew everything about our customers. But I wasn’t so sure, so I ran a test.
I gave her six feet of wall space to do what she thought was best, and I chose the inventory for another six feet. She chose specific items she just knew would sell. I went with a package the wholesaler put together because it had a cohesive look. The look of the display is very important in retail. Anyway, I didn’t even know what some of the toys were that I had ordered, but my section sold 1.8 times faster than her section. There’s a lesson there.
What’s the lesson?
You can’t look at someone and think you know for sure what they’re into. If you think that way, you’re fooling yourself. It’s a big wide world out there, and I need all the sprinkles in the rainbow for everyone.
But even someone in the pleasure business can’t please everyone, right? Can you tell us about some of the pushback you’ve gotten?
No, you can’t please everyone. One local politician was giving us a hard time. His girlfriend—not not his wife, mind you—came in and told us all about him. Jackson is a small town.
I do a lot of local radio ads to get the word out about the store. It’s always my voice. The tone of the ads is friendly, but they don’t scream sex. I want folks to know we’re here and we’re part of the community.
[Please click the Play button to hear Tami’s Sumthin’ Sumthin’ ad]
Another one of my ads is a spot I run every Memorial Day. We get a lot of good responses from that ad, but it’s not a sales pitch. I’m a Navy veteran and a widow of a Navy veteran, so the ad is just about me wanting to recognize the sacrifices our veterans make for us on Memorial Day. People really respond to that, and it’s a way of reminding folks that we’re a part of the community, just like other stores they frequent.
[Please click the Play button to hear Tami’s Memorial Day ad]
At the end of the day, Jackson is a small town. It helps a lot that people can hear my voice and know that I’m a real person, just like them.
Does the small town thing make it difficult on your personal life?
Yeah, it does, unfortunately. When people ask me what I do, I say I run a boutique. I have about five layers of questions before I tell new people what I really do. I can’t date in Jackson. Too many judgmental men around here. They’ll come into my store and buy something for their own pleasure, but they wouldn’t want to be seen with the woman who sells them their sex toys. It’s kind of sad, actually. But I’m not sad. I have a great relationship, but it’s a long-distance relationship.
What about the rest of your social life? Is it difficult to make friends?
I have plenty of friends. But when I’m trying to do stuff around town, I have to be on my guard. One time, I went to a painting class. There was this woman saying all kinds of awful stuff about my store. That was annoying, but honestly I felt bad for her. She was divorced. Her husband had an affair. Either her husband bought something at my store for his affair, or she thought he bought something from me. It didn’t really matter. She was hurt. It was easier for her to blame my store for what happened with her marriage.
But it’s more than just judgy people talking trash. You’ve faced legal challenges because of Romantic Adventures. Can you tell us about that?
Around the time I took over Romantic Adventures, the Baptist church went after us. They have a lot of influence, so that put pressure on the sheriff. He came in and seized $50,000 worth of toys off my wall. We tussled for a few years, but the case went nowhere. After a lot of legal back and forth, it came down to this question of whether or not sex toys are Constitutionally protected. Thankfully, the 5th Circuit had ruled in a different case that sex toys are protected under the 14th Amendment. That was a Texas case, but we’re in the same federal circuit, so that’s the law at the federal level here. But it’s still technically a state crime in Mississippi to sell a device that’s made for stimulating genitals.
Did you get your inventory back?
Are you kidding? No, I didn’t get anything back. I heard through the grapevine that the toys all went to the wives and moms of local enforcement.
After the leaked Supreme Court opinion in the Dobbs case, you wrote an op-ed in the Daily Beast . Can we talk about that?
Yes, I’d love to. This is really important.
OK, for context, a little after the leaked opinion the Court published the actual opinion in Dobbs , and that overturned Roe . A lot of the conversation that followed was about abortion for obvious reasons. But in your op-ed you made the point that there’s a broader attack aimed at everyone’s sex life, because the rights that protect our sex lives are grounded in the 14th amendment. Here’s a quote from your op-ed:
I have had government agents come in and seize toys off the wall as evidence in a case we tussled over for two-plus years. The only reason I have toys on the walls at all is that they were placed under the protection of the 14th Amendment by a case in Texas which is also in the Fifth Circuit.
The 14th Amendment is more important than you think.
This decision as leaked from the Supreme Court will wipe out the porn industry and the sex-toy industry in this country—not to mention rolling back our civilization by 200 years.
I’m not sure most people see the connection between what happened in Dobbs and their sex lives. Can you help us make the connection?
When Dobbs came down, shit got dark in my store. On one level, I’m worried about my own liberty. I’m putting my life at risk for sex. That’s really absurd, but it’s also terrifying.
Now, the legal risk for this business has always been there, but back when the 5th Circuit said sex toys were Constitutionally protected, that felt like a step in the right direction. I was still at risk of prosecution, and my business was still at risk of prosecution, but the law seemed to be heading the right direction. Now, it’s going in the wrong direction, and that’s very scary.
What about your customers? Do they see the connection between Dobbs and their sex lives?
Yes and no. People who can get pregnant understand that they can’t get an abortion in Mississippi. So that really changes our sex lives. I’ve seen a big uptick in questions about anal sex, not because it’s suddenly popular, but because it’s seen as a way to have sex without risking pregnancy. We’re doing a lot of education about anal sex. Think about that for a second. There’s something that gives you pleasure, but a court changes the law, and now your sex life is a very different thing. That’s crazy, and that sounds like the opposite of freedom to me.
Some of my female customers make the connection on that level. Like, they think, I better not get pregnant, so what kinds of sex can I have that’ll keep me from getting pregnant? That’s the thought process. But I don’t think they see Dobbs as a broader attack on their sex lives. That’s a more difficult connection to make.
What about the men?
It came as a big shock to the men of this state that an abortion ban would affect their sex lives at all, but it does. I don’t think my male customers understand the connection at all.
One of the things you mentioned in your op-ed is that it broke your heart that the Dobbs case came out of Mississippi. Do your customers make the connection between the laws affecting their sex lives and the politicians they elect to represent them?
I’m a liberal. That’s no secret. And my employees are liberal too. Our customers are major Trumpers, for the most part. The thing you have to understand, though, is that politics is a lot like football down here. You gotta pick a team. Everyone has a team. Someone to root for, or root against. But for most people, politics doesn’t go any deeper than that. They wear a MAGA hat, or put a Trump bumper sticker on their truck, but there isn’t much to say beyond that. We don’t really have political conversations. And it’s not like I’m talking politics while I’m selling you a dildo or some supplements. Honestly, though, I think what’s happening with cases like Dobbs goes much deeper than politics.
How so?
Well, there’s clearly an anti-woman, anti-sex agenda at work in our politics. But fundamentally, this is a rejection of pleasure, specifically pleasure for women and other marginalized groups. It’s backwards thinking that feels hundreds of years old. Personally, I think it’s worth asking the people pushing this agenda, what’s happened in your life that you’re afraid to feel pleasure and so quick to deny it to others?
We all have masks that we wear based on what other people think, or based on what we think other people will think of us. I wear a mask. You wear a mask. We all do. For some people, it’s all about putting on a hateful mask, but what’s underneath that mask? A lot of pain is my guess.
You know, there’s a saying that goes: what you resist, persists. You can’t legislate pleasure out of existence. But I see a lot of shame in this country, a lot of immaturity. America is a young country. In a lot of ways, it feels like we’re still in puberty, and because we’re not great at talking about sex, or doing sex education, America is having a really rough time with puberty.
Let’s end on a silly note that maybe speaks to some of that pubescent energy you mentioned. I noticed that Romantic Adventures has good online reviews. But one common complaint from negative reviewers is that you can’t return sex toys. Are those people for real?
Some people are nuts. Of course, you can’t return sex toys. Duh. It’s a health and hygiene thing. It’s also super weird. Nobody wants a used sex toy! But every now and then we get someone who wants to do a return. They get real loud and obnoxious. I’m talking Walmart-level loud and obnoxious. But that’s retail. You see some crazy shit go down in any retail business. Most of my customers are great, and like I said, they’re just regular people trying to make their sex lives a little better.
I’m glad Tami Rose shared her story with the situation normie community. Please return the favor by sharing this post on Notes, other social media platforms, and via email👇
If you want to out Romantic Adventures, you can visit the store’s website, or book a trip to the Hospitality State and say hello IRL!
If this is your first time reading Situation Normal, please be sure to subscribe. And if you’re already a subscriber, you know how great it is to be a situation normie, so please consider upgrading your subscription to get access to exclusive stories👇
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Stick around and chat!Usually, this is the part where I ask you questions. But I already asked Tami a lot of questions. So, I’m leaving the comments open. Ask anything you like, tell me what you thought of this story, or just say hello. All I ask is that you be respectful in the comments section. Thanks!
April 19, 2023
Human paraquat
I love The Big Lebowski. That shouldn’t come as a surprise to long-time readers of Situation Normal. My newsletter has as many Lebowski references as a bowling alley has pins. Once, I even wrote a story about pretending to be Marty Ackerman, an unseen character from the movie, to fool a tarot card reader who performed at Christina’s birthday.1
My love for The Big Lebowski shouldn’t come as a surprise to readers of my novel, either. Not Safe for Work is a Chandleresque mystery wrapped inside of a stoner comedy. Some people call this genre mashup “slacker noir.” But even before that term was coined, I knew I wanted to tell stories about amateur sleuths who’d rather do anything else—go bowling, drink white Russians while practicing Tai chi, give their apartment manager notes on their dance quintet—than get dragged into this corrupt world.
But my love for The Big Lebowski goes beyond the realm of the arts. I see wisdom in The Dude, and I’m not alone. Since the film’s 1998 release, more than a few fans have converted to Dudeism.2 It’s not exactly an organized religion, or even a disorganized one, but Dudeism is an ethos—a way of being a human in a world that is often inhumane. Here’s a description of the Dudeist philosophy:
The Dudeist belief system is essentially a modernized form of Taosim stripped of all of its metaphysical and medical doctrines. Dudeism advocates and encourages the practice of “going with the flow,” “being cool headed,” and “taking it easy” in the face of life’s difficulties, believing that this is the only way to live in harmony with our inner nature and the challenges of interacting with other people. It also aims to assuage feelings of inadequacy that arise in societies which place a heavy emphasis on achievement and personal fortune. Consequently, simple everyday pleasures like bathing, bowling, and hanging out with friends are seen as far preferable to the accumulation of wealth and the spending of money as a means to achieve happiness and spiritual fulfillment. As the Dude himself says in the film: “the dude abides,” which essentially just means one should relax, enjoy the simple pleasures of life, be generally tolerant of others, maintain equanimity in the face of adversity, and encourage others to do the same.3
Am I a Dudeist? On my better days, yes. I tend to go with the flow. I try to stay cool headed, especially when the situation gets hot. I work hard, but I see value in taking it easy. Above all, I abide.
But this past Sunday, my Dudeism was put to the test in the unlikeliest of places. In honor of the 25th anniversary of The Big Lebowski, the film was re-released in theaters. Naturally, Christina and I bought tickets, and we encouraged our friends to do the same.
The vibe at the AMC theater in Burbank was about what I expected. There were a few people wearing tattered brown bath robes, just like the Dude wore in the film. Other fans wore The Dude’s cardigan. Christina and I thought about reprising the Ackerman costumes we wore for Halloween one year, but since Cynthia and Marty Ackerman don’t actually appear in the film, and since you can’t bring a show dog, even with papers, into a movie theater, we figured the joke might get missed. Instead, we wore our favorite Lebowski t-shirts. My t-shirt read: “Lebowski 2020: This aggression will not stand, man.” Christina wore her “Little Lebowski Urban Achievers” t-shirt. Going in to the movie, it felt like we were in good company.
But as soon as the film began, we—and here I’m using the the royal we, you know, the editorial—had a problem. The problem was a man in the row behind me. He was talking, which is always a rude thing to do in a movie. But he wasn’t asking questions about the plot, or telling his friend to pass the Milk Duds, or even talking on the phone. All of that would’ve been terrible. But what this man was doing was unforgivable. He was quoting, verbatim, every single line of the movie. And he was loud. Like outside voice loud.
“Shut up!” said a woman in front of us.
“This isn’t a quote-along, man,” said another voice in the darkness.
For the next minute or so, the man behind us was quiet. But as soon as Woo finished peeing on The Dude’s rug, the man behind us began talking again. He wasn’t as loud this time, and he didn’t say every single line this time. But his second act was even worse than his first act because he said every single punchline—of which there are many in The Big Lebowski—a half-beat ahead of the characters in the film.
By way of example, just before Walter Sobchak pulls out his gun and says, “Smokey, my friend, you are entering a world of pain,” the rude man behind me would say, “Smokey, my friend, you are entering a world of pain.”
For Lebowski fans, listening to some asshole step all over the Coen brothers’ dialogue is a world a pain. Throughout the movie, the audience continued to shush the man, but he wouldn’t stop. He stepped on all the classic lines:
Hey, careful, man, there’s a beverage here!
Smokey this is not ‘Nam, this is bowling, there are rules.
I’m the Dude, so that’s what you call me. You know? That or His Dudeness, or Duder or, you know, El Duderino, if you're not into the whole brevity thing.
The man, in the parlance of The Dude, was a human paraquat.
A typical movie audience might’ve escalated the situation with the human paraquat. Popcorn might’ve been thrown. Theater management might’ve been summoned. Had there been a Walter Sobchak among us, things might’ve turned violent. But the people who come out to see a 25th anniversary screening of The Big Lebowski are not typical, and we are certainly not adherents to the tenets of Sobchakism. We are Dudeists, and even when confronted with an insufferable human paraquat, we will try to go with the flow, try to stay cool, try to take it easy, and above all, we will abide.
Situation Normal abides because situation normies know how to share. Click the button to share the original version of this story, not the compromised second draft👇
Meet Situation Normal’s Newest SponsorI love writing Situation Normal! When I say I’d do it for free, I’m not kidding. For the first two years, I didn’t take a dime, or a doge coin. But carbs and bad life decisions can only take you so far in the humor game. Thankfully, Situation Normal also runs on the generosity of paid subscribers, like:
Mary Louisa Locke, a retired historian and USA Today best-selling author, who became the newest monthly subscriber. Thank you, Mary!
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Don’t Get FuckedIn case you missed it, I wrote about doing our taxes this year. Like everything else in my life, taxes are a source for humor, even if the experience isn’t something I’d wish on my worst enemy. You can read that story here👇
Situation NormalDon't get f*cked this tax seasonIn The Waste Land, T. S. Eliot wrote, “April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.” Serious scholars say Eliot’s attack on April was a modernist take on the cruelty of spring’s renewal, juxtaposed against the horrors of WWI and its deadlier wingman, the 1918 Spanish flu…Read more4 days ago · 39 likes · 51 comments · Michael EstrinGet Fucked?The editorial calendar for Situation Normal has a weird kind of poetry this month. Last Sunday, I wrote a story titled “Don’t get fucked this tax season.” Next Sunday, I’m publishing another Smutty piece about a woman who owns an adult novelty store in Mississippi. I don’t have a title for the story yet, but given the nature of the business, I probably could call my interview “Get Fucked.” I’m not going to do that. But if I did, there’d be something poetic about Situation Normal advising its readers to avoid getting fucked one week, then telling them how to get fucked the next week. ANYWAY, be on the lookout for next week’s interview with Tami Rose.
Have you read my slacker noir? You should!Obviously, I’m just trying to sell my book here, but if Situation Normal makes you laugh, there’s a 420% chance Not Safe for Work will make you laugh too.
Stick around and chat!You know the drill. I’ve got questions, you’ve got answers.
Are you a Lebowski?
Why do people talk in movie theaters? All theories welcome, especially if you’ve got an unhinged theory to share.
Do you talk during movies? What’s wrong with you?
What are your strategies for dealing with a human paraquat?
1See: “A Tarot Card Reading for Marty Ackerman”
2See: “Dudeism, the faith that abides in The Big Lebowski” in The Guardian
3See “Dudeism” Wikipedia entry
April 16, 2023
Don't get f*cked this tax season
Photo by Markus Winkler on UnsplashIn The Waste Land, T. S. Eliot wrote, “April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.” Serious scholars say Eliot’s attack on April was a modernist take on the cruelty of spring’s renewal, juxtaposed against the horrors of WWI and its deadlier wingman, the 1918 Spanish flu.1 But non-serious scholars know better. The real reason Eliot hated April was simple: taxes.
A few years before renouncing his U.S. citizenship and becoming a British subject, Eliot published The Waste Land. According to the IRS, the poem was an epic taxable event. Unfortunately, Eliot neglected to send his friend and critique partner, Ezra Pound, a 1099. This cost both men dearly. Without his largest deduction, Eliot paid a higher marginal tax rate than Warren Buffett’s secretary. Meanwhile, Ezra Pound got nailed for failing to declare his freelance income. He escaped prosecution, however, by fleeing to Italy, where he collaborated with fascists during WWII, before going on to front the alternative rock band, Better Than Ezra.
For the rest of their lives, both men tried to tell anyone who would listen that the opening line about April being the cruelest month was a coded warning about the U.S. tax code. But as I said, serious scholars don’t believe that, probably because serious scholars know better than to fuck with the IRS. But I am not a serious scholar. I write humor, which gives me the latitude to explore the deeper truths serious scholars would never touch.
Here is the first draft of the opening to The Waste Land, the one Pound told Eliot was “too on the nose,” even if it was a crystal clear warning to Americans about the real menace each April brings:
April is the cruelest month, breeding
Liabilities out of the taxable events, mixing
Deductions and income, stirring
Loopholes within TurboTax
In a capitalist society, successful writers create taxable events. Help me succeed by upgrading to a paid Situation Normal subscription👇
It’s April. Americans should be celebrating spring, baseball’s return, April Fool’s Day, Earth Day, and Stoner Christmas. But Americans don’t have time to celebrate. We’re too busy preparing our taxes, even though the IRS already has all the information it needs to prepare the returns of more than 60 million American taxpayers.2
Thankfully, I have a system for corralling the information I need to face the onslaught of confusing financial documents and Byzantine tax regulations that comes every April. As a freelance writer, it’s important to have a system because the law requires you to make estimated tax payments3 every quarter, in addition to filing an annual return in April. Here’s my system.
I track my income in a spreadsheet, even though spreadsheets scare the bejesus out of me.4
Beginning in January, I badger our mail carrier to deliver all of my 1099s ASAP, even though we both know that I write for some rather shady outfits that can’t be bothered to 1099 anyone.5
I keep digital and hardcopy files that contain receipts for business expenses that will, in all likelihood, not be deductible because America hates freelance writers more than it hates Warren Buffett’s secretary.
Now that I’ve shared my system, please share it with every freelancer you know👇
On April 2, I opened my hardcopy file so that I could begin the process of getting right with the law. I might’ve done this on April 1, but taxes are no joke. Anyway, there were a lot of papers in the file. Papers of the 1099 variety. Papers proving that Christina and I have health insurance, even though we carry plastic cards in our wallets that prove the same thing. Papers that are receipts for goods and services that help me work, even though the IRS might not agree that those expenses are deductible.6 But among all those papers, one stood out. It was a check for $25.32. There was a pink Post-it Note stuck to the check. Written on the note were three words: “Don’t get fucked!”
While the note was written in my handwriting and the words “don’t get fucked” capture of my attitude toward taxes perfectly, I had no idea what the note meant. So I did what any amateur sleuth would do. I asked my wife.
“No clue,” Christina said. “Sounds like a five-minute mystery to me.”
Usually, Christina and I love five-minute mysteries. They’re short, fun, and satisfying. They’re also good material.7 But the key to a good five-minute mystery is the stakes. They have to be low. Like missing Limbo stick low. High stakes mysteries like murder, Ponzi schemes, and stolen catalytic convertors won’t do. No matter how quickly you solve those mysteries, the stakes are just too high to be fun.
The $25 check and the cryptic Post-it Note were somewhere between high stakes and low stakes. After all, $25 isn’t much in the grand scheme of things, but taxes are right up there with death on the seriousness scale.
“Did we even cash the check?” Christina asked.
“Great question!”
I logged into our Wells Fargo account. It was dusty in there because stage coaches kick up a lot of dust. But when the dust cleared, I saw that we had cashed the check via the Wells Fargo mobile app back in May. Then, for some reason, I wrote, “don’t get fucked” on a pink Post-it Note, stuck the note on the check, and stuck the check in my 2022 tax file.
For the next week, I pondered the meaning of the note. Like all notes, it was a message from the past. Clearly, Past Michael didn’t want Future Michael to get fucked. But Past Michael had put a lot of faith in Future Michael’s memory. I couldn’t do anything about Past Michael’s mistake, but I could look for ways to jog Future Michael’s Memory. So I Googled “tricks to remember something you forgot.” The top two results were from WikiHow, a publisher that built a business on bad answers and good SEO.
I’m always pressed for time during tax season, so I clicked on “5 ways to remember something” because it seemed more efficient than “How to remember something you forgot: 12 steps.” But the first article was crap, and the second article was too.
“Two questions, honey.”
“Shoot,” Christina said.
“First, do we know anyone who does hypnosis? Second, is hypnosis tax deductible if you’re using it to figure out a cryptic note in your tax file?”
“I think I know someone who does hypnosis,” Christina said. “But I can’t remember who.”
“Man alive, the five-minute mysteries are mounting this tax season.”
“But we won’t be able to deduct the hypnotist on our 2022 tax return.”
“Drat! The case of the forgotten hypnotist is next year’s problem.”
“Maybe. But honestly, is this even a problem? It’s only twenty-five bucks.”
“But the note,” I said. “Don’t get fucked. That’s an ominous warning.”
“Well, what do you want to do?” Christina asked.
I thought about it, and to help Christina visualize my thought process, I stroked my chin.
“Declare it.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Let’s declare it as income.”
“But it’s only twenty-five bucks. They don’t have to 1099 you if it’s under six hundred dollars.”
“That’s true,” I said. “But remember the note: don’t get fucked.”
“It’s twenty-five bucks. It won’t make a difference either way.”
“Don’t get fucked.”
“How bad could we get fucked over twenty-five dollars?”
“Don’t get fucked.”
“Why can’t we cheat? Everyone cheats.”
“It’s wrong.”
“Is there a better answer?”
“We’ll get caught?”
“So?”
“Don’t get fucked.”
“Are you sure we have to tell the government? Couldn’t we just fuck around and find out?”
“Fuck around and find out!” I snapped. “That didn’t work out very well for T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound.”
Christina sighed. After eleven years of marriage, she had heard plenty about what happened to T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. She was over it. And she was over this mystery too. So Christina added $25.32 to the appropriate line in our tax return and declared the mystery “over & unsolved.”
“April really is the cruelest fucking month,” she said.
If April was kind to you, please consider upgrading your Situation Normal subscription, and if you want to try to deduct the price of Situation Normal on your 2023 tax return, feel free to fuck around and find out👇
Stick around and chat!Have you ever come across a note you wrote to yourself that you did not understand?
Is tax season agony for you, or did you outsource your agony to a professional?
Taxes and T.S. Eliot aside, I think April is a lovely month because of spring, baseball, Passover (sometimes), Stoner Christmas, and Earth Day. How do you feel about April?
Obviously, T.S. Eliot wasn’t talking about taxes in The Waste Land. I hope that was obvious! But taxes have inspired some good art. My personal favorite is a Will Ferrell and Maggie Gyllenhaal film called Stranger Than Fiction. Can you think of any other tax-inspired works of art?
1Contrary to popular belief, the 1918 Spanish flu did not begin in 1918, nor did it originate in Spain. See The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John M. Barry.
2See “Over 60 million Americans have taxes so simple the IRS could do them automatically” in Vox. https://www.vox.com/23055489/irs-auto...
3Estimated payments are function of your quarterly revenues. There are lots of ways to estimate your quarterly revenue as a freelance writer, but some of my favorites include: wishful thinking, reading entrails, and vision quests.
4Christina made me a spreadsheet when I became a freelancer.
5If you’re not from the U.S., The IRS 1099 Form is a collection of tax forms documenting different types of payments made by an individual or a business that typically aren’t from your employer. Please note: Americans use “1099” as both a noun and a verb, but it’s always a dirty word.
6I can deduct the computer I used to write this story, and the internet service I use to send you this story. But for some reason, tax experts consider writing essentials like a comfortable hoodie, mind-expanding drugs, and snacks to be “red flags.”
7See “The case of the missing laptop” in Situation Normal.
April 12, 2023
Twitter-Quitter | Secret Sauce | Teen love
Photo by Ravi Sharma on UnsplashTwitter-QuitterI quit Twitter last week. It wasn’t exactly a cold-turkey quitting because you can’t quit the bird site cold-turkey. The best you can do is delete your account and wait 30 days for Twitter to process your request.
I like to imagine a “hardcore” Twitter employee, someone who sleeps at the office and never misses an opportunity to tell the boss that he’s the Milo Minderbinder of Tony Starks, manually printing out, then shredding every Tweet I ever Tweeted since joining the site in 2007. But in reality, I quit and all I got was this stupid message.
My reasons for quitting Twitter are complicated. Usually, it takes me months to process complicated feelings and turn them into action, but these days there’s always a hack. In my case, the hack was a decision by Twitter to suppress / block / mark as spam links from Substack. This put me in the awkward position of spamming myself, which would be meta, except Facebook is Meta now, which is a different story. Supposedly, Twitter reversed that policy, but I honestly don’t care anymore. Twitter has been an exhausting, demoralizing waste of time for a long time, but the upsides like meeting cool people and sharing the cool stuff I do are quickly vanishing into the abyss of Elon Musk’s ego.
ANYWAY, I quit. If you follow me on Twitter, you don’t anymore.
Sharing Situation Normal is a great way to support my work, but you don’t have to share on social media. In fact, it’s best if you email Situation Normal to your friends & enemies. Click the button below to spread the word👇
Did you buy NSFW, or are you boycotting fun?Seriously, don’t be a hater. Pick up a copy of my novel, Not Safe for Work! It’s so much fun you’ll want to leave a review online just to brag about how much fun you had reading it.
Secret sauceOne cool thing about writing a newsletter is that people write back to you. Email is interactive, sorta like social media. But email is slower than social media (a good thing), and still faster, easier, and cheaper than snail mail (also good things). Is email perfect? No. Nothing is perfect. But it’s a great way for me to reach you, and it’s also a great way for situation normies to reach me. Here’s an email I received from a situation normie named Kris:
Damn, I love your writing. Just found you a few months ago, total fan. But I have a question and totally understand if you don’t want to spill the secret sauce. I run a company and I’m a chemist, the reason to say is that I’m just a person doing other things. But what I like to do is write. I don’t think I’m all that good. So, no competition. You mentioned a few editions ago about your Alaska cruise trip. How you noticed conversations but then wove that into a great narrative in the newsletter. My question, if you are ok sharing your secrets, is, do you write down what you hear during the day so you can write about it later? Or do you just sit down later and think back? I love how you seem to notice great things in the world and write about them. Must be a trick of being a journalist. But I come across interesting things overheard or seen during the day and think to myself how great it would be to write about it. But then it vanishes, or I lose the impact and don’t write about it.
Make sense? Any advice? Or not. I’ll still love you.
Kris
First, I want to say that Kris made my day with this email. Situation Normal reaches more than 2,600 people twice a week, and while I get a lot of positive feedback, nothing beats a personal note. Thank you, Kris!
OK, now for the answer to your question, Kris. To begin, there’s no secret sauce. Of course, that’s exactly what I’d say if there was a secret sauce, so I guess you’ll just have to trust me on that one.
The best explanation of how I do what I do is in an interview I did with Jillian Hess at Noted. Jillian is an expert in how writers organize their material. In the interview, I talked about how part of my writing practice is to jot down brief notes. Very brief notes! The idea behind my notes is to write down just enough information to knock a memory loose. From there, I write a story. It helps to keep the time between jotting down the note and writing the story to a minimum. Fresh ideas are usually the best ideas.
Here are some other things that help:
I’ve been writing professionally for 20-plus years. Maybe you haven’t been writing as long as me, but I can assure you that the stuff I wrote early on sucked big-time. In other words, practice makes perfect better. Tip: keep writing!
I’ve honed my craft by writing journalism, essays, novels, screenplays, comedy sketches, ad copy, corporate mumbo jumbo, recipes, bad checks, and ransom notes. While it’s nice to pick a lane, few working writers have that luxury. But honestly that’s a gift because each form has something to teach, and each lesson is another tool in your tool box. Tip: experiment with new forms and styles!
I read to be a better writer. I also read for fun, or to learn stuff. But whenever I read—or watch a movie or TV show, for that matter—I’m always looking at how the writer structured their story. I think a lot about structure because that’s the thing that elevates a funny anecdote into a story. Tip: Read a lot, and read with a critical eye for story!
Hopefully, this advice is helpful, Kris. But let me leave you with this thought: I could be wrong! There’s no right way to write a story. That’s actually one thing I hope everyone will takeaway from the interview I did with Jillian. See, it wasn’t just the two of us talking. The interview was a three-way conversation with Alex Dobrenko, who writes Both Are True.
Alex and I both write in the comedic personal essay universe (CPEU™), but we come at our work from very different angles. I’m a note-taking minimalist. For me, it’s all process, and process is always a means to an end. Alex, on the other hand, is a note-taking maximalist. He writes everything down and files it away for later. The secret sauce, if such a thing exists, is that we keep going. That’s it. That’s the secret: keep going.
One thing that helps me keep Situation Normal going is paid subscribers. If reading my work makes you laugh, or think about something in a new way (or both!), please consider becoming a paid subscriber👇
Hypothetical picnic
This is what happens when you ask the AI to create an image of an AI DJAfter the AI ram-a-lama-ding-dong fiasco, I’m a little behind on asking ChatGPT questions about pop music. I still owe KdD a turn at the AI wheel, but this week’s question goes to C.L. Steiner, who asked me to ask ChatGPT the following: “Why must I be a teenager in love?”
I thought that was a good question, but ChatGPT didn’t catch the reference. Instead, the AI offered some solid (and questionable) dating advice🤖👇
ICYMII had a little fun with my Lyft driver. Or, maybe he had a little fun with me. Either way, a few situation normies called this one of my best stories and I’ll take it! Read Clever Driver here.
Stick around and chat!You know the drill. I’ve got questions, you’ve got answers.
At the end, I loathed Twitter, and leaving something you loathe is actually trickier than you might think. Have you ever left something you loathed?
Is Elon Musk the Milo Minderbinder of Tony Starks, or are your one of those people who shies away from highbrow / lowbrow culture jokes?
All kidding aside, I’m thinking about writing a serious-ish essay about social media. Would you read it?
Is there a secret sauce to writing a good story? Seriously, tell us your secrets! Or, just share your writing advice.
ChatGPT’s dating advice is mixed at best, and yet it’s better than a lot of dating advice I’ve heard. What’s the worst dating advice you’ve heard? Best advice?
What do you think of the art for Hypothetical Picnic? I think it’s an AI tool that Substack embedded into the content editor, but I don’t remember anyone talking about a whiz-bang tool that takes 30 seconds to generate weird images based on my text prompts. Am I playing with fire here?
Even more chat!My chat experiment continues. I’ll be hosting a one-hour chat Thursday, April 13, at 4pm Pacific time. Be there, or be somewhere else!
April 9, 2023
Clever driver
Photo by Mariia Shalabaieva on UnsplashTo get from my mom’s house in Summerlin, Nevada to the Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas, I have two options. I could ask my mom, aka Lead Foot Linda, for a ride. Or, I could do something my mom told me never to do—get into a car with a stranger.
Despite what they say about “stranger danger,” I went with option two. The Lyft ride cost me $45, including tip, but it saved me from twenty minutes of terror, phantom breaking, and hanging onto the “oh shit handle” for dear life.
Don’t just share rides, share Situation Normal👇
When I got into the Lyft, the driver asked me to confirm my destination.
“We’re going to the airport, right Michael?”
“Yup. Unless, you wanna drive me all the way back to Los Angeles.”
“If we do that, we’re gonna need to drive in shifts,” he said. “Also, snacks are on you, dude.”
“I’m happy to pay for snacks, but there’s not enough Jolt Cola at Eddie World to keep me awake.”
“Up all night partying?” he asked.
“More like, up early with the dawn patrol to drive my mom home.”
As my Lyft driver made his way onto the highway, I explained that my day had begun early that morning in Los Angeles.
“We made the trip in four hours,” I explained.
“Damn. You drive like a bat out of hell.”
I’ve never known a bat to flee hell faster than any other animal, but I took the compliment just the same. Also, because the Lyft driver looked like he was in his twenties, I decided not to ruin the mood with a joke about Meat Loaf. I’ll do anything for a laugh, but I won’t do that.
“Wait a minute,” the Lyft driver said. “If you drove your mom here and you’re flying back, aren’t you leaving your car in Vegas?”
“Nope. We took my mom’s car,” I said. “My car is at my house in LA, waiting for a new catalytic convertor.”
“Someone stole your catalytic convertor?” he asked.
“Yup. Twice in the past six months.”
“Twice! This crime wave is out of control.”
“Yeah, that’s the nature of crime waves, I think.”
“Man, that sucks, I’m sorry.”
“I didn’t tell you the shitty part yet. I’m on a waiting list for a new catalytic convertor. Supposedly, I’ll get the new part in May.”
“May!? What the fuck, man.”
“That’s what I said. Hopefully, the part gets here just in time for me to pass my smog test.”
“Oh shit. What happens if it doesn’t? You can’t drive it?”
“I can drive it now. My mechanic gave me a straight pipe.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s like a heart bypass for your car’s engine.”
“Are you a cardiologist?” he asked.
“No. Are you?”
“No, man, I’m a Lyft driver, and when I’m not driving, I’m studying business.”
“Right. So it’s exactly like a heart bypass for your car. And it works. Except, you belch out all this shit into the environment. More shit than your car normally belches out, I mean.”
“Oh, that’s fucked up.”
“Yeah, that’s why as soon as I get a new catalytic convertor, I’m selling the car.”
“What kind of car?”
“It’s a Prius.”
“How many miles?”
“About sixty thousand.”
“What year?”
“2015.”
“Would you sell it to me?” he asked.
“Would you want it? Before you answer, keep in mind that thieves specifically target the Prius because it’s so easy to steal the catalytic convertor.”
The Lyft driver gave it some thought, then asked me how much I wanted for my Prius.
“I’d be happy to take the Bluebook value,” I said. “But you seem like a nice dude, and I don’t want to put you in a jam.”
“I’m already in a jam. My car has too many miles on it. Lyft is gonna remove me from the platform soon. Every mile I drive is one step closer to the end.”
There was something poetic about how the Lyft driver put that, like we’re all on this long, strange trip, and while we don’t know where we’re going, or how long it’ll take to get there, we can be certain that our progress will one day lead us to the end of the line. But my Lyft driver wasn’t a poet with a side hustle, he was a business man who appeared to be in business to do business, so I asked him a business question.
“How many miles does this car have?”
“Two hundred and fifty thousand,” he said.
“Holy shit. If you hadn’t told me, I would’ve guessed it was brand new. You take really good care of this car.”
“Thank you. It’s my business, so you know I take care of it. Want to buy the car? I’ll make you a deal.”
“Tempting, but I’m looking for something with less mileage.”
“Maybe we trade cars. Plus, I’ll throw in free rides whenever you visit your mom in Vegas. It’ll be like you’re getting picked up in your own car, except it’s your old car.”
“Again, it’s tempting, but I don’t know if this is a good deal for either of us. I need a car with less mileage, and you need a car that isn’t a target for catalytic convertor thieves.”
“OK, let’s try this. The next exit is for the airport. But instead of the airport, I drive you home to LA. If we trade cars, I’ll comp you the ride. Deal?”
“Tempting. It’s a lot of fun chatting with you. And I appreciate the hustle.”
“Always being hustling.”
“Actually, it’s always be closing.”
“Right, right. The ABCs of business. Always be closing. So, what do you say?”
“Sorry, I’m gonna pass. But in the interest of transparency, I need to let you know why.”
“OK, give me the feedback,” he said. “Everything is a learning experience.”
“I’m passing because this is a bad deal for you. My Prius is a huge-ass liability.”
“Not for me. I got a garage. One man’s liability is another man’s asset.”
“Clever.”
“That’s my name, Michael.”
Situation Normal stories are cheaper than rides, better for the planet, and usually a lot more entertaining. To receive new posts & support my work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber👇
Stick around and chat!You know the drill, situation normies. I have questions, you have answers.
Would you ever name a child “Clever,” and if so don’t you think that puts a lot of pressure on the kid?
Lyft, or Uber? Or, are you an old school taxi passenger?
Do you chat with your Lyft, Uber, or taxi drivers, or are you too busy reading Situation Normal on your phone?
Is there someone you love who drives like a bat out of hell? Name names.
Did I play this all wrong by side-stepping the opportunity to educate Clever about Meat Loaf and his oeuvre?
I learned everything I need to know about business by watching Glengarry Glen Ross. What are your business knowledge sources?
If you enjoyed this story, you should check out Ride/Share: Micro Stories of Soul, Wit and Wisdom from the Backseat by me👇
April 6, 2023
Join my chat
Today I’m announcing a brand new addition to my Substack publication: the Situation Normal subscriber chat.
This is a conversation space in the Substack app that I set up exclusively for my subscribers — kind of like a group chat or live hangout. I’ll post short prompts, thoughts, and updates that come my way, and you can jump into the discussion.
To join our chat, you’ll need to download the Substack app, now available for both iOS and Android. Chats are sent via the app, not email, so turn on push notifications so you don’t miss conversation as it happens.
How to get startedDownload the app by clicking this link or the button below. Substack Chat is now available on both iOS and Android.
Open the app and tap the Chat icon. It looks like two bubbles in the bottom bar, and you’ll see a row for my chat inside.
That’s it! Jump into my thread to say hi, and if you have any issues, check out Substack’s FAQ.
Situation Normal is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
April 5, 2023
AI ram-a-lama-ding-dong fiasco | Noted | Hat🎩
Photo by Possessed Photography on UnsplashAI ram-a-lama-ding-dong fiascoI believe it was The Rolling Stones who sang, you can’t always get what you want, but if you ask ChatGTP sometimes, well, you might find, you get an answer that’s total bullshit.
Those of you who remember the ram-a-lama-ding-dong fiasco in the comments section of last week’s post know what I’m talking about. But for those of you who are confused, allow me to channel my inner Inigo Montoya and sum up.
First, a situation normie named Tim Burnell asked me to ask ChatGTP: “Who put the ‘ram’ in the ram-a-lama-ding-dong?” I thought that was a great question, but I should’ve realized that several other situation normies had also asked the same question several weeks prior. One of those situation normies was definitely Bo Bres. But it’s also possible that C.L. Steiner made the same song suggestion. C.L. is a little fuzzy on that, and to be honest, I’m a little fuzzy too. But it doesn’t matter. I fudged up here, fellas, and I’m sorry.
Second, ChatGTP’s answer to the ram-a-lama-ding-dong was wrong! We know this because of a situation normie named Betsy Brazy, who went old school on the AI and came back with citations.
Then another situation normie, KdD, fact-checked Betsy’s citation.
Thanks to Betsy and KdD, we now know that it was George “Wydell” Jones Jr. of The Edsels who put the ‘ram’ in the ram-a-lama-ding-dong. And knowing is, as they say, half the battle. But what’s the other half of the battle? I’m not sure, but I think it might be skepticism.
I wasn’t skeptical of ChatGTP, and I got burned. I could’ve Googled the answer, or gone old school and consulted an actual book like Betsy, then fact-checked that book with the U.S. Copyright Office, like KdD. That would’ve been the professional thing to do, and it would’ve cleared the two sources threshold most 20th century news outlets used for fact-checking. But I didn’t do that. I’m a 21st century digital boy, I guess, and as Betsy proved, blind faith in technology is a very bad religion indeed.
Sorry about the fudge up, situation normies. I’d promise to never let something like this happen again, but we all know that mistakes will continue to be made. Rather than an empty promise to do better, let me try to make amends. Here goes… something👇
Bo Bres will get his moment with ChatGTP later on in this post.
C.L. Steiner will get to choose another song for ChatGTP (and maybe me) to fudge up later. C.L., just leave your suggestion in the comments.
KdD also gets to pick a song for ChatGTP (and maybe me) to fudge up. Just leave the suggestion in the comments, KdD.
Betsy should get a damn cape because she was the hero of last week’s fiasco, but the prices at my local cape store are outrageous, and besides Betsy had a different wish. Chatting with Betsy in the comments, I learned that she is a lawyer. “I really, really wish ChatGTP could have taken the Bar for me,” Betsy wrote. I feel the same way, Betsy! The bar exam was misery for me too. In your honor, I’m going to write my recollections of taking the California Bar exam. Look for that story soonish! In the meantime, Betsy also mentioned that her husband, who has degrees in psychology, computer science, and English, thinks ChatGTP is a people pleaser that’ll say anything to get on my good side. Don’t I know it. But I’m trying to get back on Betsy’s good side (and her husband’s too), so I’d like to ask every situation normie reading this post for a HUGE favor. Please check out A Tractor in the Rain, which is a Substack written by Betsy’s husband’s friend, Tori. Click the link here. And if you subscribe, tell Tori an AI ram-a-lama-ding-dong fiasco sent you. Also, hats off to Betsy for 1) Spotting the mistake, 2) Calling out the error with kindness, and 3) Paying her reward forward to her husband’s friend. Betsy gets an A+ in internet citizenship, if you ask me.
Another way to ace internet citizenship is sharing stuff you enjoy, like Situation Normal👇
Noted!If you’ve ever wondered how writers organize their material, Jillian Hess has you covered. Jillian is an English professor at CUNY & the author of How Romantics and Victorians Organized Information. She’s also the inquisitive force of nature behind Noted, a Substack that examines the notes of big-time people like Charles Dickens, Jimmy Carter, and my personal favorite Jim “Lizard King” Morrison. If you’re fascinated by someone, who did something, at some point in history, chances are that your someone, who did something, at some point in history, took notes. And if they did, Jillian is on the case.
But Jillian doesn’t just examine the notes of big-time people. She also talks to contemporary creators about how they organize their material. That’s where the Comedic Personal Essay Universe (CPEU)™ comes in. Recently, Jillian interviewed me and Alex Dobrenko, who writes Both Are True, about our notes and our creative processes. Click the story for a behind-the-scenes look at Situation Normal and Both Are True👇
NotedContemporary Notes: Alex Dobrenko and Michael Estrin Don’t you love learning that two of your favorite writers were/are actually friends? William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge: friends! Toni Morrison and James Baldwin: friends! Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton: friends! Now we can addAlex Dobrenko…Read more3 days ago · 19 likes · 18 comments · Jillian Hess
Meet Situation Normal’s Newest SponsorsSituation Normal is (mostly) free, but it ain’t cheap to produce. Thankfully, Situation Normal runs on the generosity of paid subscribers, like:
Judith, who describes herself as a “concerned granny” in her Substack bio, helped make Situation Normal a going concern by signing up for a monthly subscription. Thank you, Judith!
David M., who plays his cards so close to the vest that he didn’t create a Substack bio, signed up for a monthly subscription. Thank you, David!
Nigel P., who is blessed with a fantastic first name, shared his blessings by signing up for a monthly subscription. Thank you, Nigel, and thank you for allowing me to experience the joy of typing your name!
Sheila, who is the writer, photographer, and funny person behind the Stay Curious Substack, signed up for an annual subscription to Situation Normal. Thank you, Sheila!
Curious about becoming a paid subscriber? For the price of an over-priced coffee☕️, you’ll receive a shout out & access to exclusive stories👇
Incongruous SingularityI love spotting unintentionally funny signs in the wild, but I can’t be everywhere all at once, so I rely on situation normies to capture & submit the hilarity. This one comes from Nigel in the UK, who wrote:
Being a bit of a funny guy I had an idea to start a blog called “Incongruous Singularity,” as my indy band didn’t want the name. Sadly, I only found one other example in the next few months, a rather splendid “Egg Benedict” in my mum’s home town, so I binned the whole idea. Still I am rather fond of the World Of Hat and I know where to go for my next headgear purchase.
Hat off to the proprietor of World of Hat
Thanks for the submission, and stay singular, Nigel!
Send your funny pictures, odd overheard conversations, and other hilarious artifacts found in the wild to me at michael.j.estrin@gmail.com.
Hypothetical picnicThis one goes out to Bo Bres, who asked: “What’s the story, morning glory?” To clarify, I asked Bo if he was referring to the Oasis album, and he said yes. “Title track of their second album.” OK, Bo, here we go🤖🎶👇
Well, that’s the morning glory story. But is it a true story? I doubt it. Stay skeptical, situation normies, and if you have more information, please share what you know in the comments. Just like Yoshimi, we’re gonna defeat these evil machines.
Not Safe for WorkDid you know I wrote a novel? Did you know that it’s a stoner comedy / mystery that’s based on my experience covering adult entertainment? Did you know that Not Safe for Work is more than just boobs, butts, and blunts, it’s also a serious examination of journalism in the digital age?
You probably didn’t know any of that because I’m bad at talking about my novel. Thankfully, my friend Josh said some nice stuff about Not Safe for Work.
“With a reporter’s attention to detail, an uncanny ear for dialogue, and a hilarious dry wit reminiscent of Douglas Adams, Estrin takes us on an unforgettable tour of the porn industry, where a cavalcade of quirky and desperate people validated my decision to become a comedy writer, rather than a pornographer.”
— Joshua Sternin (The Simpsons, That 70s Show)
Do Josh a favor and honor his generous book blurbing by picking up your copy of Not Safe for Work today👇
ICYMILast Sunday, I wrote a serious essay based on a conversation I had with my mom about school shootings, generational strife, Everything Everywhere All at Once, apologies, and the judgement of history. I was nervous about sharing that essay because it’s not a funny piece, and let’s face it, because it’s about a topic that usually goes sideways fast on the internet. But the situation normie community came through with generous, kind, and thoughtful comments that made me realize I had nothing to be nervous about.
Thank you for being so awesome, situation normies!
Stick around and chat!You know the drill. I’ve got questions, you’ve got answers.
How cool is it that when I fudge up, situation normies are there to help un-fudge the situation?
After the AI ram-a-lama-ding-dong fiasco, I don’t trust ChatGTP, or any other tech. But that puts me in a bind because tech is everywhere. Do you trust the likes of Google, Alexa, and ye olde wheel? Or, are you livin’ la vida Luddite? Explain.
Why didn’t the proprietor of World of Hat add an “S” at the end? After all, you can clearly see many, many hats in the window. Give us the story, make it up if you have to. If the proprietor of World of Hat gets mad, Nigel will sort them out.
If you read Jillian’s interview with me and Alex, you’ll see that we’re two funny dudes with two different approaches to organizing our material. How do you take your notes / organize your material?
Even more chat!This Thursday, I’m running an experiment, and you’re invited! I’ll be hosting a live chat on Substack at 5pm Pacific time. It’ll last about an hour, or maybe we’ll chat into the small hours. I don’t know because it’s an experiment. But figure on an hour. I think it’ll be fun, so please join!
How this will work? I’m using a time tested tactic called “fuck around and find out.” My plan is to enable Substack’s chat function on Thursday, maybe a few minutes before five, my time. That should kick out an email to the entire situation normie community to let you know that the chat is on. From there, I think we just chat, either on the Substack app, or the desktop. Don’t worry, I’ll come correct with discussion questions to get the ball rolling.
See you this Thursday, April 6, at 5pm Pacific time.
April 2, 2023
Sorry we f*cked up, kid
[Writer’s note: Today’s post isn’t funny. This post is a serious essay about the serious topic of school shootings. I hope it’ll make you think and feel the feels, as the kids say, but it won’t make you laugh. Sorry. If you came here to laugh, I think you’ll enjoy this very silly piece I wrote last March called “The Case of The Missing Laptop.” Read it here.]
Photo by Nick Fewings on UnsplashMy mom called me on Wednesday night. She’s been trying to get better at reaching out on the regular, and I’ve been trying to encourage her. Like everything else in this world, our relationship is a work in progress.
“Can you talk right now?” Mom asked. “Are you free?”
“Sure, it’s a good time.”
I switched to my earbuds and plopped down on the couch. Mortimer curled up next to me. For a few minutes, Mom and I went through the preliminaries.
Are you good?✅
Is Christina good?✅
Is Mortimer good?✅
Then Mom got the reason for her call.
“I woke up this morning, and I felt like I needed to call you today,” she began. “Have you been following the news about the school shooting in a Tennessee?”
I had been following the news, which is to say that I saw the headlines and felt that awful feeling everyone gets when the same horror show keeps running on an endless loop. But I didn’t click the links, or turn on cable news, or dive into the social media shit show. I already knew the story, and I already knew what everyone was going to say, and worst of all, I already knew nothing would change.
“Yeah, it’s awful news,” I said.
“Horrible. And it keeps happening. What’s the expression? Same shit, different day. That’s what if feels like. I feel like we’re living in a nightmare.”
For a few minutes, we said all the usual things Americans always say after a school shooting. But there’s only so much mileage you can get out of the usual talking points, and when those talking points bounce around an echo chamber, they don’t go anywhere at all. Maybe that’s why Mom and I eventually got around to acknowledging that our words were as empty as the promises American politicians have been making about this issue for decades.
“I remember the first time this happened,” Mom said. “You were away at college.”
“I remember Columbine,” I said. “It felt horrific, but I don’t think anyone felt numb to it in those days.”
“No, no. We couldn’t be numb back then. It wasn’t normal back then. This kind of shit had never happened before.”
“Columbine wasn’t the first school shooting, Mom.”
“It wasn’t?”
Here, my knowledge of pop music came in handy, in a macabre sort of way. I recalled the shooting at an elementary school in San Diego that inspired the song I Don’t Like Mondays by The Boomtown Rats. I wasn’t quite two years young when a 16-year-old murdered two people and injured nine others at Grover Cleveland Elementary. Then there’s The Ballad of Charles Whitman by Kinky Friedman. That song tells the story of the Texas Tower Shooting, where Whitman, a former Marine, killed 14 people and wounded 31 others on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin. That shooting, which is also referenced with Kubrickian gallows humor in the film Full Metal Jacket, occurred in 1966, eleven years before I was born. History may have recorded earlier school shootings, but as far as I know, there aren’t any other twentieth century pop songs about the subject. Come to think of it, I don’t know any 21st century pop songs about school shootings, but artists are always working hard to make sense of the world, especially the painful parts, so there must be plenty of contemporary school shooting songs I’m just not aware of.
“I just don’t understand is a society that won’t do anything to protect its children,” I said. “I don’t know what it says about us, but it doesn’t say anything good.”
“That’s why I called,” Mom said. “I feel so terrible about this. I needed to hear your voice.”
“I’m glad you called. We need to talk with our loved ones about these things. It’s important to bear witness.”
To some, that last comment about bearing witness may sound incongruous with the dude who chose not to click the link, or turn on the news, or dive into the social media shit show. But I don’t see it that way. There’s a fine line between staying informed and going off the deep end. If you can manage to stay on the right side of that line—never easy—you remain open to deeper conversations, even when—and maybe especially when—talking feels like it won’t accomplish anything. Those kinds conversations matter, not because any single conversation changes the world, but because history has far too many examples of societies where countless individuals failed to bear witness to the horrors their society perpetrated.
“I’m sorry to say that between school shootings, and the environment, and all the other mishigas going on these days, my generation is really leaving you guys a shitty world. It’s fucked, Michael. Really fucked. I’m sorry.”
I didn’t expect my mother to apologize for the state of the world, but as a younger member of the Generation X cohort, I get the sense that people my age and younger have been waiting for a generational apology that’ll probably never come. Our hunger for an apology—personal, or generational, or both—probably lurks somewhere in the hurt feelings that are masked by the anger—both righteous and outrageous—that fuels the generational shit-posting that’s epitomized by the OK Boomer meme. Because if you need an apology, and you know you’re not going to get one, clapping back can be comforting, even if the comfort is cold and anything that looks like healing or progress remains elusive. Not that I’m a psychologist, or even a guy who took a psych class in college (I didn’t). I’m just a dude who writes funny stories about his life for the internet. So what do I know?
One thing I know: I’m fortunate to be able to write pieces like this one because situation normies have been very generous about sharing my work. Thank you for reading Situation Normal & please keep sharing 👇
When my Mom visited us in March, we watched The Academy Awards together. I can’t be sure of my exact age, but I think I was a teenager the last time I watched The Academy Awards with my mom. Back then, watching the show was personal because my father did the sound. In addition to rooting for whatever film happened to be my favorite that year, I rooted for good audio.
These days, I don’t really care who wins an Oscar. I still listen carefully, mostly for the jokes, and I still root for good audio because good audio reminds me of my dad, who I miss every single day. Also, if you can’t hear the speeches, how do you know what to Tweet in the culture war? Audio matters, even if the things people say into the microphone are counterproductive.
Anyway, this year our living room hosted a low-key skirmish in the larger intergenerational war I mentioned in the previous section. Mom rooted for Elvis because he was The King, at least as far as the Boomers are concerned. A biopic about Elvis probably made Mom feel nostalgic for a time when she was young and the world was her generation’s oyster. (When I’m my mom’s age, I’ll probably feel the same way about a Nirvana movie, but if that movie is going to be an honest telling of what it felt like to be young in the 1990s, it’ll probably be a bummer with a kickass soundtrack.)
Christina rooted for Everything Everywhere All at Once, a really complicated film that uses the multiverse and an IRS tax audit to explore themes of immigrant identity narratives, queer identity, and inter-generational trauma. Mom hadn’t seen Everything Everywhere All at Once, and the more we tried to explain it to her, the more I felt like she’d never understand.
Spoiler alert: Everything Everywhere All at Once beat out Elvis and some other good films. It won the Oscar for Best Picture, Best Director, and three out of the four best acting awards. If the 95th Academy Awards show was a contest between Boomers and Millennials, the Millennials kicked ass and took the only name that matters: Oscar. Christina was thrilled, Mom not so much.
The Tuesday following The Academy Awards, I drove Mom back to her place in Las Vegas. We talked about a lot of stuff on the drive, and at one point I tried to explain why so many people, especially young people, were so excited that Everything Everywhere All at Once had won so many Oscars. Mom didn’t really get it, but to be honest, I don’t know if I really understood it either.
The day after I flew back to Los Angeles, Christina shared a link to a Vox article in a group chat we have going with my sister, Allison, and her partner, Craig. In an article called Hollywood’s hot new trend: Parents who say they’re sorry, writer Emily St. James argued that Everything Everywhere All at Once falls into a “suddenly popular sub-genre” she calls “the Millennial parental apology fantasy.” Other examples of the sub-genre include Turning Red, Encanto, and The Mitchells vs. the Machines. Here’s how St. James explains the narratives that define this sub-genre:
Instead of telling the time-honored story of a child learning just how much their parent has sacrificed for them, these stories tell its mirror image. Instead, they are stories where the parent has to realize how badly they’ve treated their child. The ability to heal intergenerational trauma lies at least in part with that parent, and as the film wraps up, they take real steps to doing so, usually as the child realizes that the trauma did not originate with their parent but much further up the family tree. Better able to understand each other, the parent and child end the film with a better relationship.
A little later in the piece, St. James adds key details about the exact nature of the fantasy explored in the millennial parental apology fantasy sub-genre:
The fantasy here is not just that a parent will apologize to their child (though that is key) but also that said apology will snap the cycle of abuse so it no longer perpetuates itself. And that’s a fantasy that has appeal to the parent and the child.”
According to St. James, one possible explanation for the sudden emergence of the Millennial parental apology fantasy is the fact that Millennials are starting to have kids, and Millennial audiences are therefore hungry for new takes on old themes like parenting and generational trauma. Hollywood is nothing if not a machine for monetizing cultural trends.
But labor also tells the story behind the emergence of Millennial parental apology fantasy sub-genre. As Boomer filmmakers exit the stage, they’re largely being replaced, not by Xers—a relatively small cohort that began to reach adulthood in the 1980s and made its cinematic mark in the 1990s with films like Clerks, Office Space, and Reality Bites—but by Millennials, who like the Boomers, understand that there’s strength in numbers. Regardless of the reason, Millennial filmmakers have arrived, and if films like Everything Everywhere All at Once are any indication, we’re going to see more tellings of the Millennial parental apology fantasy.
I didn’t mention the Vox article to my mom on our call. For all I know, she’s never even heard of Vox, a digital media company that launched in 2011 with the idea of rebooting news, culture, and just about every other advertiser-friendly content vertical, for the Millennial generation. Instead of talking about the Millennial parental apology fantasy, or Everything Everywhere All at Once, or even the endless cycle of gun violence that hangs over American life, I asked Mom how she thought history would judge her generation.
“Hopefully, history will say we did the best we could,” she said. “But I kind of doubt it. I don’t think history will be kind to us.”
“History is a lot of things, but kind isn’t one of them.”
Reading history is a passion of mine. My mom was the first person to encourage this passion. Thanks to her, I’ve had my nose buried in one history book or another ever since I was a kid. I’m not a professional historian, or even an amateur historian, but I think about history a lot, and on occasion, I’ve been known to use Situation Normal to interrogate the past generally and my mother specifically.
“I don’t think history will judge my generation any better than your generation,” I said.
“You don’t?”
Mom sounded surprised by my comment, but maybe that’s because my generation and the generations that came after mine have made so much hay out of blaming her generation. These days, it’s de rigueur to blame Boomers, but like all trends, blaming Boomers will grow stale, and ultimately, age poorly for anyone who was once on trend.
“I think the people out there with pitchforks for Boomers will be old before they know it,” I said. “You’ll be gone by then, but with any luck I’ll still be here, and I’m sure the kids will want to know why we fucked up so badly.”
“What a fucking mess,” Mom said.
“That’s history for you, Mom. A total fucking mess.”
Usually, this is part of an essay where the writer shares what they’ve learned—a lesson the reader can take with them to share at cocktail parties where serious people discuss serious things, before they they go to work the next day at jobs where they’re tasked with implementing serious answers to the serious questions of the day. But I suppose that’s a writerly fantasy as wild as the Millennial parental apology fantasy. Maybe wilder, actually.
The thing is, I don’t have a lesson to share here. I don’t have an answer that would make today’s kids as safe in their schools as I was in mine. Hell, I can’t even explain why it is that our society continues to accept dead children as the price for our dysfunction.
The truth is, I’m as lost as any adult reading this essay. But at least I know I’m lost, and maybe that counts for something. Maybe. Because one day, sooner than the Xers, the Millennials, and even the Zoomers realize, we’ll be old, just like the Boomers are now. And when we’re old, tomorrow’s young people will hold us accountable in ways that are fair and unfair. The only question is: will they accept our apology?
I’m committed to giving situation normies stories & essays from my life twice a week. Usually, my stories are funny, but even the funny ones are meant to make you feel & maybe see the world in a new way. To receive new posts & support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber👇
Let’s talkUsually, this is the part of the post where the situation normies gather to have a fun discussion, but today’s post isn’t fun. Also, I’m afraid that the comments section will turn into a talking points shit show. So please, let’s not do that. Instead, let’s talk about the following questions:
What does it mean to you to bear witness?
Whatever your politics are, the news can be really depressing. What do you do to stay informed while protecting your mental health?
When was the last time you talked with a loved one about a news story that really upset you? Did it help?
What are some of your favorite history books? And how does reading history make you feel about the world we live in?
March 29, 2023
Freelance Wizard | Vase Dude 2.0 | Hypothetical Picnic
Photo by Iman soleimany zadeh on UnsplashFreelance WizardAccording to the content that comes out of the content mills, the cashiers at Trader Joe’s are trained / encouraged / required to engage customers in friendly conversations at checkout. I don’t know if the content mills speak the truth, but I’ve always enjoyed speaking with Trader Joe’s cashiers.
Usually, I start the conversation with my canvas bag gambit. The idea is to alert the cashier to the fact that I brought my canvas bags, and that said bags are located under packages of oats, mint, low fat yogurt, and other weekly staples. But there is also subtext in the canvas bag gambit. The subtext is this:
I care about the planet.
I am the kind of person who wants strangers to know that he is well traveled and cultured, so my canvas bags come from various bookstores and art museums from around the plant I wish to save.
I am taking action to save the planet, even though, as Marc Maron observed in End Times Fun, the only real action I’ve taken is bringing my bags to the market, which ain’t nearly enough to save the planet.
But the other day, a pink-haired Trader Joe’s cashier preempted my canvas bag gambit by asking if I had forgotten anything on my shopping list.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “But I live really close, so I could always come back. I could walk here. I just never do. Which is sad. Because that would be good for me, and good for the planet.”
“But groceries are heavy,” she said.
“Yeah, that’s my excuse. I’m lazy. Sorry about that, Earth. I was totally going to live a hunter-gather, carbon-neutral lifestyle, but you know, convenience.”
“I don’t know you. Maybe you are a hunter-gatherer. Maybe you’re a wizard. You’ve got the beard for it.”
“OK, you got me. I’m a wizard. I didn’t drive here, but I didn’t walk either. I’ve got my flying broom tied up at the bike rack outside. It’s an electric broom, by the way, so it’s as carbon-neutral as flying brooms get these days.”
“I thought only witches had flying brooms?”
“They do. My wife is a witch. The broom is a loner. My wife wasn’t happy about me borrowing the broom, but I told her, if you want hummus, I’m taking the broom. What could she say? She loves hummus.”
“Don’t we all love hummus?”
“Indeed.”
“Do you make good money in the wizard game?” the cashier asked.
“I used to. But then the internet really screwed over the wizard community. Now, all the wizards use apps, but the apps take 30 percent. Plus, the app seems to select for entitled customers who don’t see wizarding as labor.”
“I hear that. I used to write comic books, but the internet ruined that. Every platform I use takes too much money, and the communities always turn toxic.”
“Ugh. Online communities. At first, they’re cool because you’re meeting a lot of people who are into the same stuff as you. But then instead of just enjoying that stuff, some people feel the need to shit on stuff, and then the shit starts to stink real bad, and people get angry, and then the anger brings out all their racism, and sexism, and all the awful isms.”
“Story of my life,” the cashier said. “At this point, I don’t even share my work anymore. I just make my comics for me and email them to a few friends.”
“If you’re emailing them, have you thought about putting them on Substack?”
“What’s Substack?”
“It’s an email service that automatically archives your stuff into a blog, but it’s also a platform so you can find new fans. Since it’s email-based, though, you have a lot of control, so if one of those racist, sexist shit-on-stuff trolls enters your community, you can cast them out with a blocking spell.”
“Wow. What do you do on Substack?”
“I write humor. Mostly slice of life stuff.”
“I’d read slice of life wizard humor.”
“Do you have your phone on you?” I asked.
I gave the cashier the address to my Substack. She wrote it down on her phone. Then I told her to search Substack.com for newsletters about comics.
“Wow, this was magical,” she said.
“All in a day’s work for a freelance wizard.”
Share the magic! Press the button and cast a growth spell for Situation Normal 👇
Vase Dude 2.0As some of you know, my profile of adult entertainer Sophia Locke received widespread praise from world leaders, talking heads, and prurient randos. It also drove trillions of dollars of revenue for Situation Normal. But it wasn’t a perfect profile—not by a long shot. See, I messed up big time by failing to ask Sophia Locke any follow-up questions about Vase Dude. Thankfully, several situation normies stepped up with their own questions, and I’m pleased to report that Sophia has answers! But first, watch this TikTok video for a refresher on Vase Dude.
@sophialocke_ @sophialocke_ ♬ original sound - Sophia Locke [image error]Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
Caz Hart: “I want to know if the vase needs to be a particular shape or color, or if any vase will do?”
Sophia Locke: “He wanted me to get my hand or finger stuck in anything I had. I happened to have a vase available, so that’s what I used! It was more of a ‘concerned about being stuck’ fetish than a vase one!”
Amran Gowani: “So many questions about Vase Dude. My broken, demented brain can’t shake that this is somehow Oedipal in nature, so I’d like to know if he mentioned his dear mother to Sophia at any point. Also, unfortunately, I’d like to know if he “climaxed” purely on the thrill of watching, or if manual stimulation was still required?”
Sophia Locke: “He never mentioned his mother. I couldn’t see him, but I believe I could hear him. I’m pretty sure he was actually physically jerking off to it, although that’s an educated guess based on my experience with most of the guys who had these niche fetishes.”
Meg Oolders: “Is it crucial that the woman be ‘pretending’ to get her hand stuck? Like, if she was legitimately stuck and needed to go to the hospital to get it dislodged, would that still be hot? Or.... not?”
Sophia Locke: “I have no idea if he would have been happier with it being real. I like to credit my average acting skills with giving him the most convincing two-minute show I possibly could😂.”
Dennard Dayle left the following comment on the original piece: “That man is enjoying a simpler, clearer love life than the rest of us. Maybe a simpler life in general.” I asked Sophia to respond to Dennard’s insightful comment.
Sophia Locke: “I have such a pure joy for this person and his simple, harmless kink. Even though it’s probably not something he can type into a porn tube site and find a ton of material of, I was thrilled that I could at least satisfy him for that brief time. That’s the joy of camming and personal paid interactions like this—you can find exactly what your heart desires. Even if that is a confused but eager woman with her hand stuck in a vase.”
Every Wednesday & Sunday, situation normies enjoy their humor with a side of humanity and a dash of insight. There are other benefits too, like picking up the ball I dropped with Vase Dude & running with it. Add your name to the list & become a situation normie👇
Meet Situation Normal’s Newest SponsorsI love writing Situation Normal! When I say I’d do it for free, I’m not kidding. For the first two years, I didn’t take a dime, or a doge coin. But carbs and bad life decisions can only take you so far in the humor game. Thankfully, Situation Normal also runs on the generosity of paid subscribers, like:
Janice W., who has known me my entire life, became an annual subscriber! Thank you, Janice. And I swear, I will read Moby Dick one of these days.
Cathy W., who has known me since I was a foul-mouthed teen, became an annual subscriber! Thanks for being so fucking awesome, Cathy!
Kris V. became a monthly subscriber! I don’t know Kris, but according to her Substack bio, Kris is a “businesswoman, photographer, writer, mother, gamer, and CEO.” Kickass, Kris, and thank you for supporting my silly business!
Alex Dobrenko, who writes the very awesome Both Are True newsletter and is a generous wing-person to anyone and everyone in the Comedic Personal Essay Universe CPEU™, became an annual subscriber! Good move, Alex!
Tim B., who had a great suggestion for what to ask ChatGTP, became an annual subscriber! You’ll see Tim’s suggestion in the next section, but to be clear you don’t have to pay to talk to ChatGTP. Anyway, thanks for the money and the idea, Tim!
Spencer Irwin, who writes about his relationship to media in his newsletter, Do You Know What I Love Most?, became a monthly subscriber. Thanks so much, Spencer, and I look forward to reading what you have to say about your relationship to Situation Normal!
Laura M. who I know very little about, aside from the fact that she also pays for some really good newsletters, and therefore probably has excellent taste, demonstrated her excellent taste by becoming an annual subscriber to Situation Normal. Thank you, Laura!
Adam B., who might be independently wealthy because his Substack profile indicates that he pays for 42 Substacks, bought a monthly subscription to Situation Normal. On behalf of every writer on the internet, Adam, let me just say, thank you for being so damn cool!
Jen D., who I’ve known since our first year at Wesleyan and who should know better than to give me money, became a founding member of Situation Normal. Like all founding situation normies, Jen is entitled to free rides to the doctor, provided the doctor’s office is in LA County. Jen will also receive an annual report detailing what I did with her money, which is more than I can say for that time Jen gave me her student ID to buy snacks and mixers. Sorry I blew all your meal points on Snapples and Swedish Fish, Jen, and thank you for your support!
If you’d like to see your name in the Situation Normal shout outs and read exclusive stories like High Flier, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.
For the price of an overpriced coffee☕️, you can enjoy exclusive Situation Normal stories & underwrite the situation normie community👇
Hypothetical PicnicFor shits and giggles, and because I believe that the future should be as weird as possible, I’ve been messing around with ChatGTP, an artificial intelligence tool that, apparently, doesn’t know much about music.
I think this is the third or fourth time I’ve asked ChatGTP a question about song lyrics, so at this point, we have a new recurring feature here at Situation Normal. I was going to call the feature Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, but after a strongly-worded letter from the The Flaming Lips legal team, I backed down. Thankfully, Andrew Paul Koole, who writes Ponytail Press, had a better name—one that comes from last week’s ChatGTP session. Without further ado, here’s Hypothetical Picnic.
This week’s question comes from Tim B, who asked: “Who put the “ram” in the ram-a-lama-ding-dong?” Turns out, ChatGTP had an answer, Tim, but it took some doing on my part to get that answer.
Special thanks!You’ve probably noticed the colorful dividers in this edition of Situation Normal. Meg Oolders, who writes Stock Fiction, made these because she’s an awesome situation normie, and because Meg, like all writers, lives to procrastinate. Thanks for making me look cool, Meg!
Stick around and chat!You know the drill. I’ve got questions, situation normies have answers.
Have you told your friends, lovers, and random strangers about Substack? You should! And if you talk to your local supermarket cashier about Substack, please let us know how it goes.
What’s the deal with online communities? Do they always turn to shit, or is their hope for humanity?
How about a big thank you to Sophia Locke for shedding a little more light on Vase Dude?
What else should I ask ChatGTP? Song answers only.
At the risk of sounding like a Luddite wizard, the internet has ruined plenty of stuff. Sure, it’s given us cool stuff, like GIFs, good recipes for cooking brussels sprouts, and Situation Normal, of course. But this thing of ours has also caused some havoc. What’s something you think the internet has ruined? Go ahead, channel your inner Luddite wizard. 🧙♂️
Until Sunday, when I’ll return with a Lyft driver story…
