Michael Estrin's Blog, page 22
October 5, 2022
Vegas! Recruiting. Butter boards.
Photo by Shinichiro Ichimura on UnsplashWe went to Las Vegas this weekend to visit my mom. The drive from our house in Los Angeles to Las Vegas takes just under five hours, unless you’re my mom, aka Lead Foot Linda, who was the inspiration for the Bandit in Smokey and the Bandit.
With me driving, the trip took closer to six hours. Also, we stopped in Yermo to charge the car, use the bathroom, and let Mortimer shoot his shot at marking a few square feet of the Mojave desert.
On the drive out to Vegas, I always ask myself the same question: are we there yet? But on the drive back, my mind roams. Here are some of the questions I asked myself:
What’s the casino scene like in Primm?
If you win big in Primm, aren’t you still losing?
Is this the trip I finally say, screw it and take the road to Zzyzx?
What’s the point of an agriculture inspection if they just wave everyone through?
Should I get into the interstate agriculture smuggling racket?
Which Harry Bosch novel was the one where his case takes him to Zzyzx?
How much money does that guy biking through the Mojave desert spend on sun tan lotion?
How hard is the Mad Greek crushing it?
What’s the situation with the person who lives in that lonely house in the middle of the desert?
Was this the stretch of road where Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau stopped to pee in the movie Swingers?
How many Kinky Friedman songs before Christina intervenes?
What if Roy Choi opened a roadside place in Baker?
Would the Mad Greek welcome Roy Choi’s fusion game, or would Baker quickly become the scene of a vicious culinary rivalry?
Why is that truck still in the fast lane?
How cool is the dude with a handlebar mustache leading a caravan of vintage Volkswagen Beetles on the Pearblossom Highway?
Has anything ever gone right at the McDonald’s in Little Rock, California, or is that place some kind of portal to hell?
Does the guy in the Mustang who crossed the double yellow line to pass on the Pearblossom Highway have a death wish, or is he just a dumbass?
Why don’t we stop and get date shakes?
If Christina and I get into the agriculture smuggling game, who drives the truck and who drives the bandit car?
Recruit the recruiterFor many people, working in tech is a fantasy come true. There’s the money, of course. But it’s not just the money. There’s also the power. A lot of power. Think about it. With a few lines of code, a cool logo, and enough PR flaks hyping your bullshit story about making the world a better place, you can disrupt all kinds of stuff that already works pretty well!
But there’s a catch. There’s always a catch. You have to know your shit when it comes to computers. Sadly, when it comes to computers I don’t know shit. But I still have a shot, thanks to the other Michael Estrin, who is one of the most sought after engineers on LinkedIn.
The other day, a recruiter named Malvina sent me an email about a job. In the subject line, she asked if I was the Geralt of JavaScript? I didn’t get the reference, but Christina, who works in tech and loves epic fantasy, explained that Malvina was making a reference to The Witcher.
“She knows her audience, and she’s super creative,” Christina explained. “But her email list sucks, so it’s that old story of crap in, crap out.”
Here’s what Malvina wrote👇
Here’s what I wrote back to Malvina👇
New trend: butter boards!Way the hell back in July, I went to a stranger’s house to buy cheese. Sophisticated Situation Normal readers pointed out that what I actually bought was a charcuterie board. That was good fun, but a reader named Tab isn’t laughing.
Tab wrote in (twice!) to tell me that I’ve created a monster. The issue? Ads for charcuterie boards continue to stalk Tab online to this day. Tab, I’m so sorry. May I suggest that you either switch to an anonymous browser, or buy the damn charcuterie board already?
Not that charcuterie boards are on trend anymore. Several readers—Anna, Henry, and someone going by the handle Arkansas Dave Rudabaugh—all wrote in to tell me that butter boards are the new charcuterie board. I guess Anna, Henry, and Arkansas Dave Rudabaugh are hoping Christina will read this, then send me to a stranger’s house to buy butter. Talk about a dream assignment! In the meantime, here’s a TikTok of a butter board👇
@samischnurButter board is my new fvaorite thing. Idea by @Justine Doiron !! #fyp #butterboard #foryou #tiktokfood #viral[image error]Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browserComment of the week!
Last Sunday, I wrote about how my new Apple Watch tells me how to live. The comments were great because Situation Normal readers are known for leaving great comments. To recognize that greatness, and encourage even more greatness, I’m rolling out a new feature—comment of the week.
This week’s honor goes to turtleneck-hater and Mitch Hedberg fan shambolicguru👇
Contribute a thing to Situation Normal!The Wednesday edition doesn’t write itself. I need your help! Do you have a question about something I’ve written? Got a weird overheard you want to share? See a product or sign that made you LOL, or WTF? Need life advice? Send your submissions to me at 👇
michael.j.estrin@gmail.com
When submitting, please say if you’d like an alias. Otherwise, I’ll use your first name. If you write a newsletter, I’m happy to link to it, so let me know!
If you’re new here, please👇If you’re a returning champ, please👇Stick around and chat!You know the drill. I’ve got questions, you may or may not have answers.
Have you ever stopped in Primm, and if so, did you feel like a winner?
Have you ever taken the road to Zyzzyx?
How much money do you think it’ll take to get Malvina to come recruit readers for Situation Normal?
Would you try a butter board?
How do you go about cleaning a butter board? Seems messy, right?
Until Sunday when I’ll have story about going to a Raiders game…
Finally, let me know you enjoy Situation Normal by hitting that ❤️ button 🙏👇
October 2, 2022
I bought an Apple Watch. It tells me how to live
Photo by Bestami Sarıkaya on UnsplashThe other day, I asked Christina what time it was.
“Time for you to get a watch, sucka!”
My previous watch was a 1977 stainless steel Seiko “Pan Am” (model number M158-5000). The fact that I know the model number makes me sound like a watch guy. But the truth is I’m just a guy who has access to Google image search, five minutes to spare for internet sleuthing, and a crystal clear memory of the watch he “borrowed” from his father in the late 1980s.
My father, who spent half the year on the road, loved the Seiko “Pan Am” because it was one of the first digital watches that had presets for every timezone, from Greenwich Mean Time, to Hong Kong, to New York. I loved that watch because I thought stainless steel looked cool (correct), and because I was the kind of boy who thought knowing the time in Manilla would impress girls in Los Angeles (incorrect).
I wore my borrowed Seiko “Pan Am” everyday until it died. I took it to a few watch repair specialists, but they couldn’t resurrect the watch. I wrote to Seiko to ask if they were still selling the “Pan Am.” Someone from Seiko wrote back, complimented my great taste in time pieces, and informed me that they had ceased production on that particular watch back in the late 1970s.
Since I was about to finish college around the time the “Pan Am” died, my father offered to buy me a new watch as a graduation present. I’m sure he had something fancy in mind, maybe a gold watch with Roman numerals, even though I hate gold almost as much as I hate the hassle of doing the math required by the Roman numeral system. Thankfully, my sister intervened.
“He’s not gonna wear it,” Allison told our father. “Michael likes experiences, not material things.”
At that point, my little sister gave me one of the greatest gifts of my life. With the skill of a seasoned negotiator, Allison talked our father into giving me access to his frequent flyer miles for one year. (I think it helped that gifting miles was less expensive than buying a watch).
After completing college, Dad’s frequent flier miles sent me to Southeast Asia, Central America, and Eastern Europe. My earnings from odd jobs and working as a PA covered my expenses. And despite my mother’s protests, I did it all without a wrist watch.
Looking back, the absence of the wrist watch was an advantage for a shy young man who was working a little too hard not to be so shy. Without a watch, I had an excuse to ask a stranger for the time. I learned quickly that in a foreign country, a forgettable question in a familiar accent is a good conversation starter.
When I returned from my travels, I meant to get a watch. But Allison was right. I’m not into material things. And I hate shopping. Plus, everyone around me had the time, and I felt confident asking for it! So I put off buying a watch for a few more years.
Then everyone got a cell phone. If memory serves, the top two value propositions of my first “feature” phone—a real piece of shit—were subpar mobile telephony and a clock. I left that phone at home as much as I could.
Then a few years later, a man who was such a force of nature that he made turtlenecks cool, announced something new: the iPhone. Right away, I understood three things:
It was a phone
It was also clock
I wanted one real bad
At some point, probably in 2008, I bought the original iPhone. Ever since, I’ve had some version of the iPhone by my side for nearly every moment of my life.
If you had told me at the time that my first iPhone would be the beginning of the end for things like phone calls and talking to strangers, I would’ve laughed behind your back. But if you had actually made that prediction, you would’ve been right, and somewhere around 2018, I would’ve written you a text to say so. But I probably would’ve deleted the text draft before sending it to you. See, somewhere around that time, I had begun to get this sinking feeling that a device that connects us to everyone, might be the thing that’s keeping us from connecting with anyone.
In 2015, three years before my sinking feeling of disconnection began to sink in, Apple released another new thing: the Apple Watch. Since I had gone watch-free for so long, I was skeptical. Why get an Apple Watch, I wondered, when I already have an iPhone? The way I saw it, the two devices had nearly identical capabilities, except everything on the Apple Watch was smaller.
But a lot of people—tech bros, Apple fanboys, influencers, gadget geeks, and early adopters—were on board with the Apple Watch. By 2020, if the Apple Watch Wikipedia entry is to be believed, an estimated 100 million people would own an Apple Watch.
Eventually, a critical mass of my social network—writers, cranks, shiftless layabouts, Apple fanboys, degenerate gamblers, thought followers, GIF enthusiasts, cinephiles, overachievers, Taco Tuesday observers, and scoundrels—purchased Apple Watches. Everyone I know who bought one loved their Apple Watch at first sight. I was intrigued, but as usual, slow to adopt.
Then, last Friday, in the homestretch of 2022, I went to Best Buy and purchased an Apple Watch. I was late to the Apple Watch party, but I came here to do two things: ditch my phone and get my life back. Trouble is, I’m all out of attention span.
Just You, WatchMy plan for my Apple Watch was relatively straightforward. I wanted the watch to play audio (music while I write, books while I do chores), measure my movement and collect other health data, and alert me to calls and texts so that I can ignore them.
An iPhone can do most of those things, except for some of the health monitoring. But the iPhone also has a lovely six-inch screen that’s purpose-built for doom-scrolling on social media and doom-skimming on news apps. It’s also ridiculously easy to check email and Google useless shit on an iPhone.
The appeal of the Apple Watch, for me at least, is that it has an impractically small screen. You can check email or consume the doom du jour on an Apple Watch, but it’s difficult and unpleasant, especially for a dude with shitty vision, fat fingers, and a tendency to go full-Luddite whenever any piece of tech goes on the fritz.
My hypothesis was that the Apple Watch represented a way for me to enjoy the functionality of the phone, without suffering the hazards of too much screen time. But as Francis Bacon, a key contributor to both the scientific method as well as the Wendy’s Baconator, famously said, “hypothesis is just fancy-pants science talk for, let’s see if our wild-ass guess is right.”
Human guinea pigStudies show that laymen such as myself consistently misunderstand studies, and the more we use said studies to support the totally sus claims we make online, the farther we get from anything resembling truth. With that in mind, I read exactly zero studies before putting on the Apple Watch. But to make sure this experiment of mine went off without a hitch, I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express. OK, that’s a lie. I stayed home, put the Apple Watch on my wrist, and pretty much did my thing.
One Sunday morning, a little more than a week into my Apple Watch experiment, my brother Zak called. At the time, my phone was in the bedroom, but I was in the kitchen working on meal prep for the coming week and listening to a legal thriller about a patent lawyer who ends up defending an unlikeable tech bro accused of murdering a federal judge in East Texas, where patent trolls thrive and innovation goes to die.
“Hey dude, I’m talking to you on my wrist!” I said. “I’m living the future.”
“Or, you’re living in the past, and the past is an old Inspector Gadget episode.”
“Good point. If I’m living in the past, here’s some advice: buy Apple stock.”
“That’s probably a good idea,” Zak said. “Half the customers at Ace are using their Apple Watches to pay. It’s pretty cool, actually.”
I told Zak I didn’t plan to set up Apple Pay because I didn’t see myself buying stuff with a swipe of my wrist. But that was a lie; I’ve already used similar payment systems on vacation. The truth is, I’m irrationally invested in a wallet Christina bought me because the wallet says, “Bad Motherfucker” on it.
“I got the watch to reduce screen time on my phone.”
“Isn’t that the same logic as buying a vape pen to quit smoking?”
Zak had a fair point. Vaping was initially pitched as harm reduction for smokers who couldn’t kick the habit with patches and gum. Maybe vaping began with a good hypothesis, but the experiment went off the rails because Big Tobacco was replaced by Big Vape, and Big Vape needed new customers, which is why the Big Vape marketing people told the Big Vape R&D people to work on new flavors like candy and bubblegum.
“So basically I’m asking my drug dealer to help me quit drugs?” I asked.
“Basically. But don’t feel bad. At least the Apple Watch looks cool.”
“But that’s what Big Tobacco said about cigarettes. And it’s what drug dealers say about drugs.”
“If the shoes fits…” Zak said.
We talked some more about the irony of fighting fire with fire, then things got serious.
“Is the watch helping you?” Zak asked.
“So far, so good. I’m low-key obsessed with closing the rings everyday.”
The rings, I explained, track how much I move, exercise, and stand during the day. I set the goals when I set up the watch. Everyday, my watch reminds me to stay on pace. When I come up short, the watch offers encouragement. When I hit my targets, the watch tells me I’m doing a good job. Wearing an Apple Watch is a little like tying a piece of string around your finger, assuming that string is connected to the internet.
“Hey man, knowledge is power,” Zak said. “Good on ya.”
Yes, I thought, good on me indeed.
“Anecdotally, there’s also some positive news,” I said. “I watched three movies this week, and I was able to focus on them because my phone was in the other room.”
“That’s great! What did you watch?”
“Real Genius.”
“Great.”
“Commando.”
“Also, great.”
“Who’s Harry Crumb?”
“Well… two out of three ain’t bad.”
“Yeah, I love John Candy, but that one doesn’t hold up. Thankfully, my watch saved me from sitting through the whole thing.”
“I thought the watch was supposed to minimize distractions?” Zak asked.
“It does. But it also tells me when to go to bed.”
“It tells you when to go to bed?”
Zak sounded incredulous, and maybe a little superior to a dude with a digital nanny strapped to his wrist.
“I told it to tell me when it’s bedtime. So far, I’m getting eight hours, and I’m sleeping better.”
“That’s good, I guess, but it tells you when you have to go to bed?” Zak asked again in the same tone.
“Well, you don’t have to listen to it.”
“What happens if you ignore it?”
“The ghost of Steve Jobs haunts your dreams.”
Obviously, I was kidding about the ghost of Steve Jobs. It’s actually a hologram of Michael Fassbender, who played the Apple founder in Danny Boyle’s 2015 biopic Steve Jobs. But I wasn’t kidding about how the Apple Watch, in just over a week, had already begun to change my life. Already, I was:
Moving more
Standing more
Exercising more
Sleeping better
Consuming less doom
Those changes are exciting, but the speed, scope, scale of the Apple Watch’s impact on my life is also unnerving. Because on the one hand, Zak is right: knowledge is power, and with a little more knowledge, I have the power to achieve my life goals. But on the other hand, Zak is also right: asking Apple to cure my screen addiction is akin to asking a drug dealer for sobriety.
Like the best drug dealers, Apple makes bank on its products. But unlike drug dealers, Apple spends a lot of money on advertising. Watches, phones, and computers, unlike illicit drugs, don’t sell themselves.
To this day, Apple’s most famous ad is its 1984 commercial, which ends with a promise that Apple’s technology—vibrant, colorful, determined to think outside the box—will free us from a techno-authoritarian dystopia. It’s a great ad, but I’m not so sure about that promise.
Nearly four decades later, Apple’s 1984 commercial remains one of the most influential ads of all time. I’m not Don Draper, but I think there are three reasons for this.
Steve Jobs demanded the win and got it!
Whether it’s a feature film or a 30-second spot, director Ridley Scott does not fuck around.
People are so obsessed with the totalitarian government depicted in George Orwell’s 1984 that they reflexively reject any government intrusion into their lives, while simultaneously, and thoughtlessly, opening the door for private companies, like Apple, to own their asses from cradle to grave.
It’s the last point I find most unsettling. For the first thirty-one years of my life, I never considered a mobile phone essential, even though the technology first appeared on the scene in 1973, and my father, always the early adopter, began carrying one of those Motorola bricks in 1983. Apple set me straight on mobile phones inside of a year. For nearly two decades, I lived without a watch, and during some of those years I was better for it. Within a week, Apple set me straight again.
I like to think of myself as an enlightened free thinker. But deep down I know that’s a lie I tell myself to justify every bandwagon I jump on. The truth is, when Apple invents a WiFi-enabled third eye, I’ll buy one, just as soon as the early adopters insist the Apple Eye is something you can’t live without. Meanwhile, I own an Apple Watch, and it tells me how to live. That’s what time it is, sucka.
If you’re new here, please👇If you’re a returning champ, please👇Stick around and chat!You know the drill. I’ve got questions, you may or may not have answers.
What was your first mobile phone? Was it a piece of shit, or did you get the Motorola Razr?
Do you own an Apple Watch, or another piece of wearable technology?
What’s the last movie or TV show you watched without checking your phone?
If you could un-invent (not a real word) any piece of technology, what would it be and why?
What will it take to make turtlenecks cool again?
Finally, as tacky as it sounds, you can let me know you enjoy Situation Normal by hitting that ❤️ button 🙏👇September 28, 2022
Good manners, bad vegetarian, democracy shit, and two reader submissions
The other night, Christina and I drove to Culver City to see some friends. On the way, we stopped at a place called Samosa House to pick up dinner. As you can probably guess, Samosa House serves Texas bbq. Just kidding. They serve Indian food. The ordering experience is totally straightforward. You pick rice (white or brown), then select three sides.
When it was our turn, Christina told the woman behind the counter we’d be ordering four combination plates. For efficiency, I guess, the woman asked what kind of rice everyone wanted. Then she made two combination plates with white rice and two with brown rice. Her assembly line was ready to go, but just then another customer entered Samosa House.
“I’m just here to pick-up a to-go order,” she said. “Can I go first?”
We weren’t in a rush, and it seemed like a simple request, so Christina said sure. With a heavy sigh, the woman behind the counter put our plates aside, then ducked into the kitchen to grab the other customer’s order.
“Oh, I also need a quart of curry,” the woman said.
The woman behind the counter looked annoyed, but the woman with the to-order apologized to us.
“No worries,” Christina said.
“I also need Naan bread,” the woman said.
I rolled my eyes, but I don’t think the line-jumper noticed. She was too busy adding a third and fourth item to her order.
“Sorry I’m so disorganized,” she said.
I wasn’t sure disorganization was the problem here. To me, it seemed like the line-jumper was oblivious to fact that we live in a society, which means, among other things, waiting your turn. But the line-jumper had other ideas.
“You’re so smart,” the woman said to Christina. “You wrote down your order. You’re so smart. I wish I was as smart as you. She really knows her stuff!”
Now, Christina is smart. Really smart. And she knows her stuff. But with all due respect to my wife, she didn’t exactly invent the wheel when she wrote a list of everyone’s dinner order.
“Can I also get two orders of samosas?” the line-jumper asked.
That wasn’t smart. Actually, it was a bridge too far for the woman behind the counter. She had given an inch, but the line-jumper had taken a mile.
“You’re going to have to wait,” she said. “I’m going to finish their order first, then I’ll help you.”
“But I just need…”
“To wait,” the woman said. “You just need to wait your turn.”
Advice from a bad vegetarianSituation Normal exists to amuse you, but if I can help you think about something in a new way, I’m here for that too!
Recently, Mark Dolan, who writes Why Living Today Rocks, emailed to ask for advice on eating plant-based.
I’ll get to my answer in a second, but first I think I need to tell you that I’m a bad vegetarian. Here are my bad vegetarian bona fides.
Back in college, I dabbled in vegetarianism. I’d love to say ethics, health, or environmentalism inspired my early plant-based dabbling. Wouldn’t that be nice? But the real motivation was the Wesleyan University dining hall, which consistently served up food that inspired many students to eat cereal for dinner.
My longest college meatless streak was nine weeks. I was doing fine, but then I picked up some extra hours at my student librarian job. I walked down to Main Street in Middletown, Connecticut to deposit my paycheck at the bank. But I made the mistake of pocketing $20. Well, that $20 immediately burned a giant hole in my pocket. On the way back to my dorm, I stopped at an Italian deli. I could’ve ordered something vegetarian, but instead I said, “Give me a chicken parm grinder.”
In middle-age, I got serious about vegetarianism. Well, as serious as I can get. This time around, health, ethics, and environmentalism all played a roll in my decision. My meatless streak lasted four years.
But one day, in the middle of the pandemic, I grew tired of cooking two different meals for two people. Instead of cooking a serving of ground beef and another serving of mushrooms for Taco Tuesday, I made chicken tacos. Some people might call that a fail, but those people are judgmental assholes.
These days, I don’t call myself a vegetarian. I’m an omnivore with plant-based tendencies. I pick plant-based options when I can, but I’m not strict about it. Which brings me to Mark’s email. The line that caught my eye was: “I’ve been at it for almost four years, but [I’m] not as strict as I might be.”
My second attempt at vegetarianism lasted a lot longer than my college dabbling. I think that’s because my motives were meaningful to mean and because I wasn’t very strict the second time around. I literally took it one day at a time. After my first vegetarian day, I told myself to see what happened the next day. I repeated that process for more than 1,400 days! By taking each day as it came, I never fell into a binary mindset, where I was either a lean, mean, plant-eating machine, or Hannibal Lecter.
Escaping that binary mindset made it easier to eat plant-based for four years, but it also made it easy to cope with the aftermath of crossing the chicken-based Rubicon that was Taco Tuesday. I didn’t feel bad about my decision to eat chicken that Tuesday in the middle of the pandemic because that Tuesday was just one day in a lifetime of eating. The next day, I ate plant-based, but the day after that, I ate leftover chicken tacos.
Currently, I eat more meat than I did during my four-year vegetarian streak (obvi), but I eat a lot less meat than I did before the streak began. On balance, I’m still working (imperfectly) toward my plant-based goal, and most days, I actually achieve that goal. That’s real change! But I think that if I had set out to be a vegetarian for life, I would’ve failed within months. Strict labels and a rigid mindset aren’t productive for me.
So, here’s my advice: eliminate the word “strict” from your vocabulary instead of eliminating a particular food from your diet. You might not feel like a perfect vegetarian, but I’ll bet dollars to vegan donuts that you’ll live a life that comes closer to aligning with your goals.
Help us in our mission to democratize finance!The other Michael Estrin continues to be in demand, especially by recruiters who seek out the software engineer Michael Estrin by emailing the writer Michael Estrin. Usually, I enjoy writing back to these recruiters, but this time I my response was kinda shitty.
Here’s what Sid over at Affirm had to say about Michael Estrin joining their mission to “democratize finance.”👇
Here’s what I wrote back to Sid👇
Wish me luck, everyone! Shit could get very real next Tuesday.
Look Who’s Talking BackThere’s an old showbiz adage that says you shouldn’t work with kids or animals because they steal the scene. It’s good advice for actors, but lousy advice for parents, who typically work with their kids for a minimum of 18 years. There’s no solution here, but as Amran Gowani, who writes Field Research demonstrates, parents can cope by Tweeting about the fact that they’ve been relegated to punchline status.
Amran Gowani @amran_gowaniDaughter: Dad, when do people stop growing?Me: Everyone's body is different, but most people stop growing by 25. Certainly by 30.Daughter. Oh, so you're DEFINITELY not growing.September 23rd 2022
5 LikesThe new slangAquaman emailed the other day. Aquaman isn’t his real name. It’s an alias I chose because the email was from a man and the subject was aquatic.
Aquaman’s email raises several important questions.
Is “toned” some kind of new slang that the kids are using?
Was this anecdote something you had to be there to appreciate?
Why didn’t my high school have a water polo team?
ICYMII wrote about an electrician thinks the world is doomed. The electrician gave me apocalypse vibes, but Situation Normal readers responded with some excellent advice about pushing back against doom. Check out Mad Max: Beyond Reason, then stay for the comments.
Contribute a thing to Situation Normal!The Wednesday edition doesn’t write itself. I need your help!
Do you have a question about something I’ve written? Got a weird overheard you want to share? See a product or sign that made you LOL, or WTF? Need life advice? Send your submissions to me at 👇
michael.j.estrin@gmail.com
When submitting, please say if you’d like an alias. Otherwise, I’ll use your first name. If you write a newsletter, I’m happy to link to it, so let me know!
If you’re new here, please👇If you’re a returning champ, please👇Stick around and chat!You know the drill. I’ve got questions, you may or may not have answers.
Was the woman who jumped in front of us in line at Samosa House dumb, or playing dumb?
Any advice for my first day on the job at Affirm? I really want to knock it out of the park.
If you’re not up on your regional sandwich slang, some parts of New England call their sandwiches grinders, as opposed to subs, heroes, or hoagies. This regional slang used to be quaint. But in the digital age, I worry New England sandwiches might be confused with the Grindr dating app, and that this confusion could lead to unrealistic expectations for dinner and relationships. Are my concerns valid?
Have you dabbled in vegetarianism? Any advice you’d like to share?
In reference to Aquaman’s email, what’s a slang word you’ve been trying to popularize?
Until Sunday when I’ll have another story…
Finally, let me know you enjoy Situation Normal by hitting that ❤️ button 🙏👇
September 25, 2022
Mad Max: Beyond Reason
Photo by Romeo Varga on UnsplashThings fall apart. That’s the nature of things. One day, the electric socket that powers your yard’s irrigation system is running fine. The next day, the circuit is tripping like a tech bro who just discovered psychedelics after a TED Talk on micro-dosing.
You don’t have a go-to electrician because you haven’t needed to do any major electrical work on your home yet (🤞). But you do have the internet, where you can find anything with just a few clicks.
The clicks bring you to a profile for an electrician named Aram. He looks solid—about 200 reviews, 4.5 star average. You call and explain the problem. Aram says he can fix it tomorrow, then he asks you to text him your name and address. You text the deets. The next day Aram shows up as promised.
Minutes after he arrives, Aram diagnoses the problem and quotes you price. You agree to Aram’s price. He spends the next twenty minutes replacing the socket. When he’s done, Aram says he’ll warranty the work for a year, but you have no doubt that the socket will work like a champ. You pay Aram.
That should be the end of the story, but it’s only the beginning. Because after fixing the thing that fell apart, Aram tells you about a situation that can’t be fixed—a situation called civilization.
“How long you live in the Valley?” Aram asked.
“I was born here,” I told Aram, omitting the fact that I spent seven years living on the East coast, a few years in Los Angeles living on the other side of the hill, and one year between college and law school where I walked the Earth, like Caine from Kung Fu, minus the hero shit.
“You grew up in Chatsworth?” Aram asked.
“Sherman Oaks.”
Turns out, Aram grew up in Sherman Oaks too. We don’t have any mutual friends, but we do have mutual reference points. Movies at the Galleria, back when the Galleria was an actual mall. The beef-lamb shawarma at Pita Kitchen, back when I ate beef and lamb. Sherman Oaks Little, back when a pack of Big League Chew cost seventy-five cents. Good times.
“Sherman Oaks used to be nice,” Aram said. “Now, Sherman Oaks is doomed.”
Doomed? That sounded dire. But I assumed Aram was just waxing nostalgic about a time when Sherman Oaks was nice at a fraction of the price.
“I would’ve been happy to buy there, but the prices are bonkers.”
“Tell me about it, bro. Yesterday, when you call, I’m at a six hundred square foot home south of Ventura. Like the tiny homes on TV. Guess how much it’s worth.”
“One million.”
“One point two million.”
“Insane.”
“No. Insane is Los Angeles. This home belongs to a client who rents it out. But his tenants don’t pay rent because they don’t have to anymore. He tries to evict them, but evictions are illegal because of Covid.”
For this, Aram blames the city council, which enacted renter protections at the start of the pandemic that remain in place to this day. I’ve heard dozens of tales of landlord woe these past few years. Some stories are legit, some stories sound like the world’s smallest violin, and some stories sound like the landlord is bucking for a spot in a Reddit community called “Am I the Asshole?” It takes all kinds, I guess.
“What did your client do?” I asked.
“He called his lawyer and his lawyer told him to give the tenants twenty-five grand to leave.”
“Twenty-five grand to leave!? I’m in the wrong business.”
“What you do?”
“Writer.”
“Yeah, writing is wrong business.”
“Did it work? Did your client get his tenants to leave?”
“Yes, but then real trouble begins.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“You have no idea, bro. House is empty. It’s a mess because old tenants don’t care. But he fixes everything. Brand new. I do electric. New lights everywhere.”
“The whole shabang.”
“He rents house again, but guess what happens?”
“Hey gets an obscene amount for rent because rents are obscene?”
“Bro, it’s a bad news kind of story. Guess again.”
“He can’t rent it for some reason?”
“Exactly. Ask me why.”
“OK. Why?”
“Squatters.”
“The original tenants came back?”
“No. They have twenty-five grand. They set. Squatters are homeless people. He calls the police, but the police say they can’t do anything.”
That sounded fishy to me, but this isn’t my story, so I nodded and played along.
“He calls his lawyer. Lawyer tells him, pay the homeless people to leave.”
The lawyer sounded like a one-trick pony, but what did I know?
“He paid them?” I asked.
“One grand each.”
“How many people?”
“Six.”
“Six people in a tiny home!? Sounds cramped.”
“Bro, you missing the point. Rental property supposed to make money, not lose money.”
I assume everyone who gets into the landlord game does so to make money. But I’m not sure there are any guarantees in business. Investments, after all, are speculative, and investing can be brutal. Wasn’t that the lesson Louis Winthorpe III imparted to Billy Ray Valentine right before the finale of Trading Places?
Think big, think positive, never show any sign of weakness. Always go for the throat. Buy low, sell high. Fear? That’s the other guy’s problem. Nothing you have ever experienced will prepare you for the unlimited carnage you are about to witness. Super Bowl, World Series—they don’t know what pressure is. In this building, it’s either kill or be killed. You make no friends in the pits and you take no prisoners. One moment you’re up half a mil in soybeans and the next, boom, your kids don’t go to college and they’ve repossessed your Bentley. Are you with me?
“After he gets homeless people out, place is trashed,” Aram continued. “He hires cleaning crew and construction crew. I fix a few things, then install security system so he can watch property from his house.”
“And that solved the problem?”
Aram shrugged.
“Who knows? The squatters will be back. The politicians don’t care. The police don’t do anything. We’re doomed.”
Doomed? There’s that word again. It sounds like some heavy shit because it is.
“Everybody doomed,” Aram said. “Los Angeles doomed. California doomed. America doomed. World doomed.”
“There’s no hope, no escape?”
“Bro, there is no escape.”
I looked around my neighborhood. The sun was out. The sky was blue. Butterflies, birds, and bumblebees were doing their thing. My neighbors walked their dogs. In the distance, I could hear the PA system for the local elementary school. The only real sign of doom I could see was a Rick Caruso for Mayor lawn sign.
“One day, it’s all going to go away,” Aram said. “Everything gone. Apocalypse.”
I laughed. Aram looked serious.
I wasn’t trying to be a Pollyanna. Los Angeles has real problems—beyond Rick Caruso’s candidacy. California has real problems too. Ditto for America and the world. Massive, intractable, existential problems. And yet, I couldn’t help but worry about the electrician’s apocalyptic mindset.
“Civilization is a lot more durable than we think,” I said.
That made Aram laugh, but it was the way he laughed—a cynical snicker—that made me worry.
“I’m not kidding,” I said.
“Me neither.”
In situations like this, I usually offer book recommendations. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari zooms out about as wide as you can go on the story of civilization. Like many good histories, it’s a reliable tonic for the doom and gloom that can sometimes obscure humanity’s present and future. But Harari’s book is wildly popular. Even if you haven’t read it, you probably heard about it on a podcast, or heard about it from a friend who won’t shut up about a podcast you just have to listen to.
A less popular book called The Last Apocalypse: Europe at the Year 1000 A.D. by James Reston, Jr. is my go-to book for combating existential dread. It came out in 1999, right around the time everyone thought Y2K would be the end of us. The timing was excellent because just as the talking heads were spreading rumors of digital doom, Reston came out with a story of another can’t-miss apocalypse that—spoiler alert!—missed the mark by a million miles. One takeaway from Reston’s book: humans have been telling stories about the end of the world for as long we’ve been telling stories. Another takeaway: people are intoxicated by apocalyptic thinking because it’s flattering to believe that you’ll witness the end of something as massive as civilization.
“Civilization is lie,” Aram said. “One day, everything normal. Then, boom! Power goes, water stops, police gone. It’s Mad Max, bro.”
Once again, Aram was serious. According to him, bands of armed marauders, who may or may not be leather daddies, will pick apart the dying carcass of civilization, looking for fuel, food, and (hopefully) sun tan lotion. When there’s nothing left for them to scavenge, the marauders will turn their sights on the handful of people who thought ahead, the people who spent the fat times prepping for a lean and mean existence. People like Aram, who punctuated his apocalyptic vision with survivalist plans that included canned goods, water purification tablets, and guns.
I love the Mad Max movies, but I think they’re bullshit. Actually, that’s not quite true. I think the Mad Max movies are brilliant, but misunderstood.
Mad Max is about the fall of civilization, but Max’s pursuit of the biker gang that murdered his family is about justice, and maybe revenge, not doom or the nihilism it brings. In other words, Mad Max is about setting things right, especially when everything has gone wrong.
The Road Warrior also offers a defense of civilization. When the refinery becomes untenable, Max cowboys-up and drives a tanker truck full of sand into the desert, leading the marauders on a wild goose chase so that a community of survivors can escape. At the very end of the film, the feral kid with the boomerang reveals himself to be the narrator, explaining that he grew up to become the “Chief of the Great Northern Tribe.” Once again, civilization wins! But in this telling, Max, who is known to post-apocalyptic historians as a legend called The Road Warrior, is never seen again.
Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome and Mad Max: Fury Road both offer skeptical views of civilization as corrupt (looking at you, Tina Turner) and wicked (Immortan Joe’s hydro-electric citadel, Gas Town, and the Bullet Farm). In both films, the heroes fight against the powers that run these so-called civilized enclaves. But ultimately, the endings of both movies tell us those fights were about building a better world, not tearing down the world we have. In other words, these post-apocalyptic movies don’t celebrate the apocalypse, they remind us why civilization is worth fighting for, which is the actually the reason why we tell apocalypse stories in the first place.
And yet, a lot of people consume apocalypse stories and conclude, like Aram, that these movies and books are blueprints for how to live after the shit hits the fan because it’s a certainty that the shit will hit the fan. Forget the fact that history repeatedly tells a different story of rebuilding civilization every time someone, or something, knocks it down. Forget the fact that whenever there’s a disaster, people rush to help, even the leather daddies, who send money to the Red Cross instead of looting sporting good stores for guns and hockey masks. Forget the fact that it’s incredibly arrogant to believe that out of the billions of humans who ever stomped on the terra, YOU will be there to witness the end of everything.
“Better get ready,” Aram said. “Stock up on food and guns. Learn skills. Mad Max, bro.”
Aram didn’t use the word prepper, but that’s what he was. Preppers spend their lives prepping for the end of the world as we know it—and surviving somehow. Back when I was a reporter, I actually wrote a story about prepping and personal finance. Fun fact: prepping for the end of the world is expensive.
Every prepper I interviewed was serious about prepping. Some spent thousands of dollars they didn’t have. Others were loaded and spent small fortunes on luxury apocalypse bunkers. But once it got beyond the sensible advice of stockpiling water, food, and emergency supplies for a week or so, everything they said felt like apocalypse cosplay to me. After all, these people who were positive that the end was nigh kept paying their taxes, paying their credit card bills, and paying their life insurance premiums.
“You really think civilization is done for?” I asked.
“I know it for sure, bro. The world is over. We just don’t know it yet.”
I wanted to keep chatting about this doom stuff, but Aram’s phone buzzed with a text.
“My wife,” he said. “Got to pick up groceries for dinner.”
“There’s a Ralph’s a few miles away.”
I was tempted to make a joke about how the Ralph’s, which takes cash and credit, wasn’t Bartertown. But that felt like a cheap shot. Besides, Aram was a good electrician, and if our house is still standing next month, I may have some more work for him.
If you’re new here, please👇If you’re a returning champ, please👇Stick around and chat!You know the drill. I’ve got questions, you may or may not have answers.
What do you recommend to treat a case of doom?
What’s your favorite Mad Max movie?
What’s your favorite work of apocalyptic media (book, film, TV show)?
If you were certain the apocalypse would happen within the year, would you pay your bills? If not, what would you do with the money?
Are you a prepper? Or, do you know any preppers? If so, what can you tell us about living that prepper life?
Finally, as tacky as it sounds, you can let me know you enjoy Situation Normal by hitting that ❤️ button 🙏👇September 21, 2022
Fishy Buckeyes, analog wins, the Lizard King's magic Christmas present, Heat 2 & snackle box!
Photo by Moon on UnsplashThe day after we returned from Cleveland, I went to Trader Joe’s to replenish our supplies.
“Any plans today?” the cashier asked.
“Nah, I’m beat. We got home late last night from Cleveland. After this, I’m going to do laundry and some meal prep for the week.”
“Solid plan. How was Cleveland?”
“It was good.”
I shared the highlights, or as many highlights as you can cover during the checkout process.
“Did you see any aquariums? Everyone in Ohio has an aquarium. It gets so cold in the winter that you just have to build a giant aquarium in your basement and fill it with tropical fish. Otherwise, you freak out.”
We visited three homes in the Buckeye state, but we didn’t see a single home aquarium. Maybe we missed something?
“I watch a lot of aquarium content on YouTube,” the cashier explained. “All those creators are in Ohio. It’s what they do there.”
I wasn’t so sure about that. But then again, Ohio is a big state and it’s an even bigger internet. When I got home, I searched YouTube, for shits and giggles. That’s when I found a channel called Ohio Fish Rescue. Here’s their video promising the world’s largest private home aquarium tour.
Analog for the winI’ve been trying to find ways of unplugging without disconnecting. It’s a struggle, but when we were staying with our friend Bridget in Cleveland Heights, we didn’t watch a second of television, and for the most part, we didn’t mess around on the internet either. Most nights, the three of us just talked and played records.
My first record player was a toy record player that played whatever records the Walt Disney Company produced back in the early 1980s. After that, I graduated to cassettes, then CDs, then MP3s, and finally subscription streaming services. The only exception was college, when my friend Melissa bought an old record player and some records at a thrift shop. We had fun listening to those records and spent way too much time trying to decipher the lyrics to A Simple Desultory Philippic by Simon & Garfunkel. At the time, I thought we were late to the party on records, but as it turned out, we were early on the whole retro thing.
Anyway, after returning home, Christina and I bought a record player. So far, so good. Plus, I enjoy doubling down on the analog life by putting on a record and reading a magazine. Like, totally, retro.
Merry Christmas from the Lizard KingAstute readers of Situation Normal will note that I’m low-key obsessed with The Doors and Jim “Lizard King” Morrison. You can see that obsession with our new record collection (see the above photo☝️) and in the section on the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame from my Cleveland travelogue.
As it turns out, my friend Anna is a very astute Situation Normal reader. She sent me a YouTube video that combined my love for all things Lizard King with the magick we found in Cleveland. In the video, a man who was the Lizard King’s college roommate goes on Antiques Roadshow and explains that Morrison inscribed a book called The History of Magic and gave it to him for Christmas in 1963.
Snackle Box!The other night, Christina joined some friends at the Hollywood Bowl for a screening of The Sound of Music. Christina wasn’t sure what she should bring to eat, but I suggested a snackle box. That was the right call.
Heat 2While Christina was at The Hollywood Bowl, Mortimer and I were at home watching Heat. I probably saw Heat dozens of times in the 1990s, but I recently returned to the movie because I’m currently reading Heat 2 by Michael Mann and Meg Gardiner. Billed as both a prequel and a sequel to the events depicted in the film, Heat 2 caught my eye for a few reasons.
Author Don Winslow heaped a bunch of praise on Heat 2. That alone would’ve been good enough for me.
I always wanted to know how Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) and Chris Shiherlis (Val Kilmer) came to be partners in crime, the origins of their code—allow nothing to be in your life that you cannot walk out on in thirty seconds flat if you spot the heat around the corner—and better understand why McCauley, who spends the entire film preaching that code to Shiherlis, ultimately betrays their code and dies as a result? Heat 2 answers all those questions and more.
I really enjoyed Quentin Tarantino’s novelization of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood because it added depth to the film, including insight into the troubled origins of Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), plus an entire Western novella that expands on the Lancer television pilot Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) shoots in the movie. I hoped Heat 2 would add a similar depth to its cinematic predecessor, and it does.
I’m still working my way through Heat 2. But watching the 1995 film again reminded me how much I love Heat for its intense action sequences, intricate story, and thoughtful exploration of the lives of cops and robbers. Watching Heat again also gave me an excuse to work on my Al Pacino impression, which Christina called “scary, in a good way.”
Amateur tip: the key to doing Pacino in Heat is to mumble the loud parts and scream the quiet parts with all the rage you can legally muster.
ICYMISituation Normal has more than 1,000 subscribers! Thank you again, readers, for literally making this happen! I wrote about what I learned on that journey here.
Contribute a thing to Situation Normal!The Wednesday edition doesn’t write itself. I need your help!
Do you have a question about something I’ve written? Got a weird overheard you want to share? See a product or sign that made you LOL, or WTF? Need life advice? Send your submissions to me at 👇
michael.j.estrin@gmail.com
When submitting, please say if you’d like an alias. Otherwise, I’ll use your first name. If you write a newsletter, I’m happy to link to it, so let me know!
Stick around and chat!You know the drill. I’ve got questions, you may or may not have answers.
Do you own an aquarium? If so, do you use it to create YouTube content, and are you a Buckeye? If not, can you shed light on the Ohio aquarium rumor, and what are your bona fides?
What are your strategies for disconnecting from the digital world?
What record should we buy next? Bonus: what magazine should I subscribe to? Disclosure: I already subscribe to Horse & Hound.
Have you made a snackble box yet? If not, why not?
What’s your favorite Al Pacino performance, besides Any Given Sunday?
Read any good books lately?
Until Sunday, when I’ll have a story about apocalyptic thinking…
Finally, as tacky as it sounds, you can let me know you enjoy Situation Normal by hitting that ❤️ button 🙏👇
September 14, 2022
I hit 1,000 subscribers. Here's what I learned
Photo by Markus Winkler on UnsplashWhile I was away on vacation, Situation Normal hit 1,000 subscribers. Actually, let me rephrase that. After nearly two years of hard work, I accomplished my subscriber goal for Situation Normal!
Normally, I write slice of life humor about hapless bud tenders, missing the cutoff for McDonald’s breakfast, or a time share salesman pitching me while we're in line at the Harry Potter wand store.
This post will be a little different. I’m going to play it straight, or as straight as I can play it. Countless writers in this community have taught me tons about running a newsletter. I can’t repay that debt in full, but I can start by sharing what I’ve learned on my journey to 1,000 subscribers.
If you’re a Situation Normal regular, I promise Sunday’s story about vacationing in Cleveland will be a banger that rivals the Alaskan cruise story (if Juneau, Juneau).
If you’re new here, make sure to subscribe before we get to the “learnings.”
Goals don’t happen overnight (or on schedule)I began writing Situation Normal on Substack in November of 2020. I had 125 subscribers—mostly Facebook friends who had enjoyed my slice of life stories for years, plus a handful of fans from self-publishing novels and writing fiction on Wattpad. My goal was to reach 1,000 subscribers by November of 2021. I missed my deadline by roughly ten months.
Was I bummed that it took me longer to hit my subscriber goal than I had planned? Yeah, a little. But I picked the arbitrary number and the arbitrary deadline to serve as a North Star for my journey. Missing my self-imposed deadline wasn’t a bad thing. On the contrary, it helped me focus on something more important: progress.
On the one-year anniversary of Situation Normal, I could point to the following markers of progress:
I was halfway to my goal.
My stories were finding their audience, which told me I was heading in the right direction.
Growing my audience four-fold in one year, while short of my initial goal, was a win I could build on!
Viral is great, but steady growth is betterBy far, Situation Normal’s largest jump in subscribers came when Morning Brew shared my story about a home improvement project gone wrong. In less than a week, I added 184 subscribers!
My first thought was: how do I get Morning Brew to share more Situation Normal stories like my lizard king trilogy, or the time I pretended to be Marty Ackerman to fool a tarot card reader?
I sent the Morning Brew team a thank you note, but they didn’t take the hint. So, I tried bribing them with artisanal macaroons, tickets to Burning Man, and enough Bitcoin to buy everyone at Burning Man an artisanal macaroon.
The bribes didn’t work, but Situation Normal continued to grow because every week a handful of readers would share my story with their friends. That’s when I realized that growth comes in two flavors: Get Rich Quick and Compound Interest.
The growth I saw from Morning Brew fell into the Get Rich Quick category. Like winning the lottery, a subscriber windfall is great, but you can’t bank on it because you can’t control when, or if, one of your posts will go viral.
On the other hand, Compound Interest growth is something you can control by putting out consistent work and asking readers to share stuff they enjoy.
Growth is a function of communityWhen Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, he said, “One small step for a bunch of nobodies, one giant leap for me!” Thankfully, Neil’s audio was on a delay, allowing NASA’s crackerjack PR team to change the astronaut’s words to, “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.”
Armstrong’s words are the ultimate expression of community support. But even an Earth-bound dude who prefers moon walking GIFs to actual moon walks knows that newsletters without community support will fail to reach orbit.
Writing Situation Normal is my responsibility, but Situation Normal grows because multiple communities help it grow. Here’s how👇
Every time I post, my community of readers share Situation Normal stories with their friends. (Thank you, readers, you’re amazing!)
As of this writing, 20 Substack writers recommend Situation Normal to their readers through the Substack recommendation tool. (Thank you, writers, for the endorsement, and thank you, Substack team, for building a great product!)
Existing Substack users discover Situation Normal because I participate in Substack Office Hours and I make it a point to leave comments on newsletters I enjoy.
As you can see from the chart below, multiple sources contribute to the growth of Situation Normal.
Social media is overratedWhen I decided to launch a newsletter, my goal was to build a platform that was immune to the weird whims of social media algorithms. I also wanted to minimize my social media use in order to increase my creative output and improve my mental health.
I haven’t managed to quit social media yet, but my mental health and creative output have improved. I’m (grudgingly) back on Facebook because some people I love are there, and because there’s no better tool for tracking the birthdays of people you haven’t spoken to in decades. I’m on Twitter because I’m a sucker for the misinformation goat rodeo, even though I know it rots your brain. I also lurk on TikTok because stupid pet tricks bring me joy.
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But here’s the thing: social media doesn’t really matter. At least, it doesn’t matter much in terms of my subscriber growth. After nearly two years of publishing Situation Normal on Substack, I’ve gotten 34 subscribers from Twitter (where I post daily) and 14 from Facebook (where I’m a ghost). In total, only about 5 percent of my subscribers come from social media.
While 5 percent of my audience is significant, it’s a disturbingly low figure considering how much time and energy I put into Twitter. Whatever I’m trying to get out of social media, my newsletter data tells me it ain’t growth.
Taking breaks is a good thingIsaac Asimov published roughly 500 novels. But I’m not Isaac Asimov, and while I can’t prove it, I’m positive he had a little help from a robot co-writer.
I’m kidding. Asimov didn’t get any help from a machine. He was a machine. But I’m human, and like all humans, sometimes I need a break.
As I noted at the top of this post, I hit my subscriber milestone while on vacation. New readers discovered and subscribed to Situation Normal when I wasn’t posting new material. That’s a great feeling.
A similar thing happened during a previous vacation in June. I took two weeks off for an Alaskan cruise and added dozens of new subscribers. The reason? Many of the Substack writers who recommend Situation Normal continued to post new material.
As a bonus, I returned from vacation refreshed and ready to put out new stories. Plus, the cruise gave me a story that remains my second most popular post to this day. Breaks haven’t hurt subscriber growth, but they have helped creative output.
Perfection is the enemy of a good newsletterBaseball legend and accidental wordsmith Yogi Berra once said, “If the world were perfect, it wouldn’t be.” That’s basically how I feel about publishing Situation Normal. If my humor newsletter were perfect, it wouldn’t be.
When I first launched Situation Normal, I wanted every story to be perfect. Yes, the copy had to be clean, but more than that, I felt as if my entire newsletter lived and died with each post. If I hit a home run with a story, I expected to add dozens of new subscribers. But if I struck out, I worried my audience would unsubscribe en masse.
There are a few problems with this mindset. First, you can’t hit a home run every time. Second, while I have a sense of what will likely work with my audience, I’m lousy at predicting winners. Third, living and dying for the perfect post (whatever that is) makes me risk-adverse, which undermines my creativity.
Discarding the perfection mindset is easier said than done, however. Sometimes I get into a rut where I play it safe with stories I just know (somehow) are the platonic ideal of what slice of life humor is supposed to be. Sometimes those stories work, sometimes they don’t.
But Situation Normal works best when I take chances. Case in point: I feared my story about working as a PA on Richard Nixon’s funeral might cause readers to unsubscribe because Situation Normal is about humor, not history. I also worried the topic might spark a flame war in the comments. But subscriptions grew and the comments, including one from Nixonland author Rick Perlstein, were lovely.
What’s the lesson? Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Whenever I lose sight of that lesson, I remind myself that I publish twice per week, which gives me 104 chances per year (not counting vacations) to engage my readers.
Some stories will be home runs, others will be doubles and singles, and sometimes, I’m gonna strike out. To paraphrase Yogi Berra, publishing a newsletter is 90 percent mental, and the other half is beyond my control.
Celebrate your winsI began my writing career more than twenty years ago. I’ve made my living writing journalism, fiction, personal essays, jokes, ad copy, screenplays, white papers, ransom notes, and lies.
Regardless of the form, failures always outnumber wins by a wide margin in the writing game. On the one hand, the fail-to-win ratio sucks. But on the other hand, you can’t win if you don’t fail first. It’s what Joseph Heller wanted to call a Catch-18.
Failure is the price we pay for our wins. It’s important for writers to celebrate those wins not because winning is awesome, but because failure, while necessary, has a way of grinding us down if we don’t take a moment to appreciate our triumphs.
Situation Normal has a 1,000 subscribers and counting and I’m celebrating!
Stick around and chatNormally, I end each Situation Normal post by posing a few questions for discussion. But given the nature of this post, I’d rather let you ask the questions.
If there’s something you want to know about my journey feel free to ask your questions in the comments. Or, you can just say hello and tell me how things are going with whatever project you’ve got going at the moment. I’d love to hear from you!
Please consider sharing this post!Sharing this post helps me, but it might also help someone else. If you found something I said useful, please spread the word👇
Join the Situation Normal communityIf you’re new here, I’d love it if you stuck around. Smash that subscribe button, and I’ll send you slice of life humor most Wednesdays and Sundays.
September 7, 2022
Hasta la vista, 44
Tomorrow is my birthday. I turn 45. I’m feeling good about turning 45, better than I felt about turning 44, anyway.
I was going to write a post about turning 45, but then I remembered that I wrote a really good post about happiness and getting older last year. Situation Normal has grown quite a bit since last September, so The Secret to Happiness: A Mid-Life Report is new to roughly 68 percent of you! Here’s hoping the remaining 32 percent of Situation Normal readers like reruns.
Anyway, enjoy the story! And if you want to get me a present, you can share Situation Normal with your friends and enemies. That’s the best present in the world.
Situation NormalThe Secret to Happiness: A Mid-Life ReportI turned 44 recently. Friends, family, and internet randos wished me happy birthday on social media. Mom called and sang happy birthday. My sister, Allison, sent me a Four Seasons Total Landscaping t-shirt because her sense of humor is as twisted as mine. My birthday fell on a Wednesday, so that night we flew casually. Christina took me for Armenian foo…Read morea year ago · 16 likes · 20 comments · Michael Estrin
September 4, 2022
A day in the life of a writer who runs errands
By the time you read this, I’ll be in Cleveland! I’ll have a very short & sweet post on Wednesday, but there won’t be a Sunday story. When I get back, I hope to have at least one story from our adventures in Cleveland, where I plan to see a Guardians game and visit the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame!
The other day, Christina asked if I could pick up her prescription at the pharmacy. I said sure, then she hit me with the catch.
“It’s the pharmacy at the Kaiser hospital in Panorama City,” she said. “Do you have time for that?”
I glanced at my schedule. I had set aside the morning for writing, and I had a Zoom meeting in the afternoon. It was also laundry day, but that’s a dawn to dusk kind of operation in our household. Still, if I timed it right and if traffic cooperated, I could run the errand around lunch time and be back for my Zoom meeting.
“No problem,” I said.
But that wasn’t true. The errand was a big problem, and as an Angeleno with deep roots in America’s traffic capital, I should’ve spotted the folly in my plan from the jump.
Thank you for reading Situation Normal! Be a super hero and share the fun👇
Act One: Paperback WriterThe trouble began during my morning writing session. Sometimes the pages flow like wine at one of those wineries from the movie Sideways.
Other times, the pages flow like the last drops of honey in one of those plastic bear-shaped squeeze bottles.
Rarely, the pages don’t flow at all. And on those days, even simple similes fail to materialize on the blank page.
This particular writing session included all three flow states. For the first hour, I wrote my ass off, putting 1,008 words on the page. For the next hour, I wrote 400 words, but deleted 593. In the final hour, I struggled to write anything at all.
Normally, I’d channel the warrior-poet Ice Cube and declare this a good day, but I was coming up on the end of a chapter in my manuscript. That presented two challenges.
I’m never satisfied with my work, unless I stick the landing, just like an Olympic gymnast. The ending to a Situation Normal post, or a chapter in a manuscript, or the final line in a novel is everything. I’ll work at my endings as long as it takes, or as long as my deadline permits.
When I’m working on a longer story, I like to write the first few lines of the next section or chapter. Doing so makes it a lot easier to begin the next day’s session because it’s easier to fix bad writing than it is to face the blank page.
All I needed was one great line to end the chapter I was working on, and three or four mediocre lines to begin the next chapter. But that felt like a tall order, so I did what I always do when I’m in jam.
Pace.
Drink a cup of coffee.
Talk to my cowriter, Mortimer.
“This ending is dog shit,” I told Mortimer. “What do I do?”
“I don’t know,” Mortimer said. “But leave my shit out of your shit.”
Mortimer and I began to bicker. I accused him of phoning it in, something he’s been doing for TWELVE YEARS. He accused me of being stingy with the treats. But somewhere in the middle of our quarrel, inspiration struck.
I wrote an ending that was good, or at least good enough for now. Then I banged out the first few lines of the next chapter. I felt pretty good about the way things were going, but then I looked at the clock.
“You need to haul ass,” Mortimer said.
The dog was right. But before I leaving the house, I also needed to move one load of laundry to the dryer and put another load in the wash. As Hotel California resident Don Henley once sang, we love dirty laundry.
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Act Two: I’m Your Vehicle, BabyAs I drove east on the Ronald Reagan freeway, things looked promising. Sure, I had left the house thirty minutes later than I had planned to, but traffic was light, my Prius had a working catalytic convertor once again, and Vehicle by the The Ides of March was cranking on the radio. I was making good time.
I made the transition to the 5 south without a hitch. I stayed in the right lane for about a mile, then I made another seamless transition to the 170 south. I was feeling good about this midday errand. So good, in fact, that I was in the mood to reference the “The Californians” skit on SNL.
Of course, there’s a reason why Californians, particularly those of the Los Angeles variety, spend so much time talking about traffic. Basically, traffic is the price we pay to live in this desert paradise.
The 170 south was smooth sailing, but as I looked to my left, I saw that the northbound lanes on the 170 were at a standstill because three fire trucks and two ambulances were dealing with a multi-car pile-up. That meant, among other things, that my route home was currently a highway to hell.
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Act Three: I Want a New DrugThe pharmacy at Kaiser’s Panorama City location wasn’t crowded, but for some reason the pharmacist said it would take twenty minutes to fill Christina’s prescription. I thought about killing time by getting lunch, but the nearest cafeteria was in another building ten minutes across campus. So, I posted up in the corner to read the news.
But the news out of Washington was bad and the news out of Sacramento wasn’t much better. I put in my earbuds, opened the Spotify app, and spent some quality time with Huey Lewis and the News.
After twenty minutes of waiting, I was beginning to wonder what on Earth was taking so long. After thirty minutes, I thought about giving up. But listening to Huey Lewis sing about the power of love, I knew I couldn’t let Christina down. Finally, Christina’s name appeared on the monitor, letting me know her prescription was ready.
I paid for the prescription at the counter, but before they would give me the pills, the pharmacist wanted to have a word with me. Unfortunately, the pharmacist was a mumbler. Her mask and the plastic partitions made it even more difficult to hear the pharmacist’s instructions. And just as she got to the part about dangerous side effects, the old man at the next window started yelling at the top of his lungs about Joe Biden destroying America.
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Act Four: Westbound and upThings were looking bleak by the time I got back to my car. Sure, I had the drugs, and the pharmacist had given me two pages of written instructions so that Christina could read about the dangerous side effects without the accompaniment of an angry old man. But as Jerry Reed famously sang, I had a long way to go and a short time to get there.
Time wasn’t on my side. But as I pulled out of the parking lot, I realized that I was also hungry, bordering on hangry.
I made a left on Roscoe because that street seemed like the best bet to get across the Valley without using a freeway. Also, I knew there would likely be several fast food options on the way.
The first fast food restaurant I saw on the way home was a Carl’s Jr. Young Michael would’ve gotten a double western bacon cheeseburger and called it a win. But Middle-aged Michael reminded me that I had made a commitment to making better food choices so that I could eventually meet Old Man Michael. I drove past Carl’s.
Next, I thought about stopping at Burger King to get one of those Impossible Whoppers. But that didn’t seem much healthier. Also, I’m anti-monarchy. I drove past Burger King.
Finally, I spotted a Subway. I knew I could make that work, so pulled over and decided to eat fresh.
I ordered my Subway to-go and congratulated myself for making a good decision about lunch. But when I got back to my car, I made the really bad decision to eat a sub while driving. As I drove across the Valley, half the sub went into my belly, and the other half ended up on my shirt.
Act Five: Talking HeadsThe new wave poet David Byrne once sang, “You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile. And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife. And you may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?”
Well, this Californian’s answer is simple, David. I took Roscoe to Corbin, Corbin to Plummer, Plummer to Mason, Mason to Payeras, Payeras to Casaba.
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I pulled my mid-sized automobile into the driveway of a beautiful house I share with my beautiful wife. I was thirteen minutes behind the schedule. I wasn’t hungry anymore, but I wasn’t exactly ready for Zoom primetime just yet.
“Where have you been?” Mortimer barked. “Your meeting already started, and I have to pee!”
I took Mortimer out to the backyard so he could handle his business. Then we went back inside, and I gave him a treat.
“You can’t go on Zoom with a messy shirt,” Mortimer said. “People will think you’re some kind of slob.”
I ripped off my dirty shirt, ran to the garage, and threw it in the washing machine, along with another load of laundry. Then I grabbed a fresh shirt from my dresser.
I fired up my computer, grabbed some water, and clicked the Zoom link. I joined the August Fictionistas meeting nineteen minutes late.
But as it turned out, they were just finishing up introductions, so I was right on time to introduce myself👇
FictionistasWhere has the summer gone?Watch now (86 min) | Welcome to Fictionistas, a Substack by and for writers of fiction on the Substack platform. For those of us in the northern hemisphere, summer is rapidly coming to an end. Soon school will be starting up (if it hasn’t already) and we’ll be sledding towards the holiday season. But regardless of the weather, Fictionistas continues on, steadfast, during bot…Read more5 days ago · 10 likes · 3 comments · Jackie DanaStick around and chat about the story!I love hearing from readers like you because it makes writing Situation Normal so much fun! If you enjoyed this story, please let me know by leaving a comment below. Or, if you’re the type of person who likes a prompt, consider the following questions:
This story has a lot of music references. How many did you spot?
I shared a little bit about my writing process. If you’re a writer, can you share something about your writing process?
Fictionistas is a great community for fiction writers here on Substack. Are you a member? Are there other creative communities you’ve found here on Substack, or elsewhere? Please share!
If you have a pet, do you talk to them? And if so, do they give you good advice, or just talk trash?
What’s the worst type of food to eat while driving?
Cleveland bonus question. If there’s something you think I should see, do, or eat while I’m in Cleveland, let me know!
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August 31, 2022
Seaside sexism, dolphins, doppelgängers in the news, a cheesy dick pic, Canada for the win
If the Canadian rock band Loverboy is to believed, everybody is working for the weekend. Everybody, except those people who work on the weekend, of course. Since Christina and I fall into the first category, we decided to have a little fun on Sunday. We drove up the 101 to Ventura County to visit our friend Tara and see some dolphins.
At the marina, while waiting to board the boat, Christina struck up a conversation with a woman who owned a local real estate agency.
“If you’re going out on the water, make sure you put on lots of sunscreen,” the real estate agent said.
“We’ve got plenty,” Christina replied.
“And a hat,” she said. “You’ve gotta have a hat.”
I was wearing my Dodgers cap, so I was set. But Christina had left her hat at home. By coincidence, or maybe by design, the real estate agent’s office was right next to a shop that sold hats.
“I’ll be right back,” Christina said.
Christina went into the shop to pick out a hat.
“Wait ‘till she finds out what the hats cost in that store.”
The real estate agent laughed, for some reason.
“Are you the ATM?” the real estate agent asked me.
“Huh?”
“The ATM, the cash machine. You make the money, and she spends it. That’s marriage, am I right?”
“No, my wife makes way more money than me,” I said. “She’s her own ATM.”
The real estate’s agent comment rubbed me the wrong way because it was the kind of sexist assumption that undermines women and traps everyone in nonsensical gender norms. But I didn’t clap back. It was my day off, and we came to Ventura to buy an overpriced hat and see some dolphins!
Video by me, rendered into GIF form by Christina!It’s not you, it’s your doppelgängerAfter writing about a sticker that bears more than a passing resemblance to me, several alert Situation Normal readers wrote in to share a fascinating New York Times story about doppelgängers. Thank you for sharing, Bob, Anna, Mark, and Earl! Or, maybe the thanks goes to your doppelgängers.
In related doppelgänger news, Anne Kadet of Café Anne has agreed to look into the story behind the mystery sticker. If you’re not reading Café Anne, you’re doing something wrong. And if you are reading Café Anne, I suggest paying for a subscription because this sticker case is probably going to have some expenses.
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A cheesy dick picI’d like to tell you that reading Situation Normal is harmless, but that just isn’t true. Case in point: after engaging with my story about cheese, one reader’s feed has been overrun with pornographic pictures of cheese. Sorry about that, Tab.
ICYMI, Canada rules!I wrote about racing to buy McDonald’s breakfast before they stop serving. Several American readers commiserated over the fact that McDonald’s stops serving breakfast by mid-morning (times vary by location to maximize confusion).
But Situation Normal’s Canadian readers had a different story to tell. They described a fast food paradise where McDonald’s serves breakfast 24/7. Way to go, Canada! Between universal healthcare, Degrassi Junior High, and some Alanis Morissette bangers, I always knew you were cool as fuck, but McDonald’s breakfast anytime is next level!
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What I’m readingAfter reading Nixonland by Rick Perlstein and writing about some family memories, including the time I was a PA on Nixon’s funeral, I decided to check out Perlstein first book, Before the Storm. Like Nixonland, Before the Storm chronicles the origins of the modern conservative movement in America. But Before the Storm hits different because it tells the story of Barry Goldwater, who lost to LBJ in 1964, but nevertheless went on to inspire generations of truly unhinged people who believed, among other things, that Ike was a commie, civil rights was a commie plot, and fluoride in the water would make you commie.
I’m enjoying Before the Storm, but learning that my hometown of Los Angeles was a hotbed of activity for the The John Birch Society in the early 60s freaks me the fuck out. Anyway, if you’re curious about the origins of the bat-shit crazy conservative assault on American democracy, and you don’t mind being freaked the fuck out, I highly recommend Before the Storm.
Contribute to Situation Normal!Do you have a question about something I’ve written? Got a hilarious anecdote or overheard you want to share? See something on the internet, or IRL, that made you LOL or WTF? Find a funny product the wild? Send your submissions to me at 👇
michael.j.estrin@gmail.com
When submitting, please tell me if you’d like to use an alias, or do the first name last initial thing. If you write a newsletter, I’m happy to link to it, so let me know!
Stick around and chat!You know the drill. I’ve got questions, you may or may not have answers.
Have you ever met your doppelgänger, or another person’s doppelgänger?
Watching dolphins brought me joy. What’s bringing you joy these days?
Alanis Morissette’s 1995 album Jagged Little Pill was full of bangers. What was your favorite song on that album? Hint: You Oughta Know the answer to this one.
Is Canada the greatest country on Earth?
What are you reading these days?
Until Sunday, when I’ll have a story about running late…
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August 28, 2022
I missed the cutoff for McDonald's breakfast, but the cashier was golden
They say breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but if you ask Google what time McDonald’s stops serving breakfast, you’re unlikely to get a straight answer. I know this because one morning, at precisely 10:25 am, I asked Google this question.
Google’s top result scraped the text from a USA Today article titled, “What time does McDonald’s stop breakfast?” Either things were slow at USA Today, or their web analytics honcho was calling the editorial shots. Regardless, here’s the half-assed answer USA Google Today gave me.
“What do you mean, it’s either 10:30 am or 11:00 am?” Christina asked. “What kind of an answer is that?”
Normally, I do my best to answer my wife’s question, but with breakfast on the line and somewhere between seven and thirty-seven minutes remaining to acquire said breakfast, I didn’t think I had time to fuck around and find out more information. So I slipped on my flip-flops, grabbed my Bad Motherfucker wallet, and jumped in the car.
Our closest McDonald’s is ten minutes away, so I drove like a bat out of hell. I made it to the Golden Arches in seven minutes flat, thanks to the fortune of the fickle LA Traffic Gods and the exhilarating soundtrack of Gimme Some Lovin’ by The Spencer Davis Group.
“Welcome to McDonald’s, may I take you order?”
“Hey, are you guys still serving breakfast?”
“Sorry, we stop serving breakfast at 10:30 am,” the cashier said. “You just missed it.”
I was about to concede defeat, but before I could say a word, the intercom crackled with hope.
“Actually, I just asked the kitchen, and we do have a few breakfast items left.”
“Any chance one of those items is a sausage biscuit?”
“You’re in luck,” the cashier said. “We’ve got one sausage biscuit left.”
Ten million breakfast enthusiasts in all of Los Angeles County, and I was about to snag the last sausage biscuit of the day. Damn if they don’t know how to make you feel like a winner at Mickey D’s.
“Sold American,” I said.
“Do you want to make it a combo?”
Did I want to make it a combo? This was still America, wasn’t it?
“Look, I don’t want to press my luck, but do you have any hash browns left?”
“Good point,” the cashier said. “I asked about the combo out of habit, but let me check with the kitchen first.”
A moment, later the cashier came back on the intercom.
“Well, we’re out of hash browns.”
My heart sank, but my heart doctor’s heart swelled with joy.
“But I told the kitchen you wanted the last sausage biscuit,” the cashier continued, “and honestly, I just don’t think it’s right to serve breakfast without hash browns. So, we’re gonna make one for you, if you want it.”
“Sold American!”
“Right on, sir. Will there be anything else?”
I told the cashier no, he gave me the total, and told me to drive around to the first window.
“Thanks for hooking me up,” I said. “I wasn’t sure what time you guys stop serving breakfast, and to be honest, Google was no help.”
The cashier didn’t respond to my Google comment. He looked like he was seventeen or eighteen. For all I knew, his generation had abandoned Google in favor of TikTok, where answers to mundane questions are accompanied by dope dancing, banger beats, and zero alliteration.
“Yeah, the cutoff time is kind of a confusing mess,” the cashier said. “Technically, we’re supposed to stop at 10:30 am on weekdays and 11:00 am on weekends.”
“Technically?”
“Yeah, that’s the messy part. Some managers are harsh. The second the clock hits the cutoff time, they stop serving breakfast, no exceptions. Their attitude is, too bad you missed it, even if you only missed it by thirty seconds.”
“Dicks.”
The cashier nodded.
“But some managers are cool,” he said. “They’ll keep selling breakfast as long as supplies last. The harsh managers say you’re not supposed to do that because rules. Also, it’s supposedly a hassle to keep breakfast going when we’re serving burgers and stuff, I guess. That’s the logic anyway. But honestly, it’s not like one sausage biscuit and a hash brown is gonna mess up the whole operation.”
“Sounds like there’s a cool manager working today,” I said.
“Oh yeah, she’s fire. Not gonna lie, everyone wants to work their shifts with her. Bad managers are bad for business, but good managers are worth their weight in gold, you know.”
I studied the teenage cashier. His views on management theory were way more sophisticated than the views I held when I was his age. Not only that, this young man had saved the most important meal of the day by demonstrating strong communication skills, a keen understanding of food production operations, and the ability to influence without authority.
Clearly, I was looking at a straight shooter with upper management written all over him, and at the risk of turning an Office Space reference into an ad, I’m Lovin’ It.
Thank you for reading Situation Normal! Please share the laughs with your friends!
Stick around and chat about the story!I love hearing from readers like you because it makes writing Situation Normal so much fun! If you enjoyed this story, please let me know by leaving a comment below. Or, if you’re the type of person who likes a prompt, consider the following questions:
Is breakfast really the most important meal of the day, or is it actually brunch? Explain.
There are a lot of fast food options in this world, but which one makes the best breakfast? Be prepared to defend your answer with hyperbole, opinion, and ad hominem attacks.
Aside from fast food chains, what’s your preferred dish for starting the day? I’m an avocado toast man myself, but I also break for pancakes, Dim Sum, and bagels.
When I’m in a hurry, I always play Gimme Some Lovin’ by The Spencer Davis Group. What song helps you haul ass?
Essay question: Can you please explain the sad state of affairs that led USA Today to run an entire news story that tried, without much success, to nail down what time McDonald’s stops serving breakfast? Charts welcome, but not required.
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