Jared Freid has a great bit in his new-ish Netflix special about how no one is less-informed than the mother of a 6-month-old child in the suburbs. There’s no available clip of the exact joke, but here’s a Tweet and tonal reference:
I laughed out lout at this, and not just because he had a romantic dalliance with a friend of mine (NOTE: Comedians are and remain to be enjoyed from afar and never dated). I don’t live in the suburbs (yet?), but since becoming a parent, I do try to avoid most of the non-dog-saving-humans-news, true crime docs, intense podcasts, and generally scary information that will haunt my dreams. This hypothetical oblivious Greenwich mom is goals, and not just because her hypothetical house is huge. I didn’t used to be like this, but here we are. New York Post and CNN? No, thank you. Bravo and dating shows? Come on in.
So, rather than do a deep dive into any recent headlines on A.I. or whatever the heck friggin’ Covid threatens to be up to, today I’m doing a classic “Caption This” writing prompt. Feel free to play along and write something, or just scroll down to read the output.
The Prompt: This is the stock image that appeared when I typed ”shocking”.
Got it? Great. Now try to write 100-500 words inspired by this photo before your baby wakes up (my metric for time) or it’s been an hour (clocks’). Go! ⏲️
Here are mine:
Ally’s cheeks burned every time someone leaned across a bar at a Happy Hour, draft beer sloshing over the rim of their glass, and posed the classic question:
“What three things would you bring to a deserted island?”
It happened more than you’d think. They didn’t mean to trigger her trauma of being trapped at Fyre Fest, in fact most of them didn’t even know about it, but every time, all of a sudden she’d feel like a dozen hot spotlights were pointed directly at her face, like the FEMA rescue choppers that never came. And every time, she’d take a breath, swallow hard and speak her truth:
“My phone, body glitter, and Ja Rule.”
The hardest part of being a shrunken head was finding a hat that at least attempted to balance out your proportions. That, and the voodoo.
“Sorry, I’m not Wilson.”
The day the cast-a-ways discovered bowling was the day The Big Lebowski quotes began. Some have never recovered, dude.
How’d you do? Post yours in the comments or @ me in Notes.
What Else…What Else?
Something to watch:
Low-Brow Pick: Just when you thought The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City was dead in the water (I found last season unwatchable, and I helped launch the darn thing), Season 4 smacks us in the face with a snowball of a fun, relatable New One (Monica Garcia), a new new face for Meredith (but the same hilariously dead-eyed offspring), and best of all, no Jen Shaw (she’s in prison).(Bravo & Peacock)
High-Brow Pick: Before he was forcing us to learn to spell “Oppenheimer,” Christopher Nolan made the excellent art house noir, Following, for just $6,000. It grossed over $200K and shows how much more a good script matters than expensive explosions, which is more than your $5K Balmain dress can say. (Prime)
Something to read: I started the new Walter Isaacson Elon Musk biography. Love him or hate him, it’s fair to say he’s an interesting person (person of interest?). It’s 700+ pages, so will either help me with insomnia or keeping a door ajar.
Something to think about: Are we feeling like ennui because it’s been rainy, or does it just go better with our cozy knits?