"As rando as it gets"

Gifts, avoidance, twinset, magic, iceberg lettuce

I wrote a draft about a month ago with some gifts you could buy, but I never published it because I decided it was gross. That said, one gift was this miniature “Dustbin Cat,” which was an outrageous $84 on Etsy. Someone has since purchased it, which is nice.

Another was this first edition of Donald Barthelme’s Snow White (not the story you know). This is a perfect book to me. For a Barthelme starter, I recommend Sixty Stories (I have this same edition). Just thinking about this book makes me feel great.

And now for some other stuff:

• I’ve been avoiding a self-imposed creative deadline by putting all my energy and emotion into work-work. A time-tested strategy and I’m annoyed at myself, but also glad to notice it.
  

• Steve, Seth, Andy, and I have been going out for a dinner and gift exchange every December since we met through work and became a twisted little family. That was seven years ago. We also meet for lunch once a month and text every day, basically all day, but anyway, this year Steve treated us to dinner at The Odyssey, a restaurant and “event space” that sits on a hill overlooking the San Fernando Valley. There were a few holiday parties happening while we were there, including one for the Visual Effects Society, and I peeked through a window and saw a man in clinging leather pants with long, straightened brown hair hanging down to his ass. In contrast, most patrons in The Odyssey’s regular dining rooms seem to have stepped out of the Macy’s semi-formal twinset section (black mid-calf dress, thigh-brushing sequined cardigan). All of the views were beautiful.
  

• Amelia brought the Tom Cruise Coconut Bundt Cake to our house and it lived up to the hype. By the way, Amelia and another friend Cooper have a new podcast called Jacktical Magic, described as “a podcast about America’s most baffling radio station, Jack FM.” If you’re not familiar, Jack FM is in LA and claims to “play what it wants” while also being “as rando as it gets.” Think: the songs you hear while getting your oil changed. At the center of the podcast is a 64-song tournament designed to find the most definitive Jack FM track of all time. This is fun, and you can vote on Instagram each week. The first week was Lenny Kravitz “Fly Away” vs. Red Hot Chili Peppers “Otherside.” Do you get it?

  

• Joy told me she was eating popcorn and drinking a Celsius, and this made me think of Cindy Crawford, and then it made me think about a childhood friend’s mom who had super thick black hair and would slick it back in a ponytail with Vaseline and kept cases of Tab in a kitchen cupboard. Then Joy told me about a childhood friend’s mom who would eat iceberg lettuce with canned tuna and watch Days of Our Lives on a tiny tv in her kitchen. The archetypal eighties mom. If you have any memories like this about eighties/nineties moms, will you send them to me? I’m serious. I’m thinking about something…

  

• We’re going to Ohio next week, flying into Detroit, and I’ll try to eat Coney Island. If I could, I’d go to Ann Arbor and eat Jerusalem Garden and Earthen Jar.
  

• I have so much I want to do, if I could just put my energy where it belongs and believe in myself. I can do it. I can do it. I can do it.

  

  “Ornament” on a tree in our neighborhood

  Thanks for reading. I hope good things happen for you, and I’ll see you next year.