REID #154
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SHORT:
A few days ago, I walked into a Starbucks, saw that someone named Maria was “Customer Of The Week”, and thought: “WHY NOT ME!? WHY NOT REID?” — so I’m doing super well!
Had never even been to that Starbucks location before! No worries!
Mental health is in the eye of the beholder!
MEDIUM:
My TikTok algorithm is throwing hundreds of clips from The Muppet Show my way (including this fan-cam tbt to Kermit and Miss Piggy’s divorce era). It’s perfect, and I hope my feed stays like this forever.
After days of cackling to 30-second clips, I hacked into Jess’s mom’s Disney Plus account to watch full episodes of the show.
They don’t make shit like it anymore! Name another program with puppets, Willie Nelson, and actual joke-dense/emotional plotting! You can’t!
I’m desperately trying to convince Jess to dress as the Mahna Mahna puppets with me for Halloween. We pretty much already look like them. So it’ll be a low-lift costume.
LONG:
Speaking of Muppets, Jess and I made our annual return to Fire Island and got sunburnt as shit. For the uninitiated, Fire Island Pines/Cherry Grove is a historic gay vacation spot (est. 1920s) frequented by celebs like Calvin Klein and Tennessee Williams who wanted to shake ass with their same-sex lovers in peace.
2 minutes after hopping off the ferry, Jess declared, “I’m in my ELEMENT!” (I think because Shawn Mendes was playing at a shop that sells plants and also sparkly thongs?). We stayed in a sandy room next to a building that blasted EDM musical all night (Jess was less “in their element” during that).
A strange-but-lovely highlight of the trip was when we stumbled across the world’s most theatrical AA meeting where someone did a full musical number about how they used to drink, smoke, and cuss.
The AA venue (Cherry Grove Community House & Theater), I later discovered, is a designated LGBTQ landmark — 1 of 3 the U.S. (the others are The Stonewall Inn and the Frank Kameny home in Washington, D.C.). It’s the oldest continually operating gay summer theater in the United States. The building was FLOATED across Long Island's Great South Bay in the 1940s and has been operating ever since — how come nobody’s picking up houses and hauling them across bodies of water to turn them into gay community houses and theaters anymore!?!? Someone get on this!
It poured rain during our last hour on the island, so we spent it huddled in a gift shop with two old lesbians who were pissed because they wanted to go get Chinese food on the mainland and then catch the ferry back in time to watch the U.S. Open finals. One of them kept squinting out at the stormy horizon and whispering “you can’t even SEE the boat, usually you can SEE the boat coming.” The other one, who was sporting a classic “one fish two fish red fish blue fish” tee, pointed to a chain hanging off the roof of the shop and said, “Look how beautiful that is! The way the water is running down the chain! I’m going to take a video!” and took out her phone.
I was stunned, because approximately 5 seconds earlier, Jess had said and done the exact. same. thing.
I told the lesbian this, like, “great minds!”, but she looked at Jess, eyes wide, dead-serious, and said, “If we have the same brain? Be careful. It’s a LOT to handle.”
After 20 minutes, it became clear that the rain was not going to stop, so we made a run for the ferry (as a drag queen at a nearby bar belted “River Deep, Mountain High”).
On our way, we saw a lesbian couple walking their huge dogs, getting absolutely pelted with water, ponytails DRIPPING, and seemingly unfazed. Jess whispered, “now those are lesbians”. No offense to the one fish two fish red fish blue fish ones.
I must finish this because yes, I’m back at Starbucks, and a hoard of high schoolers just entered.
Every time I see high schoolers in a coffee shop I think about how my best friend Kayla and I would study for finals at Starbucks and force this poor kid Ryan to go “buy paper” for us at random intervals. I am sorry that we made you do that, Ryan. I think it was our version of doing drugs.
^Put THAT in Euphoria! (9th grader sprinting up and down Rite Aid aisle searching for printer paper as an original song by Labrinth blares).
And in case you’re wondering, no, I’m not frequenting Starbucks to indulge in their recently-released Ahh-tumn Vibes seasonal drinks, I’m actually here daily because I cannot stop eating the blocks of peanut butter dunked in oil they sell in their gutter refrigerator section.
This week, I grabbed one and the barista immediately went, “want the bathroom code?”. I replied, “no, just this”. And he went, “oh, wow okay sorry the only time I’ve ever seen anyone buy one of these things is when they have to go to the bathroom”. Awesome!!
You’d think they’d consequently be Snack Of The Week, but Snack Of The Week actually goes to the Oreo Cookies & Cream ice cream I had on Fire Island.
When we entered the shoppe, I asked the old woman behind the counter if I could sample the Brownie Batter flavor, and she said “sure!”. Moments later, when I opted for a scoop of Oreo Cookies & Cream, she stared at me, rolled her eyes, and muttered, “seriously…?” Guess it’s not a crime to be gay on FI, but it is illegal to sample Brownie Butter ice cream but then choose to orderCookies & Cream!
Runner-up for Snack Of The Week goes to the hummus I ate in the VIP section of a show at the PUBLIC hotel. Jess’s best friend Lilia’s Australian friend Kate who now lives in London (keep up!) was visiting New York City for the first time so we decided to take her to a comedy show (mostly because the gay-seeming straight boys I do musical comedy with were supposed to perform on it but then one actually got stuck in Boston so they didn’t perform but we went anyway).
I watched the show from the VIP section and spent 80% of my time debating if I was allowed to have the free hummus on the VIP table. After three false starts, I took a chip and dipped it in the hummus. I raised the chip to my lips, opened my mouth, and then? Missed. The chip and hummus fell on the ground.
The good thing about peanut butter bars from Starbucks is there’s no dipping … you just shove them right in your mouth. The PUBLIC hotel should serve peanut butter blocks to people in the VIP who aren’t really supposed to be there. Would make it a lot less stressful.
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Sincerely,
Reid Pope
Venmo: @rpope-venmo-26
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Bonus Jonas Zone:
I would’ve preferred this show: “Put THAT in Euphoria! (9th grader sprinting up and down Rite Aid aisle searching for printer paper as an original song by Labrinth blares).”
Here are some of my favorite parts:
- u rly opened a portal in my brain w mahna mahna.... I literally thought I had made up that song bc it’s in my head all the time. Anyway I texted the YouTube link to my childhood babysitter
- my mom got addicted to the Starbucks oil bars when she broke up w her personal trainer boyfriend in 2011 or 12. There are probably still some from that era in her fridge, behind the protein drinks from the 2018 addiction. The brand if I recall is called PERFECT , unless Starbucks is making a house version now. If I’m being honest i think it’s an insane addiction but Im happy for u bc it’s cheaper than my Starbucks addiction (going to Starbucks twice a day in between going to another coffee shop). I guess I sort of get it if u want to feel like a dog.
- I rly like the picture of u and jess (I think) in the big chairs . sometimes when I’m sad about America (almost never bc it’s so amazing) I remember that at least we seem to have invented “really large versions of items.” If I had a newsletter it would have a section about the biggest replicas and smallest miniatures I saw that 2-to-7-month-period (how often I think I could get out a newsletter). (I don’t like miniatures that are too detailed or perfect. You have to be able to tell it is a miniature and someone struggled to make it. Not that u asked but i really like the Frances Glessner Lee miniatures (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/home-where-corpse-frances-glessner-lees-miniature-dollhouse-crime-scenes-180965204/) even though she is the police. I think it’s a funny way to spend your time as a police officer. Ok I’m doing way too much public trolling and should have put this in an email. Keep it up and goodbye.