SHORT:
I spent last week making a short film about a massive pile of shit. Now I’m editing it and beginning to fear that content and form are, unfortunately, inextricable.
Please enjoy this video of everyone who walked through our exterior shot:
MEDIUM:
To take my mind off the fact that I gathered friends and family to make a labor-intensive, potentially reward-negative piece of “art,” I logged onto TikTok—where I was immediately fed 300 videos explaining that the film industry is dead forever, and I should retrain as a dental hygienist if I ever want to feel joy again.
Every two weeks I have to take a survey measuring how depressed or not depressed I am. It sits in my inbox like a haunted doll until I either fill it out or ignore it and get passive-aggressively reminded to do it a week later.
The email subject line says, “How are you doing?”. Which is obviously a trick question. If I was doing well, I wouldn’t be reading emails. It’s a survey with five options: Very Depressed, Depressed, Neutral, Not Depressed, and Lying.
My friend Rima says I should learn beginner hip hop on YouTube to unlock my creativity.
LONG:
I tried to see Jess run the Brooklyn Half Marathon this weekend but missed them by point-three miles every time (and remained calm and was unfazed by this!).
There were no trains to Coney Island (where the race finished), so I had to take a $50 Uber that dropped me outside “Family Pickup”—which is located on a fenced-in field inside the Cyclones stadium. I waited in a long security line just to stand behind home plate, screaming “Jess!” through the net like I was trying to free a wrongly imprisoned Little Leaguer.
A security guard watched as I yelled, and did not flinch or try to help get Jess’s attention. After three minutes, Jess finally turned around, saw the state I was in, said, “what’s wrong with you?”, and then met me outside to take the train (that now was running) home.
Later that night, I ate a slice of pizza over a trash can before getting on the subway, and that’s why I can never be famous…
I was hunched over an NYU-adjacent bin, working my way through a white slice, when I locked eyes with an out-of-town mother in heels.
She jumped, as if she saw a ghost, and said, “What am I looking at?”.
Her NYU daughter squinted. “Huh, it has all the trappings of a New York moment, and yet... it’s something I’ve never quite seen before.”
They didn’t actually say any of this out loud, but they sped up LIKE A LOT when they passed me (and averted their gaze), which told me all I needed to know. Had I been famous, I’d been photographed, mid-hork, like a transgender Ben Affleck with Dunkin. I’d like to think I’d “own it” SoWhatP!nk-style, but I’m not so sure…
The trash can is a necessity, by the way. If you free-ball your low-blood-sugar-on-the-go slice, grease runs down your arms and suddenly you're licking your forearms on a public platform like a perv for trains.
Unfortunately, the other day, I had no choice but to free-ball. I left a café buzzed on cold brew and grabbed another slice to calm down. Walking home, I dipped my head beneath the pointy end to “land it in my mouth”... just as I passed a middle school. At pickup time.
As I found myself weaving through a sea of tweens mouth open, head cocked to one side, trying to throat the thing without burning myself, I thought: once again, if the paparazzi caught this, I’d be done.
Greasy mouth. Greasy hands. Surrounded by sixth graders.
Donezo.
Needless to say and nevertheless, Snack Of The Week is pizza.
C U Next Tuesday.
Thank you for subscribing to this newsletter. Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s not [like when people slip on ice].
If this is your first time reading, pls check out the archives.
Sincerely,
Reid Pope
Bonus Zone:
Reid on seek treatment!!!!!! We won!