Happy Sensible Time Day! This is not an official holiday that is observed by anyone besides other people who agree with me that Standard Time is infinitely superior to Daylight Saving Time. That said, I still feel sympathy for all the DST stans out there. May your day be full of as much caffeine as you require!
Now that we've got the positive stuff out of the way, we now return you to your regularly scheduled Monday, wherein you may observe:
• National Immune System Day
• National COVID-19 Day
• National Funeral Director & Mortician Recognition Day
All of those seem related to some degree... and guaranteed to prompt a persistent feeling of malaise.
Not all of today's random occasions are a bummer, though! We also have:
• National Napping Day
• National Dream Day
• National Oatmeal & Nut Waffles Day
• National Johnny Appleseed Day
My advice? Skip the first three and focus on the latter four. Take a nap and dream a little dream that when you awake some kind hero will have made you some oatmeal & nut waffles topped with warm apple compote. Nothing helps a body spring forward like a belly full of carbs!
I know it's true, Dwight. That's why I said it!
GIF via The Office / NBC
*****
Let's take note of some significant historical happenings and birthdays from March 11ths of yore:
• In 2020 the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 virus epidemic a pandemic. BOOOOO!!!
• Birthday oatmeal nut waffles all around for: Actor Mark Metcalf of Animal House and Twisted Sister music video fame (1946), singer-songwriter & producer Bobby McFerrin of "Don't Worry, Be Happy" fame (1950), English author & playwright Douglas Adams of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fame (1952), German singer-songwriter and punk icon Nina Hagen (1955), Canadian actor Elias Koteas of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Some Kind of Wonderful fame (1961), singer-songwriter Lisa Loeb of "Stay" fame (1968), actor & producer Terrence Howard of Iron Man, Hustle & Flow, and Empire fame (1969), actor Johnny Knoxville of Jackass fame (1971), singer-songwriters Benji & Joel Madden of the band Good Charlotte (1979), actress & filmmaker Thora Birch of American Beauty and Ghost World fame (1982), and Russian-American actor Anton Yelchin of Star Trek, Fright Night, and Odd Thomas fame (1989; RIP!)
*****
OK, that's it for today! No new customer Q&A due to lack of volunteers, so if you're feeling even moderately outgoing and would like to be featured in an upcoming Monday email (and are a customer with some Boredwalk tees, tanks, hoodies, towels, bags, books, or Delve Decks to show off), just reply to this and let us know and we'll send you some fun questions!
We'll be back here in your inbox on Wednesday with some more random holidays to observe, historical tidbits to acknowledge, and fun links to entertaining content! Until next time...
Peace, love, and bonus daylight,
Matt
]]>Happy Peanut Cluster Day! Unless, of course, you are allergic. If you are and are something of a grammarian, consider instead celebrating National Proofreading Day instead. If you are allergic to both peanuts and well-constructed sentences, it is also National Retro Video Game Day. So many options!
Meanwhile, I am waiting for the lions March promises to come eat me and put an end to my problems before the lambs arrive with their soft, downy false hope. Pass the bottle, Tin Man!
Chandler gets it.
GIF via Friends / NBC
*****
If you're in the market for some Boredwalk goodies — like that cute, soft Wizard of Oz-inspired Liquid Courage tee up top — be sure to use code SAVE15 at checkout for 15% off orders of $95+, not to mention free U.S. shipping on orders of $75+ — no code needed!
(We also wanted to mention that our vendor who prints our books sent us a bunch of copies of our 1990s Adult Activity books with the wrong paper type. They are still usable, but the paper works best with pens and color pencils (not as well with markers and crayons). Anyway, we are selling them at cost to get them out of our warehouse to avoid throwing them in a landfill. Grab one if you want one.)
*****
While you're waiting for your new Boredwalk gear to arrive you can also treat your earholes to the latest episode of the Boredwalk Podcast!
Meredith & Tess discuss gross eHarmony ads, Boredwalk's most recent burglary, ineffective law enforcement, and the general bad vibes swirling around Boredwalk for the last several months.
They also debate which is more powerful: capitalism or misogyny? Meredith is pretty sure it's misogyny and lays out why, and Tess supports this hypothesis with some first-hand experiences working on ads for some of the worst companies on the internet.
They then check in with the internet troll contingent, and the trolls did not disappoint. (They never do.)
Thankfully, Karen left a 5-star review for her new Grievance Journal, which helped the troll pills go down a bit easier.
Our co-hosts move on to reacting to fan answers to the Question of the Day "what fragrance do others like that you can't stand?" and patchouli was the runaway 'winner' among fans, but Tess & Meredith had their own strong opinions on this question.
They wrap things up by trading answers to the Delve Deck Venting and Joy Edition questions "what problem can you not believe technology hasn't solved yet?" and "what's your favorite guilty pleasure right now?"
Get in on the action and listen to the hilarity on the platform of your choice!
*****
Here are a few historical tidbits and famous birthdays to kick off your weekend:
• In 1910 French aviator Raymonde de Laroche became the first woman to receive a pilot's license
• In 1917 the US Senate voted to limit filibusters by adopting the cloture rule. LOL, problem solved, no notes!
• In 1950 the first Volkswagen Type 2, aka VW Bus, aka every hippie's favorite mode of transportation, rolled off the production line.
• In 1979 the compact disc, aka the best audio media format ever invented — I AM NOT ENTERTAINING CHALLENGES TO THIS ASSERTION, VINYL FETISHISTS — was demonstrated publicly for the first time by Dutch manufacturer Philips
• Birthday peanut clusters all around (unless you're allergic, of course) for: Singer-songwriter & actor Micky Dolenz of The Monkees (1945), singer-songwriter & bassist Randy Meisner of The Eagles (1946), English singer-songwriter, guitarist, and car enthusiast Gary Numan (1958), Irish-American actor Aidan Quinn of Desperately Seeking Susan and Benny & Joon fame (1959), actress Camryn Manheim of The Practice fame (1961), actor Freddie Prinze, Jr. of She's All That, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and Scooby-Doo film franchise fame (1976), actor James Van Der Beek of Dawson's Creek and Varsity Blues fame (1977), tattoo artist & model Kat Von D (1982), Uzbekistani-American actress & comedian Milana Vayntrub of AT&T commercial and Werewolves Within fame (1987), and English actor Kit Connor of Heartstopper fame (2004)
• Pour one out for: French composer & conductor Hector Berlioz (d. 1869), German businessman & fragile airship inventor Ferdinand Zeppelin (d. 1917), Grateful Dead keyboardist & songwriter Ron "Pigpen" McKernan (d. 1973), jazz singer Billy Eckstine (d. 1993), baseball icon Joe DiMaggio (d. 1999), and English composer, conductor, record producer, and "Fifth Beatle" George Martin (d. 2016)
*****
OK, that's it for this week!
We'll be back here in your inbox on Monday with another email and maybe a fresh customer Q&A if any brave soul (perhaps you?) volunteers! If you'd like to be featured in an upcoming email, reply to this one and let us know!
Peace, love, and courage (liquid or otherwise)
Matt
]]>
If you missed Monday's Boredwalk email, well, it was a doozy. I'll spare you a repeat of the gory details, but our offices were broken into and burglarized (again) for the second time in as many months last weekend.
I and the entire Boredwalk team have been overwhelmed by the outpouring of support in response, from placing generous orders to messages of encouragement and empathy to sharing what happened on social media to help spread awareness about our weird little brand.
A HUGE thank you to everyone who replied to the email or reached out via DM over Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and elsewhere. We are by no means out of the woods, but we do have a much-needed spring in our step as we continue to navigate all the challenges 2024 has thrown at us so far.
Thank you so, so much!
No, seriously — thank you
GIF via CBS
Random occasions? Have at them:
• National Dentist Day — Seriously? Gum reaper is out here looking for a statue? Hard pass.
• National Frozen Food Day — I don't know about you, but I would not have made it out of my teen years without fish sticks and frozen peas.
• National Oreo Day — My annual opportunity to remind you that Hydrox were first and Oreos are cookie-come-latelies riding their coattails!
• In 1836 3,000 Mexican troops finally succeeded in storming and capturing the Alamo following a 13-day siege defended by a mere 187 volunteers comprised of US colonists and Tejanos rebelling against the central Mexican government. Shoulda tried hiding in the basement!
• Dmitri Mendeleev presented the first periodic table to the Russian Chemical Society on this day in 1869
• Birthday sandwich cookies all around for: Italian painter, sculptor, and teenage mutant ninja turtle Michelangelo (1475), French author & playwright Cyrano de Bergerac (1619), English-Italian poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806), songwriter, bandleader, and King of Western Swing Bob Wills (1905), actor & comedian Lou Costello of Abbott & Costello and "Who's on first?" fame (1906), famed illustrator & publisher Will Eisner of The Spirit fame (1917), comedian, actor, announcer, and large check enthusiast Ed McMahon (1923), legendary jazz guitarist & songwriter Wes Montgomery (1923), singer Mary Wilson of The Supremes (1944), English singer-songwriter & guitarist David Gilmour of Pink Floyd fame (1946), actor & filmmaker Rob Reiner of All in the Family, This Is Spinal Tap, The Sure Thing, The Princess Bride, and When Harry Met Sally fame (1947), comedian, actor, producer, and screenwriter D.L. Hughley (1963), actress Connie Britton of Friday Night Lights and Nashville fame (1967), basketball icon, savvy businessman, and walking hilarious soundbite Shaquille O'Neal (1972), English singer-songwriter and guitarist Guy Garvey of the perpetually underrated band Elbow (1974), and rapper Beanie Sigel (1974)
• Pour one out for: Colonel & knife enthusiast James "Jim" Bowie and frontiersman, politician, and raccoon hat enthusiast Davy Crockett (d. 1836), who just couldn't make it to that elusive basement in time.
Also dribble a tipple in honor of novelist & poet Louisa May Alcott of Little Women fame (d. 1888), conductor and composer John Philip Sousa of marching band music fame (d. 1932), Mount Rushmore designer & sculptor whose name sounds like the result of a bet his parents lost Gutzon Borglum (d. 1941), novelist & Nobel Prize laureate Pearl S. Buck (d. 1973), Russian-American "philosopher" and professional whiner Ayn Rand (d. 1982), painter and "flower" enthusiast Georgia O'Keeffe (d. 1986), singer-songwriter & guitarist Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse fame (d. 2010), singer-songwriter & guitarist Alvin Lee of Ten Years After fame (d. 2013), and surgeon & Tommy John surgery pioneer Frank Jobe (d. 2014)
Alright, on to the amusing links!
*****
1. 🍸 Sir, she bought you a drink. You know the rules!
Tess woman-spreads all over the place and explains the transactional nature of this "free" cocktail. Now be a good little boy and grab your rubber mallet and socket wrench set — that weird noise isn't going to fix itself!
For more LOLs from our team be sure to follow us on our OG social accounts such as Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and/or Facebook. But if you're looking for merch, just buy directly from a brand's website. These social media jabronis don't deserve to get a cut.
sdsd
2. 🗳️ And the nominee is...
Matt Buechele has thoughts on this that are funny, but less funny and more depressing is the fact that I literally wrote in "Lucifer Morningstar" on my ballot for a couple of uncontested seats the other day and am more confident in a fictional literary character's bona fides than those of whichever living, breathing jabroni just got elected because no one else felt like running against them.
Evy Kay reveals the secret to untold riches on social media (and killer banana bread)!
4. 🧙🏽♀️ If they didn't want to get eaten, they should've left the house made of candy alone
It's 2024, and social media users are still being judgmental AF about non-mainstream dietary choices. I thought we were past this!
5. 🧌 Riddle me this, taxpayer!
Gabe has run afoul of the tax troll, and while this is a comedy sketch, it sure does also seem rooted in fact. Shout out to Tess for writing some awful(ly funny) poetry!
*****
We'll be back here in your inbox on Friday with more nonsense holidays to dissect, more notable birthdays (and maybe even some notable deathdays!) to celebrate, and more witty content in general. Until then...
Peace, love, and thanks,
Matt
]]>
I'm tapped out. Everyone here at Boredwalk is.
In case you missed it in our (since-deleted) Instagram post over the weekend, our offices were broken into and burglarized early Saturday morning for the second time in as many months.
We're pretty sure it was the same perpetrators of the first burglary on January 4th. We're also pretty sure the Whittier Police Department will be just as ineffectual in finding them as they were two months ago. As excited as the small army of SWAT officers who arrived on the scene shortly after the suspects left seemed at the prospect of being able to fill other humans with lead, they were equally disinterested in doing the less violent procedural tasks of taking crime scene photos and dusting for fingerprints.*
* Look, if you yourself or someone you know and care about works in law enforcement, please don't @ me about the above comment. I was actually here and saw how disappointed they all became when they confirmed the building was empty and realized they weren't going to be able to shoot someone and instead have to do actual police work. The unsubscribe link is right down below.
The reason I asked Meredith to delete the Instagram post is because in addition to the very kind words of sympathy and care we received in the comments and our DMs, there were many of instances of people giving a lot of unsolicited, uninformed, and wildly impractical "advice" about what we should do to prevent this from happening again. Well-intentioned though it may have been, it still stung to be confronted with a wall of notifications like that, as though these were all obvious and easy-to-implement solutions for a business of our size. And this, after having spent hours going through security cam footage with the police to file the incident report.
• Get a guard dog: Commercial leases, including ours, don't typically allow for that. This is an office park, not a scrap yard. The last thing we need is some snarling hellhound pooping all over the carpet and chewing all our Delve Decks and Grievance Journals and activity books to bits every night.
• Get a shotgun: A shotgun is only of use if I am physically present at the office to discharge it. I already am here 12+ hours a day, six day a week (seven this week, as I am here now typing this). I don't think it's reasonable to expect anyone to live at their office 24/7.
• Spend the night so someone is here to scare them off next time: See above. These degenerates don't really give us advance notice of when they plan to strike, so that would mean I just start living here around the clock indefinitely. Again, I don't think this is a reasonable or practical solution.
• Replace all the windows with steel: Again, we are renters, we don't own this building. The landlords will not allow us to make substantial changes to the construction of our unit. Plus, our lease is up in roughly 18 months. Spending tens of thousands of dollars on building upgrades for such a limited period of utility is not something we have the money for.
• Move to a more secure building: We are under lease until July 2025. Breaking that lease will be prohibitively expensive, as would paying for such a move, and this also assumes that other buildings in different areas will be more secure. They aren't. Criminals are literally everywhere. Even Mayberry had dozens of them on The Andy Griffith Show. This would also likely have a detrimental impact on our staff members. If our next office is very far from our current one, they may not be able or willing to make that commute on a daily basis, and we don't have many roles at Boredwalk that allow for working from home on a full-time basis, especially when it comes to printing shirts, towels, and bags, and packing & shipping orders. We all have great chemistry together and want to maintain that.
• Set up myriad booby traps, Home Alone-style: This is not a Hollywood movie, this is real life. I am 100% confident any booby traps we set up will only serve to injure myself or the other members of our staff.
• Get a private armed security guard to patrol the premises overnight: That's an extra 84 hours a week in payroll, and we do not have the budget for that, either (see below).
The other thing that a lot of the people leaving these comments seemingly fail to understand is that everything listed above costs money, and not an insignificant amount of it. We are already out the thousands of dollars in shirts that were stolen. Plus we will have to pay another insurance deductible to file a claim, not to mention the cost to replace the glass that they shattered in order to break in here.
That money has to come from somewhere; we can't just conjure it out of thin air like a wizard or the Federal Reserve. So that would entail either finding a LOT of new customers overnight who are willing to spend what we currently charge for our products, or raising our prices significantly.
We also get so many comments on our ads about how "high" our prices are already, but they really are not. We set our prices to be competitive with the rest of the market (read: similarly-sized businesses selling similar-ish products) and to cover the costs of the products themselves, the labor, the rent, the utilities, the shipping materials, and the marketing & advertising costs associated with putting our stuff in front of people (which are a LOT higher than folks seem to know), but people seem to believe Boredwalk prices should be in line with what they see at Walmart or Amazon or Temu or Shein. We are not any of those companies.
Boredwalk is a small business. We have been struggling mightily for several months, and we are on a knife's edge right now. Candidly, if there are items of ours you have had your eye on for a while, I would strongly consider ordering them now or in the near future and not just taking for granted that we will still be around and in business come November or December when you are looking to do holiday shopping. This is not a marketing ploy or a trick — this is just the reality of the situation.
Meredith and I love working on developing fun new products that delight our customers, but we have been struggling so much for months and months trying to shore up other areas of the business that are less exciting but just as (if not more) important to its ongoing function that we have not had time to even discuss new tee designs or Delve Deck expansions or our next activity books, let alone actually work on them.
We just get punched in the face in some new, unanticipated fashion each day. It's getting hard to want to even wake up in the morning.
Look, I'm sorry to slump into your inbox and whine about Boredwalk's problems to you, and on a Monday to boot. I hate doing it. I would much rather share funny jokes and unveil rad new tee designs and games and books that make you happy (or at least marginally happier).
We are still working (extremely, insanely) hard to turn things around. Hopefully we are able to do so. If not, it's been a pleasure sharing time in your inbox with you, whether you've been a subscriber for ten years or ten days.
Peace, love, and tacos,
Matt Snow
Chief Creative Officer / Co-founder
Boredwalk
]]>Look, if you've got the willpower to avoid the internet and legacy media for 24 hours, by all means power down your devices and spend today alone with your thoughts, but the fact that you're reading this right now does not bode well for your plans of thoughtful contemplation.
The good news is that, even if you fail in this endeavor, you have delicious consolation prizes waiting in the wings because today is also National Fruit Compote Day AND National Peanut Butter Lovers Day. Scrumdiddlyumptious!
While you're prepping said consoling confections, consider relaxing to the swinging sounds of Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Alice Coltrane, Sarah Vaughn, Nina Simone, Dinah Washington, Cassandra Wilson, and more — today is also National Black Women in Jazz and the Arts Day!
I doubt Queen Ella would put up with any internet idiocy were she still alive today.
GIF via Montreux Jazz Festival
*****
While you're waiting for your new Boredwalk gear to arrive you can also treat your earholes to the latest episode of the Boredwalk Podcast!
This week Meredith and Gabe discuss the heroes and trolls that alternately praise and vilify Boredwalk on the internet.
This leads to an interesting conversation about the cognitive dissonance between the forms of creative work that are deemed acceptable to monetize and those that are not (See: Taylor Swift's forthcoming album The Tortured Poets Department and Boredwalk's Grievance Journal) and how social media platforms pay for themselves in a broader sense (See: running ads for products like Boredwalk's Grievance Journal).
Our co-hosts move on to reacting to fan answers to the Question of the Day — pulled from the Delve Deck — "what is the most underwhelming tourist trap you've ever seen?"
Responses ranged from newer weird regional roadside attractions in the U.S. to critically and culturally revered classic artworks.
Then Gabe & Meredith chime in with their own thoughts on the worst tourist traps they've encountered.
They wrap things up by trading answers to the Delve Deck Venting and Joy Edition questions "what is a problem you never seem to be able to solve?" and "what's your favorite sound?"
Get in on the action and listen to the hilarity on the platform of your choice!
*****
Here are a few historical tidbits and famous birthdays to kick off your weekend:
• In 1692 Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, and Tituba were brought before local magistrates in Salem Village, Massachusetts, kicking off the shameful episode known as the Salem witch trials. If anyone needed to go traipsing naked through the forests and fields of New England tripping on fungally "enhanced" rye bread, it was those uptight magistrates.
• In 1845 President John Tyler signed a bill authorizing the annexation of the Republic of Texas
• In 1867 Nebraska was admitted as the 37th U.S. state. Happy birthday, huskers!
• In 1872 Yellowstone National Park was established as the world's first national park
• In 1893 engineer and science icon Nikola Tesla gave the first public demonstration of radio in St. Louis, Missouri
• Birthday treats all around for: Polish pianist & composer Frédéric Chopin (1810), trombonist, composer, and bandleader Glenn Miller (1904), sportscaster & hotdog enthusiast Harry Caray (1914), novelist & literary critic Ralph Ellison (1914), singer & actress Dinah Shore (1917), singer-songwriter & actor Harry Belafonte (1927), English singer-songwriter Roger Daltrey of rock legends The Who (1944), Canadian-American actor and composer Alan Thicke of Growing Pains fame (1947), actress Catherine Bach of The Dukes of Hazzard fame (1954), actor & filmmaker Ron Howard of Happy Days and countless movies fame (1954), Spanish actor Javier Bardem of No Country For Old Men fame (1969), actor Jensen Ackles of Supernatural fame (1978), and singer-songwriter Kesha (1987)
• Pour one out for: Shoemaker & political activist Homer Plessy (d. 1925). Even though the U.S. Supreme Court shamefully ruled against him in Plessy v. Ferguson, his activism was rewarded posthumously in 1954 when Brown v. Board of Education and subsequent decisions finally began eroding the legal standing of Jim Crow laws.
Also dribble a tipple for actor Jackie Coogan, the original Uncle Fester (d. 1984), and famed comic book artist and editor Archie Goodwin, who co-created Luke Cage and Spider-Woman (d. 1998)
*****
OK, that's it for this week!
We'll be back here in your inbox on Monday with another email and maybe a fresh customer Q&A if any brave soul (perhaps you?) volunteers! If you'd like to be featured in an upcoming email, reply to this one and let us know!
Peace, love, and an idiot-free weekend,
Matt
The last time I used "What's with today today?" as an email subject line and failed to specifically mention the 1995 film Empire Records in the email — the movie from which the quote was pulled from — it did not go over well. We received a LOT of replies from subscribers who did not shy away from registering their disappointment.
As much as I love the movie (and, even more, its soundtrack), this was quite surprising given the film was released almost 30 years before I sent said email, and was an utter flop at the box office upon release. I just looked it up, and it only made $303,000! And it cost $10 MILLION to make!
Apparently the Venn diagram of Boredwalk's email list and the people who saw Empire Records in the theaters is essentially a circle, and the math backs this up — the average price of a movie ticket in 1995 was $4.35, and 303,000 ÷ 4.35 ≈ 69.5k, which is about how many people receive our emails.
SO, to all my fellow Empire Records dorks, this one's for you! Please reply and share your thoughts. But ONLY if you know unequivocally where those thoughts come from.
Happy birthday, Rory.
GIF via Empire Records / Warner Bros.
Weird holidays? We got 'em:
• Inconvenience Yourself Day — You mean "life?"
• National Chocolate Soufflé Day — Nothing says "inconvenience" like making chocolate consumption as stressful and anxiety-inducing as possible. Pro tip: skip the soufflé and just eat a chocolate bar.
• National Pancake Day — Perhaps the antithesis of the soufflé, the pancake can be as thin as a crepe or as fluffy as a spongy frisbee and satisfy your sweet tooth no matter how it turns out. As long as I can drown it in maple syrup, who cares?
• National Essay Day — If you've been reading Boredwalk's emails for a minute, you know we celebrate essays three days a week (though my AP Language & Composition teacher Ms Gazda might take issue with me describing... whatever this is... as an essay). Do they make for great marketing emails? Who can say? (My bank account can, and it says "no.") But they are (usually) fun to write!
Want a few interesting historical tidbits and famous birthdays from February 28ths of yore before we get to amusing links to brighten your day? Have at them:
• The final episode of M*A*S*H aired on this day in 1983 and was watched by almost 110 million viewers. For perspective, Super Bowl LVIII had an estimated 123.4 million viewers, but in 2024 the estimated US population is approximately 342 million versus 233.8 million in 1983.
So roughly 47% of the population tuned into the final episode of M*A*S*H compared to 36% of the population watching this year's Super Bowl, and without the benefit of streaming or widespread adoption of international satellite broadcasting. In summation, football is dumb. Long live baseball!
• Birthday pancakes (or chocolate soufflés, if you must) all around for: French philosopher, author, and original essayist Michel de Montaigne (1533), chemist, peace activist, and Nobel laureate Linus Pauling (1901), English guitarist, producer, and Rolling Stones founder Brian Jones (1942), English graphic designer Storm Thorgerson of Pink Floyd album cover fame (1944), football player and actor Bubba Smith of Police Academy film franchise fame (1945), actress, singer, and author Bernadette Peters of Broadway musical and The Jerk fame (1948), comedian, actor, and supplemental insurance enthusiast Gilbert Gottfried (1955), actor & director John Turturro, who is most notable for his work in the films of Spike Lee and the Coen brothers (1957), singer-songwriter Cindy Wilson of B-52s fame (1957), Canadian-American actress Rae Dawn Chong of Beat Street, The Color Purple, and Tales from the Dark Side fame (1961), actor Robert Sean Leonard of Dead Poets Society and House fame (1969), actor Rory Cochrane of Dazed and Confused and Empire Records fame (1972), and actress Ali Larter of Varsity Blues, Final Destination, Legally Blonde, and Heroes fame (1976)
Alright, on to the amusing links!
*****
1. 🐍 We don't hate men, we just hate "men."
True story: this video started going viral on TikTok the morning of Saturday 2/17 and we got a bunch of orders for the Female Gaze tee Tess is wearing in it. Yay!
But only for a few hours before TikTok flagged it with a policy violation for being "misleading." Boo!
What made it misleading? Well, we tagged the video with a link to the Female Gaze product listing in our TikTok Shop, and because Tess didn't explicitly mention the shirt she was wearing or tell people that they could buy it in our TikTok Shop they deemed the content "irrelevant" to the product that was tagged. Even though she is talking about gender politics in the video and the shirt featuring the mythical avatar of feminist rage occupies at least 50% of the frame throughout. sO miSLeAdiNg!
Show of hands: who has EVER opened the TikTok app on their phones HOPING it would be a never-ending scroll of "influencers" gushing about how "obsessed" they are with whatever product they're trying to sell like some sort of lo-fi QVC? Anyone? Anyone?!
Truly, this is the stupidest of timelines.
For more LOLs from our team be sure to follow us on our OG social accounts such as Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and/or Facebook. But if you're looking for merch, just buy directly from a brand's website. These social media jabronis don't deserve to get a cut.
2. 🧐 Book recommendations that guarantee business success!
The content creators at Almost Friday TV list five books every "entrapranure" should read. The Scroll of Flesh to Coin sounds riveting!
3. 💸 Inflation is out of control
FlossyBaby accurately depicts my experience every time I check out at the grocery store now.
4. 😼 Cats rule, and councilmen drool!
Content creator Jenn, aka ThatGoodNewsGirl, makes videos highlighting uplifting news stories, so her whole account is worth a follow, but in this one she shares a story about how Browser the library cat got evicted from his job but ultimately was reinstated, much to the chagrin of the cranky cat-hating Texas councilman who initially pushed for Browser's ouster. Huzzah, Browser!
5. ♂️ How to manifest a hostile takeover
Gabe is the apex of alphas. He made gravity his b!†©h! Follow Boredwalk for more empowering knowledge!
*****
We'll be back here in your inbox on Friday with more nonsense holidays to dissect, more notable birthdays (and maybe even some notable deathdays!) to celebrate, and more witty content in general. Until then...
Peace, love, and soufflés pancakes,
Matt
]]>Happy National Invasive Species Awareness Day! Fun fact: every species on this miserable mudball is already acutely aware of the most invasive species of all EXCEPT for the one that is doing the invading! Three guesses as to which one I'm referring to, but I have hunch you'll only need one.
Thank goodness brilliant walking talking viral loads Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are hard at work trying to export the carbon-based cancer that is humanity off-world. It's like they're trying to answer a question no one asked: "What if we took the universe but made it, y'know, significantly worse?"
This guy knows what I'm talking about:
Sure, he was a rogue computer program, but was Mr. Smith actually wrong? I think not.
GIF via The Matrix / Warner Bros. Pictures
*****
We FINALLY have a fun new customer Q&A down below from Julie L., but before we get to that, let's take note of some significant historical happenings and birthdays & deathdays from February 26ths of yore:
• In 1616 astronomer Galileo Galilei was formally banned by the Roman Catholic Church from teaching or defending heliocentrism (the view that Earth orbits the Sun). At the time it was believed that all celestial bodies orbited Earth. Typical Main Character Syndrome, even in the 17th century.
• In 1919 Grand Canyon National Park was established
• Ten years later in 1929 Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming followed suit
• Birthday cake all around for: French author, poet, and playwright Victor Hugo of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and Les Misérables fame (1802), German-American fashion designer Levi Strauss (1829), soldier & hunter William "Buffalo Bill" Cody (1846), surgeon and cereal enthusiast John Harvey Kellogg of corn flake fame (1852), singer-songwriter & pianist Fats Domino (1928), singer-songwriter & guitarist Johnny Cash (1932), singer-songwriter Mitch Ryder (1945), singer and psychotherapist Sandie Shaw of "(There's) Always Something There to Remind Me" fame (1947), singer-songwriter Michael Bolton (1953), Rage Against The Machine & Audioslave bassist Tim Commerford (1968), singer-songwriter, producer, and actress Erykah Badu (1971), and Swedish-American record producer & songwriter Max Martin (1971)
• Pour one out for: Comedy legend Bill Hicks (d. 1994)
*****
OK, scroll on down to learn a bit about fellow Boredwalk fan & customer Julie! If you're feeling even moderately outgoing and would like to be featured in an upcoming Monday email (and are a customer with some Boredwalk tees, tanks, hoodies, towels, bags, books, or Delve Decks to show off), just reply to this and let us know and we'll send you some fun questions!
We'll be back here in your inbox on Wednesday with some more random holidays to observe, historical tidbits to acknowledge, and fun links to entertaining content! Until next time...
Peace, love, and self-awareness,
Matt
*****
Julie looking well-read in her Ban The Fascists Save The Books tee!
1. What's your actual day job and what's your dream day job?
"Darling, I have no dream job, I do not dream of labor!" 😉
(Editor's note: Fair point.)
2. What's your biggest pet peeve?
Slow drivers in the fast lane— keep up or get out of the way!
3. What's a book you think the Boredwalk community should read?
I've been recommending Legends and Lattes a lot recently— If you're a fan of T.J. Klune, you'll probably enjoy this!
4. If you could have any super power what would it be and why?
The ability to manipulate probability. For example: likelihood that I win the mega-millions lottery? 100%, likelihood of stepping in fox poo when I walk my dog in the dark at 5AM? 0%
(Editor's note: This is one of the most creative and unique answers to this question we've ever received. Well done! Not too many Longshot references out there.)
5. You can curse your nemesis with a minor annoyance for eternity; what do you choose?
He would get shocked every time he touched something. Just a constant overload of static electricity.
(Editor's note: Interesting that you went with male pronouns specifically here...)
6. If you could make a mundane wish (meaning, a wish for something seemingly inconsequential that you still believe would benefit you immensely), what would it be for?
I wish foxes didn't poo on sidewalks in areas where there are no streetlights.
(Editor's note: Awfully demanding for an invasive species, but OK.) 🤣
7. What experience do you most want to cross off your bucket list?
I would love to be able to visit every country in the world.
8. What is something you wish you could go back in time and say to your younger self?
I beg you, do not perm your hair! 😩
9. Clear up a misconception (about your job, where you are from, some other topic you know a lot about).
Corsets: the vast majority of women did not tight lace their corsets, and they would very often add padding to the bust and hip areas in order to achieve the popular silhouette at the time. Also, MEN wore corsets too!
10. Where can the rest of the Boredwalk community find you?
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While I think today's random occasion has its heart in the right place, this seems like one of those problems that just isn't going anywhere.*
* See: story this week about non-binary teen Nex Benedict who died after being assaulted by their classmates in a high school restroom.
Sometimes people end up the way you'd expect, though. I googled my middle school bully several years ago and the only thing that came up was her mugshot.
This girl had the build of a linebacker even in the 7th grade and towered over me, tripping me in the hall and doing her best to try to make me miserable. I was entirely too small to do any standing up to her at the time, but it sounds like karma caught up to her eventually. If only karma were on a tighter timeline.
I hope whichever bullies made your life difficult as a kid are having the day they deserve now.
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While you're waiting for your new Boredwalk gear to arrive you can also treat your earholes to the latest episode of the Boredwalk Podcast!
This week Tess and I lamented the soggy L.A. weather reflecting the generally cursed vibe of 2024 thus far. Turns out targeted social media ads and organic content are no help in this regard! Just an endless doom scroll of posts about war-torn Gaza and Ukraine, endangered & neglected animals, and environmental catastrophe. What fun!
This discussion of the present dystopia led to us pondering whether or not we are actually in Hell, and curiosity as to what each of us did in our past lives to warrant such torment.
Fittingly, Tess lightened the mood with a 5-star review of Boredwalk's darkly humorous dystopian activity book Adventures in the Abyss. If you can't leave the hellscape, you may as well laugh at it, right?
Things have been mercifully subdued on the internet troll front, but that is largely to do with social media platform shenanigans on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, which I explain in an exasperated but (hopefully) amusing fashion.
Moving along, Tess read fan responses to our recent Question of the Day "What life experience drastically changed your thinking on something?" and she and I share our own answers. Strap in, because we got deep!
We wrapped things up by trading questions & answers from the Venting and Joy editions of the Delve Deck! First we respond to the query "What is your least favorite home decor trend?" and then close things out with "What have you watched recently that you can't stop recommending?"
Get in on the action and listen to the hilarity on the platform of your choice!
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Here are a few historical tidbits and famous birthdays to kick off your weekend:
• Scientists announced the first successful cloning of an animal on this day in 1997 (this animal is referenced in our 1990s activity book, which you should definitely get if you don't have it yet and want to get nostalgic about the 1990s).
• The Tootsie Roll was introduced on this day in 1896. Thank goodness better candy options have come along since!
Birthday shoutouts for composer George Frideric Handel (1685), activist W.E.B. Du Bois (1868), actor Peter Fonda (1940), singer-songwriter Howard Jones (1955), actress Niecy Nash (1970), actress Emily Blunt (1983), and actress Dakota Fanning (1994)
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OK, that's it for this week!
We'll be back here in your inbox on Monday with another email and FINALLY a fresh customer Q&A! If you'd like to be featured in an upcoming email, reply to this one and let us know!
Peace, love, and karma,
Meredith
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Yeah, we're talking gooey yeasty sticky pastries, perhaps loaded with nuts and maple syrup for good measure. What's not to love?
Our Delve Deck Joy Edition asks what dessert you'll always order if it's on the menu, and some sort of cinnamon roll or sticky bun is at the top of my list. It's a dopamine rush in edible form.
If you could use a little treat to brighten your day, perhaps a Delve Deck Joy Edition or some other fun item from our site, you can get FREE US SHIPPING on any order today with code STICKY at check out.
Want a few interesting historical tidbits and famous birthdays before we get to amusing links to brighten your day? Have at them:
• The peace symbol was designed by Gerald Holtom on this day in 1958. The symbol was commissioned by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and combines the semaphore symbols for the letters N and D - an abbreviation of "Nuclear Disarmament"
• The world's first telephone book was issued in New Haven, Connecticut on this day in 1878. If you are too young to remember telephone books, go ask your parents about these behemoths.
• The New Yorker magazine began publication on this day in 1925
• The first Legend of Zelda game was released on this day in 1986
• Birthday sticky buns all around for: fashion designer Christian Dior (1905), author Erma Bombeck (1927), actress of Golden Girls fame Rue McClanahan (1934), singer-songwriter Nina Simone (1933), actor Alan Rickman (1946), singer-songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter (1958), actress Jennifer Love Hewitt (1979), actor/filmmaker Jordan Peele (1979), and actor Elliott Page (1987)
Alright, on to the main course: amusing links to brighten your day...
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1. 😈️ Can men and women just be friends?
Tess and Gabe from Boredwalk's content team might not think so, but they have some very different reasons why!
For more LOLs from our team be sure to follow us on our OG social accounts such as Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and/or Facebook.
2. 🤖 Watch out for Alexa, she has an agenda
Humorist Emily Morrow imagines the robot uprising we're all dreading/expecting.
3. 💀 Are you attempting to blend in with the human population?
Horror/humor creator Ashur Gharavi has some ideas for you. I have to admit, I was transfixed by Ashur's content and binged all of his videos. If you like super bizarre funny spooky content (and if you're a Boredwalk fan, I bet you do) you'll probably enjoy a lot of his content.
4. 😆 If planet Earth were on a dating app
Humor creator Hila imagines what Earth's dating profile would say to try to get some right swipes.
5. 🧙 Why Terry the gnome finds himself in the corner
Terry isn't getting his gnome bacon due to his dark magic antics. Will he learn his lesson? Doubtful.
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We'll be back here in your inbox on Friday with more nonsense holidays to dissect, more notable birthdays (and maybe even some notable deathdays!) to celebrate, and more witty content in general. Until then...
Peace, love, and pastries,
Meredith
]]>Happy National Pancake Week! If anything could possibly snap me out of the interminable malaise of winter, it would an entire week dedicated to this fluffy, spongy, delicately sweet conveyance for maple syrup.
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However, in case starchy breakfast treats aren't your thing, today is also:
• National Chocolate Mint Day. An infinitely superior flavor pairing to that of chocolate and orange, I'll be celebrating with some After Eights tonight. It's also Girl Scout Cookie season, so Thin Mints are an excellent alternative!
• National Airboat Day. Ugh, seriously?! Hard pass. Anything that is both obnoxiously loud AND designed to put me closer to the mouths of alligators is not to be celebrated.
• National Vet Girls Rock Day. Now we're talking! Thanks to the over 2 million female veterans in the U.S. for their service. Including our dearly departed Bea Arthur! Dorothy the Golden Girl served as a truck driving Staff Sergeant in the Marine Corps during WWII.
February 19th's historical happenings of note:
• In 1847 the first group of rescuers reached the Donner Party. Grisly!
• In 1878 Thomas Edison patented the phonograph. I'm more of a Nikola Tesla stan, but props to Tommy boy for inventing the device that would eventually lead to music in my earballs.
• In 1963 Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique was published, contributing to the reawakening of the feminist movement in the United States.
• Birthday pancakes and/or chocolate mints all around for: Actor Lee Marvin of The Wild One and The Dirty Dozen fame (1924), singer-songwriter & producer Smokey Robinson of Motown hit-making fame (1940), singer-songwriter and Smokey's partner in The Miracles Bobby Rogers (1940), English guitarist & songwriter Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath fame (1948), novelist Amy Tan of The Joy Luck Club fame (1952), actor & playwright Jeff Daniels of Dumb & Dumber fame (1955), English singer-songwriter & guitarist Dave Wakeling of new wave luminaries The (English) Beat and General Public (1956), Austrian musician Falco of "Rock Me Amadeus" fame (1957), English author & Screenwriter Helen Fielding of Bridget Jones's Diary fame (1958), actor Leslie David Baker, aka Stanley on The Office (1958), English keyboardist Steve Nieve of Elvis Costello's backing band The Attractions (1958), English singer-songwriter Seal of "Crazy" and "Kiss From a Rose" fame (1963), actress Justine Bateman of Family Ties fame (1966), Puerto Rican actor & filmmaker Benicio del Toro (1967), singer-songwriter Beth Ditto of The Gossip (1981), and English actress Millie Bobby Brown of Stranger Things fame (2004)
• Pour one out for: Jazz trumpeter & composer Lee Morgan (d. 1972), Scottish-Australian singer-songwriter Bon Scott of AC/DC (d. 1980), actor, producer, and screenwriter Harris Wittels of Parks and Recreation and Comedy Bang! Bang! fame (d. 2015), Italian novelist Umberto Eco (d. 2016), and author Harper Lee of To Kill a Mockingbird fame (d. 2016)
OK, no new customer Q&A this week, unfortunately! If you're feeling even moderately outgoing and would like to be featured in an upcoming Monday email (and are a customer with some Boredwalk tees, tanks, hoodies, towels, bags, books, or Delve Decks to show off), just reply to this and let us know and we'll send you some fun questions!
We'll be back here in your inbox on Wednesday with some more random holidays to observe, historical tidbits to acknowledge, and fun links to entertaining content! Until next time...
Peace, love, and pancakes,
Matt
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Today's random occasion is Do-A-Grouch-A-Favor Day which encourages you to do something nice for someone grumpy.
I am often grumpy and would LOVE for the universe to do ME a favor and stop making everything terrible. If you are also prone to misfortune and the attendant crankiness that comes with it, I hope the universe cuts you some slack today.
*****
While you're waiting for your new Boredwalk gear to arrive you can also treat your earholes to the latest episode of the Boredwalk Podcast!
This week Meredith & Tess revel in Taylor Swift's ruination of the Super Bowl for fragile men!
Tess then plots what she is going to do with the preposterous amount of grapefruit her partner Trevor was scammed into purchasing by his ex-coworker's child. Meredith is dealing with the same issue, but with lemons, and instead of an annoying child it is Mother Nature herself doing the scamming by virtue of the lemon tree in her yard.
Moving on, Tess reads a nice review from a customer raving about her Lurk Laugh Loathe hoodie. Yay! However, then we get a visit from the land of trolls — always an interesting peek into the psyches of idiots.
Tess then reads fan responses to the recent Question of the Day "What do people often wrongly assume about you?" before providing her own answers. That's right, answers plural! Tess contains multitudes! Meredith chimes in with her own. Interestingly, both of their answers deal with their respective heights and the assumptions people make based on their size!
They wrap up by trading answers to the Delve Deck questions "where is the most annoying place to go?" and "if you could wave a magic wand and make something more popular, what would you choose?"
Get in on the action and listen to the hilarity on the platform of your choice!
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Alright, this is normally the part of the email where I tell you about interesting historical facts and famous birthdays, but February 16th has slim pickings, unless you think it's riveting that on this day in 1861 Abraham Lincoln thanked an 11 year old girl for advising him to grow a beard to gain more votes.*
* Okay I guess that's mildly interesting. I didn't know he didn't always have that beard or that he grew it at the behest of an 11 year old to gain votes. I assumed he was born with a beard and that 11 year olds were too busy working in coal mines to be political consultants in the 19th century.
Birthday shoutouts for Reading Rainbow host LeVar Burton (1957), rapper Ice-T (1958), tennis player John McEnroe (1959), who is only getting a shoutout for his involvement in the TV series Never Have I Ever** because I don't care about tennis, and rapper/vowel hater*** The Weeknd (1990)
** Never Have I Ever is an endearing coming of age show about an Indian-American teenage girl on Netflix that is totally worth watching if you want a reasonably funny cute sit-com to watch that feels more cable than network TV.
*** I assume he hates vowels since he excised one from his name. I guess he had his fill of the letter E and figured we'd all just deal with it, and we have, so good on him I guess.
OK, that's it for this week!
We'll be back here in your inbox on Monday with another email and maybe a fresh customer Q&A! If you'd like to be featured in an upcoming email reply to this and let us know!
Peace, love, and grouching,
Meredith
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Halloween was months ago and we've been steadfast in sticking to our New Year's resolutions (right?!), so it's obviously time for a fresh sugar buzz for all of us. Valentine's Day to the rescue! While you're busy scarfing down fancy chocolates today, here's some savings to wash down those treats.
Today and TODAY ONLY take 14% off your order with code VDAY14 at check out.
This is what would happen if I got a job at a chocolate factory.
GIF courtesy of CBS / I Love Lucy
Want a few interesting historical tidbits and famous birthdays before we get to amusing links to brighten your day? Here's a few:
• The first photograph of a US President — specifically James Polk — was taken in Washington, DC on this day in 1849
• The original Dracula film starring Bela Lugosi as the titular vampire premiered on this day in 1931
• Arizona was admitted as the 48th state of the United States on this day in 1912
• Youtube.com was launched on this day in 2005
• Birthday chocolate all around for: African-American abolitionist, lecturer, and editor Frederick Douglass (1818), actress Florence Henderson of The Brady Bunch fame (1934), reporter/Watergate sleuth Carl Bernstein (1944), illusionist Teller of Penn & Teller fame (1948), actress Meg Tilly of Psycho II and The Big Chill fame (1960), actor Simon Pegg of Shaun of the Dead fame (1970), singer-songwriter Rob Thomas of Matchbox 20 fame (1972), and actor Freddie Highmore of Bates Motel fame (1992; who knew Valentine's Day was so big in the Psycho canon?)
Alright, on to the main course: amusing links to brighten your day...
*****
1. ❤️️ What's in and out for Valentine's Day 2024
Tess from Boredwalk's content team is doing some trend forecasting for V-Day 2024, and it's as wickedly funny as you'd expect. Be sure to comment and let her know if you agree!
For more LOLs from our team be sure to follow us on our OG social accounts such as Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and/or Facebook.
Humorist Elle Cordova imagines what the fonts are thinking when Calibri gets demoted.
3. 😹 This kitty is hangry and indiscriminate
Ever seen a big orange cat aggressively devouring cucumber? You're about to! Reminds me of something my dearly departed big orange cat Bigby would do; that guy would've eaten literally anything. Turn sound on to get the full effect of this cat's weirdo grumbles and munching sound effects.
4. 😆 When trying to help a stranger takes a turn
This sketch about getting in the car with strangers has more twists than a pretzel, enjoy!
5. 🐈 Delightfully wholesome minimalist comic about life with a cat
Here's a sweet little comic about caring for a cat by indie artist iamsitting.
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We'll be back here in your inbox on Friday with more nonsense holidays to dissect, more notable birthdays (and maybe even some notable deathdays!) to celebrate, and more witty content in general. Until then...
Peace, love, and sweets,
Meredith
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Chin up, Niners fans! There's always next year! If nothing else, you can now give your full attention to the Warriors and the Giants until September. So, uh... y'know... shake it off. (Too soon?)
And congrats, Chiefs fans! The Taylor Swift Conspiracy worked exactly as planned! I hope she and Travis enjoy their much deserved trip to Disney World/Land/Census Designated Place. They've earned it!
Every weird misogynist that's been suffering from TDS (Taylor Derangement Syndrome) for the last several months, probably.
GIF via NBC / The Office
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Two things to celebrate today as you recover from your Super Bowl hangover (yeah, I SAID IT! Screw your "big game" nonsense, Goodell! Come at me!):
• National Freedom To Marry Day, which celebrates the day in 2004 when then-mayor Gavin Newsom directed the city of San Francisco to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples
• National Plum Pudding Day, because who doesn't want to celebrate bizarrely named English desserts full of fruits other than actual plums?
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Alright! Let's kick off the week with a few famous February 12th historical events and notable birthdays:
• In 1733 James Oglethorpe founded Georgia, the 13th of the original colonies that would eventually become the United States, when he settled at Savannah
• In 1909 the NAACP was founded
• Birthday plum pudding all around for: English geologist and theorist Charles Darwin (1809), lawyer and 16th President of the United States Abraham Lincoln (1809), French engineer, businessman, and automobile manufacturer Louis Renault (1877), NBA legend Bill Russell (1934), author & educator Judy Blume (1938), singer-songwriter & keyboard player Ray Manzarek of The Doors (1939), computer scientist, engineer, and futurist Ray Kurzweil (1948), actor & talk show host Arsenio Hall (1956), actor Josh Brolin of The Goonies fame (1968), singer Chynna Phillips of Wilson Phillips fame (1968), filmmaker Darren Aronofsky of Pi, Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler, and Black Swan fame (1969), rapper Gucci Mane (1980), and actress Christina Ricci (1980)
*****
OK, no new customer Q&A this week, unfortunately! If you're feeling even moderately outgoing and would like to be featured in an upcoming Monday email (and are a customer with some Boredwalk tees, tanks, hoodies, towels, bags, books, or Delve Decks to show off), just reply to this and let us know and we'll send you some fun questions!
We'll be back here in your inbox on Wednesday with some more random holidays to observe, historical tidbits to acknowledge, and fun links to entertaining content! Until next time...
Peace, love, and plum pudding,
Matt
Here's hoping you have a bullshirt-free weekend! I myself have been dealing with entirely too much bullshirt since the start of this cursed year, so hopefully a respite is nearly at hand for me, too.
In case you were not aware, there are some random holidays being observed today!
First up is National Cut The Cord Day, which seemed more worthy of celebration in the previous decade before every major Hollywood studio decided to slap a "+" after their name and charge $10/mo to watch things we've already seen dozens, if not hundreds, of times.
Remember when the streaming space was basically just Netflix, Hulu, and something-something Prime? Virtually everything ever filmed was available between those three platforms for like $20/mo.
Now we're back to paying cable prices to access the same amount of content, with the added inconvenience of having to login to each service with a strong password comprised of a billion weird characters using a single-button remote. By the time you're logged in, you've forgotten what you wanted to watch in the first place! Isn't modern living fun?!
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Don't worry, though — today is also National Pizza Day! Callooh, callay!
It's also National Toothache Day, which honestly is very much a bummer, so if one arises I plan to just rub some pizza on it and see if that helps.
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While you're waiting for your new Boredwalk gear to arrive you can also treat your earholes to the latest episode of the Boredwalk Podcast!
This week Meredith & Tess pay tribute to the insect mass grave that keeps appearing in the same spot in our recording studio each week. This sparks debate on whether the cause is scientific or supernatural in origin. Opinions are split!
Tess then shares a review of Boredwalk's Good Company guest book, which sparks a discussion about marketing fails. This leads into a fun dissection of recent troll comments — delightful!
They then react to fan response to the recent Question of the Day "what is your favorite emotion?" before sharing their own answers.
The episode wraps up with a rant from Tess about commercial audition requirements before she and Meredith trade answers to questions from the Delve Deck Venting and Joy Editions: "What ruined an enjoyable hobby for you?" and "what is your favorite memory?"
Meredith talks about the conundrum of being a feminist horror fan, and Tess reveals her best concert-going experience ever — and it shockingly was NOT opening night of Taylor Swift's Eras tour! Tap here to listen to all of the things!
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Alright! Let's send you off into the weekend with some notable events and famous birthdays from February 9ths of yore! If that includes yours, happy birthday to you!
• In 1942 year-round Daylight saving time (i.e., the summer one) was reinstated in the U.S. as a wartime measure to help conserve energy resources.
Reinstated?! You mean this was just the normal, sane way we lived, we got rid of it, brought it back, and then got rid of it again?
Look, I get that there are some people that enjoy living like Morlocks in the dank, depressing clutches of standard time so they can get their precious "extra" hour of sleep, but they're like the folks who love Hawaiian pizza: I acknowledge that they exist and are entitled to their terrible opinions, but I prefer that they just keep it to themselves so the rest of us can continue moving society forward. Down with standard time! Do it for the environment! #DST4life
• In 1961 The Beatles — performing as "Lunchtime" — gave their first performance at Liverpool's Cavern Club following their return from Hamburg.
• In 1964 The Beatles — them again! — made their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, performing to a then-record setting audience of 73 million viewers across the U.S.
• In 1971 Satchel Paige became the first Negro league player to be voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame
• Birthday pizza all around — even Hawaiian, if they insist — for: English-American philosopher, author, and activist Thomas Paine of Common Sense fame (1737), Peruvian-American artist Alberto Vargas of pin-up painting fame (1896), Portuguese-Brazilian entertainer and large hat enthusiast Carmen Miranda (1909), renowned sci-fi & fantasy artist Frank Frazetta of Fire & Ice fame (1928), singer-songwriter Carole King of Tapestry fame (1942), actor Joe Pesci of Raging Bull, Goodfellas, and Home Alone fame (1943), novelist Alice Walker of The Color Purple fame (1944), actress Mia Farrow of Rosemary's Baby fame (1945), actress Judith Light of Who's The Boss? and Transparent fame (1949), English singer-songwriter & bassist Holly Johnson of Frankie Goes to Hollywood fame (1960), journalist, screenwriter, and TV producer David Simon of The Wire fame (1960), actor, producer, and screenwriter Charlie Day of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia fame (1976), English actor Tom Hiddleston (1981), and actor Michael B. Jordan of Creed, The Wire, and Black Panther fame (1987)
• Pour one out for: Singer-songwriter & guitarist Bill Haley of "Rock Around The Clock", "See You Later, Alligator", and "Shake, Rattle, and Roll" fame (d. 1981), Frisbee inventor Walter Frederick Morrison (d. 2010), and jazz composer Chick Corea (d. 2021)
*****
OK, that's it for this week! Meredith and I are extremely eager to get back to working on new art and other products for you, but other more tedious and less fun aspects of running Boredwalk are preventing us from doing so. Soon! (We hope.)
We'll be back here in your inbox on Monday with another email and maybe a fresh customer Q&A! If you'd like to be featured in an upcoming email reply to this and let us know!
Peace, love, and less bullshirt,
]]>
Happy National Girls and Women in Sports Day! Fitting that this is mere days away from Caitlin Clark breaking the all-time women's college basketball scoring record! Something else sportsball related is happening this weekend, but it escapes me...
Before we get to today's sweet link roundup, let's acknowledge some notable events and birthdays from February 7ths of yore! If today happens to be YOUR birthday, I hope it's a happy one full of celebratory delights!
• In 1497 Florentine supporters of ascetic Dominican friar and noted buzzkill Girolamo Savonarola burned cosmetics, art, and books in a "bonfire of the vanities." This is why we can't have nice things: religious weirdos are always setting fire to our coolest stuff — books, art, music, witches, etc.!
• In 1992 the Maastricht Treaty was signed, leading to the creation of the European Union. Only took a few thousand years for them to learn the lesson "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em!"
• In 2013 Mississippi officially certified the 13th Amendment, becoming the last U.S. state to approve the abolition of slavery. Yikes. Better late than never, I guess? But also: woof. Do better, Mississippi.
• Birthday cake all around for: English lawyer & philosopher Sir Thomas More of Utopia fame (1478), blacksmith, businessman, and plowing enthusiast John Deere of riding lawn mower fame (1804), English novelist & critic Charles Dickens of "look, you know the books, I'm not listing them all here" fame (1812), author and prairie enthusiast Laura Ingalls Wilder of "look, you know the books, I'm not listing them all here" fame (1867), Irish shipbuilder Thomas Andrews of RMS Titanic fame/infamy (1873), actor/80s teen movie villain James Spader (1960), singer-songwriter, guitarist, and friend of people in low places Garth Brooks (1962), English comedian, actress, and producer Suzy Izzard (1962), actor, comedian, and filmmaker Chris Rock (1965), rapper & producer J Dilla (1974), actress Tina Majorino of Napoleon Dynamite and Veronica Mars fame (1985), and actress Deborah Ann Woll of True Blood and Daredevil fame (1985)
• Pour one out for: Jazz singer & pianist Blossom Dearie (d. 2009), and Major League Baseball Hall of Fame outfielder, manager, and 2-time World Series champion Frank Robinson (d. 2019)
The way Boredwalk's year is going, you'd think Thomas Andrews built our company, too.
GIF courtesy of Titanic / Paramount Pictures
Now on to the amusing links!
*****
1. 🛋️ Boundaries? Those are the things made to be broken, right?
The doctor is in... and he has had about enough of our bull****!
We were VERY pleased to have our friend Ky stop by Boredwalk HQ last week to shoot some content! Be sure to give him a like, a follow, and watch ALL of the things wherever you consume content. Links to all of @TheVibeWithKy's social accounts can be found here.
For more LOLs from our team be sure to follow us on our OG social accounts such as Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and/or Facebook.
2. 🏰 Disney never seemed so sinister!
Voice actor & content creator Lucas pulls back the curtain to show us what REALLY happens during pitch meetings at Disney.
3. 😹 When positive feelings are too intense...
... you may be suffering from cute aggression! YouTuber Anthony Vincent will explain.
4. 😟 Self-checkout stressing you out?
Voice actor Tawny Platis has just what you need to get through this harrowing ordeal.
5. 🥣 Trader Joe's is the best!
Sketch comic and content creator Davie Bailsig breaks it all down for us! (Just don't mention the cereal. Or the parking.)
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WE HAVE JUST THE SOLUTION FOR YOU
Happy Rain-ageddon from soggy Los Angeles! I have to imagine that after getting pummeled by "atmospheric rivers" for two consecutive winters, any southern Californian who interacts with singer-songwriter Albert Hammond, Sr. would accuse him of selling us all a false bill of goods. It most certainly DOES rain in southern California.
Thankfully our office is slightly elevated, so we should be dry enough to continue printing shirts and packing up orders without issue, but as the shirt up top says, maybe worrying about it will help? Seems like sound advice, so I'll be fretting my way slowly down the 605 this morning in case anyone needs to get ahold of me.
No, this is not Albert Hammond, Sr. of "It Never Rains In Southern California" fame. It is his son Albert Hammond, Jr. of Strokes and solo career fame, which is the closest Albert Hammond in GIF form I could get. They look pretty similar, though, so this'll do in a pinch.
GIF via Red Bull Records (because apparently Red Bull also gives you record contracts in addition to wings)
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We have quite a smorgasbord of random occasions to observe today, so let's get celebrating! It is:
• International Clash Day (the English punk band, not a celebration of geo-political conflict)
• Disaster Day (if this rain keeps up that's exactly what we'll have here in SoCal!)
• National Chocolate Fondue Day
• National Fart Day
• National Shower With A Friend Day
I imagine eating too much chocolate fondue could lead to farts, which could lead to a disastrous clash with your bestie if you let one rip while showering together, so, uh, eat wisely I guess?
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Alright! Let's kick off the week with a few famous February 5th historical events and notable birthdays:
• In 1907 Belgian chemist Leo Baekeland announced the creation of Bakelite, the world's first synthetic plastic. Vintage household items made of Bakelite have since become popular collectibles.
• In 1919 actors & filmmakers Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith launched the production and distribution company United Artists
• In 1971 NASA's Apollo 14 mission completed a landing of a crew of astronauts in the lunar highlands
• Birthday chocolate all around for: Beat Generation novelist & essayist William S. Burroughs (1914), famed session drummer Hal Blaine, who played on 150 U.S. Top 10 hits and 40 #1 hits (1929), baseball Hall of Famer Henry "Hammerin' Hank" Aaron (1934), Swiss artist H.R. Giger of Alien film franchise and Danzig and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer album cover fame (1940), singer-songwriter & pianist Barrett Strong of "Money (That's What I Want)" fame, among many others (1941), Atari, Inc. and Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre founder Nolan Bushnell (1943), English actress Charlotte Rampling (1946), engineer & astronaut Mary L. Cleave (1947), actor & filmmaker Christopher Guest of This Is Spinal Tap, The Princess Bride, Best In Show, A Mighty Wind, and Waiting for Guffman fame (1948), English actor Tom Wilkinson of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Batman Begins fame (1948), actor & screenwriter Tim Meadows of Saturday Night Live, The Ladies Man, and Mean Girls fame (1961), actress & filmmaker Jennifer Jason Leigh of Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Single White Female, Backdraft, and Weeds fame (1962), actress Laura Linney of The Truman Show, The Big C, Love Actually, and Ozark fame (1964), bassist & singer-songwriter Duff McKagan of Guns n' Roses and Velvet Revolver fame (1964), actor & comedian Chris Parnell of Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock fame (1967), Puerto Rican-American baseball Hall of Fame second baseman Roberto Alomar (1968), singer-songwriter Bobby Brown of New Edition and solo career fame (1969), Welsh actor & director Michael Sheen of Underworld and Twilight film franchise and Masters of Sex fame (1969), and programmer and creator of LiveJournal Brad Fitzpatrick (1980)
• Pour one out for: Actor and inspiration for The Simpsons' Troy McClure Doug McClure (d. 1995). You may remember him from such TV shows as The Virginian and Out of This World and such films as Gidget, At the Earth's Core, The Land That Time Forgot, The People The Time Forgot, and Warlords of Atlantis.
Also pour one out for actor Kirk Douglas of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Spartacus, The Fury, The Man from Snowy River, and The Final Countdown fame (d. 2020), and Canadian actor Christopher Plummer of The Sound of Music, Starcrash, Somewhere in Time, Dragnet, and An American Tail fame (d. 2021)
*****
OK, no new customer Q&A this week, unfortunately! If you're feeling even moderately outgoing and would like to be featured in an upcoming Monday email (and are a customer with some Boredwalk tees, tanks, hoodies, towels, bags, books, or Delve Decks to show off), just reply to this and let us know and we'll send you some fun questions!
We'll be back here in your inbox on Wednesday with some more random holidays to observe, historical tidbits to acknowledge, and fun links to entertaining content! Until next time...
Peace, love, and melted chocolate,
Matt
]]>IT'S GONNA BE COLD, IT'S GONNA BE GREY, AND IT'S — EH, YOU GET IT.
Happy Groundhog Day! I have it on good authority that our prognosticating pal Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow up on Gobbler's Knob this morning (regardless of what the internet claims), so prepare to enjoy another 6 infinities of misery!
Our other friend Phil — a prognosticator of weather — has the forecast for us! What say you, Phil?
Same as it ever was!
Forgive my exhaustion with existence, but I'm writing this after 75+ minutes on chat support with "Miguel" over at Meta to figure out why their vaunted algorithm elected to replace our Facebook & Instagram Shop banner that was something normal — like, y'know, a product photo — with a generic sizing chart graphic.
Miguel's answer? "Who can say why robots do the things they do?"
You're right, Miguel! Clearly not me! Clearly not you! Clearly not even Zuck. He's FAR too busy kickboxing some lackey in the face on a private beach in Hawaii to worry himself with petty human concerns like making sure his $120 BILLION dollar product works properly for his paying customers like some jabroni at Boredwalk (aka me)!
Anyway, enough of my whining about all my terrible life decisions!
Moving on to other topics...Happy National Catchers Day! We are a mere week away from when pitchers and catchers begin reporting to their various Spring Training facilities, and right now baseball season is pretty much the ONLY thing I have to look forward to, so huzzah to you, catchers!
My favorite factoid about catchers is that their equipment is derisively nicknamed "the tools of ignorance," in reference to the irony that a player with the intelligence to be effective at his job behind the plate would be foolish enough to play a position requiring so much safety gear.
]]>
Happy National Hot Chocolate Day! And if you're of the opinion that candy is dandy but liquor is quicker, Happy Brandy Alexander Day!
Fun fact: the Brandy Alexander was John Lennon's favorite tipple, and his carousing pal Harry Nilsson is who introduced them to him!
It is also Eat Your Brussels Sprouts Day, if that interests you, I guess.
Before we get to today's sweet link roundup, let's acknowledge some notable events and birthdays from January 31sts of yore! If today happens to be YOUR birthday, I hope it is a happy one full of chocolatey delights! (Unless you are allergic, in which case I hope it is full of some OTHER, secret delight of your choosing.)
• On this day in 1988 Doug Williams became the first Black quarterback to play in a Super Bowl, as he led my hometown Washington Commanders to victory over the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XXII. I was only a tyke at the time, but I remember being pretty stoked about this.
• Birthday hot chocolate all around for: Dentist and Western novelist Zane Grey of Riders of the Purple Sage fame (1872), baseball icon and Hall of Fame second baseman Jackie Robinson (1919), actress, singer, and dancer Carol Channing of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Hello, Dolly! fame (1921), journalist & author Norman Mailer (1923), Chicago Cubs Hall of Fame infielder Ernie "Let's play two!" Banks (1931), singer-songwriter Harry Wayne Casey of disco luminaries K.C. and the Sunshine Band (1951), English singer-songwriter John Lydon of the Sex Pistols and Public Image, Ltd. (1956), Scottish author & screenwriter Grant Morrison of The Invisibles fame (1960), English singer-songwriter & guitarist Lloyd Cole (1961), English singer-songwriter & actress Minnie Driver of Good Will Hunting, Grosse Pointe Blank, and The Riches fame (1970), actress Kerry Washington of Scandal fame (1977), and singer-songwriter & actor Justin Timberlake of gaslighting Britney fame (1981)
• Pour out a Brandy Alexander for: English conspirator and mask inspiration Guy Fawkes (d. 1606), English author, poet, and playwright A.A. Milne of Winnie-the-Pooh fame (d. 1956), and Motown composer & songwriter Anna Gordy Gaye (d. 2014)
Look, the mask that bears his name is cool an' all, but let's not forget that this stylish edgelord was really just a religious zealot who was executed for trying to replace Protestant King James with his 9-year old daughter Elizabeth and then force her to marry some crusty old Catholic dude of his choosing. Smells like textbook patriarchal establishmentarianism to me!
GIF courtesy of V for Vendetta / Warner Bros. Pictures
Now on to the amusing links!
*****
1. 🧙🏼♀️ Tess has a fever...
...and the only prescription is moving to a secluded castle in the forest!
For more LOLs from our team be sure to follow us on our OG social accounts such as Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and/or Facebook.
2. 🐶 Cute dog! Is it a charcuterie?
Matt Conaghan is a freshly minted thousandaire, and he is here to brag about his recent windfall!
3. 🍝 When you're here, you're miserable!
Actor & comedian Chaz May portrays a day in the life of an Olive Garden patron.
Comedy creator Tyler Bender walks us through the next diet craze that will be sweeping the nation: Red 40 maxing!
5. 🦙 Boyfriend trouble? Replace him with a llama!
Next time the pocket-hoarding man in your life gives you grief about carrying your stuff, just remind him how replaceable he is.
*****
We'll be back here in your inbox on Friday with more nonsense holidays to dissect, more notable birthdays (and maybe even some notable deathdays!) to celebrate, and more witty content in general. Until then...
Did you know solving puzzles is actually good for you? Solving puzzles fosters a sense of accomplishment, releasing dopamine in your brain, which makes you feel happier. Plus, solving puzzles stimulates your brain, improving memory, cognitive function, and problem solving skills in the process.
That makes today a perfect occasion to get our adult activity books, Adventures in the Abyss or Whatever! Both books are loaded with logic puzzles, crossword puzzles, word searches, math puzzles, cryptograms, mazes, word jumbles, coloring pages, and more!
(If you're not in the mood to celebrate puzzles you could also celebrate Curmudgeons Day and Freethinkers Day.)
Wow, okay, Valentine's Day is next month, but if you do need Valentine's Day gift ideas, check out the Delve Decks! Couples that have been together for decades tell us playing with them makes them feel like they're dating again. How romantic, we love to see it!
GIF via Giphy
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Alright! Let's kick off the week with a few famous January 29th historical events and notable birthdays:
• Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" was published in the New York Evening Mirror on this day in 1845
• Kansas became the 34th US state on this day in 1861
• The Coca-Cola Company incorporated in Atlanta, Georgia on this day in 1892
• The Rubik’s Cube made its international debut at the Ideal Toy Corp. in Earl’s Court, London on this day in 1980
• Birthday cake all around for: writer/philosopher Thomas Paine of Common Sense pamphlet fame (1737), 25th US President William McKinley (1843), Russian author & playwright Anton Chekhov of "Chekhov's gun" literary device fame (1860), actor W.C. Fields (1880), actor John Forsythe of Charlie's Angels and Dynasty fame (1918), actor Tom Selleck of Magnum P.I. fame (1945), talk show host/actress Oprah Winfrey (1954), writer/director Edward Burns (1968), actress Heather Graham (1970), and actress Sara Gilbert (1975)
*****
OK, no new customer Q&A this week, unfortunately! If you're feeling even moderately outgoing and would like to be featured in an upcoming Monday email (and are a customer with some Boredwalk tees, tanks, hoodies, towels, bags, books, or Delve Decks to show off), just reply to this and let us know and we'll send you some fun questions!
We'll be back here in your inbox on Wednesday with some more random holidays to observe, historical tidbits to acknowledge, and fun links to entertaining content! Until next time...
Peace, love, and puzzles,
Meredith
]]>Well, we are now almost a full month into 2024, and I have to say that so far I am in agreement with our striped friend up top — thoroughly unimpressed.
So far this year:
• Our office has been broken into and burglarized (twice! In the same night!)
• Two adult men in their 50s decided to pause their high-speed chase through my suburban neighborhood over a minor fender bender and beat each other to a pulp in my (now blood-stained) driveway while I was attempting to park my car and get the foster kitten I was bringing home from spay surgery inside to recuperate.
• Boredwalk's sales have been in the toilet except for the (admittedly very excellent and hilarious) activity books for adults that we have struggled to advertise effectively for almost two years until a few weeks ago thanks to an ad that doesn't even feature pictures of said books, because why not?
• One of the aforementioned adult pugilists showed up yesterday morning and blocked our driveway (again) as Boredwalk co-founder Meredith and I were leaving for work in an effort to intimidate me into giving him nonexistent video footage of his earlier crimes that he was convinced would exonerate him in his upcoming assault and battery trial, forcing us to call 911 for the second time in 10 days.
So yeah. 2024: off to an inauspicious start!
I wish I could, Liz Lemon, but I have 11 more months of this nonsense to look forward to!
Who knows what fresh Hell February will bring!?!
Moving on to other topics...Happy National Green Juice Day, I guess? Woof, January 26th — you are not helping at all
The only "green juice" I am remotely interested in drinking is a glass of melted mint chocolate chip ice cream, and even then I'd have to think long and hard about what I'm about to swallow.*
* I know a lot of creeps reading this just giggled like a middle schooler, hit "reply," and started typing "that's what she..." Stop. Please don't. You're better than that. Get your mind out of the gutter!
Today is also National Peanut Brittle Day, which on the surface may sound marginally better than Green Juice Day, but honestly, this low-key seems like a scheme Big Dentistry cooked up to sell more crowns and fillings during a slow month. Don't fall for their tricks!
Finally, today is also National Fun At Work Day, but I think we've established that is not happening here at Boredwalk this year, so let's just move on...
*****
While you're waiting for your new Boredwalk gear to arrive you can also treat your earholes to the latest episode of the Boredwalk Podcast! Click here to listen on your favorite podcasting platform!
This week Meredith and Tess discuss unhinged people who steal other artists' work only to claim THEY are the aggrieved party. It happens way more often than you might think!
Next up is a dispatch from the land of trolls, which is never a dull moment! A special twist this week is their professed concern for our souls, which seems both well-meaning but also invasive and judgmental.
This week's Question of the Day was "which song immediately transports you back to a happy time of your life?" Lots of fun answers from Boredwalk's Instagram & Facebook followers that run the gamut!
They wrap up the episode by trading answers to the questions "what are you too hard on yourself about?" from the Delve Deck: Venting Edition, and "what are you most thankful you learned as a kid?" from the Delve Deck: Joy Edition. Listen to hear their answers!
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Alright! Let's send you off into the weekend with some notable events and famous birthdays from January 26ths of yore! If that includes yours, happy birthday to you!
• In 1837 Michigan was admitted into the union as the 26th U.S. state
• In 1870 my home state of Virginia was RE-admitted into the union following its regrettable choices in 1861
• In 1915 lovely Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado was established by the U.S. Congress. Nice lay-up there, Congress!
• Birthday peanut brittle all around for: Austrian-American singer, unsolvable problem, and inspiration for the musical The Sound of Music Maria von Trapp (1905), activist, filmmaker, salad dressing enthusiast, and damn handsome actor Paul Newman (1925), mediocre baseball player, humorous TV dad, great sportscaster, and legendary beer pitch man Bob Uecker (1934), Marvel Comics illustrator Sal Buscema (1936), activist, author, and academic Angela Davis (1944), film critic and thumb aficionado Gene Siskel (1946), bassist & singer-songwriter Andy Hummel of influential power-poppers Big Star (1951), singer-songwriter & guitarist Lucinda Williams (1953), Dutch-American songwriter and guitar god Eddie Van Halen (1955), "Quiet Storm" singer-songwriter Anita Baker (1958), Canadian hockey icon Wayne "The Great One" Gretzky (1961), and English singer-songwriter & guitarist Andrew Ridgeley of Wham! fame (1963)
• Definitely pour out ALL the green juice (because it is gross) for: Chewing gum industrialist William Wrigley, Jr. (d. 1932), hardboiled Romanian-American actor Edward G. Robinson (d. 1973), country music singer-songwriter & guitarist Charlie Louvin (d. 2011), actor Abe Vigoda of The Godfather, Barney Miller, and Joe Versus The Volcano fame (d. 2016), and Los Angeles Lakers icon Kobe Bryant (d. 2020)
*****
OK, that's it for this week! I promise that Meredith and I are extremely eager to get back to working on new art and other products for you, but as you can imagine from the listicle of misery up top, design time has been hard to come by this month.
We'll be back here in your inbox on Monday with another email and maybe a fresh customer Q&A! If you'd like to be featured in an upcoming email reply to this and let us know!
Peace, love, and crossed fingers that things settle down,
Matt
]]>Happy National Compliment Day! Compliments?! Ew, gross. Keep that anxiety fuel to yourself.
All is not lost, though! Today is also National Peanut Butter Day — huzzah! One of my favorite ways to stuff down the anxiety and discomfort I reflexively feel when complimented is to pile as many peanut butter cups on top of it as possible, so I guess we'll call January 24th a win-win for ol' Matty boy?
Before we get to today's sweet link roundup, let's acknowledge some notable events and birthdays from January 24ths of yore! If today happens to be YOUR birthday, I hope it is a happy one full of peanut buttery delights! (Unless you are allergic, in which case I hope it is full of some OTHER, secret delight of your choosing.)
• In 1908 the first Boy Scout troop was organized in England by Robert Baden-Powell
• In 1933 the 20th Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified, changing the beginning and end of terms for elected federal offices
• In 1935 the Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company began selling the first canned beer, and 89 years later sent me on a wild goose chase to find a humorous GIF featuring (presumable) co-founders Gilbert and Freddy toasting to their brewing acumen. (Oddly specific, yes, but also this seems like something that definitely could have happened in the 80s or 90s and been caught on film — two entertainment icons at their cultural peak relaxing with some cold ones?)
Well, yeah, but...have you tried his canned beer?
GIF courtesy of A Nightmare on Elm Street / New Line Cinema
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Birthday compliments (if you must) and peanut butter cups all around for:
• Prussian king Frederick the Great (1712), who must not have been that awesome since his country no longer exists
• Novelist Edith Wharton of The Age of Innocence, Ethan Frome, and The House of Mirth fame (1862)
• Actor Ernest Borgnine of McHale's Navy, The Black Hole, Escape from New York, The Dirty Dozen, The Wild Bunch, The Poseidon Adventure, and The Devil's Rain fame (1917)
• Singer-songwriter & guitarist Neil Diamond of "Sweet Caroline", "Forever In Blue Jeans", Midnight Mass, and Saving Silverman fame (1941)
• Soul singer Aaron Neville of "Tell It Like It Is" and "Everybody Plays the Fool" fame (1941)
• Singer-songwriter Warren Zevon of "Werewolves of London" fame (1947)
• Actor, screenwriter, and comedy legend John Belushi of Saturday Night Live, Animal House, and The Blues Brothers fame (1949)
• Ukrainian-American comedian & actor Yakov Smirnoff (1951). Fun fact about Yakov: when he first moved to Los Angeles to pursue comedy he lived with two roommates who were also struggling aspiring entertainers — Andrew Dice Clay and Thomas F. Wilson (Biff of Back to the Future trilogy fame). Why no producers have made a show about this living arrangement has baffled me ever since I learned about it over a decade ago.
• English singer-songwriter, pianist, and TV presenter Jools Holland (1958)
• Actor, comedian, screenwriter, and voice actor Phil LaMarr of MadTV, Futurama, and DC animated universe fame (1967)
• Olympic gold medal winning gymnast Mary Lou Retton (1968)
• Actor Matthew Lillard of Serial Mom, Scream, and Scooby Doo film franchise fame (1970)
• Actor, producer, and screenwriter Ed Helms of The Daily Show w/ Jon Stewart, The Hangover film series, and The Office fame (1974)
• Actress, comedian, and writer Kristen Schaal of Flight of the Conchords, The Last Man on Earth, 30 Rock, and Bob's Burgers fame (1978)
• Actress & singer Tatyana Ali of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air fame (1979)
• Actress Mischa Barton of The OC fame (1986)
Pour out some canned beer for:
• Roman emperor and noted party boi Caligula (d. 41)
• English soldier, politician, and cupcake frosting enthusiast Winston Churchill (d. 1965)
• Comedian and Stooge Larry Fine (d. 1975)
• Lawyer, jurist, and Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall (d. 1993)
• British singer-songwriter Mark E. Smith of The Fall (d. 2018)
Now on to the amusing links!
*****
1. 😇 😈 Heaven? Hell? Tell me there's a secret third option...
Good news: there is! Hope you like Skyline Chili!
For more LOLs from our team be sure to follow us on our OG social accounts such as Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and/or Facebook.
2. 🎨 Don't be gelly — it's just art!
Seattle-based mixed media and paper collage artist Nadya Borisevich does some very cool stuff with old magazines and layered ink/paint!
3. 🐈 Big Chungus is all about that van life
#VanLifers Kayli & Logan may be documenting their existence in close motorized quarters, but I am only here for the van cat content. More Chungus, please!
4. 🤑 There's no such thing as a cool billionaire
Comedian (and occasional Boredwalk sketch writer) Robert Schultz would beg to differ!
5. 🦹🏽 Finally, a glimpse into the inner workings of The Illuminati!
Comedian Nate Meeker and friends set the record straight. Shady puppet masters: they're just like us, putting in a hard day's work!
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We'll be back here in your inbox on Friday with more nonsense holidays to dissect, more notable birthdays (and maybe even some notable deathdays!) to celebrate, and more witty content in general. Until then...
Peace, love, and peanut buttery delight (or not),
Matt
]]>
Happy Answer Your Cat's Questions Day! If only this foster kitten we've been caring for, Grover, would ask us some. We'd be delighted to answer them all to the best of our ability, but she remains steadfast in her choice to only emit intermittent chirps & grumbles.
"How are you, Grover?" - Me
"Fine, thanks!" - this kitten, probably
It's also National Hot Sauce Day, which will come in handy as something Buffalonians can drown their tears in today! Tough break, Bills fans. There's always next year.
Today is also National Polka Dot Day! I was surprised to learn that Minnie Mouse is credited with popularizing the iconic print two years after it first appeared publicly in a Miss America swimsuit pageant. Disney's got those little white 4-fingered gloves in everything, don't they?
Finally, let's end today's random observance run-down on a sweet note: Happy National Blondie Day! I was also surprised to learn that the original recipe for brownies did not call for chocolate, making blondies the original form of the chewy treat! However, this news does make me wonder what its final form will be in the event blondies are some sort of edible Pokémon...
Maybe strawberry, for some sort of Neapolitan baked treat trifecta?
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Alright! Let's kick off the week with a few famous January 22nd historical events and notable birthdays and deathdays:
• In 1890 the United Mine Workers of America was founded in Columbus, Ohio
• In 1973 the Supreme Court of the United States delivered its decisions in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, legalizing elective abortion nationwide until it was overturned on June 24th, 2022
• In 1984 the first home computer to popularize the computer mouse and graphical user interface, the Apple Macintosh, was introduced during a Super Bowl XVIII television commercial
• Birthday blondies all around (hot sauce optional) for: English soldier, explorer, and alleged "stupid git" Sir Walter Raleigh (1552), English poet John Donne (1573), Scottish privateer Captain William Kidd (1645), English poet & playwright Lord Byron (1788), chemist & pharmacist Wilbur Scoville of hot sauce heat scale fame (1865), singer-songwriter and soul music icon Sam Cooke (1931), actress Piper Laurie of Carrie (1932), actor Bill Bixby of My Favorite Martian and The Incredible Hulk fame (1934), English actor John Hurt of The Elephant Man, V for Vendetta, and the Harry Potter film franchise fame (1940), English singer-songwriter, music manager, and punk style influencer Malcolm McLaren (1946), singer-songwriter and erstwhile Journey frontman Steve Perry of "Don't Stop Believin'" fame (1949), indie filmmaking legend Jim Jarmusch (1953), actress Linda Blair of The Exorcist fame (1959), Australian singer-songwriter and 80s heartthrob Michael Hutchence of INXS fame (1960), DJ & producer DJ Jazzy Jeff of "Parents Just Don't Understand" and "Summertime" fame (1965), actress Diane Lane (1965), celebrity chef Guy Fieri (1968), actor Gabriel Macht of Suits fame (1972), and singer-songwriter & jazz singer Lizz Wright (1980)
• Pour out some hot sauce in memory of: Australian actor & director Heath Ledger (d. 2008), Canadian author & illustrator Margaret Bloy Graham of Harry the Dirty Dog fame (d. 2015), sci-fi & fantasy novelist Ursula K. Le Guin of Earthsea series fame (d. 2018), baseball icon and MLB Hall of Famer Hank Aaron (d. 2021), and Buddhist monk and peace activist Thích Nhất Hạnh
*****
OK, no new customer Q&A this week, unfortunately! If you're feeling even moderately outgoing and would like to be featured in an upcoming Monday email (and are a customer with some Boredwalk tees, tanks, hoodies, towels, bags, books, or Delve Decks to show off), just reply to this and let us know and we'll send you some fun questions!
We'll be back here in your inbox on Wednesday with some more random holidays to observe, historical tidbits to acknowledge, and fun links to entertaining content! Until next time.
Peace, love, and spicy blondies,
Matt
]]>
As is our tradition, I am here to let you know it is both National Brew a Potion Day and National Popcorn Day. I am all for it, as a fan of both tasty snacks and all things spooky.
January 19th is actually a cornucopia of factual delights. Did you know Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is birthday twins with Full House middle daughter actress Jodie Sweetin (both born on this day in 1982)? Or that it's Scrabble's birthday? I don't know how all of this helps you, but if you're a regular Boredwalk email reader I bet you're awesome at trivia night because we bring the random trivia!
It's also this dude's birthday...
If you're in the market for some shockingly soft hoodies* or other Boredwalk goodies, be sure to use code SAVE15 at checkout for 15% off orders of $95+, not to mention free U.S. shipping on orders of $75+ — no code needed!
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While you're waiting for your new Boredwalk gear to arrive you can also treat your earholes to the latest episode of the Boredwalk Podcast! Click here to listen on your favorite podcasting platform!
This week I chatted with Tess from our content team about the latest in crimes-that-always-seem-to-be-happening-around-me (this week you can hear about the fistfight that broke out in my driveway, which did NOT involve me or any one else in my household), the return of social obligations following the holidays, and This Week In Trolls, wherein two chaotic and inconsiderate sociopaths try to justify their awful impulses in reaction to some comedy sketches our content team published recently. They are unsuccessful in this endeavor.
Next up we react to fan responses to the Question of the Day "what food do you hate that everyone seems to love?"
The episode wraps up with the two of us trading questions from the Venting and Joy editions of the Delve Deck!
First up from the Venting edition: "what seems like it should make you happy but doesn't?"
Not satisfied with one venting question, we also discuss "what problem can you not believe technology hasn't solved yet?"
As a palate cleanser we attempted to indulge in some joyful rumination, answering "if you could create a magic pill, what would it do?" Give a listen to hear our answers!
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Alright! Let's send you off into the weekend with some notable events and famous birthdays from January 19ths of yore! If that includes yours, happy birthday to you!
• The American Civil Liberties Union was founded on this day in 1920
• Scrabble made its debut on the board game market on this day in 1955
• Indira Gandhi became India's first female prime minister on this day in 1966
• Cult film Donnie Darko premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on this day 2001
• Birthday cake all around for: author Edgar Allan Poe (1809), artist Paul Cézanne (1893), model/actress Tippi Hedren (1930), singer-guitarist Phil Everly of The Everly Brothers (1939), singer-songwriter Janis Joplin (1943), singer-songwriter Dolly Parton (1946), actress Katey Sagal (1954), US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (1982), and actress Jodie Sweetin of Full House fame (1982)
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OK, that's it for this week! We'll be back here in your inbox on Monday with another email and a fresh customer Q&A! If you'd like to be featured in an upcoming email reply to this and let us know!
Peace, love, popcorn, and potions,
Meredith
]]>Happy National Bootlegger's Day! Weird to celebrate a criminal activity, but since January 17th is both Al Capone's birthday AND the anniversary of the enactment of the Volstead Act, which prohibited the sale of alcohol in the U.S. beginning in 1920, I suppose it's fitting.
All I know about Al Capone I learned from The Untouchables. Mostly that he was an avid baseball fan.
GIF courtesy of The Untouchables / Paramount Pictures
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Alright, before we get to those links let's acknowledge some notable events and famous birthdays from January 17ths of yore. Maybe yours! If it is, happy birthday!
• As mentioned, in 1920 the prohibition of the sale of alcohol began in the United States as a result of the Volstead Act taking effect
• Birthday cake all around for: English author & poet Anne Brontë (1820), film producer & Universal Studios co-founder Carl Laemmle (1867), mob boss & baseball fan Al Capone (1899), actress & national treasure Betty White (1922), actress, singer, and presumable cat enthusiast Eartha Kitt (1927), actor James Earl Jones (1931), boxer & activist Muhammad Ali (1942), actor & comedian Andy Kaufman (1949), English singer-songwriter & guitarist Mick Taylor of Rolling Stones fame (1949), singer-songwriter Steve Earle (1955), actor & comedian Steve Harvey (1957), singer-songwriter & guitarist Susanna Hoffs of The Bangles (1959), Canadian-American actor & comedian Jim Carrey (1962), former First Lady Michelle Obama (1964), English singer-songwriter & guitarist Richard Hawley (1967), Russian-American animator Genndy Tartakovsky of The Powerpuff Girls and Samurai Jack fame (1970), rapper & producer Lil Jon (1971), actor Freddy Rodriguez of Six Feet Under and Ugly Betty fame (1975), actress & singer-songwriter Zooey Deschanel (1980), and boxer & YouTuber Jake Paul (1997)
• Pour one out for: 19th President of the United States and lemonade enthusiast Rutherford B. Hayes (d. 1893), stained glass artist Louis Tiffany of fancy lamp fame (d. 1933), author & playwright Betty Smith of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn fame (d. 1972), and problematic chess icon Bobby Fischer (d. 2008)
Now on to the amusing links!
*****
1. 🛠️ No need to bring any tools...
..this furniture comes with its own!
The Alpha Female Podcast is back with more incontrovertible facts about the shortcomings of men, like their refusal to build IKEA furniture on the first date. IT'S THE SOCIAL CONTRACT, GENTS.
For more LOLs from our team be sure to follow us on our OG social accounts such as Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and/or Facebook.
2. 🤡 Make your firing festive in one easy step!
Just add clown!
3. 😬 This gives all new meaning to the term "Blood Moon"
Actress & comedian Anna Akana breaks down why no women have been on the Moon yet.
And content creators Eva & Javier Gabriel know exactly what that one thing is: to win an argument with their partner.
5. 🤨 Work spouses: Like regular spouses, but creepier
The secret (family) is out!
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We'll be back here in your inbox on Friday with more nonsense holidays to dissect, more notable birthdays (and maybe even some notable deathdays!) to celebrate, and more witty content in general. Until then...
Peace, love, and unauthorized libations,
Matt
]]>Happy National Gazpacho Day!
I suppose early December is a fairly fitting time to celebrate a chilled soup, but since modern gazpacho relies heavily on a distinctly summery produce — tomatoes, cucumbers, and avocados are fixtures in mine — it feels like maybe this isn't the ideal juncture at which to put it on a pedestal.
But who am I kidding; if someone offers me a bowl of gazpacho today, there's no way I'm passing that up.
Hot, cold, lukewarm — if it has tomatoes in it, I'm in, Lisa.
GIF courtesy of The Simpsons / FOX
Alright, before we get to those links, let's take note of some famous events and birthdays from December 6ths of yore. Maybe yours! If it is, happy birthday!
• In 1865, Georgia ratified the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, legally freeing American slaves
• In 1884 the Washington Monument was completed
• Birthday gazpacho all around for: Songwriter Ira Gershwin (1896), actress Agnes Moorehead of Bewitched fame (1900), Canadian-American businessman Irv Robbins of Baskin-Robbins ice cream fame (1917), jazz pianist & composer Dave Brubeck of "Take Five" and "Blue Rondo à la Turk" fame (1920), computer programmer and entrepreneur Craig Newmark of CraigsList fame (1952), singer-songwriter Chris Stamey of 80s power-pop luminaries the dBs (1954), English drummer & songwriter Rick Buckler of mod punk legends The Jam (1955), actor & comedian Steven Wright (1955), guitarist, songwriter, and producer Peter Buck of R.E.M. fame (1956), guitarist & songwriter Randy Rhoads of Quiet Riot and Ozzy Osbourne band fame (1956), drummer David Lovering of Pixies fame (1961), English singer-songwriter and DJ Ben Watt of Everything But The Girl (1962), filmmaker Judd Apatow (1967), and HIV/AIDS activist Ryan White (1971)
• Pour one out for: Singer-songwriter & guitarist Roy Orbison of "Only the Lonely" and "Oh, Pretty Woman" fame (d. 1988) and singer-songwriter Dobie Gray of "Drift Away" fame (d. 2011)
Now on to the amusing links!
1. 💍 If it's the holidays, it's time for a lot of "he went to Jareth's!" commercials
Screw Jared — people who want to REALLY express romantic emotion via fancy rocks get their baubles from Jareth!
For more LOLs from our team be sure to follow us on our OG social accounts such as Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and/or Facebook.
2. 💉 Worried about pox and/or plague? Get thee to the apothecary!
Renaissance person Colleen McCandless (briefly) takes modern medicine back to the actual Renaissance.
3. 😭 What is this salty discharge?!
Yeah, this Chevy commercial is emotionally manipulative AF, but even my cynical @$$ started bawling 30 seconds in and didn't stop for the next five minutes.
4. 🤨 Ew, literacy? Sounds like witchcraft.
Comedian Missy Chanpaibool reimagines pilgrim women as pick-me girls. Jedediah doesn't know what he's getting himself into!
5. 🎙️ Sounds like somebody shoulda gone to Jareth's!
Boredwalk's alpha female podcast is back, and they have a bone to pick with men who don't put out on the first date!*
*And by "put out" we mean "complete minor home repairs."
She bought you dinner, pal, so stop playing coy and get on your knees — that shower drain isn't going to unclog itself!
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OK! We'll be back here in your inbox on Friday with more nonsense holidays to dissect, more notable birthdays (and maybe even some notable deathdays!) to celebrate, and more witty content in general. Until then...
Peace, love, and gazpacho,
Matt
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Happy National Cookie Day! The cooler temperatures may be bumming me out, but there are few things that warm the cockles of ones heart like freshly-baked cookies. Scrumdiddlyumptious! Bonus points if you can enjoy them with someone covered in warm & cozy fur.
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For you gaming enthusiasts, today is also National Dice Day! I prefer games that don't require die rolls, but to each their own.
And if your extremities are particularly chilly today, it would be a capital idea to celebrate National Sock Day!
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Let's kick off the week with a few famous December 4th birthdays and historical facts:
• In 1865 North Carolina ratified the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The state of Georgia would follow soon thereafter, and within two weeks U.S. slaves were legally freed.
• In 1909 the Montreal Canadiens ice hockey team was founded as a charter member of the National Hockey Association. It is the oldest surviving professional ice hockey franchise in the world.
• In 1956 the "Million Dollar Quartet" of Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash record together at Sun Studio in Memphis, Tennessee for the first and last time.
• Birthday cookies all around for: Austrian-Swiss poet & author Rainer Maria Rilke (1875), singer-songwriter, guitarist, and bassist Chris Hillman of The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers (1944), singer-songwriter & drummer Dennis Wilson of The Beach Boys (1944), actor Jeff Bridges of Tron, Starman, and The Big Lebowski fame (1949), actor Tony Todd of Candyman film franchise fame (1954), jazz singer-songwriter Cassandra Wilson (1955), actress Marisa Tomei of My Cousin Vinny and Slums of Beverly Hills fame (1964), actor & musician Fred Armisen of Saturday Night Live and Portlandia fame (1966), rap icon Jay-Z of "being Beyoncé's lesser half" fame (1969), and model & actress Tyra Banks (1973)
• Pour one out for: German-American philosopher Hannah Arendt (d. 1975), singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer Frank Zappa (d. 1993), and singer & actor Bob McGrath of Sesame Street fame (d. 2022)
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OK, scroll on down to learn a bit about fellow Boredwalk fan Jay! If you're feeling even moderately outgoing and would like to be featured in an upcoming Monday email (and are a customer with some Boredwalk tees, tanks, hoodies, towels, bags, or books to show off), just reply to this and let us know and we'll send you some fun questions!
We'll be back here in your inbox on Wednesday with some more random holidays to observe, historical tidbits to acknowledge, and fun links to entertaining content! Until next time...
Peace, love, and cookies,
Matt
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Jay looking cozy in her Brooklyn 718 scoop-neck sweatshirt while adding to her Grievance Journal!
• What's your biggest pet peeve?
People who chew with their mouth open and men who cannot share a sidewalk!
• What's a book you think the Boredwalk community should read?
The Body is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love by Renee Taylor
• If you could have any super power what would it be and why?
I’d want to fly. I think it would be fun and I’d save on gas.
• You can curse your nemesis with a minor annoyance for eternity; what do you choose?
I don’t have to, as he keeps on getting fired from jobs on his own.
• What experience do you most want to cross off your bucket list?
I would go skydiving without the fear of puking and duking the run-of-green-sturdy fields.
• If you could make a mundane wish (meaning, a wish for something seemingly inconsequential that you still believe would benefit you immensely), what would it be for?
Take care of one of my beloved’s chronic pain
• What experience do you most want to cross off your bucket list?
Own a cat and dog at same time!
• What is something you wish you could go back in time and say to your younger self?
Get the offer in writing!
• Clear up a misconception (about your job, where you are from, some other topic you know a lot about).
Feminists can cook and have a great sense of humor!
• Where can the rest of the Boredwalk community find you?
I love the West Coast!
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This hot new release is months in the making, but if you loved our original Delve Deck, we're sure you'll love these two new expansion packs. This time we have a little something for everyone!
For the rays of sunshine: maybe you bought our original deck but wished it had even more upbeat content or you're one of those folks trying to work on your gratitude practice. For you, we present the Joy Edition. This deck features 150 questions about your favorite things, helping you hone in on what you love, what you're grateful for, and what makes you the happiest. It's perfect for bonding with friends about your favorite stuff and can even function as prompts for journaling or solo reflection.
For the rays of pitch black: you know you're my people! Like you, I too am a ray of pitch black and believe complaining should be an Olympic sport. If you enjoyed our Grievance Journal, this new deck is a must-have. With 150 questions, our Venting Edition is perfect for bonding with friends about all the stuff that drives you the craziest.
And before some so-and-so lectures you about how you shouldn't complain*, tell them to stuff their judgment in a sack, because complaining can actually be good for you (and let's be honest, it can be fun, too)! You can also direct them to the Joy Edition—like I said, something for everyone!
*Isn't complaining about someone else's desire to complain also complaining? Gotcha there, rays of sunshine! C'mon, admit it — you wanna complain, too. Come to the dark side, we have cake!
GIF via Blown Away
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Alright! Let's send you off into the weekend with some notable events and famous birthdays from December 1sts of yore!
• Sherlock Holmes first appeared in print on this day in 1887
• The Kingdom of Iceland was established on this day in 1918
• The first issue of Playboy Magazine was published on this day in 1953
• Civil rights activist Rosa Parks was arrested on this day in 1955 for refusing to move to the back of a bus
• Birthday cakes all around for: French-English sculptor and founder of Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum Marie Tussaud (1761), comedian Richard Pryor (1940), actress Bette Midler (1945), comedian Sarah Silverman (1970), actress & musician Janelle Monáe (1985), and actress Zoë Kravitz (1988)
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Happy Choose Women Wednesday!
Joke's on the Women's Entrepreneurship Day Organization, which established Choose Women Wednesday in 2014 to flip the narrative that a woman's place was in the home and not leading thriving businesses — I choose women every day of the week!
No offense to my bros, but women are generally smarter, more collaborative, wittier, smell nicer, and more pleasing to interact with in a variety of modes than their male counterparts.* #sorrynotsorry
*Don't worry, I'll still talk baseball with you guys. See, you ARE good for something!
Today is also National Lemon Cream Pie (aka Lemon Meringue Pie) Day, celebrating one of the greatest pies ever created! Fun fact: you have a woman to thank for those, too! Big ups to 19th century chef/entrepreneur Elizabeth Goodfellow of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania for that delightful treat!
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Alright, before we get to those links, let's take note of some famous events and birthdays from November 29ths of yore. Maybe yours! If it is, happy birthday!
• In 1877 Thomas Edison demonstrated his phonograph for the first time
• For you futbol fans, FC Barcelona was founded on this day in 1899 by a group of Catalan, Spanish, and English players, eventually developing into one of Spanish football's most legendary teams
• The Beatles' "I Want to Hold Your Hand" was released in the UK in 1963. By February 1st 1964 it became the group's first American #1 hit.
• In 1972 Atari released Pong, considered the first commercially successful video game. Think about that for a moment! How boring life must have been in 1972 for some people that THIS blew their minds:
GIF courtesy of Atari & some poor soul over on Reddit's r/gaming who sincerely believes that Pong "holds up surprisingly well."
• Birthday lemon meringue pies all around for: Philosopher, academic, abolitionist, and women's rights advocate Amos Alcott of "being Louisa May's dad" fame (1799), novelist, poet, abolitionist, and suffragist Louisa May Alcott of Little Women and "being Amos's daughter" fame (1832), educator & politician Nellie Tayloe Ross, who was the first woman to be governor of a U.S. state (1876), famed director and choreographer Busby Berkeley (1895), British novelist, poet, and critic C.S. Lewis of The Chronicles of Narnia fame (1898), pianist & composer Billy Strayhorn of "Take the 'A' Train" and "Lush Life" fame (1915), author & poet Madeleine L'Engle of A Wrinkle In Time fame (1918), legendary Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers sportscaster Vin Scully (1927), English singer-songwriter & guitarist John Mayall (1933), comedy icon Garry Shandling of The Larry Sanders Show fame (1949), filmmaker Joel Coen of "the Coen brothers" fame (1954), Canadian comedian and TV host Howie Mandel of Gremlins, St. Elsewhere, Bobby's World, and Deal or No Deal fame (1955), actor Andrew McCarthy of Pretty In Pink, St. Elmo's Fire, Less Than Zero, and Weekend At Bernie's fame (1962), actor Don Cheadle of Boogie Nights, The Ocean's Trilogy, Hotel Rwanda, and Iron Man 2 fame (1964), actress & comedian Ellen Cleghorne of Saturday Night Live fame (1965), and actor Chadwick Boseman of Black Panther and 42 fame (1976)
• Pour one out for: actress Natalie Wood of Miracle on 34th Street, Rebel Without a Cause, and West Side Story fame (d. 1981), English-American actor Cary Grant of North by Northwest, To Catch a Thief, and Father Goose fame (d. 1986), English singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer George Harrison of "being The Quiet One in The Beatles" fame (d. 2001), and comedian Patrice O'Neal (d. 2011)
Now on to the amusing links!
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1. 🐈 Who needs therapy when we have cats?
Josh from Boredwalk's creator team shares his cheat code to improving his mental health, and it's adorable!
For more LOLs from our team be sure to follow us on our OG social accounts such as Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and/or Facebook.
2. 🌶️ Sure, this fun mash-up of videographic transmogrification is cool...
...but what I REALLY want to know is where creator Nico Sobolewski got his hands on that bottle of sriracha in late 2023?!
3. ☕ WTF happened to Mary-Kate Olsen?!
She just vibrated into a higher plane of existence thanks to drinking ALL the coffee. This short form vid is a little older, but it's new to me, and Elaine Carroll really nailed this impression.
4. 🥹 These miniature dioramas are breathtakingly adorable!
Operating as A House of Wonders, crafter Caroline Dewison creates handmade miniature dioramas and teeny tiny dollhouse kits that are the most whimsical things I've seen all week (and I spent most of the weekend cuddling a sleeping cat)!
5. 🍄 No one, I think, is in Ellard DeVane's tree
As an artist I love a lot of different forms of creative work, but two in particular that — for me, anyway — go together like peanut butter & chocolate (or whichever food pairing makes YOUR taste buds sing) are psychedelia and stop motion animation.
Visual artist Ellard DeVane successfully weds the two with his clay slicing animations, and I very much look forward to pulling up his YouTube channel next time I want throw on some Slowdive or Wand or Holy Wave tracks and space out on the couch for a spell.
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OK! We'll be back here in your inbox on Friday with more nonsense holidays to dissect, more notable birthdays (and maybe even some notable deathdays!) to celebrate, and more witty content in general. Until then...
Peace, love, and lemony feminism,
Matt
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