I want to talk about producers for a minute. Specifically, producers of roundtables like @pchh, whose jobs are maybe less understood than producers of narrative shows that involve extensive sound design and scripting. Our producers do a huge number of things that make the show possible. They are an integral part of our planning meetings. They pitch ideas for things we should cover. They pitch guests we could invite. They provide crucial perspectives on things they have expertise about.

The ability of forces within baseball to successfully, vigilantly stamp out fun is really impressive. si.com/.amp/extra-mus… Was there really some kind of concern that this hat was going to make people think, “Aha, apparently there is more than one official MLB hat!” sportingnews.com/us/amp/mlb/new…

One of the things they get at in this episode is that the vast majority of popular relationship self-help is aimed at straight women. And one reason these books work when written by men is that women hope it will help to have their feelings backed up by a man with authority.

https://twitter.com/ifbookspod/status/1649077369682927616

But often what happens is that there’s a little of that (“yes, you should indulge your wife’s little expectations, like kindness and drying dishes”) combined with a lot of undermining bullshit (“stop being a NAG”).

Today I made this apple cake soaked in a literal cup of bourbon. It was delicious and tasted exactly like a good cake soaked in a cup of bourbon. If it had had *any* more, it would have been too much. It was maximum bourbon. I poured the bourbon (and sugar and butter) glaze over the cake with it still in the Bundt pan and I thought, “This is not going to soak in. It’s too much! I’ve flown too close to the sun!” But no. Almost! But no.

A thread for the garden people.

My backyard. Please ignore the cluttered patio. I need to straighten up the patio furniture situation. My plant identification app finds a combo of nettles, Kentucky bluegrass and shepherd’s purse.

This has such a particular feel to it, where people with power get hung up on the offense they take at *defiance*.

https://twitter.com/davidfolkenflik/status/1642150177589927940

“If we make exceptions, we will teach that there are no rules at all” is a ridiculous position to take. Basically all rules have exceptions. As is pointed out in the piece, the normal result of backing out of an agreement is compensating the other party.

So the Rule Against Perpetuities is in the news. Can I remember it?Imagine your will said: “I leave these 100 acres of land to my heirs, on the condition that they have to keep the statue of me on the lawn. Knock down the statue, ever, the house goes to the city.” (1/) This kind of restriction on real property (which *roughly* means land) is generally considered bad for the world. There’s only so much land. You don’t want people to tie it up with their little weirdsies. (2/)

ABC will air a special about the Brandy/Whitney Houston CINDERELLA, featuring a reunion of much of the original cast, followed by an airing of the film, on August 23. This is in recognition of the film’s 25th anniversary, and — correctly — its influence and continued status as a very beloved piece.

I liked VENGEANCE. It might seem obvious to replace Unsouled Business School Shithead with Unsouled Podcast Shithead as a way to deploy some of the same skills, but there are some sharp cuts aimed at media dudes that land hard. Novak has a way (as was the case on THE OFFICE) with a straightforwardly insufferable statement delivered with this very slight petulance — a soupçon of indignation, you might say — that just makes it freshly and richly agonizing. That thing about Chekhov, delicious.

What I find aggravating about the “it’s bad for you to work from home!” is that it crowds out a perfectly fair, perfectly helpful and productive conversation about how some people may need to apply some intentionality to how they socialize post-office. I am somebody who got a lot of my social time at the office. That’s not bad! It’s because I work with people I’m crazy about, who support me and who are fun and who I genuinely enjoy.

This is a terrible answer. But I don’t want to talk about that; I want to say something else. I saw somebody in this OP’s position saying this answer made them wonder whether this is what people are secretly thinking when they talk about how hard things are.

https://twitter.com/sarahhollowell/status/1513909252532088834

And that breaks my heart, so I want to say: When I hear parents talk about this, I am *not* secretly thinking this, and none of the many people I have talked about pandemic-era burdens have ever said they think anything like this.

Between two basement floods and a major sewer line repair and some unpleasant but necessary basic medical preventative maintenance (I’m fine) inherent in getting old, the last couple of weeks have really been a special brand of un-fun. But I learned the same thing from both: Do your maintenance, ask questions, you’ll always be better off if you just go ahead and find out what’s going on. If you’re fortunate enough to be able to invest in an ounce of prevention, etc.

P.S. Tree roots suck.

Quick update on some recent reading! I’m most of the way through THE METHOD by @parabasis. Fascinating history, and often painful to see how the same toxic patterns recur across approaches to art. bloomsbury.com/us/method-9781… Greatly enjoyed @BlairBraverman’s debut novel SMALL GAME. Survival thriller that’s also insightful about media? Don’t mind if I do! harpercollins.com/products/small…

Here are two things that can both be true:

(1) I don’t regret my choice to tolerate shitty conditions in early stages of my career/education, given that they were the only ones available.

(2) Those conditions were shitty and should therefore be addressed. What kind of an answer is “every industry is exploitative”? Every road gets potholes too, but that doesn’t mean after you drive over one you go, “WELL I DID FINE AND SO CAN YOU.”

If you can understand not competing because you want to protect a knee or an ankle, you should understand not competing because you want to protect your mental health. If you don’t, you’re rejecting the entire idea of mental health more generally and going back to “Cheer up!” I shut myself in a bathroom at work once because I was having an anxiety attack and felt like I was about to pass out. If called upon to do something difficult at that moment, I could not have. If called upon to do something dangerous, I couldn’t have and shouldn’t have.

My certainty that there is a robin’s nest with babies in it that’s in my azalea even though I’ve never seen it is an excellent example of circumstantial evidence. Does a certain dog run over to that shrub and stand on his hind legs leaning on it so he can peek inside, at which point two agitated robins fly out and start swooping around yelling at him? Yes. Yes, that is the case.

I realize I've been on this beat extensively, but if you host anything, Rachael Ray is a good study. She does a ton of signposting, "here's what we're going to do," "here's what we just did" stuff. Mixes maybe 90 percent information with 10 percent personality patter. You could diagram the way the show starts, ends, works in and out of commercials, and you'd get some interesting reflections on how very successful shows are built.

If you watched Jonathan on Survivor, especially on Cook Islands, you met Stacy -- his indie filmmaker wife, whom he transparently adored, to the point where I made jokes about it in recaps.

https://twitter.com/SurvivorPenner/status/1348839518854545409

A bunch of seasons later, just after I left Television Without Pity, I had some kind of contact with them, I think -- I forget why. But she got me into a Survivor finale party at a bar in New York. It was great fun, and by the the time I looked for her, she'd left.

Not glad to see some of the people who should be encouraging people to be patient trying to draw conclusions about how the election is going by speculating about early votes that haven't even been opened or counted yet. This is the thing everybody said it was dangerous to do; they're all doing it anyway.

There are a *lot* of things that are good to keep in mind right now, but one is that the confidence with which people announce what's going to happen over the next, say, two weeks is unrelated (or possibly inversely related) to how much they know what they're talking about. There's a lot of predicting as anxiety management, either "everything will be fine" anxiety management or doomsaying "I'm preparing myself for my dreaded outcome by predicting it" anxiety management.

I've decided this dog walks around the daycare all day saying WASSUUUUUP and then laughing.

https://twitter.com/lindaholmes/status/1321251905067192322

WASSUUUUUUUUP

https://twitter.com/lindaholmes/status/1319431349736976384?s=19