This is “Woof of the Week”, the newsletter about the things that make me say “Woof” the longest each week!
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Welcome to Woof of the Week!
Is this a dead meme?
I saw this posted zero times on Monday! Perhaps it’s because the majority of people on my social media were all concerned about the results of the WGA negotiations - which, if you haven’t heard, has resulted in a strike.
It’ll be interesting to see how long this one lasts - the last writer’s strike went from November 2007 to February 2008. Adam Conover shared the proposals made by the WGA & responses by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) and the amount of rejections made by the AMPTP make me feel like this strike might last just as long. A Woof if I’ve ever heard one!
Around the World in 80* Woofs
*more like, a handful of bullet points
Here’s some stories from last week that made me say Woof:
Dark Brandon made an appearance at the White House correspondents' dinner this weekend. This begs the question - if the President embraces a joke that liberals have reclaimed from conservatives, is the joke officially dead? This Vox article by Aja Romano does a great job explaining the transformation of this joke.
Last week marked the return of The Always Sunny Podcast after a two month hiatus due to the hosts (the creators/stars/writers of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) needing to film the new season of the show. And that’s all well and good, but what about their podcast ads? The podcast is sponsored by a revolving door of companies, Athletic Greens, Vouri, BetterHelp, etc. These same companies also sponsor podcasts from people who don’t have nearly the same level of fame as the Always Sunny crew. In my experience, these ads can be sold per episode, or for a duration of time, especially for repeat companies. So during this relatively short notice hiatus, did the guys break their contract and eat the cost? Because while it’s possible that they had planned for this behind the scenes, it certainly did not seem like it from an audience perspective. It got me thinking about other “creators” like a YouTuber or Streamer with the same sponsors - could they financially afford to do so if they needed to take an extended break short notice? When celebrities get to play in the space where the refrain is “anybody can have a podcast!” do they still get treated differently? (The answer is duh yes, but how specifically?) Who knows - I may be overestimating my experience in the digital space here so perhaps I’m missing something, but you gotta think the Always Sunny crew had to eat the cost, and you can bet that Glenn Howerton was probably mad about it!
It sounds like someone really enjoyed the LA Philharmonic this past weekend! Attendees of Friday evening’s performance of Tchaikovsky’s fifth symphony reported hearing a “woman making a moaning noise” during the second movement. The LA Times interviewed symphony goer Molly Grant who assumed the woman had an orgasm saying, “She was heavily breathing, and her partner was smiling and looking at her — like in an effort to not shame her… it was quite beautiful.” While I’m sure this couple had a great time, I’m really just hoping this doesn’t become a TikTok trend.
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Struggles in the Long Term
* Keeping this one short and stream of consciousness-y
Since reviving Woof of the Week, people usually ask me:
How’s your blog going?
I try to push back, “it’s not a blog, it’s a newsletter!” But every time I’ve said that I feel less and less sure about that point. With many touting Substack Notes as the first serious Twitter replacement, until more people got off the Blue Sky waitlist, a lot of attention has been driven to this platform. It’s now a bit more common to say “check out my Substack” instead of “check out my newsletter.”
And of the handful of Substacks that I do subscribe to, I would say it’s about 60-40 personal writing to newsletters proper. And so if those newsletters feel like “blog” content, so be it! It’s 2023, we’re all vulnerable on the internet now!
Where I still draw pause is my inability to put out the work I’ve really wanted to work on - slightly more reported and thoughtful stories about things that are happening. There’s been plenty of bigger pieces that I have banked up that I keep kicking down the road. Yet every week, I’m unable to start progress on them. I haven’t even started taking a picture every day like I said I would!
There’s so many things to blame on why I’m unable to start them, but at the route of it is the fact that I struggle with putting in a little bit of work over a long amount of time. In most aspects of my life, I’m used to sprints, not marathons. I meal prepped three different week long meals, in one night. (Did I think about how and when I was going to eat these? Certainly not!)
Perhaps it’s because when chipping away at something, there’s more room for self doubt to creep in - so by getting the work done all in one sitting, I’m done, my mind can’t wander. It certainly is an answer to why I procrastinate so much. But I think the two are a little bit different - I always want to do the work, it’s just the starting that can be so difficult.
Anyways - I’d like to leave you all with some ideas I’ve been ideating about doing longer pieces on. Maybe I’ll start one this week! If you read this, feel free to let me know what you think I should pursue:
“To All the Barbers I’ve Been Unable to Speak to Before” - a meditation on how I grew up getting my hair cut by barbers who spoke English as a second language, and then in my adult life I sought out barbers who were similar, thus effectively limiting my ability to communicate what kind of haircut I wanted efficiently. Also how getting my haircut is the closest thing I can get to meditation because I don’t speak to my barber, and with my glasses off I lose most of my sensory input. (Scared that this is just blog content. And also come off rambly. And also I don’t have before and after pictures of my most drastic haircuts.)
“We (as a society) Do Not Understand Wes Anderson” - capitalizing on the Wes Anderson trend that has taken over not only TikTok but also AI in the form of a fake Star Wars trailer. I would write about how I gloss over Wes Anderson’s visual style when i think about him, and instead focus on how sad his movies are - and how most things that are replicating Wes Anderson miss that point and also his visual style altogether. (Scared that I’ll come off pretentious, maybe I, as a person, do not understand Wes Anderson either)
“The Los Angeles Barnes and Nobles Doesn’t Want You There” - talking about how frustrating it is that Barnes and Nobles in Los Angeles don’t have power outlets at their Starbucks cafes. Would dive into Los Angeles and its citizens’ relationship with the unhoused community, limiting accessibility to public spaces, and the continued extermination of the third space. (Scared that I don’t have the research skills to do this justice, that I would not write about the unhoused community in a politically correct way, need to learn more terms and ideas surrounding urban planning and lifestyles and not rely on that one class I took on third spaces in college.)
And the list could go on… perhaps when I have some time in May I’ll go through the long list in some fun way to narrow down what’s still got the juice to write about.
Anyways thanks for reading :)
Quote of the Week
This week’s quote is slightly paraphrased and is from 2021 apparently:
Embrace it, when you’re 30 you’re gonna think about all the things you didn’t do, and all the Pokemon cards you didn’t open.
Gonna go out and buy a booster pack right now.
That’s all folks!
Thanks for reading this week’s edition of Woof of the Week! Leave a comment because I’d love to hear your thoughts! Some questions I have for you -
It’s
Gonna
Be May
See you on the next one!
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