Yeah, that wasn’t long after the period when I was writing for the front of the book. Wrote something about Project Runway when it was new, wrote about the first Survivor All-Stars.

Ooh, I forgot about that.

Reasonable.

This concludes: Aunt Linda Reminisces About TV In Lieu Of Her Usual Rant About Your Very Weak 4/20 Jokes.

You know it.

Oh yeah. All kinds of stuff.

And do not get me started about the TV Guide Fall Preview, the single most important magazine of the year.

One of the first things I did as a freelance writer other than recaps was writing little things for the front of the book there. It was a GREAT job, because it paid two dollars a word.

I mean, to some degree, you were not wrong. No Cinderella any time they wanted. No Cinderella on demand. Demand was not a thing. What a time.

Now, they’d be like, “Oh, only three? Not interested in the discourse, then?”

Like, you could wear out your VHS tape, but having to physically rewind a literal tape (whirrrrrrr) meant it wasn’t pain-free to skip forward and backward like a forensic examiner.

I used to watch things three times to write recaps, and even then, people went “whoa.”

Honestly, for a long time, even after you could record shows you missed, most normal conversations about TV did not involve watching shows eight times. At some point, we all became a little weird about that.

Although I will admit: Watching a show one time and then not arguing about it for months because you couldn’t see the episode again and everybody was just relying on memory might also be wondrous if it happened to me now.

Also we had three networks plus PBS and a couple of syndicated channels that showed, like, monster movies (with commercials) and Three’s Company reruns.

And you still needed that booklet.

Truly, we live in a time of wonder.

TV Guide—the little one—was a booklet you had to take out in order to see when you had to watch things, and when I was in grade school, I couldn’t record them either.

You watched the new Happy Days on Tuesday by changing the channel at 8 when it was on, or you didn’t see the episode until summer.

Muting The Cut discourse foreverrrrrrrrr

Eh, I don’t know. Her only feeling toward her friend seems to be pity. She assumes she knows her friend’s thinking when she doesn’t. I mean I’m glad it’s entirely clear that this is about her own issues, I guess, but this kind of reaction is not the enlightened wisdom she obviously thinks it is.

That must be horrible, I’m sorry.

I remember very clearly realizing that we now had horrible things happening so often that you couldn’t acknowledge when you were (for instance) doing a regular podcast episode shortly after one happened, because you’d do it every time.

Again, I agree the line can be fine with special editions and so on, but nobody is trying to collect Five Below squishies thinking that’s going to be a cool collection to have.

It’s a fine line, but I also think there’s a difference between a true collection, where you may want a specific thing but you also value having lots of variety, and something where everything is junk except a particular piece where all the value is social-media-imposed.

But the Five Below stress ball where only one color is coveted and you can’t know if you have it until you buy it and open it? So you just have to keep buying and opening? That is … P.T. Barnum level sucker exploitation.

At least you knew what Beanie Baby you were getting.

(2/2)

The fact that retail stores have figured out that they can create a cheaply made item nobody actually wants and TikTok will create demand for it based on nothing but wanting to make content about it is bad enough. (1/2)

So the next two series the Phillies are playing are against the teams who pounded them in their last two series?

Sounds about right.

This is also a fair point.

Right -- and it was voluntary! I would not have wanted to be forced into it, and 99 percent of attorneys would not have been well-suited to it.

You’re going to want to read this book.

(Source: I have read this book.)

Especially if you’re talking about a massive shift to, like, data entry. That is unserious.

This is a very good question too, and the one concern I think a lot of rich executives actually have about how this is all going to go.

Oh I know; I’m focusing on the mention of factory jobs, but absolutely yes.