IT'S PROBABLY ALL THE STEWED SEAFOOD 🦐
Greetings from my sick bed! I'm typing this missive from my bed as I recuperate from a recent bout of influenza. Hopefully by the time you're reading it, I will be getting dressed to head back into the office to help the rest of the Boredwalk team keep up with the holiday rush.
If not, then I suppose my condition took a turn for the worse, in which case...
I mean, I'll *probably* survive, but it is nice to imagine all my problems being over forever. A boy can dream!
GIF via ABC
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Today happens to be National Bouillabaisse Day, which is just a fancy French way of saying "fish stew." Given the English translation's relatively ... uninspiring ... connotation, I can understand the desire to gussy this dish's name up with superfluous vowels & consonants. Brevity is the soul of wit, francophones! I guess Hamlet never made it across the channel. Or it did, and you were too busy overcomplicating food to notice.*
* I kid because I love. If anything positive came out of my recent brush with viral discomfort, it's that it allowed me to re-watch my absolute favorite show of 2022, FX's The Bear. If you haven't seen it yet, do yourself a favor and do so. If nothing else, it will provide a fairly accurate portrayal of what working at Boredwalk (or any small business) is like. i.e., everything around you breaking or malfunctioning all the time, sprinkled with a pinch of "will we remain solvent another week/month/quarter/year?" Fun times!
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What happened on December 14ths of the past? Here are a few things:
• Happy birthday to Alabama — the fightin' crimsons! — which became the 22nd US state on this day in 1819.
• The Wright brothers made their first attempt to fly with the Wright Flyer at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina on this day in 1903! However, it wasn't until three days later on the 17th that they successfully flew for a sustained period. Good thing we don't send emails on Saturdays, or you'd hear about Orville & Wilbur again, and nobody likes redundant content!
• Happy birthday to actress and mental health advocate Patty Duke, born this day in 1946!
• Have a rockin' slice of cake in honor of legendary journalist and critic Lester Bangs, born this day in 1948!
• Have a conciliatory cupcake in honor of porous-legged former Boston Red Sox first baseman Bill Buckner, who was born this day in 1949. Sorry/not sorry, BoSox fans, lol!
• Today is also the birthday of: French pop ingenue Jane Birkin (1946), Major League Baseball hall of famer Craig Biggio (1965), and singer-songwriter Beth Orton (1970)
• Pour one out for wooden-toothed founding person George Washington, who shuffled off this mortal coil this day in 1799, singer & pianist Dinah Washington, who passed way too young at the age of 39 in 1963, and Turkish-American Atlantic Records co-founder Ahmet Ertegun, who peaced out of existence this day in 2006.
Alright, you've waited long enough — on to the links!
1. 🎁 That's a wrap
If you're like me and struggle with how to giftwrap irregular objects — like house cats — this video how-to will come in handy!
The Boredwalk team weighs the pros & cons of each!
These talented makers take an (admittedly already creepy-looking) life-size animatronic wizard and ratchet up the holiday horror factor to eleven with this Krampus-y makeover. I'd like to see AI do that! (Not really. Please don't do this, nerds.)
Look, Netflix's new series Wednesday is dominating the television streaming universe right now about as much as T Swift is dominating the music streaming universe, and a big part of that popularity is down to everyone's favorite phalanged familiar, Thing. This video shows how they brought the most beloved sidekick of 2022 to life.
Sure, Vegas clocking in at number one is no surprise — it's kind of baked into their whole vibe, what with the gambling, the prostitution, the unbearable heat, and the presence of the Raiders football franchise — but who saw St. Louis coming in right behind it at number two? Los Angeles, are you even trying?! Get it together! And NOLA, you're not even the most sinful city in your own state?!? What is happening!?!**
** Other than me getting a little too liberal with the punctuation keys?
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. Don't miss it! Until next time...
Peace, love, and unpretentious seafood concoctions,
Matt
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