News
National Day of Unplugging?! 🤨
GOOD LUCK WITH THAT
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
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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 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!
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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)
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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 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
What's with today today? 🤨
WELL, IT'S RORY COCHRANE'S BIRTHDAY, FOR ONE
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!
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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!
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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 soufflés pancakes,
Matt
Go back to where you came from! 👽
JUST FIX YOUR HOME PLANET AND STAY THERE!
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
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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)
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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
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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?