The Friday Dispatch: August 15, 2025

Hi! Hello! Howdy! Happy Friday. If there are any typos in this email, it’s because I am watching an episode of Psych with a roller derby plotline. And the song Check Yes, Juliet is playing during this scene?! This show! It’s targeting me! Ugh!

Earlier this week I learned about a website called Spaghetti Book Club, which publishes book reviews by little children. This one is my favorite, a review of a Calvin and Hobbes book, by a small child named Liam. Excerpt:

If you get a chance, click through to the website to appreciate the early-2000s high-tech illustration that accompanies the review. If you’re looking for more book reviews, by a woman who is 30, maybe you would like to read yesterday’s Book Empties post!

Okay, IN RETROSPECT, my header image for this post may seem a little abrasive. No offense meant to the Liams and Thomas P.s of the world.

You know who loves Calvin & Hobbes? MYLES, my HUSBAND. You know whose birthday was yesterday? MYLES. MY HUSBAND. So please drop a “happy bday Mdawg” in the comments or text him from a Google voice number or somethin!

I made a carrot cake for his birthday1 and at one point, I dropped a big handful of carrots on the ground, then spilled rum across the countertop. In this moment I felt like Bugs Bunny doing a Julia Child impression!

(Most of the time I feel like Julia Child doing a Bugs Bunny impression).

There’s a radio ad for Celsius energy drinks, and it plays all. the. time. during baseball games. In this house, we believe baseball should be consumed via the radio, the ad with the Mountain Dew song should be the national anthem, and that the MLB app should diversify the information in its “baseball trivia” feature. I’ve learned what an “oppo taco” is 14,000 times.

This Celsius ad, though. It worries me. It’s a first-person narrative. It’s less of an advertisement, more of a cry for help. We follow a lady who drinks a Celsius as she starts her day at the gym. Then, she drinks another one as a midday pick-me-up. Of course, she drinks one more before she goes out clubbing with the girls! But…this seems like a ton of caffeine to me, perhaps to the level of dependency. And what if she accidentally gets one of the Celisuses that was mistakenly filled with vodka? She will die!!

Hey, speaking of radio.

I’m on a show next month called College Radio! And Missourians2 rejoice, it’s the COLLEGE RADIO GONE COUNTRY episode!

I’ve wanted to be a part of College Radio for MONTHS. Much of my comedy life is spent writing songs with jokes in them. College Radio is jokes with songs in them! Here’s the official description of the show:

The show is on September 20th at Caveat here in NYC. Buy an in-person or livestream ticket today! Please! And thank you!

Hey, speaking of country music.3

There’s a new Taylor Swift album coming out! The title track (The Life of a Showgirl) features Sabrina Carpenter! Here is my official commentary on the new album, Taylor’s appearance on the New Heights podcast, the leaked lyrics and the collab:

She gonna eat her

Facebook has been recommending a really weird genre of post to me lately. I’ve seen my share of AI-generated fictional rubbish on social media, who hasn’t! For some reason, though, I’m only getting posts about…Eminem?

Here’s the first one that showed up in my feed:

Wow! How did he generate a second hat? Magic? Here’s the caption:

There’s a whole list of recurring characters in these AI posts, including Rihanna, Beyonce, Halsey, Kelly Clarkson, Billie Eilish, Steven Tyler and, recently, Adam Sandler. In the last two weeks Eminem has “shocked the world” with many collaborations which “no one could have seen coming,” including:

But he’s ALSO, somehow, had time to attend Ozzy Osbourne’s funeral, adopt Hulk Hogan’s youngest daughter, adopt multiple other children from assorted orphanages, visit Rihanna THREE times to reveal “a long-hidden message that left everyone frozen,” and give/receive mysterious gifts worth millions, most of them to/from Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, and 50 Cent.

Obviously, these are all examples of AI “slop” that the internet is increasingly flooded with. There are a few little quirks of these Eminem-specific stories that I find weirdly…charming? Charming’s not the word. It’s sort of how like those terrible Dhar Mann videos all include the phrase “So, you see…” or how YouTube bots often plagiarize comments by other bots. The Eminem stories all have a reference to “insiders being shocked” or “crowds were so shocked, they froze in the audience.” And the AI signature last line: “it wasn’t a ___—it was a ____ that _____.”

It wasn’t a lyric—it was a message that changed everything.

It wasn’t just a card—it was a confession that no one saw coming.

It wasn’t just a personal victory—it was a moment of vulnerability that struck a chord with millions.

All of this HIGH DRAMA paired with terrible cartoon art!!!! Man. I remember back in the day, Facebook was just flooded with stock photos and inspiring, made-up stories about how we can learn from children even as we teach them. Anyway. IDK why the algorithm decided Eminem was my entryway to the SlopSpace, but what a beautiful spirit guide he has been.

Earlier this week I hung out with my friend Zoe, who just moved to NYC. She’d visited before, and she’s been here full-time for about a month, so I asked her: “Have you seen the big room full of dirt yet?”

I might’ve talked about this in a previous newsletter. It’s important so I’ll talk about it again! The New York Earth Room is the most underrated art/tourist attraction in the city. It is free. It takes 45 seconds to look at it, and then you are free to go about your day; OR, you can really look at it and engage with it for a while, and spend some time in a nice air-conditioned room with a bunch of well-tended dirt. What is the New York Earth Room? It is: 280,000 pounds of soil, in an apartment at 141 Wooster Street. It has been on view since 1977. I’ve seen it 10 times and I never get tired of it. It’s something that only exists in New York (two other Earth Rooms by the same artist, Walter De Maria, used to be on view in Munich and Darmstadt, but neither of them are around anymore). From 1989 to 2024, the Earth Room had the same caretaker, a man named Bill Dilworth. While writing this, I hoped to reach out to him and tell him how much I appreciated his work, but looking him up, I learned that he died in December. So! Go see the Earth Room in memory of Bill Dilworth, who spent 35 years of his life tending to it.

ALSO: Damn did I love The Naked Gun reboot. I loved it as an extension of the original films, I loved it as a modern-day stand-alone movie, I loved it as a vehicle for fans of the Black Eyed Peas to finally feel represented. Myles and I saw it at Alamo Drafthouse (thank you, John & Amy!), so we all the pre-show, in-theater clips and songs were “spoilers without context.” Wouldn’t that be a fun job, choosing all the pre-show “hints” that play in the theater? Here are a few things I would play in the theater before a screening of The Naked Gun, if I had my druthers (technically spoilers but how would you know):

We conclude, as usual, with America’s favorite not-shopping column, WIDNBTW. After my sumptuous leathery spiral in last week’s Dispatch, I spent A LOT MORE TIME on Poshmark and eBay…with one potential MAJOR ($11) success?! That’s an update for a future Friday, though.

Here’s What I Did Not Buy This Week:

Alright, I gotta get outta here and eat more carrot cake. Happy Birthday Myles and God Bless Us Every One. And? Please! Enjoy the song of the summer.

Yes, the song of the summer is a mashup that came out in January 2017. Yes, there are Yoshi sound effects in here. YOU LIVE IN AN ERA OF ABUNDANCE!!!!!

I hope your heart is warmed by energetic funniness today and forever.