Friday Flames | 7.7.23
A weekly synopsis of what we figured out about inverted pineapples, moist epitaphs, and Thread dread.
First of all: Happy 77th anniversary (on 7/7!) to Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, who have been married longer than most people have … been. 🥂
Now then: It’s a quirk of temporal fate that we’re supposed to celebrate America’s birthday just days after SCOTUS puts a couple more fistprints in the cake. Yet here we are, shielding our pets from fireworks right after rulings that allow 1) a business to refuse service to gay people and 2) the government to keep soaking 43 million student debtors with the highest interest rates in a decade.
As one of our favorite tweeters put it: “Never thought I'd live to see the day that I'd trust gas station sushi before I'd trust the Supreme Court, but here we are.”
Speaking of which: The U.S. may have just turned 247, but will Twitter still be around for the semiquincentennial? Wednesday saw the launch of Tentacles—sorry, Threads—another shoplifted idea clone launched by Meta so Zuck can drink Elon’s milkshake. (And Elon is salty about it.) Meta may be a social media company town that will harvest your marrow if you let it, but tens of millions have joined this “privacy nightmare“ anyway, just to watch Elon eat it.
For now, Threads feels like when we lived in NYC, after the remnants of a hurricane would power-wash the city and make everything smell a little less nasty for about six hours. Breathe it in now, because the stank will return.
When fireworks are fireweak
A lot of us who spent last month inhaling Canada are mostly done with fireworks—and especially with the neighborhood cretins who decide July is Fireworks Month. Fireworks fill the air with 42% more shit, and concerns in DC and Utah and NYC and LA are inspiring a change to drone shows. Google a few of them. They’re amazing. And here’s a piece that describes how light shows are created and asserts that drones are absolutely not programmed to exterminate us all.
“Moist in life, moist in death”
If you’re still deciding what to do with your body after it expires (and maybe composting isn’t your jam), consider that TikTok has reinvigorated Rosie Grant’s quest to make recipes that she finds on gravestones. Magda thinks her recipe would be for her favorite moist chocolate cake, at the risk of people reading “moist” at her gravesite for all eternity.
Welcome to Comeoniwannalayya
The world can feel truly arcane and mysterious when you learn, as Doug did this week, that displaying an upside-down pineapple—on clothing or jewelry, on a cruise, at an RV campsite—is a swinging couple’s invitation to Pound Town.
You might be well ahead of a country mouse like Doug on this (hell, Parade magazine knew before Doug did), but if you’re just learning this now, please keep it in mind as you roll into your next RV park.
Currently watching
Doug finished the second season of Slow Horses, based on Mick Herron’s second novel in the series, Dead Lions. Russian agents, elaborate misdirection, schemes upon schemes. And Gary Oldman has the supreme talent to make you truly sense how badly his character smells. Now the goal is clear: read the third novel, Real Tigers, before it arrives on AppleTV+ by … the end of the year?
Magda is traveling and not watching much. This includes the exhibits at the Museum of International Propaganda, which didn’t open the day she visited. (It’s a nonprofit run by volunteers that’s open just 11 hours per week, so whatchagonnado?) She bets the rest of the museum is as fascinating as the items in the front windows.
Currently reading
Magda is re-reading Heavy, Kiese Laymon's memoir of growing up under racism in Jackson, Mississippi, with an eating disorder and a really complicated relationship with his single mother. It's a tour de force, the kind of book you want to race through but don’t, in order to savor Laymon's writing. Magda doesn't read a lot of books written by men, on purpose. But this one is totally worth the exception.
Doug is about to finish Slow Horses and about to start How To Stop Time by Matt Haig, about a man who ages so incredibly slowly that he witnesses centuries of human history. Including the entirety of the Carters’ marriage.
Coming next week
The podcast resumes with Episode 8 on Wednesday, July 12, when our first guest couple, Tiffany Noel Taylor and Richard “R.B.” Furlong, talk about what it’s like when your robust-beyond-their-years parents suddenly need a ton of your time and help. Oh, and your siblings are married to each other, so your brother-in-law is also your … brother-in-law. We had a lot of fun with this one, and they shared many hard-won lessons that will inspire you to get those affairs in order.
Thanks for reading, and please remember that TikTok searches for “pineapple upside down” and “upsidedown pineapple” yield very different results.
Magda and Doug