Biden looked spritely. Trump is back on the ballot. Kathy Hochul sends in the troops. The Houthis keep bombing. TikTok is mad. Plus: Rupert Murdoch gets engaged.
Hello and welcome back. Some housekeeping: We have our second debate coming up (April 11 in Dallas! See you there!) And you probably won’t notice this, but I’m holding back a couple health- and science-related items this week because I’m going to try out an experimental Health newsletter soon. If it’s bad, we’ll just pretend it never happened. Onward.
→ SOTU: Well guys, Biden looked great and delivered the State of the Union well. Aggressive, confident, smiling, strong, tanned. As New York magazine’s Washington correspondent Olivia Nuzzi quipped: “I guess there’s no adderall shortage at the White House.”
He celebrated NATO expansion (hi, Sweden!). He reaffirmed support for Ukraine. He talked about January 6 as a sort of second Civil War: “They failed! America stood!” But really, it was all about breaking the perception that he’s old and feeble. In that he was very successful, at least to my trained and ageist eye. The Republican response was delivered by Alabama senator Katie Britt, who was sitting in a kitchen, enunciating every syllable very intensely. It was kind of creepy. It’s hard to describe. And Trump during the SOTU? He was playing around on TruthSocial, putting photo filters on Biden’s and Kamala’s faces.
→ MSNBC is getting really fun again: After Russiagate, MSNBC went into conspiracy hibernation, chastened though never admitting wrong. Now, with 2024 in full swing, the golden days of MSNBC are back. This week, we had Joy Reid saying that Trump seems young and spry and it’s because he’s lazy: “The reason he doesn’t look old like Biden looks older—the presidency ages you when you do the job. Obama went gray because he was doing the work. Donald Trump looks the same as when he ran because he was playing golf the whole time.” Interesting theory. Extra points for including the phrase “doing the work.”
On another MSNBC show this week, everyone had a good laugh about people who care about immigration. They can’t believe voters choose it as a top issue! Here’s former White House press secretary Jen Psaki: “I live in Virginia. Immigration was the number one issue.” Joy Reid laughs. Rachel Maddow comes in with the kicker: “Well, Virginia does have a border with West Virginia. They’re very contested there.” The joke here is that the poor whites of West Virginia might move east. Like ew, someone call border control please! Appalachian invasion! Strategically, because I like many normal liberal policies, I don’t love the Democrat Commentariat becoming open snobs who say how much they hate poor people every week. But as a snob myself (I order sparkling spring water in glass bottles to the house every week and I feel no shame, I like it), I feel I don’t have a leg to stand on here. Carry on, guys! What are all these poor people doing, anyway?
→ Voters do care about Biden’s age and the border: Despite MSNBC’s admonishments, voters continue to worry about Biden’s age. Among people who voted for Biden in 2020, 61% now think he is “just too old” to serve effectively, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll. It is perplexing to me how and why Dems got themselves in this situation. People (like columnist Josh Barro, who I like a lot, and various White House types) are calling now for Sonia Sotomayor to retire, since she is older and sometimes travels with a medic. There’s of course a risk that if Trump wins, she’ll be replaced by a conservative judge. But it’s really hard to argue that the 69-year-old justice should step back when the man running for a second term is. . . 81. So as RBG tried to do once before, the plan is to white-knuckle it to November and hope for the best, or bring in some blood boys.
→ Trump back on the ballot: In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court put Trump back on the Colorado ballot. How did anyone ever think kicking the Republican candidate for president off the ballot would work? These state judges just decided to do one-party rule and thought no one would complain? I promise Trump can be beaten at the ballot box—you don’t need to go full Russia to do it. The Associated Press covered it as the Supreme Court endorsing January 6, because of course:
And political commentator Keith Olbermann, a major hero of the #Resistance, wrote that the Supreme Court “must be dissolved.” And then:
→ Isn’t this a good time to pay down the debt? Our national debt is now rising by about $1 trillion dollars every 100 days (someone forgot their wallet in the car!). Which is weird because it feels like right now the economy is good, Covid is over, and it might be a nice moment to pay off some of that debt or slow the burn. Oh, this just in—I’m hearing it’s more fun for Biden officials to use money guns to spray cash? That voters like cash being sprayed on them? Students don’t like debt? Okay. Interesting. Money guns to continue.
→ Those migrant planes are fake but also real:
Trump claimed that 325,000 migrants were flown into the U.S. and dropped off in undisclosed cities as part of a new federal program. AP says it’s false. Sounds good and clear. But then. . . if you read the AP article, it says it’s all definitely true?
From the AP’s curious debunking: “Under a Biden policy in effect since January 2023, up to 30,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela can enter the country monthly if they apply online. . . . Biden exercised his ‘parole’ authority, which, under a 1952 law, allows him to admit people ‘only on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.’ ” And: “On Jan. 26, the agency reported 327,000 were vetted and authorized for travel.” And: “[C]iting an exemption under the Freedom of Information Act for law enforcement–sensitive information,” the government is not disclosing at which airports migrants are dropped off.
I am big-time pro–legal immigration, pro–making the process easier and more humane, but the way the Biden administration is doing things and the way it’s being covered is very, very weird. He has secret migrant planes, let’s just call it what it is.
Unrelated but interesting from Semafor (with a theory here from a Mandarin-speaking tech writer):
And don’t worry, conservatives are also being weird on this issue. New York City police arrested migrant Jhoan Boada for the crime of attacking cops but then realized they’d misidentified him. Boada hadn’t attacked any cops. He was pictured leaving custody, flipping off the cameras. Right-wing media ran with this image as the encapsulation of soft-on-crime policies and migrant entitlement. But Jhoan Boada was genuinely misidentified. I, too, would leave custody flipping the bird. Rock on, Jhoan.
→ Cookie Monster Americans: Biden continued his crusade about consumer packaging this week. “They charge you just as much for the same size bag of potato chips, only it has a helluva lot fewer chips in it!” And: “I’ll tell you who did notice, the Cookie Monster.” I know it’s an election year but are we already at the “I used to be able to buy a whole sandwich for a dollar” portion?
In actually good and important causes championed by the Biden administration: this week, the EPA announced $53 million in water infrastructure upgrades for Arkansas. That’s nice. More of that. (Jen Psaki, if you say even one thing about Arkansas residents. . . )
→ WPATH Files: This week, the leading organization for doctors who perform gender transitions on minors is reeling from a major leak of internal documents, emails, and conference calls. What the leak mostly shows: doctors really had no idea about a lot of the long-term impact of these interventions. Would the kids put on blockers and then cross-sex hormones ever be able to orgasm? Wow, we’re finding out that they can’t, because they’re saying they can’t.
Will puberty blockers followed by cross-sex hormones (the yellow brick road of medical transition) stunt a kid’s growth, one clinician asks? Answer seems like yes: “Blockers, by suppressing puberty, keep growth plates open longer, so younger teens have a potential to grow longer, however their growth velocity is typically at prepubertal velocity, without typical growth spurt.”
Or watch this video of clinicians trying to figure out how to get their 14-year-old patients to do informed consent to lifetime sterility (often starting at age 9 with puberty blockers).
From the video: “It’s a real growing edge in our field to figure out how we can approach that. I’m definitely a little stumped on it.” I am also stumped on how to get gender-dysphoric children to consent to sterility—maybe we can wait till they’re 18? Just an idea. Just a thought.
One practitioner talks about meeting former patients now in their 20s who want to start families, and he jokes that when they find him, he responds: “Oh, the dog isn’t doing it for you?”
The biggest news is that these groups knew that the hormone therapies were causing cancer. I’ve said it before, but as a one-time butch teenager with rabid political opinions and the knowledge that I was Correct About Everything, now a happy gay adult with no political opinions and the knowledge that I am Usually Wrong: thank god this movement wasn’t around when I was 14. That said, when I’m done having kids, given the state of things post-breastfeeding, a double mastectomy sounds sort of nice.
→ TikTok very upset about maybe getting banned: A new bipartisan bill in Congress would ban apps controlled by a foreign adversary. TikTok is owned by ByteDance, which is based in China, where no companies have freedom from the Chinese Communist Party’s oversight. The legislation would ban TikTok unless ByteDance sells it. But then how can it do the manipulating and probably the spying? So now TikTok operatives are lecturing the American government on the First Amendment and capitalism: “This legislation will trample the First Amendment rights of 170 million Americans and deprive 5 million small businesses of a platform they rely on to grow and create jobs.”
Right. Freedom of speech and commerce. Right.
On Thursday evening, the bill unanimously passed the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, 50–0. “Needless to say, this is incredibly unusual,” wrote political reporter Jake Sherman.
→ AOC chased by protesters: Some jerks found Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and her husband as they were leaving a movie theater and started heckling the congresswoman about the Israel-Hamas war. Why hadn’t she called it a genocide, they wanted to know, chasing her through the mall and recording. She lost her temper, as would I. It’s sad because my bet is someone close to her or on her own staff shared that AOC would be at that movie, at that time. The protest is too large and organized to be this random. Though it was Brooklyn.
Now, I am Team AOC on this. Leave her alone to have a Dune: Part Two date night (and I hope she fires whoever leaked her schedule). But it’s fair to note that AOC used to be a big fan of this style of protest and generally escalatory protest tactics. It would be very cool if she came out now and drew lines. . . . Anyway, here’s 2020:
→ What is going on with Mitch McConnell’s family? Angela Chao, Mitch’s sister-in-law, was found dead, drowned in a Tesla that had driven into a pond on a private ranch. That’s very strange. It’s being investigated as a criminal matter. But the weirdest part is Mitch McConnell then immediately announced his retirement. Extremely odd series of events here.
→ Et tu, Brown? Brown University, the cool Ivy, the stoner cousin with no curfew, is bringing back the SAT. Brown is citing the same stats we’ve always known: the SAT helps increase diversity in part by highlighting talented kids who are in difficult circumstances, smarties who didn’t get to go to sailing camp or hire me to write their essays (I charge very little, $50K max per supplemental), maybe even kids who had to work instead of running their high school’s literary magazine. Anyway, you know standardized tests are back in fashion when Brown starts requiring them again.
→ Do you have a permit for that paintbrush? In Minnesota, a new bill would ban unlicensed housepainters. You wouldn’t even be able to buy large amounts of paint from places like Home Depot lest you try to do something unauthorized. Yes sir, we’re gonna need to see some ID and a badge for that much White Dove.
We know what you’re thinking of doing with it. We know about the accent wall in the kids’ playroom.
You’ll be shocked to hear that the politicians behind this new law are supported by the Painters and Allied Trades Council, the housepainters’ union. They would love to see all Minnesota husbands banned from touching paintbrushes, just for safety reasons, you see. It can be very dangerous if Todd does the trim in the breakfast nook wrong. Very dangerous.
→ North Carolina’s GOP governor nominee is a very odd pick: Mark Robinson, who is the new Republican candidate for the North Carolina governorship, might be a nut. One classic strange Robinson take: “I absolutely want to go back to the America where women couldn’t vote. Do you know why? Because in those days we had people who fought for real social change, and they were called Republicans, and they are the reason that women can vote today.” Lots more oddities where that came from. Here are a few: he quoted Hitler on Facebook, he called gay people “maggots,” and said the movie Black Panther was a Jewish-Marxist conspiracy “created to pull the shekels out of your Schvartze pockets.” I wish Mark Robinson failure in this endeavor.
Not to be out-crazied, Candace Owens went on a riff this week about the possibility that Jewish gangs are murdering people in Hollywood. “Food for thought,” said Owens. Indeed.
→ A bad WaPo take and a creepy Republican response: Sometimes to be a moderate is to feel crazy, stuck as we are between two very strange extremes (and I’m not even talking about Mark Robinson anymore). This week, The Washington Post ran a long news story about how shoplifting is a fake, dumb “late-capitalism horror story.” In the piece, which describes a Washington D.C.–area CVS that was robbed so much it’s shutting down, the Post reporter explains: “America is a sticky-fingered nation built on stolen land, and its current moral panic is about shoplifting.”
Yes, The Washington Post is trying to argue, as usual, that theft is a distraction from the real story: for-profit stores are bad, because America is bad and is itself stolen, and all our moisturizers and shampoos should be provided free by the government. That Jeff Bezos, the ur-capitalist, pays these writers and loses $100 million a year is endlessly funny to me. If I got really, really rich through my ruthless business acumen and admirable work ethic, I might also enjoy keeping a playpen of communists just to see what they get up to. And anyway, CVS closing is quite literally good for Jeff. It’s a double win!
Now conservatives, of course, had a field day with this, and it got very creepy. When one antisemitic Twitter/X account posted about the writer, cryptically: “In case you were wondering, yes she is,” Rep. Mike Collins of Georgia wrote back: “Never was a second thought.” The X account confirmed it meant she’s Jewish, while Mike Collins pretends people are just reading into things, overacting and such.
→ Moscow police arrest people they identified at Navalny funeral: The Moscow cops studied video footage of people who went to mourn opposition leader Alexei Navalny and are now locking them up. I don’t think there’s a modern commenter who has had worse timing than Tucker Carlson declaring Russia the promised land for old-fashioned values right before Putin killed off Navalny. Meanwhile, John Kerry, United States Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, called on Russia to reduce emissions, which would maybe soften the blow of their Ukraine slaughter mission: “If Russia wanted to show good faith, they could go out and announce what their reductions are gonna be and make a greater effort to reduce emissions now, and maybe that would open up the door for people to feel better about what Russia is choosing to do at this point.” Freaky quote. Though come to think of it, I guess I would like Russia more if they were, let’s say, recycling tank parts after another village slaughter.
→ We Sent in the Troops: Hoping to straighten out the city’s subway system, New York’s Democratic governor Kathy Hochul deployed 750 National Guard members to do some stopping and frisking, some bag checking, some broken-window theorizing. You know, the stuff we were told for years is fascism. Why now? A bunch of random attacks, including a subway conductor being stabbed in the neck. The attacker probably just needs therapy, right? Long conversations with the conductor to talk about the pain they both feel? Not anymore. In 2024, cops are back!
Weird because in 2020, that same editorial board member was posting about how cities like New York deploying the National Guard is: dangerous, anti-humanity, and anti-democracy. We like our subway rides with a fifty-fifty chance of death! Anyway, as someone who has changed her mind over the years, I’m good with this. I’m okay quietly winning (just kidding I need to loudly win). Mara Gay, welcome to being a normie. We both don’t want subway conductors randomly stabbed. I was right and you were wrong.
→ Houthis keep bombing: So we definitely know that one side wants violence. But thankfully, America is run by a peace-loving man. The military under Biden’s command told the Houthis, “Friends, comrades, let’s just get along.” And in response, this week the Houthis killed three sailors. A ship they hit with a missile last month finally sank this week, too. It was carrying approximately 21,000 metric tons of ammonium phosphate sulfate fertilizer, which will cause major environmental damage. Alas. What can you do? We tried everything with those Houthis, namely asking them nicely.
Biden is the presidential Gentle Parent. He’s not going to spank you for biting, he’s just going to ask why you feel the need to bite so often and to think about how that might make us feel. And like any toddler, the Houthis sometimes respond with big feelings (shrieking DEATH TO AMERICA and killing sailors). It’s okay. We’ll get there. We all feel big feelings sometimes.
→ Kiss photo banned, unbanned, memory-holed: A lot happened very quickly around the classic photo of a Navy sailor kissing a woman in Times Square at the end of World War II. I’m not talking about that moment, on V-J Day, whatever that is. I’m talking about eighty years later, where the real battle is being fought.
First, the Department of Veterans Affairs banned it and asked all facilities to remove it immediately. “To foster a more trauma-informed environment that promotes the psychological safety of our employees and the veterans we serve, photographs depicting the ‘V-J Day in Times Square’ should be removed from all VHA facilities. This action reflects our dedication to creating a respectful and safe workplace and is in keeping with our broader efforts to promote a culture of inclusivity and awareness.” Right, the photo is banned, because the nurse didn’t consent to being kissed in celebration. Outrage ensues, as you might imagine. (I mostly just keep thinking about the Houthis, and how this scrappy group of Yemeni terrorists are winning the seas, and I gotta say, I get it.)
Then, hours later, the head of the Veteran Affairs department unbanned the photo, posting on his social media to reverse course.
But the best is the last step: “fact-checkers” at Snopes declared it fake news to say the photo was ever banned. This never happened. FALSE. Joe Biden’s military would never. (Well, they did, but it was a mistake. Ignore. It is FALSE. Delete. Shut up.)
→ Judith Butler’s rant: Judy’s at it again this week, explaining to a cheering audience that Hamas is not a terrorist group and that October 7 was not antisemitic. “We can have different views about Hamas as a political party, we can have different views about armed resistance. But I think it is more honest and historically correct to say that the uprising of October 7 was an act of armed resistance. It is not a terrorist attack and it is not an antisemitic attack.”
Remember that guy who called home to his parents in Gaza in jubilation over all the Jews he killed? Anyway.
The University of Toronto is hiring a professor to teach a special new seminar on “Anti-colonization and the Politics of Violence.” “The seminar pursues a nuanced understanding of violence as it relates to de/anticolonization as a lived praxis of resistance and as a praxis of resistance and as a practice of self-defense that is grounded in the assertion that there can be no decolonization without anticolonization.” Frankly, whoever can understand that sentence deserves the gig.
Meanwhile, the United Nations finally admitted this week that Hamas used rape as a weapon of war. And The New York Times is having internal breakdowns over their reporting on this, as staff revolt over the fact that the NYT dares to cover it, with the paper now having to launch a leak investigation to find out who keeps sharing stuff (hint: it’ll be the staffer who is typing Allahu Akbar Death to Jews in Slack, which should narrow it down to a tight 12 or so).
There’s more on Houthis, Tradwives, and a Very Boomer Air Force Lieutenant, but first, I bring you our resident cartoonist, David Mamet:
→ The most Boomer Air Force spy scandal: A 63-year-old former Air Force lieutenant colonel has been arrested and charged for leaking classified information to a woman he met online. It is apparently very, very easy to convince a 60-something man to tell you top-secret military tidbits. Here were some of her prompts:
“By the way, you were the first to tell me that NATO members are traveling by train and only now (already evening) this was announced on our news. You are my secret informant love! How were your meetings? Successfully?”
And: “Dave, it’s great that you get information about [Specified Country 1] first. I hope you will tell me right away? You are my secret agent. With love.”
And: “Sweet Dave, the supply of weapons is completely classified, which is great!”
Oh, Dave. Dave, did she ask you to set up a special checking account too? Dave, please, for the love of God, step away from the desktop computer before you give away the launch codes.
→ Doom loop to boom loop! San Francisco’s moderate lib faction won big this week, in an almost clean sweep. Police are now allowed to engage in chases and can use video surveillance technology, basically catching up to any normal urban police force. Adult welfare recipients are now required to enroll in free drug treatment and testing programs, catching up to any normative idea of how welfare should work. But the best tally is the algebra vote. See, a few years ago, San Francisco made it illegal for public schools to teach eighth grade algebra as an optional accelerated class, because it might mean acknowledging that some kids are better at math. Algebra is the issue that woke the sleeping beast of San Francisco (normal people), who then tackled all the other issues. This week, 84 percent of voters said they want algebra offered to kids. Props also passed that will make housing easier to build, which counts as another loss for the city’s progressive wing (I’m serious).
The Chronicle declared the end of the good times:
I will never understand how banning algebra for public school kids and letting poor neighborhoods go to rot lest the police get involved was. . . progressive, but it happened and now, god willing, it will be forgotten. Long live San Francisco! Long live moderate libs who are fine with people learning math! I don’t want to learn math, but it doesn’t bother me when someone else does. That’s what makes us healthy, happy people.
→ Speaking of cities that are building housing: Hell yeah, Austin, where rents are down 6.7 percent from February of last year. When you build housing, life gets more affordable.
→ Elon vs. OpenAI and Elon vs. Tesla lawyers and Elon vs. . . . : Elon Musk is filing a lot of lawsuits and also getting sued a lot. But for my humorous purposes, the best one is his battle against a group of Tesla shareholders. Musk had bet his Tesla CEO compensation on hitting certain milestones, milestones which at the time were considered impossible, but if he hit them, he’d make a huge amount. Everyone said it was crazy, “the most radical compensation plan in history,” per NYT’s Andrew Ross Sorkin. “He gets no salary, cash bonus, equity, he only gets equity that vests over time but only if he reaches these hurdle rates which are, dare I say, crazy.” Well, reader, he hit those crazy goals! But then a group of shareholders decided he shouldn’t get the payday anyway, and Delaware courts agreed. It’s pretty crazy. The best part is, the lawyers for that group of jerks, the shareholders, are now in court because they want to be paid. . . $5.6 billion in Tesla stock. Gotta love lawyers.
→ Why are smart cars collecting all this data? The Biden administration is working to prevent China from spying on us via our cars, which are becoming large computers, basically. In reading about this, I’ve learned that our smart cars are collecting insane amounts of information. More than just how much we listen to the radio. From Quartz’s coverage: “Several products sold by General Motors and Nissan were found to gather genetic information, while Nissan and Kia were found to collect details about their drivers’ sexual activity.” I’m sorry, genetic information? Sexual activity? The Honda is for getting to the grocery store and back in one piece, thank you very much. I don’t need it knowing about my marriage.
→ BBC’s bad week: One of their Gaza-based reporters, Mahmoud Awadeyah, is secretly bankrolled by Iran. He praised various terror attacks and posted selfies with the leader of Islamic Jihad. You know, normal reporter stuff.
And a Syrian immigrant accused of child rape was profiled very sympathetically by the BBC as simply a victim of racism. He has now been convicted of raping another child. I know it’s hard to believe, but migrants are just normal people, not special spirit deities who could never do violence.
→ Tradwives Off the Wall: For those who like staring into the uncanny valley, check out the feed of influencer Alexia Delarosa, one of the many “tradwife” influencers now finding big audiences. There is Alexia in a full face of makeup making homemade fettuccine Alfredo for her toddlers. In one video getting a lot of pickup, Alexia, in an off-the-shoulder number, marches out to her garden while holding a chicken, and “harvests” strawberries from her raised bed. “These were perfectly ripe,” her voiceover tells us while she plucks her strawberries (which are red tip–down in the dirt, green stem sticking up). “I can’t believe I actually grew these here.” This is so sweet to me because she’s never even seen how a strawberry grows.
In other videos, she suggests drinking ranch as a cold soup. She calls her nearly four-year-old son her 45-month-old. All of these off-kilter Easter eggs seem designed to piss people off, or else make them do a double take while scrolling. Now, whether this is high satire, or carefully calculated influencing (she does ads for JCPenney and a virtual homeschooling platform) is up for debate. But as the tradwife world grows— online, meaning ethereal stay-at-home moms who show off their painstakingly crafted meals and well-outfitted broods—expect to see more outlandish videos that make you doubt your own sanity.
→ Audacious! Stacy Davis Gates, the head of the Chicago Teachers Union, speaking to the City Club of Chicago this week, made a simple request. “We are asking you to give us an opportunity to tell our story,” she said. Nice, beautiful, I’m all in. Except what she’s actually asking for is $50 billion-with-a-B dollars to cover the union’s demands. “That’s audacity,” she said.
Gates, who, in another video, said she was “very, very, very ashamed of myself and disappointed” for helping to elect Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson (shout-out Austin Berg for compiling these highlights) goes on. “Stop asking that question,” she says, anticipating that perhaps someone, you know, might want to know how she hopes to cover $50 billion in contract demands. “Ask another question.” Okay! How about: How in the hell do you expect to pay for that?
→ Congratulations to Rupert Murdoch on his engagement: He’s 92. She’s 67. And they’re getting married in June. This is Rupe’s sixth engagement. Whatever your politics, you gotta admire the insanity of someone who believes that much in love. Congrats to the happy couple!
CORRECTION: An earlier version of TGIF misquoted Mark Robinson by abbreviating his quote on women and voting, incorrectly implying he did not want women to vote. We have extended the quote and apologize for the error. Nellie was writing in haste and had used the worst source possible, HuffPost.
And where do you TG? Send pics to TGIF@thefp.com.
Mindy writes: TGIF’ing and preordering Nellie’s book from a suburban bookstore café outside Baltimore, MD.
Rob writes: Thoroughly enjoying and LOL’ing with TGIF from our anchorage at Isla Ixtapa (a.k.a. Isla Grande) on Mexico’s Pacific Coast.
Susan writes: TGIF’ing from Milwaukee, WI, on the couch with my kindergartner (and doll audience) waiting to put her on the school bus.
A different Mindy, this one from Oakland, writes: TGIF’ing while going blonder. Blonder!
Teresia writes: I TGIF in my sewing room, where most of the creative ideas occur in my house, and also the most production. Besides, it’s more pleasant than housekeeping.
Myron writes: The cold, wet, beautiful Oregon Coast off Cannon Beach in the presence of Haystack Rock.
Mary Kay from Lewisville, TX, writes: A twofer! TGIF and opening SWAG at my north Texas middle school! 🤠
Brigitte from New York TGIFs while driving: I TGIF in my car while performing that unique NY ritual of complying with alternate side parking rules. Coffee and smart humor: the only way to make sitting in your car while not moving bearable.
Mike writes with love: TGIF’ing in Kona Village, Hawaii, where my wife and I are celebrating our 8th anniversary after 32 years of marriage (m. 2/29/92).
Rosie writes: Replaced the blinds in my office in Boulder, CO (where I TGIF every Friday lunchtime), to create an even better backdrop for my TGIF photo. The price of competing to get selected is as steep as those Flatirons! Let’s hope this works.
Zack, who really gets me, writes: Zack here, TGIF’ing from a Chick-fil-A on the NY State Thruway.
Zach, this one with an h, writes: TGIF’ing with our two youngest while I work from home and my wife teaches piano lessons.
Mayim writes: TGIF’ing from Pinecliff Lake, West Milford, NJ, where I’m working on a movie and staying in a lovely little log cabin.
Megan from Manchester-by-the-Sea, MA, writes: Usually I TGIF at home, but last week I TGIF’d from the driving school while my daughter waited to take her driver’s license test. She passed!
Melissa writes: I’m TGIF’ing while at the Key West Butterfly and Nature Conservatory as the rest of my family strolls in front of me, trying to attract the butterflies in hopes that they will land on them!
And finally, Fred, in the third person, writes: Fred reading with his horse Siete in Kansas.
TGIF, everyone. I hope the state of your unions are strong.