Ope Pardon, No. 8ish: Better Offers

This will be brief because this is mostly just a note to say there isn't a proper newsletter this week. And there most likely won't be one next week either.

While I know I could simply not send anything at all, and spare your inbox and perhaps my analytics, when I was 10 or 11 years old, the cool kids at school invited me to hang out one weekend and my mom wouldn't let me go because I had previously committed to going to this actively uncool kid's birthday party* and my mom said I wasn't allowed to cancel on people just because I got a better offer for my Saturday afternoon. Ever since then, I have been haunted by a moral imperative to honor (the first) commitment I make whatever it may be and while I have gotten better at ignoring this imperative, because the world is, in fact, full of nuance and changing, canceling or reprioritizing plans is, in fact, frequently justifiable, I nonetheless have a hard time doing so without providing an explanation.

Also: One of my strongest anxieties is the fear of letting people down and while I am not so vain as to think anyone will feel let down if I skip a week of this silly little thing, I do feel like I must acknowledge it so you know that I know that, yes, I have not honored my commitment and so, could, theoretically, have let you down. Needing people to know that I know when I suck is big for me.

So here we are! No newsletter this week, for no particular reason. And no newsletter next week, because I am going out of town to visit a dear friend for her birthday and yes, that is 100% me choosing a better offer.

But I also don't want to leave you without anything to read this fine Sunday so please enjoy this flawless argument that F1: Drive to Survive is a secret Real Housevives franchise by one of my favorite TV critics, Kathryn VanArendonk.

If you've already read that because I sent it to you the second I saw the headline, here's Kathryn on why The Dropout (Hulu's Elizabeth Holmes/Theranos show) works so much better than the other scammer shows of late. (I've watched just the first episode of The Dropout and so far, big fan. But I am also a sucker for needle-drops so I was an easy mark.)

Okay, that's all for now! As you were!

*Something you should know about this girl's birthday parties: They actually ruled. She was kind of awful but her birthday parties were grand affairs. The first one I went to was Harry Potter-themed and her mom balled out on favors and goodies and activities. The next one was Star Wars-themed and the main activity was that we were going to reenact — I want to say almost scene-for-scene, these were sleepover parties so we were there a long time — The Phantom Menace. The birthday girl was the director, which suited her bossy personality; I was cast as Anakin, my eyebrows had to be drawn on, but I can't remember how we approached the rattail. (Yes there is video and yes I'm sure my mother still has it.) I remember this party fondly, it was a good time. The next one, the birthday party in question, the one I didn't want to go to, was Pirates of the Caribbean themed, a movie that I hadn't seen before we watched it at the party. It was, if I recall, a fun enough time all said and done, but we were just about at the age where such forms of make-believe fun weren't cool so there was a lot more catty resistance to buying in publicly and whole-heartedly to activity.

After that, my family moved so I don't know how her birthday extravaganzas evolved from there.

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