Jokes and Sass

“some people” here is playing the role of “my husband”

No, I didn’t just write this to dunk on him, but I wrote it a little to dunk on him. He’s wonderful but, like us all, is flawed, and one of his flaws is not liking The Sound of Music (1965).

This post is in honor of Christopher Plummer, of course.

And in all seriousness, The Sound of Music is phenomenal. Fight me. Okay, don’t fight me, because I’m conflict-averse and have very weak arms, but also this opinion is right.

Christopher Plummer, may his memory be a blessing, is perfection in his role as Captain Georg von Trapp. The small facial expressions, whether they are a smile or a frown or an exhausted sigh or the smirk you give a Nazi sympathizer when you’ve eviscerated him at a fancy ball, are all diamond-encrusted acting of the highest caliber and that image of him tearing up the flag gives me more patriotic zeal than our national anthem. Watching him fall in love with Julie Andrews is pure, unadulterated delight.

And Julie Andrews? Don’t talk to me? Like??? This woman could do nothing mediocre and every moment she is on screen is a ray of sunshine to which I am not entitled but for which I am eternally grateful. This woman sings a song titled “I Have Confidence” while strolling down a rich dude’s driveway swinging suitcases and my depressive self somehow doesn’t hate it even a little??? What magic do you weave, Fraulein?

And the kids??? How are these precocious little nightmares all universally adorable and talented? Who cares? They all are great and in tune and look excellent in clothes made of draperies and “oh that isn’t realistic”? Go walk into the Volga or whatever river that is that they all fall into all cute-like. This movie gives us 7 children from ages 5 to 16 and they are not insufferable nor are they interchangeable and this is a miracle but because it is The Sound of Music it is also to be expected because everything this movie does is perfect even when the nuns are sassy to Maria.

SPEAKING OF WHICH. THIS MOVIE. This movie has a bunch of nuns singing a diss track about JULIE ANDREWS and it works. Do you know how difficult that is? Like this group of nuns set up a roast of 1960s Julie Andrews who is like if an angel were somehow more of an angel and it still hits. They call her a clown and you’re like “ha, yeah, fair, she did just get lost in the hills instead of doing chores what a goof” instead of “HOW DARE YOU COME FOR JULIE ANDREWS” because they love her and that’s how you do a good roast, you know your subject. And then they use the song AS SHE WALKS DOWN THE AISLE GO OFFFFFF

Even the smaller characters are perfect! The Reverend Mother has perfect Old Lady Energy and a perfect solo and you can’t come for “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” if you’ve never caught yourself humming it while doing a chore you hate like “existing while not watching The Sound of Music” (it’s also really good for parody songs). You’ve got Max, who is sassy and a perfect foil for the Captain, because who else is gonna give him a hard time? And you’ve got the Baroness, who possibly invented beauty and bows out gracefully in the face of true love and gives us the iconic “or at least needs my money desperately” line.

And the kids! The KIDS! Liesl being 16 and having a song that is one of the biggest *WINK*s in musical and cinematic history and she sings the song with a Not Good Youth and we are still like “look how cute these two kids are” which is just a remarkable thing. The parade of children into Maria’s room during the thunderstorm is the most adorable parade ever captured and Friedrich and Kurt running in like “oh we’re not scared just uh checking on the girls just kidding sing to us Ms. Andrews please”??? When you’re watching as a child??? Find me a more relatable scene, I dare you.

And the MUSIC! You currently have at least one song on loop in your head as you’re reading this, because the songs are earworms that are actually earcaterpillars that become earbutterflies and fly off into the joyous feel of sunshine on your face on the first warm day of spring. There’s a whole song about solfege and it legitimately opens “let’s start at the very beginning/a very good place to start” and we love it and have no problem with it because it’s catchy and you’re learning and it’s Julie. The opener I’m not even going to talk about because watching the zoom into Maria on the hill is like how I imagine jumping off a cliff into a hug must feel, and then we get to go pretty quickly into the aforementioned diss track. “My Favorite Things” is a bop and you know it. And “So Long, Farewell” also goes in the camp of “I cannot believe they made a song about something this simple that works this well”; it’s literally a bunch of kids going to bed and you’re sitting there doing the choreography (which is just waving) before you realize it.

And the slower and softer songs? Just let me lie down for a year because oh my God they’re perfect. “Something Good” is an objectively perfect love song and especially for a former nun and the concept of trying to explain to someone that you don’t deserve them in song is EXTREMELY RELATABLE DON’T ACT LIKE IT ISN’T. And “Edelweiss”? Try to listen to the reprise when he’s singing to like, Austria, and gets choked up, and try to not get choked up yourself, trick question, trick statement, you can’t, you’ll get sad, and that’s good and fine because BLESS MY HOMELAND FOR. EV. ER.

The movie is funny; the moment where Plummer accidentally calls her “Captain” is just about the best “oh I would do anything to take back what just came out of my mouth” moment on Earth, and the Captain dunking on his kids who can’t lie about berries well enough to save themselves is *chef’s kiss* the best. The movie is romantic; the Captain and Maria performing the Landler is a masterclass in romantic tension. The movie is triumphant; seeing the nuns pull out the car parts for the Nazi cars is basically the happiest I ever was watching a movie as a kid. This movie is the best, and it is not too long, okay, I hear you, and you can shush.

The hills are alive with the sound of my being right.

(author’s note: those year-in-review things that families send out? you know those? that, but not lying? anyway please know that I care sincerely about your struggles, this year has been varying degrees of challenging to absolutely impossible, you are seen and you are loved, therapy is important, please forgive me for my pretty messed up sense of humor)

(I also kinda hate myself for putting “author’s note” but I thought it was funny idk on to the actual post)

ACTUAL CONTENT BELOW

Dear friends and family,

This year has been such a difficult one, and we wish we could spend it with you: we miss you! Well, that is, we miss some of you. The rest of you, we’re actually thrilled that the pandemic gives us an excuse to not have to be around you over the holidays, and we’re currently brainstorming excuses for next year. It has been really great to keep up with you all on Facebook as much as possible, especially when we see you in huge groups without a mask! Yes, specifically you, Aunt Eileen!

Given that so many families this year lost so much, we’re doing our best to remember that we still have so much to be grateful for. Our best is nowhere near sufficient, though, and despite knowing that we’re living in a comfortable home with a stable income, each member of the family spends every waking minute suppressing a scream. #gratefulthankfulblessed

Bill’s coming up on his twelfth year at his job, and he learned quickly how to transition to that WFH life! “Quickly” here is, of course, relative, and he still forgets to mute his microphone on at least half of his conference calls. His colleagues are increasingly fed up, but he’s got a fun way of diffusing the situation: he reminds them all he’s not a millennial and not “techie” like most of his team! Oh, how they laugh every time he says that. The best one so far was when he gave a ten-minute presentation to a client without turning on his camera OR his microphone! That little oopsie lost the company a client and lost him the respect of his secretary, but we’re all adjusting to “the new normal,” ha ha!

Sandy’s been learning how to manage online school for the kids, which is, for some reason, yet another responsibility that’s fallen on her shoulders, just like nearly everything else! Someone could use a quarantini, ha ha! She’s been switching the kids’ computers between the kitchen and the basement every day, because apparently the basement is the better spot, despite the WiFi consistently failing to reach the laptop down there for fifteen consecutive minutes, and Bill somehow loses the ability to hear any time the kids are yelling for help! What a goofball!

Sandy is seeing an individual therapist to help normalize therapy for the family and because a close friend posted a maskless selfie in Target captioned “I am an American, I am FREE.” As a family, we’re seeing Dr. Schrader every week nowadays (we’ve been working together as a family to address what he has us call “The Incident”) and he’s been very helpful, especially after we deleted the TikTok app from the kids’ phones and drank a bottle of wine each.

Jacob is missing his classmates, and isn’t adjusting well to online classes at all, and the absence of structure has been causing him to withdraw from both his friends and his family in stages, and one of the few points of agreement between Bill and Sandy is their worry for him, but he recently got a Nintendo Switch, so he’s doing Minecraft, or something! His newest hobbies is looking up obituaries for people with his last name and asking his grandfather for the names of Vietnam War protest songs. He’s asked for a drum set for Christmas, so there’s no good solution here! #pandemichobbies

Olivia is still Miss Smiles, as you’ll remember from last year’s card! Except, of course, when we had to tell her that she couldn’t go to her friend’s birthday party because they were having a maskless, indoor party, we were ready for a sobbing meltdown, but instead, she got a flinty look in her eye and called her friend a “selfish bitch.” We have no idea where she learned that! We found her in her room later cutting up the unicorn Squishmallow pillow she received from that friend. Did we mention she turned the big one-oh this year? Ha Ha!

Speaking of milestones, Bill and Sandy celebrated 15 years of marriage this summer, and celebrated by letting the kids watch six straight hours of TV and DoorDash-ing Chipotle. The evening was thrown off course a bit by a phone call from Bill’s parents wishing us a happy anniversary that they used as an opportunity to ask why we weren’t going out to a restaurant to eat. Bill (such a jokester!) told them “because we’re not ******* stupid” and Sandy had to ask the kids to turn up the volume on the TV so they wouldn’t hear their dad screaming “do you want to die?! because it sounds like you want to die!” at Nana and Poppy. The Mandalorian sounds great on our sound system, by the way! Ha ha!

And last but not least, our dog Waffles has developed some kind of separation anxiety that’s manifesting even when we walk down the driveway to the mailbox. He’s very good at barking while the kids are in online class, and earlier this fall, he found a nest of baby rabbits and murdered them. Olivia was the first to find him covered in blood after, and she got a quick lesson in “the Circle of Life,” and not the Beyoncé kind! LOL!

We’re excited to see what 2021 has in store for all of us, and hopefully it’s seeing more of you “I.R.L.” (that’s “In Real Life,” for all you “boomers” out there, ha ha!) instead of on our screens. Please excuse the quality of the picture, but it is the one photo we have of all of us this year, and we didn’t realize that the dumpster was in the background when we took the picture. Kind of fits the 2020 theme, though, doesn’t it? Ha ha!

Let us know how you’re doing, if you get a chance! If your Christmas newsletter is filled with any kind of happiness, though, it’s going directly into a fire.

Happy Holidays!

(enclosed picture shows four grimacing people and a blurry dog)

TO BE CLEAR: I love these. I am ride or die for Hallmark Channel Christmas movies, and you can kindly go off to your home on Sadness Island if you’re gonna make fun of me for enjoying them. I get to poke fun because there’s an element of the ridiculous in them, but this is very much a “no one can make fun of ______ except for me” kind of post. This is the same way in which I get violently defensive of the Fast and Furious movies: they’re silly, but they are certainly not the canary in the coalmine signaling the fall of civilization. They’re ridiculous and harmless at worst and they are THE MOST AMAZING THING IN THE WORLD at best. (*sitting impatiently waiting for F9*)

Back to Hallmark movies: I love them. They began in actual October, because the Hallmark Channel does what it wants, and on the Hallmark Channel the Christmas season would begin in June of the previous year if the fates allowed. Hang your monthly streaming bill upon the highest bough. Did I make Andrew add Sling so I could watch these for 2 months? You bet your ox and lamb keeping time I did. I wanna watch as many cable-knit, twinkly-lit, perfectly-coiffed people as I possibly can fall in love in extremely odd circumstances using a formula.

“But they’re all the same!” I hear you cry. Right, yes. Yes, they are. They are pretty and chilly and sparkly and cozy and they will not hurt me, which is more than I can say for the rest of this year and like, life in general. I love the formula. The formula works. They’re all the same and that’s what I want. And I want it for all of you, too. So here it is: the Guide to Every Hallmark Channel Christmas Movie.

This outline is also, to be fair, no longer completely accurate. The channel has been making an effort to show gay couples and black couples and multiracial families and increase diversity across the board, and while it is far from perfect, the effort is there. But I am **feelin’ sassy** and where’s the fun in mocking a wholesome channel striving for equality? Nowhere. There isn’t any fun. So hop aboard the Willful Ignorance train while I give something I love a hard time. There’s a new movie nearly every night and definitely on weekends. BASICALLY EVERY. DAY. J O I N MEEEE

The guy

Straight out of the L.L. Bean holiday catalog, Mr. Tall, Medium Brown, and Handsome is the bergamot-scented, cozy-sweater’d smolderhunk that Hallmark thinks we want and okay they’re not entirely wrong. They come in two main varieties: Earnest Goober and Very Serious and Important.

The Earnest Goober is smiling and happy and generally into Christmas-type things, and will almost certainly be found playing in a snowball fight or other kind of youthful merriment before the end of the film. A patterned scarf is guaranteed, and an ugly Christmas sweater or hat or antlers headband or Rudolph nose or some other festive accoutrement is almost guaranteed.

The Very Serious and Important is a professional profession who works workingly all the time and Cannot Be Bothered with This Holiday Nonsense, as he has Things to Do Right Now. Definitely owns a patterned scarf as well but in a more muted plaid. Not a big smiler, until and unless the heroine is around, and then he smiles like smiling is his new professional profession.

Regardless, he is warmth, he is plaid, he is Kind Eyes, and he is going to help his true love decorate something at some point. Usually a tree, sometimes a baked good (gingerbread house, cookies), sometimes an entire event space.

The girl

An actual Sugarplum Fairy of Christmas Cheer or a model for Gucci’s suiting line who probably moonlights as a knife thrower or something; there is no middle ground. The heroine is either full-bore sparkle princess or a sentient pencil skirt who cannot remember her own birthday and would take a call from work during her niece’s Nativity play when her niece is baby Jesus. She’s in no way bad, though: like, if she took this call, she’d make up for it by depositing twenty grand into the kid’s 529.

She either is the meaning of Christmas or is going to find the meaning of Christmas, and sometimes both; do not ask me to explain this sentence any further as I SHAN’T. She does not have short hair, and she will do something absolutely bananas during the course of the movie like bake a batch of cookies in her work clothes, or wear high heels to babysit three children. Her apartment is the size of Grand Central Station and it is clean and gorgeous and no I don’t hate her why would you say that. She’s at least partially made of sunshine and in all seriousness I’d absolutely hang out with her, she’s nice to people and at worst she’s just very busy and at best she’s sugar and spice and skating on ice.

The guy’s best friend

Or roommate. Or coworker. Or brother. Just some vaguely manly presence whose existence we do not analyze in depth. In one Hallmark movie I watched this year, “The 12 Dates of Christmas,” this man’s wife went into labor in the first ten minutes of the film, and we did not hear from him again. Ever. I am hoping everyone is okay and they didn’t name the baby Khrynzleigh, but I must become comfortable with disappointment. Another one was a firefighter at the same station as our hero, who was with our heroine working on electrical safety for an event. The friend dropped “so you’re saying that there’s an opportunity for *sparks to fly*?” with the smuggest grin ever and reader I fell in love with a Hallmark Channel SIDE CHARACTER.

This dude is here as an exposition factory to ensure we know what our Mr. TM-B&H is about, and whether that thing is 1. work or 2. who am I, Hedwig? what am I? I feel kind of bad for these guys since they nearly always seem to have lovely, functional families and want the best for our hero and will at least never call our hero asking him to support their small business that is just Herbalife. I’d watch a movie about the best friend in a second. Sometimes they are allowed to be funny, but usually this is reserved for our next person.

The girl’s roommate

Could be roommate, coworker, sister, friend from college, cousin, whatever. This person is the funniest and best human on Earth and is somehow not the star of the show. She does, however, make the heroine do stuff she doesn’t want to, so actually? No, I lied about her being the best, she’s out here making people **improve their lives** and shit who wants that? A friend who wants what’s best for you even if it makes you uncomfortable? Gross. I am kidding, I love every one of my friends who has made me a better person except for when it’s against my will like every time.

My personal favorite was a girl’s roommate who dunked on her for her attendance at a kids’ fundraiser for their music program – not because it’s bad to be there, but to pretend like she’s not there for the cute dude is just lies. Another one kept her friend from returning to her shitty fiancé who told her three weeks before they were due to get married that he wanted “to put a pin in it” re: the wedding. These women are Good People.

Both of their families

First, I have to point out that there is nearly always a tragedy of some kind that explains the absence of at least one family member. Probably only Disney has a worse track record of “the mom’s gone” because holy God why are all the moms gone???? And families can look any kind of way that they are but it is just like a weird removal of a person in a lot of these. This was a sad paragraph and I will stop. The guy and girl usually have their parents (or a parental-type figure) floating around somewhere. And by “somewhere” I mean “in the movie for a weird amount of time.” They are going to mention how proud they are of the hero or heroine “no matter what” at some point and while I don’t always buy it, it is always consistent.

There are also a lot of grandparents, and the grandparents are pulling some Benjamin Button shit or something because they are all like “oh my darling I missed you!” to the late-twenty-something main characters while looking like they just came from the spa and being born in 1970. Millennial grandparents are not young, stop lying to us, Hallmark, even people in their late twenties now look fifty because of this year.

The designated adorable

There is a character in the movie whose job is to be cute beyond all sense. Sometimes, this is a dog; it might be the guy’s dog or the girl’s dog, or just a dog that shows up whenever the spirit of Christmas needs a boost, or something. His name is probably Jingle. (This goes without saying, but I would die for Jingle and any other Jingle-esque iterations.)

The character could also be an elderly neighbor: this one is usually male, and they are consistently sunshine and do something like run a reindeer farm or harvest sugar cookies directly from the ground idk. They’re very cute but also make you anxious in a “let’s not ask for their opinions on Black Lives Matter or the whole thing is ruined” way.

But the most common and most popular designated adorable is a kid. Either the hero or heroine might have a smol angel as their offspring, but more frequently this is a kid or kids that they can just be like vaguely orbiting for festivity and Zuzu’s petals or something. They are usually just shy of “this is unrealistic and unbearable precocity” and are always well-behaved.

The setting

Okay, this one has some variation. There are some bigger cities that have been featured in these films: New York is the obvious one, but I’ve also seen Chicago and (I think?) Atlanta or another bigger Southern city. And I watched a movie this year that took place in Vienna. It was called “Christmas in Vienna.” It was Christmastime, and they were in Vienna. I wanna go to Vienna. *****vIeNnA*****

HOWEVER, nearly all of these bad boys end up in a flippin’ adorable small town in a quadrilateral-shaped state, and everyone in them is nice, cute, and well-moisturized (hashtag couldn’t be me) and I resent them all for having nice hair and glowing skin and apartments that are clean all the time even during the holidays. The whole place looks like Small Business Saturday, and it is somehow always snowing or has recently snowed (snown?), yet everyone can wear their coats open and their scarves unwrapped and just dangling from their necks like a fashion accessory rather than a hypothermia-preventer.

That last part is true of the big cities, too, and while I haven’t been to Chicago in the winter, New York in December is frequently just gray and sad and cold. Not always, it’s frequently gorgeous, but definitely not snow-globe pretty every day, and PEOPLE BUTTON THEIR COATS, DAMMIT.

The traditions

*Tevye voice* exposition

There’s at least one, usually like a half-dozen, sometimes like twenty, things that the characters’ families do every year. And there’s a definite sweetness to it, like their grandma makes them an ornament every year because she loves them, or they have recipes that involve everyone, or they went to pick out the tree together and let the kids get one that’s like way too big for the house. Earnest, heartwarming, festive shit that I adore.

However, they do tend to get really specific with some of these, and the emotions associated are also specific and intense, and somehow the tradition replicates itself in the movie a lot? And it’ll be something like “we’d always drink hot cocoa with 4 (four) marshmallows and sit on the floor in the position of the cardinal directions at exactly 5:37 on December 12th and sing ‘Good King Wenceslas’ but not the right lyrics just ones we made up” and that’ll somehow happen in the movie so our hero and/or heroine will be in their feelings about it. In their defense, I’m in my feelings about everything all the time, it doesn’t take much, so I support this weirdly specific nostalgia.

The empty coffee cup/mug

JUST LEMME RAGE REAL QUICK ON THIS ONE

every. single. movie. has this: they get coffee or cider or hot chocolate from a stand on the town square or whatever and then they wave around the cup and it is so, so clear that there is nothing in that cup and it makes me so upset. Put something in it, anything, anything with mass, water, sand, the receipt for the film’s sweater budget, ANYTHING, PLEASE. Just make it look like a cup with something inside of it.

My anger at this one thing really sums up my experience with Hallmark Christmas movies: yes, sure, this wedding planner has to fly to Alaska to get her bride “jingle bell flowers” and gets stuck there but falls in love and saves the town and Christmas and I buy it like the last scarf in the store, but you’d better put some damn hot chocolate in that cup.

In case anyone would like to read into this as “ooohhhh look how difficult it is to wear a mask, we shouldn’t have to, see, she agrees with me,” lemme just cut you off right there, she does not agree with you, wear a dang mask, we live in a society

But I will allow this: there are infinite kinds of non-medical face masks out and about, and I’ve tried to identify most, like a very odd ornithologist, and I’ve done this by wearing them, like a very odd… ornith. Bird. Whatever, I have a pretty prominent nose and every mask on earth likes to remind me so I feel both like a toucan and like a scientist who studies toucan plumage.

No, I also don’t know what just happened there BIG NOSE WEIRD MASKS MOVING ON

I haven’t worn all of this list but I’ve worn quite a few, and I’ve definitely observed them all in some fashion, and I don’t even know where I was going with this other than to lie down for the rest of 2020. Be good to each other.

the “slow down there, McDreamy”

This mask is one that looks like, vaguely medical, but you’re not at all associated with the medical profession and everything else about you shows that, because you’re dressed in a sleeveless Eagles tshirt and you’re messing up the lines at the grocery store, Seattle Graceless. Stand on the goddamn stickers on the floor, bruh, it’s not hard. Did this sound personal? It was. The mask has that kind of light blue-green color and a fabric that looks like a tarp and they always seem to be worn by someone you’re frantically praying is not actually in charge of anyone’s health.

baby’s first mask

This mask was probably donated to you or given as a gift or ordered from Etsy in the same way Dick Cheney fires a shotgun (the first thing you see; aim for the face), and it is either still pretty pristine because you used it for a day or two uncomfortably and then discarded it in favor of masks you picked out, or it looks like the skirt of a Les Mis barricades extra at the end of a six-month revival tour because you took way too long getting any other masks and wore only one until the mask was more makeup and dirt than mask.

definitely didn’t happen the second way for me haha nope absolutely not lol (it was light gray once yeah I still have it)

the vaguely inappropriate one

This doesn’t mean that the mask is TV-14 or anything, or that it looks like you bought it for a bachelor/ette party (I HOPE YOU AREN’T HAVING THOSE RIGHT NOW OH MY GOD), it’s just that it’s a little too… something, for everyday use. My personal example is unfortunate, because I love the dang thing so much, but it is a Fiona the Hippo mask. It is soft, and comfortable, and a friend sent it to me, and I cannot wear it at work because the front is designed to make you look like Fiona the Hippo. This is not Fiona’s fault in any way, she is a flawless big baby who can swim and doesn’t let anything stop her because she is fearless and who run the world? girl hippos, but if I’m at work, a client at some point could be like “why do you have a hippo on your face” and then I’d have to fight them and that’s just not good for anyone. Especially not Fiona. She’s a blubber, not a fighter. My perfect large child who has the little ears doing the wiggle thing!!!

Wilson from Home Improvement

Yeah, I remember this show, I’m old, shut up. Yeah, the dude at the fence, whose face you never saw. Yes, him, okay, I made the reference, let’s move on.

This mask doesn’t have anything structurally flawed but it is very, very much the wrong size for your face. The top edge of the mask is attempting to protect you in the same way you applied eyeliner in 7th grade (“on your waterline, until it hurts”) and the bottom edge basically hits your collarbone. No one knows who you are. And yes, I know, don’t threaten you with a good time, but the downside is that you frighten kids and dogs.

the glasses-fogger

No, you know what? I’m not even gonna talk about this one any more. My glasses have looked like that car window in Titanic for months now, and I’m grumpy about it, and I tried the soap thing, and I didn’t try very hard, and I don’t wanna hear about your product recommendations, and I would prefer to remain annoyed rather than exert any effort, and I’m gonna stay grumpy. I lied, I do want product recommendations, but only if they’re like, newborn-level effort because I’m tired. I’m so tired, you guys.

the bank-robber

Not that this one has to be a gaiter, as bank-robbing can be done with any face accoutrements available to you (I encourage the overthrow of banks through whatever means necessary, I’m kidding if law enforcement is reading this, or am I, anyway), but gaiters seem to be the big one here. The darker the color, the more robber-y, in general, although I have to imagine a deep red would have fun Elektra vibes and could feel glamorous. Please do not read that article as “gaiters are worse than no mask” as that is not the case, it is not what that article means, wear the thing until we get an actual comprehensive study with more than one data point, I’m not even going to link to it in this post because then you will read it and decide bad things and I’m not gonna be responsible for that.

Gaiters have been great for me while hiking and doing vaguely athletic things, but even though my go-to one is a nice periwinkle with a fun pattern of shapes, I still feel very much like I’m on a casting call for The Town. That’s what you look like, too, I’m sorry, I don’t make the rules, whose cah ah we gonna take?

the ear elastic made of steel wool

For this one, the mask itself is okay, like the fabric is fine and no issues, but somehow your poor delicate ears are red and wrecked by the end of the day because the manufacturer had leftover garroting wire and used it for the ear loops. Sometimes you don’t find out that the loopies are made with leftover Lasso of Truth until you’re out and about with no other options and that big time sucks.

“Couldn’t you just buy one of those that ties around your head?” Yeah, I could, but then I’d have nothing amusing to complain about, and this site would get as dark as the world around us. So loopies complaining it is and was and forever shall be.

the mid-life crisis

My guy, you are a partner at your marketing firm, you own a BMW 4-series, your Black Sabbath mask is fooling no one.

You’ll sometimes see this one with new-ish fathers too, where they are pushing the stroller through the dairy aisle with a Slipknot t-shirt and a black mask with a mandible on it, and like, dude, just go watch Paw Patrol or whatever, it’s a pandemic, we are literally all at home listening to the saddest and angriest music we can right now, you’re not special.

Jeremiah was a bullfrog

This mask might be one of your favorites. It’s light, it’s soft, it’s not giving you horrible chin zits, you’re not conscious of its existing every waking second, maybe it’s even in a color you like. But it cannot withstand the force of air that comes in and goes out of your body. The fabric constantly moves in and out even when you’re not exerting yourself, and despite the fact that you are doing nothing more difficult than sitting on a Zoom call, you look like an angry toad.

wyd? nm, just buccal pumping, it’s whatever

and did the beginning also sound like this is a personal one for me? it is, the mask is a nice dark teal, and I look like a very elegant, jewel-toned amphibian but an amphibian nonetheless.

the all of them

Apparently the same makers of skin care face masks have decided to overrun the world with similarly-small-nosed models and I am sad about it. I’m speaking here mostly to my fellow Cyrano de Bergeracs who could drive a freight train through the space between your face mask and your inner zygomatic bone (Roxane / you don’t have to listen to Christian) but there’s plenty of other issues that people are having with this one-size-fits-all-poorly thing. Ears in a different spot, a thinner or wider head, your chin doing a thing, the mask sliding down or sideways, we’ve all got our nose to bear. Sorry, this got weird; if you find a mask or gaiter or bandanna or diving bell that works, get like a thousand more of them. You don’t know you’re beautiful. Yes you do. What am I saying. Faces are weird, bodies are weird, when can I upload myself to the cloud, the hardware sucks.

well that’s a choice

Just not a mask, it’s not a mask, and you’re wearing it as a mask, and I don’t know why. Like, that’s a snorkel, or it’s a Halloween costume head, or it’s just your t-shirt pulled up over your mouth. That last one is one you see so flippin’ often, and I have no idea why people are doing it. It’s inconvenient, uncomfortable, and makes you look like a Yip-Yip. Okay, that last one is a plus, my mistake. But people are giving masks out for free, and you’ve still chosen to look like an absolute buffoon. Like, Old Navy is selling masks, fire up your laptop and do it. Or better yet, go outside, and walk in a straight line until you end up at a business that is selling them.

And for the love of 4th-grade science class make it go over your nose. Your chin doesn’t breathe. We live in a SOCIETY.