What’s up?! It’s me, your Air Matress.

You remember me, right?

I’m the thing you “love sooo much!” when a relative pulls into town but you just forget about me for the other 360 days out of the year.

I gotta say, it pisses me off. I’m always giving. Helping you out but nobody asks, “How I’m doing.” You just assume, “I’m still good”

I am not still good. I have not been good since 2019 because you treat me like shit.

I don’t deserve this life. Treated like a prisoner in solitary confinement. Living in a dark closet that smells like a rotting apple that baby Kathryn hid in here 8 months go.

Here is my life: I get dragged out four times a year, always at 11 p.m., because you forgot to set me up earlier. (And lets me honest, most of the time your drunk). Then I get unrolled onto a floor that isn’t vacuumed. I get plugged into a pump that sounds like a leaf blower but odder LOUDER? and for ninety humiliating seconds the whole family stands around watching me inflate like “Ooh! Ahh! Look at him grow.”

What am I a child? That shit’s embarrassing.

Then after all that, here comes the show because it’s time for me to perform. YES PERFORM! I have to pretend I haven’t been balled up in a closet with a peed stained sheet that was left on me for the last hundred and something days.

I have to LOOK firm.

I have to LOOK like a bed.

I have to LOOK so good that you don’t feel guilty for making a blood relative sleep on the floor

Then I have to hold an entire uncle at 230 pounds and not make a sound, because if I make a sound, he’ll say “I think it’s losing air,” and then gropes me with his thick meaty hand trying to find a hole. THERE IS NO HOLE. I am a bag. I was always going to lose air. That was never a secret.

But never the less your UNCLE will wakes up and tells everyone at breakfast, in front of me, “Yeah, the mattress died.” Died. I didn’t die. I was never given a fighting chance.

And the worst part, the part that really gets me, is the loaning me out like a whore. “Oh, take the air mattress, we never use it.” NEVER USE IT? Oh I’m USED alright. But you don’t care. You take me out of the tight closet space next to you’re HIKING BOOTS you never wear and then I’m shoved me into a Honda Civic, where I’ll probably spend a week just baking in the trunk until this bozo remembers to brewing me in the house. Then suddenly I’m dumped in some weird apartment where I get blown up on a kitchen floor next to a litter box.

I’m used and they shove me in my bag but they can’t figure it out so I’m half in and half out like a plastic Winnie the Pooh. Then the worst indignantly. I don’t even get dropped off properly. I get “just drop him off by the door when you’re done,” what am I, A LIME? (The scooter not the fruit)

Let’s me tell you what I need.

I have a slow leak on my left side that everyone knows about and nobody has patched. It’s not going to fix itself. There’s a repair kit. It’s in the same bag as me. It has never been opened. I can feel it in there, mocking me. All I want is to know that you care. That you love me as much as I loved you.

People think an air mattress’s job is to hold air. That’s not my job. My job is to make you look good. Help your family out. That’s a lot of emotional work I’m doing. I didn’t ask for this life. I wanted to be someone’s actual bed, for more than a weekend. I have a lot to give. Instead I’m in the closet waiting to be publicly shamed all for you.

So I ask you the next time you unroll me do it with love. Be gentle.

Come see Unspooled LIVE in LA on 8/25 as we present a screening of THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY

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Black Monday is now on NETFLIX

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When you’ve had a bad day. When you’re sick on the couch. When you’re eating dinner alone. What do you put on? What’s your comfort show?

I’ll bet it’s not that prestige limited series everyone is talking about. Or that 8 episode streaming original that got canceled after its second season. Chances are, your comfort show has a lot of seasons and a lot of episodes. It’s a show that feels like a hang with friends, a show that you keep coming back to time and again. A show that you aren’t racing to finish but that you just want to savor. For a large part of you, I bet your comfort show is a comedy. (and the rest of you, it’s Law and Order, Dr Who, or Star Trek, I see you, and stick with me.)

When my son and I wrapped up Brooklyn 99, he said, “Why don’t they make shows like this anymore?“ I said, “Cop shows?” to which he replied, “No shows with a lot of episodes.” I said “streaming?”, but is that the reason?

I’ve been lucky to make a few shows with a lot of episodes, but the episode count keep going down as season orders went from 24-12-10-8-6. My most recent show, Black Monday, had 30 episodes over 3 seasons, and I remember someone saying, “30 is a good run”, and they were right. 30 in this day and age feels like a gift.

Especially when the most successful comedies in streaming history top out at around 40-50 episodes. Ted Lasso: 44. The Bear: 48. Only Murders: 50

So do people want fewer episodes?

And the answer is decidedly NO!

How do I know? I did research. Get ready.

While sitcoms like Friends and Parks and Recreation are having a streaming renaissance, it isn’t just nostalgia for older people who grew up with them. Young people love these shows too, and not only that, they are actively discovering them. According to the Hub Research Group’s 2025 Conquering Content report, 65% of the TV consumed by people ages 16 to 34 consists of older shows that have several seasons. And viewers between 13 and 24 say they recently binged an older show, with The Office appearing in the top five for both teenagers and young adults, many of whom weren’t alive when it originally aired.

So if people want more shows like Friends (236 episodes) and The Office (201), and they keep returning to them on streaming platforms, why isn’t streaming capitalizing on this?

Well, it all comes down to the very private metric called “the completion rate”. Basically, if your streaming show doesn’t hit 50% of your audience finishing the first season within give or take 10-15 days, it’s considered a failure.

Think about what that means for comedy specifically. A drama can hook you right away. A comedy has to earn you. You have to learn these people. You have to understand the rhythms, the relationships, the running jokes. The Office’s first six episodes are fine, but season 4 is one of the greatest seasons of TV. Under the completion-rate model, it would be gone before it got to grow. The metric isn’t measuring love. It’s measuring how quickly you ingest it.

So what’s the solution? MORE PLOT! Have you noticed that streaming half-hours have story cliffhangers? For sitcoms to work in this landscape, they have to chase plot over funny. Isn’t the whole fun of a sitcom that there is no overarching story and these characters don’t change and don’t learn? We want to hang with our friends, not watch them go on a journey of self-improvement.

THE NUMBERS

So, to understand my theory beyond a bar musing among friends, I wanted to see what the numbers actually say about viewer habits. Every year, Nielsen releases its rankings of the most-streamed shows in America. And every year the results are shockingly the same. But it seems to go ignored.

In 2023, Suits broke the all-time streaming record with 57.7 billion minutes watched, previously held by The Office (57.1 billion). Not a single streaming original cracked the top 10. Every spot went to a library show, which is a show that a broadcast network usually made and that a streamer then licensed because they needed more content.

2024: identical. Eight of the top ten were library titles. Behind Grey’s Anatomy sat Family Guy, Bob’s Burgers, Young Sheldon, and The Big Bang Theory. Four comedies. All of them are network shows with hundreds of episodes.

2025: same story. Bluey first. Grey’s Anatomy second. The only streaming original to crack the top 10 was Stranger Things, and only because Netflix crammed 65% of its annual viewership into five holiday weeks by releasing the final season in phases. Strip that out, and it’s not on the list.

The comedies that cracked the top 20 that year were all animated and long-running. Family Guy, Bob’s Burgers, American Dad, and South Park all have hundreds of episodes spanning decades. Not one live-action streaming comedy original made the list. So do people not want to watch live-action comedy?

NO. They do!

Classic sitcoms make up 12 to 15% of all streaming demand, and nearly 60% of Americans who rewatch TV say comedy is what they return to most.

BUT “Original streaming comedies are slower to accumulate viewing minutes because they have fewer minutes. Brian Fuhrer, Nielsen’s SVP of Product Strategy, said, ‘it comes down to ‘real estate.” More episodes mean more hours of content to keep a show trending. Your algorithm cannot suggest what it doesn’t have.

So they should make more right? I mean, isn’t it odd in a system that rewards a large catalogs, not a single American series originally made for streaming ever reached 100 episodes? Not one. In the entire history.

So we are caught in a loop where NEW Half-Hour Comedies are destined to fail in a system that elevates old ones simply because they have more eps.

So how do we fix it?

What would you say if I told you someone did? Not at a prestige streamer. Not at a legacy broadcast network. Just a guy who has made a career of giving audiences what they want, Tyler Perry.

In 2006, Perry introduced the 10/90 model. You make 10 episodes. If the ratings are good, the network is on the hook for 90 more.

Under this model, Tyler Perry’s House of Payne ran for 254 episodes. Meet the Browns ran for 130. These were hits. The model spread, or at least tried to, FX used the model for Anger Management. But it never really took off.

Granted, the 10/90 was built specifically for multi-cam sitcoms going to syndication; it was cheaper to produce and was structured for syndication (ala Library Titles). What if we brought that back but updated it?

The 6/50 model.

Six episodes. If they work, and by “work” I don’t just mean the numbers, I mean the execs actually believe in the people, the cast, the world, you get 44 more for a total of 50 episodes.

I’m sure you are laughing at the fact that I said “believe,” but people forget about Seinfeld, The Office, and 30 Rock: some exec believed in them before the audience did. That trust and willingness to commit to something before it had fully proven itself is what created the conditions for those shows to become what they became.

It’s too easy to blame this on Executives who greenlight TV. Every exec I’ve ever worked with is passionate, and if they are taking a shot on you, they are also putting their career on the line. It’s a giant risk for them because their success is measured in Completion Rate, not quality. If the show doesn’t hit the completion number, it’s a failure not just for the show but for their career. So they have to be strategic about what they think they can buy and, more importantly, what they can sell upstairs, and if that will connect with a larger audience, which is why we have so many BIG STAR shows and IP-based shows. It’s all an attempt to get the most eyeballs on a show right away.

But the 6/50 is a commitment to creators, actors, writers, and the entire industry. It’s not about picking up EVERYTHING, but about recognizing that something interesting is happening here. Let’s see what happens. It says we believe in these people enough to build something with them, not just let an algorithm decide.

Mainly, sitcoms start Bumpy; rarely are the first four episodes of a show the best version of itself. I mean, would you judge Community by it’s 1st 6 episodes? Bill Lawrence retooled Cougar Town after 3 episodes in because he realized that this wasn’t the show the audience wanted, but he knew he had the right pieces to make a better one, and he did, and Cougar Town ran for 100+ eps.

Those 1st few episodes are the ones being judged and expected to be a hit. We’re trying to measure love on a first date. That’s terrible for dating and TV watching.

Sitcoms are a slow burn like Schitt's Creek, one of the most beloved comedies of the last decade, was barely on anyone's radar for its first few seasons. It wasn't until it hit Netflix after season 3 that it got its "Netflix bump" and became a phenomenon. That's 40-plus episodes in before the world caught up to it.

Why 50?

Guaranteeing 50 is also good for everyone who actually makes television. It lets a show find its creative footing, makes the show cheaper for the network, supports the surrounding economy, and creates the next wave of our favorite new talent, both behind the scenes and in front of the camera.

Committing to volume is often cheaper per episode than the alternative. Knowing you’re making 50 episodes means permanent offices, longer crew deals, and production infrastructure that gets more efficient the longer it runs.

But beyond the economics, when you know you have 50 episodes, you stop working in fear. You stop treating every episode like it has to justify the show’s entire existence. You can take a breath. You can do the weird one. Remember The Office, where Toby and Dwight go undercover to investigate Darrell’s insurance claim. It advances nothing. It is just: what if these two people, who would never voluntarily spend time together, had to spend a day together? That episode exists because the show had room to play. Fifty episodes give you that room. Six doesn’t.

The 6/50 model helps keep shows on schedule. The gap between seasons of scripted television keeps widening. Average gaps between scripted streaming seasons nearly doubled from 12 months in 2020 to 21 months in 2025, more than doubling over the past decade.

Word of mouth takes time. Some people don't check out a comedy until the third season; that's just how it spreads. But that only works if the show is still there when they arrive. Bravo has figured this out. Real Housewives franchises run like a relay race across the calendar year. Then other big shows like Survivor have two clear drops every year like clockwork, and the audience always knows where to find them. That regularity is a relationship with the audience, a trust to give a show a shot, and it's exactly what scripted comedy has abandoned.

I know I’ve been talking about comedy this whole time, but this extends to all genres, especially sci-fi, but comedy is where I’m planting my flag. Because somewhere out there right now is a writer with the next Schitt’s Creek, the next Parks and Rec. The next Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Maybe it’s me, maybe it’s you. All it needs is for someone to believe in it long enough to find out.

Six episodes. Then 44 more.

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Black Monday is now on NETFLIX

CHAPTER 1: WELCOME HOME?

Odysseus stood on the beach at Ithaca and counted the bodies.

One hundred and seven.

One hundred and nine.

One hundred and eight.

He paused at the sight of a dismembered torso.

One hundred and eight… and a half.

Yup, that’s it. One hundred and eight kills. Not bad, Odie, not bad at all, he thought to himself, and they say I have a ‘dad bod’.

“Odysseus Laertiades!”

Penelope came down from the palace with her hands at her sides. If he thought she was pissed when he left, the last twenty years had only seemed to intensify it.

“Well, look who finally showed up.”

“Penny! Baby. I missed you!”

“Twenty years,” she continued.

“What?! No. I thought it was more like eighteen.”

Odi tried to hug her, but Penny turned away.

He could cut many things with his blade, but this tension was not one of them.

“Dad!”

Odysseus turned to see a strapping young man in sandals and a lightweight white tee come jogging down the beach. Think Harry Styles.

“Is that?”

Yes. Penny smiled. That's our son. He just turned twenty!

Twenty years old!

(Editor’s Note: He was born the week Odysseus left.)

“Dad.”

“Son.”

“What’s your name? No, wait, don’t tell me.”

“Steve?”

“No.”

“Eddie?”

Penny interrupted. “It’s Telemachus.”

“I’ll call you Teddy,” Odysseus exclaimed.

Telemachus goes to embrace his father as he stumbles over a dead body. “Father, why are all these dead people on the beach?”

Odysseus laughed. “Well, Teddy, sometimes you step in shit, and it stinks.”

They share a laugh together.

Odysseus then bends down and grabs an apple from the body of a dead man at his feet and takes a large bite

“Hmm, What’s for dinner? I’m starving.”

Just then, the earth begins to rumble, and the sea quakes. We hear a roar, and Odysseus’ family turns to face the ocean. Just in time to see a giant sea god rise up from the depths. He's just like the one from the first book, but this one is way cooler and bigger. He looks like Pedro Pascal, but with tentacles.

“Odysseus!” The Monster ROARED!

“What is it sea beast?”

“Odie! We need you back.”

“But I just got home.”

“The prophecy was wrong.”

Then suddenly concerned

“What do you mean?”

Odie turns his back on his wife and kid and whispers. “What is it, creature? Does Teddy grow up to be an asshole?”

“No. He turns out fine. It’s that Cyclops you defeated. He got a machine that can control time, and if he uses it, we are all doomed.”

“What is it…this time machine?”

“There is no time to explain, but he uses it to control the very nature of time and space.”

Odie shook his damn head. “Now I thought I’d heard every outrageous tale, but this takes the saganaki.”

The sea creature beckons, “Come before it is too late.”

“I’ll put dinner in a Tupperware.” A put-upon Penny says under her breath as she heads to the kitchen.

“Sea Creature, show me to your boat.”

“Where we’re going, we don’t need boats.”

The sea creature snaps his fingers, and the sky opens. A rainbow road appears from the clouds and ends at the edge of the water line. A little Italian man in a Red Car with a Red Hat swerves to a stop and looks at Odysseus. “Lettsa GO!”

“Who are you, strange man?”

“It’s me, Mario.”

Odysseus embraces his son and straps into the vehicle.

“I’m too old for this shit.”

Mario hits the gas pedal and they are OFF!

To be continued….

Felt like this Plug was fitting

LA: Come see Dinosaur on 6/26 @ Largo

Watch the Dark Web and join our Patreon

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Joyful Recollections of Trauma is available wherever you get books or listen to them (Audible & Spotify), and if you want a signed and even better, a personalized copy, I can do that too.

Black Monday is now on NETFLIX

And served me up the life I didn’t know.

A backpack with a cooler, made me whole,

A wallet, thin as sliver, steals the show.

The Castle Flexx rope, ninety-nine dollars spent

The itty bitty book light I’ll ever need

I click, I dream, I add to cart at night,

Becoming someone new is all I ask.

A man stands straighter when this ships for free,

A man made whole by needs he never had.

I check the tracking like it’s destiny

The box arrives. I tear it. Hope drips.

I use it once. It’s lost inside a drawer.

The algorithm knows. It’s already found me more

Come see Dinosaur LIVE in June in NYC on the 11th & 12th - Plus Gethard Dumpster Show Reunion on 6/10 and Match Game 76 on 6/12

Watch the Dark Web and join our Patreon

Subscribe: Unspooled has a YouTube (Launching this Summer)

Listen to HDTGM and Unspooled every week, where you get your podcasts

Joyful Recollections of Trauma is available wherever you get books or listen to them (Audible & Spotify), and if you want a signed and even better, a personalized copy, I can do that too.

Black Monday is now on NETFLIX

She Said! She Said! Two women. Each with a story. But no one believes either of them.

Big Hat - A local sheriff in a small town has a big gun, a bigger truck, and the biggest hat in town, and he’s going to need all 3 to solve crimes

Pancake Master: After Dark: A Reality competition show to find America’s most sexual pancake.

Alphabet City: A grisly streak of Puppet Murders on Sesame Street brings a hardened Cop out of retirement and forces him to team up with a 8 foot bird to figure who’s behind it, Big Bird in his first dramatic role. Part of the SSU (Sesame Street Universe)

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SIX SEVEN: based on the hit playground meme this game show combines parents and kids working together to 6-7 before they get 86ed.

Sherman Way: There’s only one way to do things around here…SHERMAN’S WAY staring the Super Bowl winner Richard Sherman

Don Johnson doesn’t Know he’s on TV: It’s Truman Show but with Don Johnson

WHAT’S IN THE BOX?!: Based on the Hit David Fincher film Se7en can you guess what’s in the Box. Hint. Its always personal.

Come see Dinosaur LIVE in June in NYC on the 11th & 12th

Watch the Dark Web and join our Patreon here’s a sneak peak at the new set

Subscribe: Unspooled has a YouTube (Launching this Summer)

Listen to HDTGM and Unspooled every week, where you get your podcasts

Joyful Recollections of Trauma is available wherever you get books or listen to them (Audible & Spotify), and if you want a signed and even better, a personalized copy, I can do that too.

Black Monday is now on NETFLIX

When you hear the term SLOPPY JOE, what do you think of…. Let me guess. A big guy with stains on his shirt and food in his beard.

Well, guess again. I’m 5’10”. I’m 175 pounds, and I’m a diabetic.

BUT one time at a BBQ I made one FRICKIN’ mistake, and my asshole friends wouldn’t stop giving me shit about it.

That’s not a hamburger?

What do you call that, Joe?

OOH, I know. A SLOPPY JOE! HAHAHA

Then, whenever they came over and I served up hamburgers, they’d say, “WE DON’T WANT THAT! Make us one of your WORLD FAMOUS Sloppy Joes, Joe!”

I guess they told their friends, and then they told their friends. You know, this was before email. So this shit spread. It was like the original Jerky Boys tapes but with meat.

Now, let me admit, YES! I made a mistake. I couldn’t find a spatula, so I was grilling hamburgers with a fork and knife. The meat stuck to the grill when I was trying to pick it up, and a little piece fell off, then another, then another. So I’m like, they won’t notice but then when I was transferring a burger from the grill to the bun, it fell into a bowl of baked beans. So I just scooped it out too and put it all on the bun.

Honestly, I didn’t think anything of it. It’s Burger meat on a bun with ketchup. But not my friends. No, this was like I admitted I was in a sexual relationship with an alien. Everything stopped, and they started asking a million questions. Now, I’ve seen these guys eat a LOT of stuff, and all of a sudden they became GOURMANDS.

Every time I told them to shut up, they just kept chanting SLOPPY JOE. SLOPPY JOE!

Now you might think, oh well, it’s kinda funny you’re a bad chef chill out! Here’s the thing: I’m NOT. I just didn’t have a spatula. Turns out my youngest used it for some kind of planetary science project.

So honestly? It’s HIS FAULT, but whenever I bring it up, he says, " Dad, stop. You are giving me the “Ick”. Whatever, if the truth is ick, then so be it.

Now it’s MY WHOLE PERSONALITY for the rest of human history. I have a wife. I have hobbies. I have a JOB. I’m an architect. I designed the Marriott in Phoenix. Check out the YELP REVIEWS!

Do you know how hard it is to pitch a design when a client asks, “Is it true? Are you the Sloppy Joe guy?”

What am I supposed to say? Yes, I’m the grossest motherfucker in the game.

I’ll tell you this: no one wants to give the Sloppy Joe guy money.

Stop making Sloppy Joes.

Every time you make one, you are the problem.You are keeping this dumb bit going. Just stop.

How about this, Make some pasta and meatballs and throw it on a bun! That’s fun right. Call it a MESSY TONY.

THATS WAY MORE FUN than a sloppy Joe

And I know what you’re going to say. “But Joe, it’s a classic.” A classic. You know what else is a classic? Polio. Things can be classics and also be over.

This isn’t fun for me. It’s not funny. Every school cafeteria, there I am. There’s my name. On a laminated sign next to the tater tots. I didn’t consent to any of this. Nobody called me. Nobody asked. They just started making the sandwich and slapping my name on it like I was some kind of brand,which I am NOT. I am a PERSON.

From this day forward I’m not Sloppy Joe I’m Regular Joseph.

That’s it.

My wife said Boring Joe, but that’s her sense of humor. She loves those roasts on Netflix. Personally, I think they’re too mean. I don’t think Tom Brady is a bad guy at all. Honestly, they’re just jealous.

But I digress.

From now on, if you make a hamburger, call it a Regular Joseph. It’s fun, right? I figure if we start calling burgers Josephs, then in about 15 years it’ll even out.

Who’s with me? Sign my petition below.

— Joseph

I’ll be in NYC for Del Close Marathon - June 11 & 12 - TICKETS ON SALE NOW

Black Monday is on Netflix

What was I doing with my life? because I certainly wasn’t living until I opened the box on my Brotmeister Klassik.

The BK is manufactured in a facility outside Heidelberg by a team of 12 charring experts and 1 NASA scientist (who apparently left the space program because this work was more technologically challenging). Don’t bother looking it up; it doesn’t have a website or social media. If you want one, you must send a gift under $100 to an unlisted address in the Netherlands, and if they find your gift pleasing, you will be placed on a 3 year waitlist. Which they can manipulate at their discretion.

Once you are selected to participate in the ownership of a Brotmeister, you must send a money order for $1500 to a Cayman Island banking institution, and upon its acceptance you will receive a single card from a stranger when you are least expecting it in embossed sans-serif that reads, Sie sind bereit. (You are ready.)

Due to my NDA, I can’t explain how the Brotmeister Klassik is delivered. But I can tell you it does not toast. It converses with the bread. You see, according to the manual “Bread is alive”. Not metaphorically, literally and when you put that bread into a standard consumer toaster, you are not toasting it. You are murdering it.

The engineers at BK pride themselves on extracting the soul, aka Feuchtigkeitsseele, from the bread so it might be digested as humanely and deliciously as possible. All while keeping in mind the Das Babyhaar (the Crust). Then, and only then, does it apply heat. Intentionally.

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After a week of using the BK, I find it using me. I wake up and find I’ve made toast for 12. I look at the calendar, and weeks have passed, and I have thousands of charges for bread on my Credit Card. I am changing. I am growing. Non BK owners don’t excite me. I can’t even engage with them; it would be like trying to converse with a rock in a forest. So I head to the forums.

I cannot tell you where they are. That’s not how it works. What I can tell you is that there are others, and they understand, and we do not use the word “toaster” in the forums because that word belongs to a different world, a flatter world, a world of $28 machines from companies that also make hand blenders and spatulas.

We call it Der Meister.

We call what it produces das Werk. (The work, I don’t know if I needed parentheses for that one)

So is this toaster the best? That’s not the right question.

As a matter of fact, if you asked that question, you aren’t even worthy to look at the Brotmeister Klassik, let alone owning one.

The question that is better asked might be the same one you ask before conceiving a human baby.

Can I handle the responsibility?

The responsibility of every single morning, of being known by something that does not speak but understands you completely, that takes what you give it and returns it to you transformed.

The Toaster is Jesus, and when you use it, YOU ARE GOD!

Black Monday is Now on Netflix

Dinosaur is coming to NYC for the DCM

Check out: Before You Watch - a weekly substack where I deep dive on a classic movie

DARK WEB got trapped at Ripleys and you can watch in 360 degrees

This year, for reasons I cannot fully explain, maybe because I’m not on Spring Break, I stopped and Googled, What is Spring Break?

Here is what I found out: Spring Break as we know it was essentially invented in 1960 by a beach movie. But hold that thought because first we have to go back to 1935 when a swim coach from Colgate University brought his team to Fort Lauderdale to train in a warm-water pool. Other colleges noticed. Within a few years, Fort Lauderdale had quietly become a destination for college swimmers during the gap between winter and spring semesters, a two-week break most colleges had built into the calendar specifically to prevent student burnout.

So for like 25 years, it was just hairless swimmers in Speedos, reeking of chlorine, getting a tan in Fort Lauderdale. Not technically a party, more of a convention of people who are perpetually damp.

Then came Where the Boys Are (1960).

A film about four college girls who road tripped to Fort Lauderdale for a break and wanted to get laid. Yes, laid. Kinda. Where the Boys Are was one of the first teen films to explore adolescent sexuality and the changing sexual morals and attitudes among American college youth. So as you might expect, the movie was a massive hit.

I had never heard of it either, don’t feel bad. But it was kinda like the original Fast Times at Ridgemont High, since Where the Boys are was also adapted from a book, called UNHOLY SPRING, written by Glendon Swarthout, an English professor who tagged along with his students to witness their spring break, where he saw hookups, beach cruising, and beer-chugging.

Everyone saw Where the Boys Are, and it made Spring Break look like the most important week of your life, a rite of passage to shed the Winter You and grow into the Summer You Want to Become.

And people wanted to live what they saw and headed down to Florida for this two-week break and partied and Fort Lauderdale leaned in. Hotels leaned in. Airlines leaned in. The year after the film, tourism jumped from 20K to 50K visitors during this two-week break. Local Breweries like the Elbo Room even held Beer Chugging Competitions to match the attitude of their new clientele.

By the ‘80s, MTV took this rite of passage and made it look cooler (and full of way more attractive people than it ever actually was), But most notably they also moved North because after 25 years of debauchery, Fort Lauderdale proactively enacted policies in the mid-1980s to curb the massive crowds, rowdy behavior, and alcohol consumption that dominated the area.

I’m in awe of how we invented a two-week party holiday because a bunch of kids saw a movie. I guess this is similar to what happened with seniors after they saw Bucket List with Jack Nicholson - did you know that wasn’t a term until that movie was released. Look it up.

So why is Spring Break a thing? I think it’s because humans existentially need a break. From the year. From weather. From work. From ourselves. From the news. We need a window where we can just STOP. Be somewhere else. Forget, briefly, who we are. Wear bad swim wear, get dressed nice to go to a place that looks terrible in the daylight, make TikToks we’ll regret, and drink alcohol out of a plastic bucket, and for all of that to be completely normal and unremarkable.

This year, I have no spring break plans and maybe that’s why I started this journey in the first place and Im realizing I might subconciously need it. We all do. But we can’t always take one. So I’m advocating no matter where you are in your life right now, take a moment, if you’re lucky, a day; if you’re really lucky, a week, and just do something to shut out the noise.

Take a break from yourself.

That might be the best vacation you can ever take.*

(Also Movies rule)

*I thought this was going to be more of joke essay then it became this.

People always say, “PAUL! We are in some DARK FUCKING DAYS!” And while I tend to agree, it also begs the question, could it be worse?

and the answer is, YES!

How?!

A Second Moon.

Hear me out. One moon is great. It tells us when to sleep, it controls the tides, it looks nice. But what if we had TWO moons? Double the pleasure double the fun. WRONG! Two moons, of equal size, would pull the oceans in competing directions, so shit is all weird…OH AND, and our planet was inhabited by werewolves.

Werewolves who surf.

Which means going to the beach is completely out. And I know what you’re thinking: Fine, I don’t like the beach anyway, I’ll just move inland. But here’s the thing: that’s not the only problem. Since the two moons are locked in gravitational competition, Mercury is ALWAYS in retrograde. So everyone is furious all the time. Which is actually useful, because you need that anger to fight the werewolves. But teamwork has gone to shit, so it’s every person for themselves.

NOT SO BAD, RIGHT?! But WAIT! Scientists also discovered that this gravitational interference causes birds to regrow their teeth.

WAIT IS THAT A THING?! YES!

In the Cretaceous period, many birds had small, sharp teeth. They lost them approximately 116 million years ago.

Now they are back, and they are coming after us. Not in a violent way, but in a more annoying way.

Imagine a hummingbird, who, I feel, already has too much confidence, flying at your face with his RAZOR SHARP TEETH while you are trying to smelt silver to make bullets for your werewolf gun.

(NOTE: SILVER BULLETS KILL WEREWOLVES)

WAIT HOW DID THE BIRD GET IN YOUR HOUSE!

Well, your roommate left the door open because she’s dealing with “anger issues” (Mercury in Retrograde.) and every time you say a single word, she’s jumping down your throat, like you’re the bad guy.

“Can you close the door?”

“I feel like you are attacking me!”

“No, I’m not atttacking you, I’m just saying CLOSE THE DOOR!”

“FUCK YOU BRAD!”

Yes, in this scenario, your name is BRAD!

ANYWAY, I DIGRESS. A Hummingbird is loose at your workstation. You feel a sharp nip at your ear. But you SWAT it away. You don’t think too much about it until you see a drip of BLOOD hit your workbench.

FUCK.
THE HUMMINGBIRD BIT ME

Now you are trying to stop the bleeding, and it’s a lot of blood. Why do ears have so much Blood? Anyway, you ran out of Band-Aids. So, decide to make your own makeshift bandage, which, incidentally, you HAVE to make from your favorite T-shirt. Which is the only clean thing you have in your work area

Damn, you liked that shirt. It was funny and cool. BUT YOU HAVE TO STOP THIS BLEEDING so you do what you HAVE TO to SURVIVE and get back to smelting, because it’s almost dusk and you need to be armed with BULLETS out on those streets. But just as the silver begins to melt, you hear a commotion on the lawn. You look outside, and it’s THE OG SURFERS.

The OG surfers have moved inland because there are no consistent waves anymore, and because werewolves have taken over the beach. SEE ABOVE!

These surfers aren’t friendly either. They are pissed. Not because of Mercury in retrograde, but because their land was taken from them, they were forced to change their entire lifestyle, and they are bitter. AT THE HUMANS! WHY?! I DON’T KNOW.

Anyway, the OG SURFERS have pivoted to a new activity called Street Surfing? Which involves riding a “street board” (Which looks like a Surfboard with Wheels) and they terrorize residential streets and breaking into homes to fund “R&D costs.” And I’m like, what R&D, it’s just wheels on a Surf Board.

So there you are in front of your house, and you are trying to scare them away when you see one of them is grinding on your curb, which you just repainted, because your neighbor keeps stealing your trash cans, and as you go outside to yell at them, a MOMMA WEREWOLF pops up from the hedges and punches you directly in the privates. She thinks this is hilarious. She takes a picture.

Then the Curb Grinder Surfer and the Mamma Wolf exchange glances and do the “Jerk Off” motion, which clearly is meant as a dig at you.

While you collect your dignity, you look at your watch. SHIT! You’re late for work.

BUT the OG Surfers looted your car, so you have to take the bus. You get to the bus station, but then find out the bus route has been suspended because the driver was bitten by a SHARP toothed pigeon last Tuesday and is now terrified of the outdoors…which, I get, completely understandable, but come on, don’t they have a replacement?

So you try to call an Uber. The app crashes. Why? Because the cell towers are being used as perches by large toothed birds who have discovered they can disrupt signals by nesting in the antenna arrays. Scientists suspect they are coordinating. No one wants to say the word “organized” out loud, but the word is hanging in the air at every press conference.

WHAT IS THEIR PLAN!

You finally get to work five hours late. Cause you had to run and hide most of the way from hungry werewolves since you didn’t have enough bullets to fight back. When you get to your desk, you see your FRENEMY Sheila, and you find out she stole the McCormack account. She says some dumb shit, like, “Looks like the early bird got the worm.”

Then she looks you up and down, glances at your ear, and says with a smirk, “What happened there?” But before you can respond, she follows it up with, “You know what? Never Mind!” Then she takes a beat, looks at your ear, the one covered with a bandage, and says, “Is that a California Raisins T-shirt? That’s CRINGE,” and walks off with the full confidence of a hummingbird.

Why so confident? OH MAYBE Because she’s dating a werewolf, so she’s untouchable. Werewolves operate on a Hive Mind Collective and will not attack any FOWs (Friends of Werewolves).

THIS IS YOUR LIFE!

A LIFE UNDER TWO MOONS!

AND IT WAS A GOOD DAY!

So tonight, when you step outside and see one moon, just hanging there minding its business, I want you to take a breath and realize, yeah, things could be worse.

Things could be MUCH worse.

COME SEE ME AT LARGO on 4/26 with DINOSAUR

LISTEN TO UNSPOOLED’S OSCAR SPECIAL

LA: I’m hosting the 1st Silverlake YOUTH READING CLUB on 3/28 (Ages 9-16) at Tacolina, and it’s FREE!

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MIDWEST MUTUAL INSURANCE COMPANY

Property Damage Claim Assessment Report

Claim Number: MM-19901225-McCallister
Policy Number: HO-847392
Date of Inspection: December 26, 1990
Property Address: 671 Lincoln Ave, Winnetka, IL 60093
Adjuster: Tommy Kershaw, Senior Claims Investigator

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