Tough Times Index
Who knew Minecraft would be so poignant?
Welcome to Mess & Noise. Last issue featured a post-girlboss analysis of two female defendants in the news and a perfume review that was actually a story about my deceased therapist. If you’re new here, I also write about raising kids in the attention economy, what working class means today, and the unique absurdity of parenting in NYC. I recently dropped a workplace guidebook called Pushing Back with Tact that you should snatch up here.
If I say we’re in a recession with a capital R, you could push your glasses up your nose and “Well, actually” me with the GDP, unemployment numbers, consumer spending, retail sales, etc.
I would argue the “jobs” are actually “gigs” like driving Ubers or cleaning hotel rooms (no shade for an honest day’s work!), the “spending” happens on credit cards, and we’d go ‘round and around.
Or maybe not. I’m in a bubble of would-be middle class, mid-career, college-educated creative professionals in New York and the consensus is: things are wack right now. If John Januzzi can’t get hired and Eddie Huang has to rack up debt for his kid’s health, what hope is there for the non-rising Substackers?
Which reminds me:
I’ll refrain from using the R-word and call this bizarro economy Tough Times™ instead, with a proprietary index as proof. The first quarterly report is based on specific data points across movies, fashion, the 4-block radius around my apartment, and peri-menopausal mood swings.
Enjoy! Or don’t! None of it is great!
Data Point 1: A Minecraft Movie
Yes, I saw it and I had a blast. It’s an objectively bad film that was not made for me — a fact some millennial moms are struggling with. But my son loved it and I have about three or four years before he refuses to be seen in public with his mom, so I’ll sit through all sorts of terribleness if it means being featured in his core memories. So much of being a parent is being a Pick Me!
The “real world” in the Minecraft Movie is as bleak as you can get away with during the first act of a children’s action/comedy.
The orphaned siblings at the center of the story are forced to move to a new (but old) town of Chuglass, ID. They don’t mention how the mom died so I’m guessing opioid overdose or unaffordable cancer. The dad is never mentioned so I’m guessing opioid overdose or unaffordable cancer.
The real estate agent who finds their new house also runs a mobile petting zoo, one of several jobs, she explains after balking at the idea of having only one job.
Everything in Chuglass is sad and obsolete. It’s the same writer/director team as Napoleon Dynamite, so they nailed the Vintage Dead End milieu again. The kids choose Chuglass because it’s the only place sister could find a job “doing social” for a potato chip factory — seemingly the last vestige of commerce in town.
A school teacher “digs for clams by the airport” on weekends for extra money because he “only claimed $14,000 on (his) tax return last year” from his teaching salary. These are the script’s zingers, by the way!
The Jason Momoa character is in crippling debt and on the verge of eviction, a fact that compromises his character’s motives during the Overworld mission and puts everyone else in danger.
But the most poignant exposition in the film’s first 30 minutes when Henry, the nerdy and inventive main character, defends his rocket pack renderings against a naysaying bully. He cites “math” as a proof point, and the shithead replies, “My dad says math’s been debunked.”
It’s a clunky story about the battle between wealth and resource extraction for personal gain vs. the beauty of invention for the greater good. The good guys win in the end and there’s no redemption for the math deniers. Cute.
First Act of A Minecraft Movie as Tough Times™ Indicator: 10/10
Data Point 2: Graffiti on Apartment Buildings
I’m not clutching my pearls (can’t afford ‘em!) over graffiti in New York, but the volume and placement of it is always telling. My mid-Brooklyn neighborhood has the standard amount of tagging on street signs and the occasional storefront, but this apartment building is getting pummeled lately!
There was one little tag hidden on the driveway side of this building for the first few years I’ve been walking by. In the past several weeks, it’s exploded like the tulips and daffodils on adjacent blocks in Victoooorian Flatbush (said like the anthropomorphic rose in Alice in Wonderland.)
It wraps around the building like neon blue wisteria, if wisteria spelled out stuff like “Sicko” and whatnot.
Frankly it’s giving post-war Naples vibes and has me wondering if I’m truly living better than my ancestors. Here’s a pic of my grandma in The Old Country with communist graffiti and a cafone in a wifebeater in the background.
Neopolitan-Style Graffiti on a Residential Building on a Victorian Flatbush-Adjacent Block as a Tough Times™ Indicator: 8/10
Data Point 3: Hemlines and Heels
I may be a middle aged mom with a permanent top-knot and so many sweatshirts, but I’ll never give up caring about what the kids are wearing. Something I noticed around the pandemic which shows no signs of fizzling is this schoolmarm look.
They say hemlines and heel height are proportional to the country’s economic strength. Skirts famously get longer during wartime, then go micro (with tall heels!) for the boom-boom times. Based on how young women in their prime sluttin’ years are blowing it with these ultra-orthodox silhouettes (the irony of dressing like a 27-year old with six kids to signal your sexlessness!), I’d say we’re in a full-on depression.
As a card-carrying, non-fairweather feminist I acknowledge and empathize with the phenomenon of young women “not wanting to be perceived” in public, and covering up with lots of amorphous fabric is a strategy. That’s a whole other essay that I’ll get around to writing once it’s too late and the hoze make a comeback.
For now, the shapeless bottom line is this: when secular women aren’t showing their arms or ankles in Traditionally Horny Spring Weather, something’s gone wrong in society!
Young Women in Big Old Skirts with Flat Shoes as a Tough Times™ Indicator: 6/10
Data Point 4: Buy Now, Pay Later Integration on Grocery Apps
This doesn’t need much editorializing. The Klarna + UberEats partnership already had us packing it up in a totally over economy, but seeing the option to pay for groceries in installments feels much sadder!
I bet BNPL companies will start integrating at physical points of purchase soon if they haven’t already. Like a Toast integration for your avocado toast.
Carried Interest on Egg Purchases as a Tough Times™ Indicator: 10/10
Data Point 5: Cabbage Recipes in The Wall Street Journal
Nothing like those plunging stock tickers to make cabbage look sexy! (Sexy as a large corduroy skirt and combat boots.) Four days later in the Boston Globe, turnips were turnin’ up, too.
Cheap Vegetables Repositioned as Aspirational as a Tough Times™ Indicator: 7/10
Data Point 6: Legit Celebrities Doing Paid Subscriptions on Substack
I’m not looking at people who write “for a living” and therefore need to subsidize their dwindling book deals and media jobs with service-oriented newsletters. But like, Miranda July? Kathleen Hanna? The former is a household name, if the household knows what The Criterion Collection is or had a “Keep Calm and Carry On” poster in its living room at some point in its design journey. The latter is married to a goddamned Beastie Boy.
Someone more clever than me posted about how unsettling this is with this pic:
Girlhood Idols Rolling Out Pricing Tiers on Their Social Media Accounts as a Tough Times™ Indicator: 9/10
I have a few more indicators on my list but it’s already long and I want to hear yours!
Overall Tough Times™ Score: 8.3/10
Behold These Links and Recs
"...it’s obvious that the long battle against ‘woke’ or social-justice ideology has a victor." Uh no, we’re just in a cultural overcorrection, which will lead to another wild pendulum swing in the opposite direction. The U.S. is bipolar. DEI is dead today, and tomorrow we will be Checking Our Privilege in our diary entries (I do this because I have Long-Woke Mind Virus.)
Surveillance pricing is coming to a store near you. McDonald’s already charges customers a dollar more on their paydays. Staffing agencies lowball workers based on their credit reports. This is why “services” like CreditKarma and RocketMoney exist, to broker your data.
I can’t tell you how much this photo and headline enraged me. I want to rip out that manbun and feed it through his manbuns. My only solace is these guys look like they only read books about productivity and self improvement and listen to podcasts about scaling at 2x speed and don’t know shit about prose or what normal people actually want to read.
One more assault in my War on Dudes: This is what every Gen Z bro with a “culture” podcast sounds like to me, and how I picture their audience:
Johnny Hilbrant is so funny, btw. This is another gem, “The PE guy.”
Hard segue: Does New England have its very own serial killer?
The Blue Origin Flight Showcased the Utter Defeat of American Feminism
Chatbots and the Mental Health Crisis. But also, this bot turned out to be a good therapist.
Like a denim recession zombie, True Religion jeans are making a comeback. I had a friend who worked there in the early aughts and she said they had a theft rate of 30%, highest in the biz by a lot!
Wall Street Wants to Fix Your Airplane and your flight attendant is worried about you.
OK, I have so much else to share with you, but I have to run to school pickup! I wasn’t able to post for two weeks because I ran spring break camp for my kids (you should see their customer feedback forms), then I took my seasonal trip to Dark Places and all I got was a Thousand Yard Stare.
I’m back now and the next issue will have some silver-lining predictions. Stuff to look forward to!
👋 Hello, New Subs! 👋
Big thanks to Lisa D., Michael C., Kate P., Shauna R., Sarah M., Patricia G., Lucas L., and Nitasha T. Happy to see you here!
Ok but I really did like The Minecraft Movie. Yes, I’d eaten an edible and yes we saw it at the Alamo where I was delivered a warm cookie right around the time we got to the Lava Chicken Song, but I am confident neither of those factors influenced my opinion.
As always, I enjoy your writing. This one definitely made me chuckle.