The Internet Letter

You’re Not Special, Everyone ‘Geeks Out’ on the Olympics

to: the gold medal winner for olympic obsession
subject: stop making it seem like no one else watches

Olympic excitement is not a bad thing. It’s great you feel a sense of unbridled jingoism every time Michael Phelps or Ryan Lochte takes his shirt off. This is normal. Yet somehow every four years when the summer games arrive, some revelers forget that the Olympics is, essentially, the biggest thing in the world.

Instead, they take to social gatherings and social media to announce, with a bit of embarrassment, that they ‘totally geek-out’ for the Olympics. Well, duh. Welcome to civilization. You’re not special. Not at all, in fact.

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This New York Times Vows Column Makes Me Hate Myself

to: alexandra sage mehta and michael robinson
subject: a beautiful love story or something

Read it here.

“Alexandra Sage Mehta and Michael Robinson do not seem to belong to the Facebook generation that expresses itself in sentence fragments. In conversation, their sentences are grammatical and lovely and often sound as if previously written, if not rewritten. Both are writers and care deeply about words as well as opera, cooking, stick-shift cars, modern design and swimming in cold water. “

Ouch. That generation, my generation. They write and rewrite in real life. Gtfo.

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An Examination of Nicolas Cage and John Travolta in Face/Off

to: director john woo
subject: questions and observations

Before there was Facebook, there was Face/Off.

In 1997, one film pitted two powerhouses of acting in a histrionic deathmatch. John Travolta. Nicolas Cage. One a hero cop who has the face of an evil criminal surgically implanted on his own, infiltrates the underworld. The other, an evil criminal who has the face of a hero cop surgically implanted on his own infiltrates the police department. Or something.

An American cinema classic, to be sure. But upon further review of the film on TNT, some questions and observations.

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The Super Sad, Awesome, Epic, Solemn 100th Post

to: dear readers
subject: on this milestone

In just under one year, we’ve hit 600 unique visitors, 4,000 page views, and 100 posts.

This isn’t really impressive in any way. Still, it’s infinitely higher than zero. That counts for something.

We could write a parody of a congratulatory e-mail to staff, extolling the virtues of hard work, a knowledge of popular culture, and a voracious appetite for news, but it wouldn’t be much different than this.

Thank you for reading.

Universal Signs of Stupidity

to: mankind
subject: officially the unofficial markers of intelligence

It’s/Its—If you know how to construct a sentence in the English language that contains the phrase “it is,” this should be painfully clear.

09’—The apostrophe denotes that you’re deleting something. What are you deleting after the 09?! It’s ‘09.

Columbia/Colombia—One is a country. The other is an Ivy League school. Don’t mess this up.

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Ratings Bonanza! Barack Obama Endorses Gay General Hospital

to: all general hospital staff
subject: congrats! may ratings hits new record (that may have coincided with President Obama endorsing gay marriage on ABC)

Dear GH Staff,

It is with our utmost pleasure that we’d like to announce that we’d like to announce a record-shattering ratings-score for a single episode. Congratulations! The May 9th episode learned a whopping 107 million viewers, crushing our previous high of 7 million daytime viewers.

Many had written us off, saying that after 49 seasons and nearly 13,000 episodes, we had flatlined. Not even close.

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The Poodyssey: An Epic Tale of #Photofinish

to: the bathroom staff at the ifc center
subject: new york city has no public restrooms

Sitting on a bench in Washington Square Park, shooing a pack of squirrels away, it hit me—nature was calling.

And by nature, I mean I had to go the bathroom. Earlier in the day, I had been foolish enough to drink an entire cup of espresso coffee because, well, it was there. Five hours later and only 30 minutes before venturing out of my apartment for the first time in two days, I had half of an “American” bodega sandwich. It was a series of unfortunate events.

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