Welcome to the Year of 'Sad Ben Affleck' Loving His Dunkin' Iced Coffee
Bring your streamers and balloons.
Even before wanting to pull a Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes and burn 2020 to the ground, 2021 was going to be a Big Year.
This is the year I’ve been looking forward to for a long time. It’s the year when, seventy-five million stretch marks ago, I had to stare down the kindergarten entrance paperwork and attempt math. Graduating year? I dunno, definitely double hands and some singles. How many is that?
Not only is my kid graduating high school this year, but she’s also turning eighteen. When your first baby drops like a surprise visual album, you turn on the oven expecting to bake some kind of intricate dessert to enjoy over time together with layyy-ahhs, as Mary Berry from The Great British Baking Off would say. In reality, the years go by like you’re baking chocolate chip cookies — store bought pull-a-square or put-your-back-into-it homemade — and you’ve got eleven minutes on the microwave timer or it’s scorched bottoms and rock hard trash. The intense years of parenting seem like oven time, but it’s all microwave and go.
The Main Squeeze and I will both turn forty later this year, and in a few short weeks it will be twenty years since, as he said, “I fell in love with you.”
Calm down, thirty minutes ago I yanked a dish out of his hand jockeying for dishwasher position and he was like “what’s your problem” so things with my beloved are all chocolates and rose petals. Live, laugh, love.
It’s difficult to write about these moments of missed celebration with family and friends; the ground beneath me opens up and I’m left falling through rings of sadness, which then crash into fury. Eighteen is a big deal. Twenty years together is too. Forty, I can’t even believe it. That’s the twentieth anniversary of the time I had chunky blonde highlights like the peanut butter and jelly combo jar that just sits on the grocery store shelf looking like a good idea, but in reality not so much, would not recommend.
On the television today, the news put a microphone in front of a woman waiting hours in her car for a vaccination shot. “I just want to see my friends, my grandkids. I want life to go back to normal,” she said choking up; her voice cracking in desperation which usually means a breathless dam is about to break and drown her face. From the kitchen I yelled, “RIGHT?!!” (Yelling from the kitchen about the news is a thing I do because I am both thirty-nine and also a senior citizen.)
I am tuned into TV grandma’s frequency. I am not crying wah-wah over no parties. I’m mourning younger me’s goals and aspirations, dreams and hopes; all of the things my family has overcome to enjoy this slice of pizza cut from the humblest of down and out pies. And yet, here we are, being cock-blocked by a bunch of carnie ass clowns pounding sand for “freedom” like access to spray tans, F-150s and huffing paint fumes are civil rights issues.
But these maskless cheese doodles will not steal my joy-adjacent-ness. Yes, I may mourn what could have been today, but come tomorrow it’s Operation Celebrate Everything.
Okay, let me dial it back a minute. I am not that person. I need to do some joy stretches before I break something (even if there is a heating pad under my tree, I can’t bust this immediate move).
I don’t want to lead with toxic positivity as my new year vibe during *fingers crossed* the later stages of a pandemic in which the entire country is living and breathing a Dickensian classic. But I’m in need of some celebratory momentum within this hellscape of indoor life.
Let me indulge you with a little bit of Ben Affleck. He’s tall, he’s dark-haired, he’s very sad. The guy is two hulking calves of emotional drama. He chain smokes in masks, he brings a bathroom towel to the beach and stares with existential dread at the horizon and … he loves large Dunkin’ iced coffees.
I want to focus on Affleck’s tasty beverage of choice — it says, yes, I may be sad on the inside but also on the inside I’m enjoying this delicious coffee roast poured over ice cubes. And that’s a message I can get behind.
If this year needs a mascot, it’s Sad Ben Affleck. He is all of us. While also being none of us — he is a rich, famous white guy but without the sense to never have a toddler tattoo a phoenix on the entirety of his back meat Affleck does, however, know that sadness needs celebratory accessories — after all, we are still alive.
Which is why I’m changing the name of this newsletter to Comfort Trash. I plan on acknowledging the fucked up-ness of it all but will forge ahead doing my best to celebrate the little things with balloons and streamers.
I want this newsletter to bring you a measure of comfort as we continue to try and live through this Big Year together that’s bound to be full of trash. I hope when you read these stories you laugh at my bad choices, consider reading something with me you think is low brow, and feel a little less alone. So, welcome to 2021, I’m happy you’re here.
CURRENTLY READING, WATCHING, LISTENING & COVETING:
Currently reading:
The Most Chaotic Award Show Moments to See The Light
December’s Celebrity Skin Book Club pick:
The Meaning of Mariah Carey // Jan. 7th at 8 PM est IG LIVE
Watching:
Soul // Disney+ (bring an emotional life vest)
Song:
Words // Dolly & Barry Gibb duet
Coveting:
Benefit’s Pore Professional has changed my slick face by noon makeup game
If you’re enjoying FLOP ERA, please share this newsletter with a friend (or your mom) so they can question your judgement but at least enjoy the mess.