Like A Bat In The Supermarket
It is probably enough to note that this week’s episode of The Distraction, which was recorded last week, is A Vacation Episode. Regular listeners have encountered these before, and even those readers that have never listened to the podcast but have some understanding of words can probably guess at what this means. If you want to parse it even more finely, this is a Double Vacation Episode, given that Drew was on vacation when we recorded it—was, quite literally, slathered in sunblock and headed to the beach when I reminded him that we were scheduled to talk—and that I am on vacation now as the episode finds you wherever you get your podcasts. If you want to go in fully prepared, you should bear that in mind. Think about what a Double Vacation Episode might be like. OK, here you go:
Ordinarily, these episodes are looser and a little goofier than the usual, heavier on the Funbag questions, and imbued in some subtle but palpable sense with the energy of someone who will not be setting an alarm for the next few days. We were both bringing slightly different versions of that in this one, but the vibes synchronized pretty quickly, and it wasn’t long before Drew was talking about sunblock mishaps and gaveling an edition of Drew’s Fancy Corner into session by talking about his hotel do’s and do-not’s. The thread count on the early portion of the episode is notably high.
I tried to steer things towards a conversation about why New York City’s grocery stores are so uniquely heinous, which was sort of occasioned by Zohran Mamdani’s planned pilot for publicly owned grocery stories, and is also the sort of thing that I’m trying my hardest not to talk about basically every waking moment, and we eventually got there. Drew talked about his early-20s habit of going window shopping at fancy groceries, and celebrated the universal WOAT of NYC groceries, and the one that looks the most like it belongs in Kathryn Bigelow’s 1989 thriller Blue Steel, Gristedes. We shared some Gristedes stories—Drew’s, mine, Michael Schur’s—and addressed some others, and I picked up the requisite “dumb shit we did in our 20s” duties in this type of episode by talking about a friend’s New Year’s Day Frying Stuff Party and the indoor smog emergency that resulted.
The whole back half of the episode is given over to Funbag stuff, with the majority of that being Drew and I attempting a serious answer to the question of how to engage with creeps saying weird political shit on a public golf course. I wouldn’t say that we solved the problems of how to live together, how we act online, how we think about acting online, or trying to be a person in general, but we did the best we could. A question about close encounters with Guys went in some predictably unpredictable directions, featuring Drew sharing the story of how a Division III football player with a brief NFL career built an enduring legend by carrying a keg up a hill, and me telling the story of how former NFL tight end Carlester Crumpler came to leave me a birthday voicemail. In retrospect, I was present at the creation for the concept of Cameo, but didn’t really notice it. It would not be the last time my mind was elsewhere.
If you would like to subscribe to The Distraction, you can do that through Apple Podcasts, wherever else you might get your podcasts, and Spotify if absolutely necessary. Thank you as always for your support.
