Mackey here once again with the holiday note, a (hopefully) forgivable comic contrivance. Think Falstaff or Giuliani minus the dripping brown dye, a foil to permit the sharing of far-fetched half-truths, their source deniable, disreputable yet entertaining. Not only does this dog write, I also read(1). Recently, I devoured a new book with origins in the very household where I sleep (a lot) – Humor, Seriously – by Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas(2). In it, I discovered the manifold benefits of levity, conducted a humor audit (more fun than the tax kind, marginally less fun than the food audit I conduct on the hour) and took a humor quiz to identify my style (I’m a Sweetheart). Pre-order the book, and my mom may take you on a walk too.
Circumstances(3) attenuated boys’ college trajectories and precipitated their decision to take an unscheduled gap year, leaving them with a metaphorical blank whiteboard for the year. Our literal garage whiteboard speaks to Cooper’s gap focus: Welcome to The Pump Zone and #GAINZ. Unafraid to ruffle feathers with his jokes or unsolicited coaching advice, he’s a classic Stand-Up. A triple threat, Cooper is an athlete, coach, and his own best cheerleader, laughing early and often at his own wit. Around the kitchen he is heard barking: “Put that down!” to people attempting dessert or a salty snack. It is odd to recall a boy who spent 17 years on a strict Yummy® brand dinosaur chicken nugget diet as he now deftly swats single french fries out of others’ moving hands. Cooper has other strengths too: his reluctant ability to acquire new skills (working for his cousin’s healthcare IT company, researching M&A targets, swearing at Excel), (2) his musical taste (auto-tuned rappers and floor-shaking weight drops after massive sets), and (3) his hair (good flow).
It sounds judgy to call Devon’s humor dark (he’s a textbook Sniper), but it does inexplicably incorporate a recurring Ted Bundy theme. Not content to remain among the family’s unpublished, he is in the final-edit phase of Checking the Invisible Boxes: A Survival Guide to the College Application Process. After devoting 18 years to the effort, he decided to commit to paper valuable insights and shortcuts before the otherwise useless knowledge of standardized tests and personal statement writing somehow (hopefully) un-sears itself from memory. It’s a gift of sorts to Téa Sloane. Unfortunately, at 15, Téa is firmly anti-advice. This doesn’t bother Devon partly because nothing bothers Devon, and also because she’s just the beta customer. Devon really wrote it for me based on Devon-logic that if he can get a dog into college, Téa should be a shoo-in.
Téa is a classic “Magnet,” charismatic, upbeat and fast-moving. She brings an aggressive, impatient enthusiasm to her cooking, turning burners on high and throwing in ingredients with wild abandon. With shouts of “Yolo!” last heard in a SoulCycle circa 2019, she brings the burn she feels to the kitchen. Her room is like the state of California, unapologetically heterogeneous, consisting of five distinct regions: (1) a bed with 6 different pillows for 6 different classes, (2) a lonely unused desk, (3) a damp towel heap, (4) a cereal dish pile, and (5) clothes mound (consisting of 50 identical t-shirts, 25 identical sweatpants, 30 identical bathing suits. Approximately 40% of the mound is “not hers” but belongs to friends “but it’s ok because they have most of my clothes.”) She has many assets: (over) confidence in her cooking, athletic prowess, shiny hair, impressive eyelashes and encyclopedic knowledge of The Vampire Diaries. With a flair for science and critical inquiry, she has recently been pondering questions: “Is there a Mr. Hyde in all of us?” and “What skin products do vampires use for that moonlight glow?”
The family sabbatical this year involved a two-week trip to Hawaii, which many of you are thinking sounds like “not a sabbatical,” “definitely a vacation” and “a damn shame they left the dog behind.” And you’d be right, but getting there required so many tests and forms and holding pens and receiving false positives and fainting at the airport and emergency quarantines, that it eliminated the possibility that any reasonable person would consider it vacation-like. Once finally clear of the decompression/decontamination/welcome to Hawaii process, they relaxed by working most of the time, which, in Hawaii creates a mildly masochistic vibe. When not working they swam with mantas, an activity during which small fish mistake you for krill and attack you while others on the boat throw up next to you. You pay money to do this. Dad also brought a mini-SCUBA kit with bottles so small that most of the time was spent refilling them; it packs away neatly in a black box that looks a lot like it should contain a sniper rifle. He was popular at the beach.
Your narrator, meanwhile, was curled up on my grandparents couch, a cocktail in one paw and a beach read in the other. Still 92 pounds thin and a fan of eating paper towels and rocks, I have a girlfriend named Cat. She doesn’t know it yet. Sometimes it’s better to just carry the capacity for relaxation and love within your own heart.
With love (unrequited or requited), levity and big woofs, Mackey
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(1) I do not. I am mostly blind. Also a dog.
(2) Great girl, my god-mom and also the reason I am not in China anymore.
(3) Codeword for the current global pandemic. I’m going to see how far I can get before mentioning it.
Hey it’s me, your boy Mackey¹. I’m a mostly-blind dog with a possibly over-developed and wildly inaccurate sense of danger. I can’t see, can’t run, and am frequently convinced that that thing moving in the distance beyond my nose is a mortal threat worthy of a red alert, but I can write².
It’s only my second Christmas, but even I can tell that life moves extremely fast here.
Téa Sloane is now a teen, and thus her response to any question is completely rational and proportional.
Devon’s car hit Andy’s car in our driveway. Devon might have been driving and, perhaps because we were all there to witness it, it seemed to happen in slow motion. Teen driving is terrifying enough, but watching a new driver miss the shift from R to D and confidently accelerate broadside into another car that you own defines excruciating. If only this car-on-car action was an isolated incident; our Platinum Member Discount at Mike’s Auto Body suggests otherwise.
Coop suddenly cares about nutrition. For breakfast he now downs a health shake that only Andy is permitted to prepare for him. He doesn’t even trust himself. Andy’s just so-so at preparing his scrambled eggs properly (cooked not burned, fluffy not watery), so Jennifer is allowed that honor. Those of us who don’t already, will be one day working for Cooper.
The family moved to NYC this summer, which means that they lived there for 4 weeks and 1 day. It was long enough for them to do quite a few things that I wouldn’t recommend.
For example: when you hear it’s Young Comedian Night at a bar in The Village, you immediately think ‘I should bring my 13-year-old girl,’ right? Neither did I, and need I remind you, I’m a dog. Ignoring both tingling Spidey-Sense and logic, Andy, Jennifer, Téa Sloane and our friend John³ arrived early to get a good table. Just before the opening act, Jennifer spots two friends solo on the far side of the club and impulsively dashes across the club so they wouldn’t be lonely. If this was on TV, this scene would feature arch music or strategic cutting to foreshadow the significance of this impulse and the impending cascade of doom that would soon follow. The first comedian takes the mic. “So, I’ve been told that there’s a child in the audience!” she says. Spotting Téa Sloane seated 15 feet in front of her, she waves, saying “Hello, child!” to Téa, who gamely waves back. The woman then launches into her routine about stress masturbating on the toilet with a hairbrush. Time passes. From across the room, Jennifer locks eyes with Téa, enacting a desperate yet encouraging pantomime which said both: “You can do it, it will get better!” (it didn’t), and also “Cover your ears! Close your eyes! Curl up into a ball!” By halfway through the third comedian’s lightly misogynistic bit about how thoroughly he disappoints the women he meets for sex on Tinder, and wonders aloud if gay dudes would be quite so judgmental, Jennifer issues the order to abandon ship. Wedged in among larger, appropriately-aged audience members, she used cocktail tables like stepping stones, cutting directly in front of the performer to reach Téa, then (figuratively) picked her up by the scruff of her neck and moved swiftly to the closest ice cream shop to ward-off permanent emotional scarring while furiously Googling ways to induce memory loss.
While Téa was riding the tides of parental negligence this summer, the boys were on deck to begin college applications. For the uninitiated, the college application process is like hell, but considerably worse. It is a forced march across a parched, featureless desert that you can’t even feel special about surviving, because literally everyone you know is marching alongside you. Any other experience this all-consuming and painful would be the subject of the college essay. Jennifer thought that being friendless and thus free of distractions, the boys time in NYC would be optimal for college essay inspiration. Also, it would be fun, kind of like writing a novel on the beach! They’d get done early and be ready to really savor their senior year. That Disney-esque idea was beautiful and 100% pure fiction. It’s December and the boys are still heads-down writing apps. People who study pain say it has two scalars: amplitude and duration. The ability to make painful things more painful by maximizing their duration is a family strength.
Andy remains focused on entrepreneurship including a satellite business, an autonomous drone security company and a friend’s pinball business. Long able to justify the outlandish under a façade of work relevance, he’s now eyeing rockets, more pinball machines and a prototype microturbine jet drone.
Jennifer’s book, Humor, Seriously: Why Humor is a Secret Weapon in Business (and Life), is progressing in ways that make college apps seem fun. Hitting Amazon right ahead of the 2020 election, you’ll also be able to find it wherever fine alcohol is sold. Because Jennifer teaches a class on AI for Human Well Being, and because Andy is Andy, they have both been serving as Technical Advisors on Artificial Intelligence and the applications of Quantum Computing for the upcoming Halo TV series featuring Cortana. And because truth is stranger than fiction, Jennifer will use some of the Halo material to inform her class.
Lots of love & Woofs, Mackey
¹ This is not Mackey. As you know, the kids traditionally take turns “writing” this holiday card, a cheap comic contrivance to say things that we believe, but originating from a deniable expendable source — like Rudy Giuliani. However, over time, the kids grew old enough to construct complete sentences and some of you began to believe that they actually wrote it. And you were amazed and a little star-struck by their talent which was flattering but also unwarranted because they didn’t write the letter. So, to be clear to the point of absurdity that our kids don’t write these letters, and to emphasize that they never did, we are going with a dog as an author.
² I cannot write.
³ John is an innocent here (you didn’t see him bring any of his daughters, did you?). He is mentioned solely for accuracy and to give him credit for his shared pain.
I am Téa Sloane Smith, and this is our holiday card.
First, big news on the dog front! After ten years of polite, heartfelt requests, we finally found Mackey, thus proving that either politeness or relentlessness pays off, and we’ll never know which. Rescued from China’s illegal dog meat trade (yes there’s also a legal one), Mackey was named for my grandpa’s WWII shipmate who helped get my dad into his alma mater, Pomona.
Grandpa TJ (right) and the original Mackey (center) Sweating out WWII in Saipan
He is also named in honor of mac & cheese my go-to food (a totally valid reason, back-off), and the classic Kris Kross song, Jump, comprised nearly entirely of shout-outs between Mac Daddy and Daddy Mac.
You kids need a gimmick, but it’s got to cost zero. (said a promoter)
Having tired of classically fun cities, we chose Berlin for this year’s togetherness adventure. We are big Merkel fans, and the parents share a Germanic belief that life isn’t supposed to be one big party, so we seek resilience-cultivating experiences just for the sheer stubbornness of surviving them. Even the German language is terrifying: “ich liebe dich” means “I love you.” Just read that twice before bed. A firm believer in self-administered second chances, my mom again booked us an Airbnb that looked amazing online. Stockholm deja-vu quickly set in triggering a creeping unease in each of us as we rolled our bags toward our Berlin home that first night. Slogging through the urban dark in the dripping shade of elevated train tracks, we weren’t surprised when our host’s instructions had us enter through three successive security gates and a dark, dusky industrial hallway decorated with “fuck off” and German phrases that looked a lot like “love you and miss you” (ich liebe dich und vermisse dich schon for you German learners!). Paralyzed by apprehension, I sought Mom’s eyes for reassurance that we would survive this walk. Confident in the knowledge that things were about to get worse, Cooper and Devon’s coping mechanism was to literally ignore the writing on the wall. Clearly trying to overpower her own sense of self-preservation, Mom pivoted into lecture mode (strangely comforting under the circumstances). She explained that Berlin was a rich tapestry of peoples with a cultural history of graffiti and that such self-expression should not be taken literally. Also, riffing a bit, she reasoned since they wrote “fuck off” rather than “fuck you” it should be taken more in the spirit of a collective invitation to be free and to not follow oppressive societal rules, rather than as a personal insult. Thankfully, by this time we had found our doorway.
For our first week, our German friends recommended two attractions: a concentration camp and a Spree river cruise. Seeking to ease into fun-optional life, we started with the boat. As we approached the actual vessel, however, the boys started to tense up. In the distance we saw layer of smoke. On approach the smoke resolved into a vast sea of white hair. Playing to their punctuality stereotype, scores of German seniors had arrived 30 minutes early and were waiting on top of an old-timey ferry boat. Our parents aren’t known for their keen sense of “what is fun.” It’s a realization we live with but it still manages to surprise us nearly every day. I started to rub one brother’s back: “Don’t worry, Coop. It is going to be ok.” Despite the rest of us, our feet resignedly walked us on board where a ticket-taker guy asked us if we were sure we had the right boat. Devon visibly held his breath, squeezing his eyes shut – hoping my parents would answer “No.” Instead they showed him our tickets; ticket-guy paused a little too long on them then nodded in disbelief and lead us aboard.
The white hair sea up top was matched by another below deck. Our simulated smiles passing through were returned with expressions ranging from the German equivalent from “oh, mein liebchen, we are sorry for you,” to “welcome to das boot, the alcohol is in the back.” My parents bravely rolled past the pensioners at the open bar, and lead us upstairs (German seniors arrive promptly for the late-morning schnitzel, gravy and pre-departure schnapps). Fortunately, we found the remaining seats were just in front of the only baby aboard, a newborn whose presence lowered the average passenger age to a mere 87. As soon as we cast off, the smartest human aboard, in a desperate last-ditch expression of what we were all feeling by now, began a blood-curdling shriek that it sustained for the duration of the cruise.
The key to life is lowered expectations. If you disagree, it’s because you have never traveled with us.
After a week’s vacation in East Berlin, we needed a break. We found one at The Soho House, a stylish ex-pat embassy different from the rest of the city in every possible way. We could start with the pervasive pulsing techno beat, or the periodic staff smiles, but we would definitely have to end with the full elevator that Milla Jovovich took a step into with us before deciding to catch the next one. Perhaps too late, we learned from the one local that grudgingly agreed to meet us there, that among Berliners, The Soho House enjoys a reputation somewhere between the Hard Rock Cafe and a Trump Casino. And that, my friends pretty much sums up our efforts to broker detente with our closest ally.
One evening four years ago, while enjoying a nutritious Round Table Pizza dinner (which my mom ordered and refers to as “cooking”) we took a poll to see which of us was the funniest. We all agreed that it was dad. Second place was a matter of debate. I claimed it for myself, but Devon does have his enigmatic signature “Devon sayings” and in second grade Cooper was legitimately voted “most funny” by his class. However, we all agreed that mom was the least funny. Never previously finding herself at the bottom of any list and determined to change her ranking, she went straight to her office and locked herself away. Having finally formulated her plan, she emerged recently and is still a bit sensitive to sunlight. In the end, her plan was simple: she will write a book on humor (with her legitimately funny friend, Naomi). And then we’ll see who is most funny!(spoiler alert: still dad).
Yours, with humor, love, fun and meaning!
xoxoxo
Stop. You shouldn’t read further. This letter is already ridiculously long, but for those of you who are really bored or are reading this in prison and have questions about the Berlin club scene…
So glad you asked!
So, as super cool people do, I did some research to determine which club/s we might visit. It turns out there are two types of clubs in Berlin: one where kids could join and one where they should not and it is not clear which one is hipper. Berlin is a unique city where sex and drug education in schools commences in 6th grade, and at an extraordinarily advanced level. German teachers don’t mince words or images. Full disclosure is the norm. Though I’d recommend against it, an American of any age would learn a lot in a conversation with a 6th grade Berliner.
Insufficiently prepared to hang with German middle-schoolers, Andy and I focused on an adult club, one that could match our aspirational level of cool – Berghain. Fortunately, my research produced extensive notes on how to get in (because as with Stanford, that’s the hard part).
How to get into clubs in Berlin:
Wear all black. Also, no button-downs. Not that you would consider that, but to be clear.
Go with Germans. If you don’t know any Germans, meet some, ask them where to go, then ask to go with them. Chances are that they will say “nein,” blow smoke in your face and walk off. But if you somehow throw them off their game, and they say “ya,” you have improved odds.
Be cool. Despite there being no line, be ready to stand by the door for a couple of hours. First, it is always busy inside. Second, that is what Germans do: they stand stoically. And remember you are German, work especially hard on this if you have no Germans with you.
Pasty? Shirtless? Leather short-shorts with suspenders? Willkommen!
Don’t talk in line. AT ALL. SILENCE!
No cell phones. I am writing this mostly for myself and not you. We/you can’t get “other things done” while in line. So no texting, emailing, and definitely no picture-taking. If you don’t smoke, now is the time to start. Be nonchalant and glum. Life is nothing except the contemplation of individual insignificance and the burning desire to express that in violent dance.
If they say no, walk away, they won’t change their mind. Ever. Because: Germans.
Andy and I set our alarm for 6AM Sunday, as we were told that the low water mark / best chance for admittance was at 7AM Sunday I slid on my black pleather Spanx, which had the double benefit of looking super cool AND flattering. Andy also dressed in black, complete with a Nordstrom’s-looking pullover. The logic was a) it was a little chilly out and that would keep him warm and b) Nordstrom’s hasn’t gotten to Berlin yet so it might create a novelty effect. I decided to not take my Tory Burch purse because research suggested that East Coast preppy wouldn’t fly well yet Nordstrom’s would strike the right note of collective, possibly intentional irony (keep them guessing).
We hopped into an Uber; the German driver took one look at us and did not stop grinning ear-to-ear the entire 10 minute ride to Berghain. (We are CRUSHING making Germans smile these days. It is barely a challenge).
We rolled out of the cab, and walked towards the massive concrete building in the distance. The former coal-fired East German power generating station emitted a pulsing, definitely non-funky beat that shook the ground. Andy politely declined all the friendly dealers who offered us an exhaustive menu of drugs.
We approached the door, only to realize we didn’t have any money. I whispered to Andy, “Do you think they take AMEX?” Andy’s eyes and mouth suddenly squeezed tightly shut to suppress his reaction to my question as well as his frustration with himself for forgetting cash. We ever so casually turned around (in a glum German way, ostensibly to reconsider the drug dealer’s wares or life itself) in search of the nearest ATM.
We walked past all our drug dealer friends, who had clearly seen this turn-around-to-find-an-ATM-strategy before and offered us drugs once again because we might need them more now. We declined, but this time looked in their eyes and smiled because familiarity was our growing our friendship.
We walked to an ATM four blocks away, which gave us a chance to check out what other club-goers were wearing: not Spanx. Noted.
Andy and I made our way back to Berghain, excited (but not showing it) that there were only 2.5 couples in the line. We stood behind the five people in silence, ostensibly emoting a similar, acceptable level of cool and glum.
After 30 minutes, the line was starting to grow (apparently 8AM Sundays is when the 2nd shift arrives) and some 1st shift club-goers started to leave (all had sunglasses on, suggesting that inside the club it is sunny!). The doorman looked at the first couple in our line and let them in, and then the next person in – we were on a roll. But then, BOOM, the doorman stared at the couple just ahead of us and shook his head imperceptibly.The guy stared at him as if to ask, “Really? You aren’t going to let us in? But we are so cool and glum!” The doorman glared back and took a mental picture as if to say, “you will never ever get into this club. Ever.”
Then, the doorman looked at Andy and I – all well-dressed with just the right amount of novelty – and slowly (but with ambivalence, you could tell) shook his head kindly. I gave him a sly wink and small smile, as if to say, “we get you, you have hard choices to make on a Sunday AM, and we are for sure not going to argue because we might come back and we are now friends, cool?”
It is not clear, but I am pretty sure he winked back. So, I wanted to share the good news that Andy and I FOR SURE HAVE A SHOT at getting in next time we are in Berlin. And you can come with us!
