Devon here¹,
As you likely know, our family has singularly terrible holiday card experiences. This year differed but only by degree. This time it was substantially worse than ever before. It involved six weeks of our time, five card designs, four hired “helpers,” three full-scale print runs, two card vendors, and ultimately no partridge in a pear tree (zero actual cards sent). The spin we worked out was that we decided to go electronic to save trees, money and reduce our carbon footprint. And who reads our cards anyway? We found ourselves stuck however because we wanted hard copies for us and the five of you who don’t open email. So for the six of us, we created cards. However, it turns out not one of us looks good in the photos, a fact naturally only fully realized after the cards returned from the printer. Yet, at least a few of you said you ‘missed’ this newsletter, so here I² am writing you, possibly you alone, a 2017 update.
Unable to achieve consensus on a family sabbatical this year, we embarked on three separate ‘kid sabbaticals,’ which are unique concepts that my mother came up with in her head – that magical place where there’s always time for one last email before we leave the house and also where everything is beautifully designed and executed. In “actual reality,” they proved to be whatever is the opposite of a sabbatical, and involved my parents shipping us 3 kids to 3 different destinations for 3 weeks to learn a skill, against our will. I was forwarded to NY to get a ghost of Christmas future’s view of unemployment as I trained to code for Ethereum in Starbucks during the day, and couchsurfed during the night. The couches were owned by people we know/love, so my housing wasn’t totally random, but the hosts didn’t really know if or when I was coming, so it was like Improv Couch Surfing with Friends (coming to Comedy Central in 2019³). My brother was shipped to LA to explore how to be an entrepreneur, and where he learned that making more money beats making less, many LA startups are equipped with slides, and JibJab is the best place to work ever (partially due to aforementioned slides). My sister was escorted to San Diego where she trained to become a yoga instructor. She kick-started her way to Prana Yoga, going in with a dream to be the youngest yogi ever, and left with a keen appreciation for how slow yoga can be without a phone, how painful stingrays are when surfing, and how much she likes her phone. Among the three of us, she, at least, came away with a certificate.
In other updates: Téa Sloane loves music, TV, and speed (the velocity, not the chemical). When she DJs in the front seat of the car, she painstakingly finds a good song, passionately announces: “I LOVE this song,” listens for 10-15 seconds and then skips forward pronouncing, “Ok, I get the point.” Fueled with this philosophy, she can cram 30 to 50 songs into a three-mile trip to school and 5 to 8 TV episodes a night between homework and her 8:30PM bedtime. Téa Sloane’s self-reported life goals (stated after watching Project Runway or any reality TV show) are to: “Have a black gay friend to help me with fashion and also with life.” And to “help boys/men understand that they have to shave too. It’s not fair.”
Cooper remains focused on golf, which he plays nearly daily with his best friend, Dave, my 79 year old grandfather, and tennis, which he plays every other day with his second best friend – Tom, Dave’s 77 year old pal. Coop remains enthralled with cookies and chocolate. He eats two Nutella sandwiches after school. Each. Day. Last week, my dad observed his Nutella sandwich/chocolate cake production and asked as he took his first bite, “What does that do for you?” Coop responded: “It gives me a brief sense of euphoria, followed immediately by a sustained feeling of shame and regret.” He is, in so many ways, an 80 year old man himself.
Me: I am focused on cryptocurrency, an investment I only came across because I thought the stock market seemed overheated. I threw some money at it a year ago and since timing and/or showing up is everything, I am now considered a visionary. I spend a fair amount of time mentoring Téa Sloane, imparting unsolicited words of wisdom, and leaving things in her bed (cans of wasabi peas, fresh fruit, shampoo bottles) so when she wakes up, she can look at life anew, afresh, with wonder. Coop, in contrast, goes to Téa Sloane’s room, finds lists of things that she apparently wants enough to actually write them down, and then crosses off items he deems unworthy (e.g., “get Snapchat”). On Sundays, I work at the Exploratorium, where I excel in cow eye dissection and magic tricks, I mean illusions, as a means to break the ice with girls, I mean make friends. Coop and I still enjoy each other’s presence and do small things to make each other smile. In our entryway, my parents proudly display three professional portraits of us. In July, Coop changed my photo to a picture of Zach Galifianakis in The Hangover to see if anyone in our family notices anything ever. So on our wall, you see Téa Sloane’s sweet smile, Cooper’s twinkling eyes, and Zach Galifianakis’s belly. In September, Coop pointed out it out to me. Inspired, I changed his portrait to Dr. Evil and after some weeks passed with nobody noticing that, I taped Coop’s school ID to the frame. I like to connect the dots for others.
My dad, who has never seen a new technology that he doesn’t immediately love, has been “trying to get smart about crypto” (his words), and we have built five mining rigs. They bear the names of his favorite fictional space crafts (totally normal): Jupiter 2, Nostromo, Serenity, Sulaco, Zero-X and Event Horizon. Even I don’t know what movies some of those are from. As you know, crypto is the collective eye-roll of our generation, but on the upside, with 39 GPUs running 24/7, pulling 150 watts each, we no longer have to heat our home.
My mom, voted “Least Funny” for the latest family yearbook, decided to teach a class on humor, ostensibly not out of spite. Some people teach a class on something in which they are an expert; this is like that, just flipped. So she and her humor-partner-in-crime, Naomi, and their (legitimately funny) team created a Humor Bootcamp which is a way for her, I mean others, to get their funny on – starting January 14th, 2018. Grab a friend and sign up here (not an ad, and ironically also not a joke).
Sending you warm wishes for a brilliant 2018, fueled by speed, Nutella, magic, crypto diversification, humor and love – Devon (penning for Coop, Téa Sloane, Andy, Jennifer, Jupiter 2, Nostromo, Serenity, Sulaco, Zero-X and Event Horizon).
Notes:
- This is not Devon. The kids never ever write the holiday cards. When we started writing holiday newsletters in 2002, this didn’t require a footnote, but lately they’ve gotten so old that you think they might command the impressive vocabulary and wit that we do and actually author these letters. That is not remotely true. Although if you’re super cool and not our friend, they could possibly add you on Snapchat or whatever comes next. Love, Andy and Jennifer.
- Again, not me. It is Andy and Jennifer.
- Not really.