Horses and animatronics

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Hi! 

Please say hello to Wilbur, a stuffed coyote that used to ride around on a little trike (a la Jigsaw) and deliver pizza at a place that only existed in Sioux Falls, SD called Gigglebees. A voice actor would sit in the back of the establishment and talk through Wilbur.

Derek, my perfect boyfriend, got to meet WIlbur as a child and didn’t tell me about this illustrious bike guy until this year. We have been together for nine years. I know everything about Derek. We have shared our deepest secrets with one another and he didn’t bother to tell me about a pizza delivery puppet stapled to a trike that rolled into kids birthday parties until this year.

What I love most about Wilbur are his floppy knees. You can tell there isn’t a guy in there. Derek also said they would occasionally remove him from his tracks and take him to community events. Imagine being light-headed at a blood drive and seeing knock-kneed Wilbur barreling towards you on three wheels.

A note about the ad you’re about to see: I really like beehiiv (the platform I build my newsletters on) and they sometimes offer me ads to put in Dinner Cut. I’m still figuring out how ads/subscriptions fit into the future of this newsletter, but I can promise you’ll never get an AI ad or something random as all hell. But this one seems chill! I mean it’s kinda dramatic, but sure! I have gotten a lot of good info from beehiiv’s videos and tutorials (especially their creator spotlight newsletter.)

Email Was Only the Beginning

Four years in the making. One event that will change everything.

On November 13, beehiiv is redefining what it means to create online with their first-ever virtual Winter Release Event.

This isn’t just an update or a new feature. It’s a revolution in how content is built, shared, and owned. You don’t want to miss this.

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This is my new interview series that I’m calling “extremely serious.” We’ll see what fun header image Faith will design for me so I can replace the word art one above. I’m going to interview some of my favorite artists who (like myself) do goofy work, but take it seriously.

First up, is Ella of @ horses_and_memories, the most gorgeous poetry and horse meme instagram account. If you’re not one of her 25k followers, well fine, live your life, but my groupchat has been sharing the heartwrenching poems and horse photoshops for years. Aside from photoshopping perfect horses, Ella is a poet/essayist in NYC with a 9-5 corporate job. 

What about your work do you take super seriously?

I've always seen myself as a writer. I've always expressed myself through writing, even if I wasn't sharing it. When I started sharing it through posts, the format was so silly that it allowed me to be so serious. A horse meme is so ridiculous that I can be as serious as possible and cover whatever topic I really need to dig into. The horse is like that little buffer. But recently, I've also been taking the horses very seriously. It takes me so long to make some of these memes. I make dozens of different versions. I test out different color schemes. So now it's all serious, the content and the form.

It means a lot to me. It's my little world that I’ve created.

How long does it take to make one post, if you had to put a timestamp on it? 

The whole process of creating all the slides it's like…a couple hours. Maybe three hours?

Literally everything on my phone, even if it feels like a little thing…it takes forever.

I feel like I've gotten some requests for advertisements or from people to make memes, and I would get kind of offended when their offer would come out to like $1 an hour. I would rather do something for free and pitch someone's work that I really believe, rather than be paid like $20 if they think it's gonna take me 10 minutes to make something.

What’s your dream collab?

I've been thinking a lot about collaboration this year. I've been thinking a lot about how I want talk about myself less. I want to do crossovers with my friends who are artists. My little sister is a painter, and I've been making crossover memes where I take their art and I make it into my format, and that's been amazing. 

Also the other meme girls. I envision some kind of long term project where I don't know if it'll be interview style or essays, but there are so many girls that I look up to and admire in that space. But in terms of ads…Aquafor. I DMed them and was like “I will make memes for you!!!” They don't want me.

Is there a post that you’re especially obsessed with?

My love for a post usually doesn't match the ones that blow up. Like, the dumbest one: “will you be my alligator boyfriend?” And it's a horse leaping over an alligator. 

That one got reposted 4,000 times. I was just with my friends talking about Lana Del Rey. I think the ones I'm proudest of are the ones I've shown to my sisters or my parents, and it make them cry. There's one from December 30. It’s like “My parents came to this country so…” and then it's silly things, but you get to the end…

And I watched my sister swipe through it, and at the last slide, she just started bawling.

Or honestly, the ones where my friends text me, “Hey, are you okay?” Because it means that I communicated the intensity of something I was feeling. 

In one of your essays, you talk about virtual olive branches. When was the last time you extended a virtual Olive Branch? 

Sometimes someone will unfollow me from my childhood, but I still want to know what they're up to, so I keep following them. That feels like an olive branch, like that's just for me, like I'm still interested in this person's life. And I kind of want to keep tabs. I want to see how their relationship pans out.

I want to see every engagement photo. I want to see every single engagement.

I want to see it. And there's some people where it's just like, I am so comfortable just being a fan. I love being your fan, it doesn't have to be mutual.

This interview has been edited and condensed to make both the the interviewer and the interviewee sound smart and cool.

Some things I’m a fan of rn:

• The factory that put Wilbur together made a whole bunch of peddling animatronics

• A $25k cash grant for trans filmmakers courtesy of the Duplass Brothers

• I’m going to be a cowboy alien for Halloween with the help of this makeup tutorial

• Next self defense class is Monday, October 27 at Grace Church, reserve your spot here

• Can’t stop listening to this Reba song

• New ZuZuZah with David Feinberg

• We are finally recording a live album of Little Orphan Boy and are fundraising to help pay for the project!

Next Issue: I’m diving into Dritty’s Dreamland, a genius/horrifying/sicko show written by my friend Chris Dritsas. This was my first time production designing a show and it was also the start of my glorious friendship and creative partnership with Annaleigh Stone!!!

Thanks for reading and, as always, don’t tell me about any typos unless they are really bad.