was she born with it or was it god damn Maybelline?
nature v makeup
Fun news - I’m doing a Substack Live with TV writer and genius who wrote for Jon Stewart and is apparently very cool and now on Substack! The substack team connected us in a ‘hey you two funny people do a live’ and I said sure bc I am confident it’ll mean I’ll get cast in a big TV role from it. David also runs the TweetOfGod twitter account that has 4.2million followers so yea I’m interviewing god!
They even made us a graphic which I edited with more information like how its tomorrow Fri at 730p EST anyways you’ll all get notified bc Substack is relentless in their pursuit of notifications god bless here’s a weird essay!
was she born with it or was it god damn Maybelline?
I was up this morning at the devil’s hour of 330am, muttering to myself, inside my head,, “was she born with it? or was it god damn Maybelline?”
Over and over again, this phrase — a tagline from a 1990s commercial for Maybelline, rattled through my skull except instead of just saying ‘maybe she’s born with it, maybe its Maybelline,” I was adding my own little spins:
“maybe she is born with it, sure, but on the other hand, maybe it’s Maybelline?”
“Maybe its a third option we haven’t considered? No of course not, that’s insane - either she’s born with it or it’s Maybelline.”
“As the mother of this child, you were there the night she was born, yes? Good. Now on that night, when she emerged, did she already have it? Or was it added later, i.e. Maybelline?”
The mom wouldn’t know what to say and would maybe cry because who can remember giving birth, so they’d bring in the doctor who did the birth:
“Doctor, you delivered this baby, yes? Was the baby born with it? Doctor please, you’re under oath here.”
But the doctor wouldn’t remember jack diddly shit bc doctors show up for like 5 seconds during childbirth for the photo opp right as the baby comes out and then disappear back into some doctor cave leaving the nurses to do all the real work.
So we’d look for the nurses, but for some reason none of them were alive. All dead, except for one - Mabel Maybelline. IT WAS MAYBELLINE WASNT IT!!!!
All this before 4am, in my little head!
(I sent this to Lauren to review and her note was “All the nurses being dead threw me a little”)
“I write to know what I do not know”
I learned a lot writing the above:
Maybelline is not a shampoo company, as I imagined, it is a makeup company.
It’s spelled “Maybelline” like it literally has the word ‘maybe’ in it? I thought it was Mabeline for sure.
The commercials from which this jingle come are weird, of course, but include images of giant women walking across a roof with NYC in the background. These women played what can only be called a pivotal role in my sexual awakening which was, until college, an exploration of the self.
the gospels of our time
One thing no one tells you about being a kid is that whatever you hear - commercial taglines, songs, phrases - that stuff becomes the gospel of your life. Like how one thousand years ago, kids would just hear the bible, we hear Mambo Number Five by Lou Vega, over and over and over until it plays, unbidden, in our minds, most mornings.
Besides “One Shot” by Eminem and “Cupid’s Chokehold” by Gym Class Heroes, this is the song I most wake up hearing.
… I like Angela, Pamela, Sandra and Rita
And as I continue, you know they getting sweeter (uh)
So what can I do? I really beg you, my Lord
To me is flirting is just like a sport
Anything fly, it's all good, let me dump it
Please set in the trumpet
Sandra…and Rita?
AND Rita?
AND ON TOP OF THAT, they’re getting sweeter? Sweeter??
To you, flirting is just like a sport? Who wins then, Lou? Who loses? Lou? WHERE ARE THE FIRST FOUR MAMBOS LOU??
Apologies Lou you’re right, it’s all good, go ahead and dump it.
(mf needed a rhyme for trumpet and went with ‘dump it’)
Also sex stuff
Besides (and actually including) commercial jingles and Mambo No. 5, most of what swims around in my dumb head is stuff I learned in high school, stuff that I’m now realizing is all sorta sex stuff??
“your mom” + MILF
Remember, friends, this was the age of the MILF, a concept popularized, but certainly not created by, the classic film AMERICAN PIE (1999).
And during this era, a staple of high school discourse was the famous, “your mom.” The ultimate retort to any and all things:
“It’s gonna rain later.”
“That’s not what your mom said.”
The implication here being…what? You spoke earlier with my mom? You were spending time just the two of you?? DID YOU HAVE SEX WITH MY MOM????
Idk why but that last lil bit made me think of this sketch which is prob one of my top five of all time - it’s in Tim Robinson’s episode of The Characters, a show on Netflix back when Netflix did cool shit:
Tying this all together nicely
What does this all mean?
I don’t know.
I do know that I hesitate to say I don’t know.
Like “I don’t know” is a bad thing.
We should learn in school that the answer to most questions is ‘idk.’
Like on tests, most of the time, the right answer really is just… ‘no clue, idk'.
But we learn only to get the answers right.
Why dont schools teach us that?
I dont know!!
Was she born with it, or was it Mabeline? Or was it Maybelline?
I don’t know!
Sandra AND Rita?
I really don’t know!
Just let me dump it.
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Believe it or not, this post took me 19 years to write. It’s all I did. Just write and write and write. I made no money and ate little, sustaining myself entirely on the calories of an Unlimited Refills large Coke from McDonalds. You only need 6.8 of those a day to hit 2000 calories.
Anyways, the McDonalds people asked me to ask you guys if you could support Both Are True with money so I could maybe buy a chicken nuggets pack or even a couple Big Macs so they don’t get fired bc their manager keeps asking questions and they can’t keep telling him that I’m a “really big deal writer whose books have all been banned and so you can’t find em anywhere.”
Obviously I’m not asking for anything, artists don’t do that, but for the sake of John and Alaska and the rest of the Mcdonald’s staff (i love u guys), plz support both are true.
comments
What are you afraid of admitting you do not know?
what were the commercial taglines and songs of your youth that play unbidden in your mind?
Does your understanding of relationships sex etc come 100% from ridiculous shit you learned in high school?
are you doing okay? what’s it like in there?
2: you're soaking in it / when you're looking good you're feeling good and when you feel good you look great / Rice-a-Roni the San Francisco treat, saute and simmer flavour can't be beat / I brought the broom! I brought the mop! I brought the pump! The pump??? The Pledge Pump! It's easy, you just pump!
I feel like your wife gives good notes. Soundtrack of my youth: I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, and the theme song to The Love Boat and M*A*S*H. Love advice from my BFF’s older sister who was so beautiful she was famous in other school districts not just ours: If a guy doesn’t come around to your side of the car and open the door for you, stay seated in the car until he does. No, you will not look like an idiot. He will.