Post-Pourri: May* 2k24

On the Grandma McFlurry, 'Baby Reindeer', Chappell Roan, and "Royal Match"

*belated! Apologies for stealing May valor here three days into June but this sort of time-displaced ‘Stack-stamping will help me rev up for the actual month ahead and, who knows, maybe write more than one post. We all have our motivational tools!

I really, really am working on some longer, more essay-ish posts, I swear, from a portrait of my Year of Lyfting Dangerously (or “Lyfting Fog,” I haven’t decided) to some BTS look at one of the two screenwriting projects of mine currently in limbo, and which you might enjoy more than Hollywood seems to be doing at the moment. Personal stuff! Vulnerable stuff. But today we’re gonna talk about milkshakes and iPhone games.

TASTE: McDonald’s Grandma McFlurry

Last summer, McDonald’s struck viral gold with their “Grimace Shake,” a purple-colored, berry-flavored milkshake whose popularity hinged, I’d argue, on how random it was. Also because the mythology — honed on TikTok — suggested we were drinking Grimace’s blood. In some ways it was a precursor to the ‘Dune Pt. II’ popcorn bucket, which broke out because it looked like something you could put your dick inside. Both campaigns benefited from the fact that McDonald’s and AMC weren’t in on the joke.

Soon, AMC theater concessions will be stocked with ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ popcorn buckets that seem very intentionally designed with f**kability in mind, thus killing the joke entirely¹. McDonald’s meanwhile, has just released… the Grandma McFlurry.

“What does that even mean?” I thought, thumbing through Candyjunky or Snackolator or whomever’s Instagram post about McDonald’s latest stunt menu item. “Have we so thoroughly lost the plot of wacky snack marketing that we’re just saying words now? What’s next, a ‘dog McFlurry’? ‘Happy shake’?” I sighed at the state of things and then made a plan to try it as soon as possible.

In-restaurant

If you didn’t surmise it already from the marketing, your first taste confirms that “Grandma” here is code for “butterscotch” or even more accurately “Werther’s Original,” which McDonald’s clearly did not obtain the legal permission to use or say. So you’re left with a level of abstraction that harkens back to some semi-fictionalized version of elder matriarchy from the late 80s and early 90s, this notion that every sweet lil’ granny you could ever meet carried a purseful of Werther’s. Did my own grandma (RIP) sometimes stock them? I mean sure. But today’s grandmothers are botoxed and BBLed, as likely to be Equinoxing as they are watching ‘Murder She Wrote’ or whatever the modern equivalent is². The point is McDonald’s is promoting a false America that no longer exists.

None of which matters, because the Grandma McFlurry is GREAT, the perfect ratio of butterscotch sauce to butterscotch pieces and mixed better than any other McFlurry I’ve ever had, at least as prepared by the McDonald’s on Figueroa near the University of Southern California³. Sure, it ignites certain nostalgia receptors that may or may not make you think about lineage, or mortality. But more importantly it works as a balanced dessert treat with strong mouthfeel. Grab a rascal scooter and RIDE, don’t walk to your nearest Mickey D’s before they run out and are forced to start early production on the Grandpa shake, which I’ve heard tastes like Barbasol.

PROCESS: The many trow-mas of ‘Baby Reindeer’

It feels genuinely crazy to me that one of Netflix’s biggest-ever TV series is mired in sexual assault, mental illness, and knowingly bad standup comedy, but that’s the thing about Netflix! Whatever Ted Sarandos wants to crow about the rigor of their international development slate or the genius of their algorithm, the company is unmatched in its ability to throw a million titles against the wall to see some left-field entry stick. ‘Baby Reindeer’ feels like the first one since ‘Squid Game’ that truly bears this principle out.

If for some reason you’ve heard nothing about this show: ‘Reindeer’ tracks a possibly untalented, definitely bottled-up comedian/bartender named Donny (Richard Gladd), whose kindness toward a sad-looking patron (Jessica Gunning) escalates into her stalking him. And that escalates into some of Donny’s bottled-up stuff getting, well, un-bottled. All over the course of seven half-hour-ish episodes that are definitely not a comedy!

I was maybe two weeks into the ‘Reindeer’ hype cycle when I threw my hands up and decided to watch, figuring this was some ‘Tiger King’ situation (not just because it featured an animal in the title, but because it looked like morally dubious misery porn) and I’d ultimately feel left out to have missed.

Ultimately ‘Reindeer’’s a lot closer to ‘I May Destroy You’ than anything else. Like Michael Coel’s masterpiece, this is a work of self-examination that stares right at some of the most unsavory subjects (see: sexual assault) and manages to be… sweet? Weird? Nuanced? And yes, occasionally funny.

Maybe you can chalk some of the show’s compulsive watchability up to the same true crime obsession that has us 1.5x speed-listening through podcasts about husbands beheading their wives, but I think a lot more has to do with the way ‘Reindeer’ unpacks the notion of victimhood and trauma, in all its forms. Donny, at least to start, is a clear victim. That’s amplified by what we learn about his past, that serves as the linchpin of the entire series. But what power is he granting his victimizers? To what extent is Donny complicit — not in these awful things that happen to him, but how he navigates his own emotional recovery? Suffice to say this is TRICKY TERRITORY but the massive enthusiasm for this unlikely show suggests people want, maybe need, to wade through it.

DEBATE: The “next big thing” status of Gen-Z camp songbird Chappell Roan

If you’ve been reading Lifting Fog long enough then you know what a hater I am. It’s not a bad thing! Maybe an annoying thing, for all of us, as I approach most cultural offerings — especially ones that have achieved “critical consensus”; ESPECIALLY ones that have achieved it quickly — with a strong degree of skepticism bordering on outright hostility. Oh, ‘Baby Reindeer’’s the “best thing you’ve seen on TV all year??”

🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐🧐

But I am also (big self-pat here) always willing to have my mind changed, which is to say actually engage with the thing I am predisposed to h8ing. And so it goes with the increasingly ubiquitous pop musician Chappell Roan.

I may be a 38-year-old cishet white writer with a coffee bean subscription but, like — I’m clued in. I’d heard her name before. I knew she’d Set Tongues Wagging at Coachella and was quickly becoming the Artist We Need Right Now. In what little I’d heard from her, she struck me as someone trying to ape Taylor Swift AND Phoebe Bridgers AND Lana Del Rey AND Olivia Rodrigo all at once. A canny marketing angle, sure, but was there anything to it? The only way to know for sure was to listen to her full debut, ‘The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess’.

Reader… there was.

Here I am cringily trying to maintain a foothold on the ledge of youth culture relevance [cue Steve Buscemi gif] only to discover well shit, I genuinely like this album. Many songs on it, in fact, including this synthy, soulful dirge:

What I had assumed was posturing absent sincerity was, well, posturing hiding sincerity; more Lady Gaga than anyone else, filtering great songwriting and real singing ability through overtly camp presentation. A performer!

Anyway, I write this today with a mouth full of words, having eaten them all. Chappell Roan is the real deal, and I look forward to whatever she does next. Gen-Z has agreed to let me keep posting for another six months.

FACE: Your addiction to the mobile game “Royal Match”

With 38 years of evidence, I feel confident saying that contained in the folds of my brain is something at least approaching an addictive personality. When I play video games, it’s frequently for hours — like, tens of hours — at a time. I’ll power through books in a day, utterly consumed. Cocaine is not a part of my life only because I know I would go all in. I’d be a Coke Guy, convincing myself that I was rhapsodizing like Seth Cohen when in fact I was just screaming some unwanted monologue about ‘Cloud Atlas’, or the Grandma McFlurry.

Anyway, like clockwork I once or twice a year find myself unable to put down one of those mindless iPhone “match-3” games they advertise on Instagram or Duolingo (free edition). You know exactly what I’m talking about even if you’ve never played one yourself. “Candy Crush.” “Gardenscapes.” Bright and colorful games where you match tiles in various patterns to produce in-game currency that you use to beat increasingly harder levels. It’s pure casino logic, dopamine rush, a slot machine in your pocket that trades on our absolute worst impulses.

Recently, I downloaded and then one week later deleted the most popular one: “Royal Match.” What can I say about it? There’s no story (you’re refurbishing the castle of a king with seemingly endless rooms) and its graphics are maybe only slightly better than its competitors’. No, the real draw — and this is of course as true of social media as it is match-3 games, all of which take their cues from Vegas — is the way it just keeps you playing. Every single time you think “one more game,” you level up your light ball (this allows you to create duplicates of other power-ups you match it with), then you score enough propellers in something called “Propeller Rush” to earn you a x2 points multiplier, which will help you collect pickaxes faster with which you can dig through treasure tiles, which might win you more of the trading cards the game doles out with algorithmic scarcity, which if you collect a whole set (and you’re already so close with eight of nine!) might net you a 30 minute lightball multiplier, and then you’d really be fucking cooking…

Now it’s 11pm. Now the rest of the world is asleep and this Substack post you’d promised yourself you’d get to by the end of the month remains unfinished. But it’s not like anyone was going to read it that late, anyway, right, on either the west OR the east coast? The world is asleep. This is your time. Back to the king’s castle, where you’re not a phone game addict but in fact some combination Jedi master/Rain Man/Tony Hawk, transforming a 900 into a nose manual into a crooked grind, with x20 point multiplier. You’ve never been so good at anything in all your life and you think if only there were a way to make money from this, you’d be set.

Now it’s 1am and you’ve used all your hammers and cannons and arrows to try and salvage some sloppy power-up usage. You’ve halfway-depleted your in-game coin coffers, too. If your luck doesn’t turn around soon, pal, you might actually have to plunk down REAL money, like USD real money, to keep the party going and—

I stop, pushing my phone back from 5 inches away from my face to a healthy 6 or 7. I hold down the Royal Match icon. I hover over “delete from home screen.” I think better of it — I click “delete from phone.” Guys, I can quit anytime I want to!

…until I’m vaguely bored again at some point, probably early fall, and re-download and start the cycle anew.

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More Post-pourri, from the archives:

1. as is Ryan Reynolds’ wont!

2. ‘Blue Bloods’? Sound off in the comments

3. the men’s bathroom code for which, if you’re interested, is 3414 (as of June 3rd)