The Friday Dispatch: March 14, 2025

The Mexican Pizza is $3.14 in the Taco Bell app

Happy Pi Day! Even though I participated in the Phoenix Pie Social for years, and even judged it, at one point, Pi Day always makes me think of cake. Reason: When I was in high school, my mom used Pi Day as an excuse to…bake a cake. And, on the top, in sprinkles, she drew the pi symbol and as many digits of 3.1459etc she could fit. Her sprinkle handwriting is top-notch! Very legible.

Anyway, maybe I will eat pi today. Maybe not. The Taco Bell app is running a $3.14 special on Mexican Pizza today, so you can kick your weekend off right.

My Dumbest Creation Yet

Damn, this lyric video took FOR EV ER to make and then editing the footage took FOR EV ER and getting the sound from the performance to sync up to the clips took FOR EV ER…and then, as I was uploading it to YouTube, I thought “Oh, I probably have time to make a Columbo x Chappell Roan photo collage!” And I did.

As always BIG big thanks to Caitlin and Lauren of We Stan Together, who have are essentially the benevolent queens giving this jester stage time and an audience month after month. All this, despite the fact that my songs seem to be getting progressively more elaborate and, simultaneously, less tethered to anyone’s interests but my own!

The next We Stan Together is on April 6th! Will I be singing a silly song? Maybe.

A Less-Dumb Creation and a Chance to Hear Poems

A little less than a year ago—last May, in fact, when I was just starting to work on my solo musical—I gave my friend Jake the ability to see my location at all times using Find My iPhone. In the months that followed, I wrote poems, and Jake took photos. Sometimes I knew where he was and what he was capturing, like when he came into the dentist’s office with me and photographed my wisdom tooth removal. Other times, he would be following me down the street, or taking pictures through a storefront window, without my knowledge. All the while, I was writing poems that similarly positioned me as the subject of reporting. Hattie Touches The Art.

Hattie Allows Her Library Card to Expire.

Hattie Has Plenty of Blood. All of them, written in the third person. All of them, one moment in my life, big or small. Some also photographed. Some just for me.

Late last year, Jake and I broke convention and went to a studio for some posed photos. This was a special dispensation we granted, because these were to be the cover images for our new zine, Reporter Quarterly.

Jake and I, and our friend Emmy, who is an incredible layout artist, have been keeping this project under wraps, more or less, as we’ve worked. If you’ve hung out with me IRL in the last 10 months, you might know about this project, especially if I texted you beforehand to say “Hey, can my friend come along and take photos for a zine?”

Even though we’ve been working on it for so long, every step of this process has been a surprise for me. There’s one poem, in particular, which I wrote in October 2024, that I only “got” after Emmy paired it up alongside a photo Jake snapped in January 2025.

Why am I telling you all of this now?

At the end of March, I’ll be debuting some of the “reporter poems” for the first time at a reading series! I’ll be sharing a few poems from this first edition of RQ, and giving you a sneak peek of poems we’ll be sharing in future editions. Later this month, I’ll have more information on how to pre-order the first volume of Reporter Quarterly. But in the meantime…if you’re local…won’t you come to a FREE reading at Cherry on Top in Brooklyn, Monday, March 31st, 8PM? Maybe I’ll even show you a photo of the inside of my mouth!

Huge, huge, huge, huge, infinitely gigantic thanks to Jake and Emmy for bringing this dream into the world with me. I am truly lucky to have you both as creative partners.

Sleep Like Amanda Knox or Your Glasses Will Melt

Have I talked about Amanda Knox-ing in this newsletter yet? No? Okay. Well: I know this sounds like a name I should NOT be using as a verb. Hold on.

Last year, I was reading an article from Slate which, in classic online-magazine-headline-format, admonished me for sharing a bed incorrectly. I wasn’t really paying attention: the correct way to share a bed is to sleep on a different side each night (uh-huh); if you like spooning, this is especially intelligent because your arm will not fall off (okay, makes sense); I, the author of this article, figured this out in prison (?).

When I got to this line, I scrolled up. I realized I was reading lifestyle advice from Amanda Knox. And you know what? She rocks at lifestyle advice!!! Excerpt:

…My husband and I have identical nightstands with identical lamps and identical USB-C cables for charging our phones. That’s it. I often bring a book to bed, and it’s quite easy to transfer that lone item across the astronomical distance of the bed. Lotions and whatnot belong in the bathroom. Sleep mask, earplugs, white noise machine? I’ve always been a great sleeper, so this may be my privilege talking, but you can learn to sleep without those things. Most humans on Earth don’t have or use such items. They are first-world traps of luxury, keeping you stuck in a mattress rut. But I have an adjustable mattress and my husband and I have different firmness settings! What’s that, Your Majesty? I fell asleep in my chair while you were complaining about the fancy mattress you were tricked into buying.

So, when either Myles or I is having a Weird Shoulder Thing or an incorrect knee, or one of us has to get up early and the other can stay in bed, we will ask each other, “Amanda Knox tonight?”

Only recently did we realize the dire material cost of not listening to Amanda Knox.¹ Last weekend, I woke up, I reached to grab my glasses from the nightstand, and they were kaput! The left arm had popped right out! I thought, at first, that I had a screw loose, but nope—the hinge itself had bent and warped. How could this be?

I examined the angle where the hinge had bent. In doing so, I realized that it was warped from turning my head to the left so I could pay attention while Myles read his sections of The Boxcar Children (our nightly routine) (we’re on the “houseboat mystery” book now and it’s nuts). The repeated pressure of tilting my head to the left slowly bent the hinge, and eventually, when I put my glasses away for the night after gazing lovingly at Myles for an hour, the hinge popped out completely. If we had only listened to Amanda Knox, and swapped sides with more regularity, I could’ve gazed at him from the other side of the bed and put less pressure on my glasses frames.

So, the moral of this story is: Don’t look at your boyfriend too much or you will have to order new glasses.

Good and Also Great

Here are four things that made my life better this week!

• I finally spent the $50 annual fee on a Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack, because I wanted to play some N64 games. WHY THE HELL DIDN’T I DO THIS SOONER. Oh man. I’ve been playing a lot of Pokemon Stadium and Paper Mario. When I need to kill 2-5 minutes at a time (for example: cooking), I play Pokemon Puzzle League or Kirby and the Crystal Shards². At some point in the near future, I am going to open Harvest Moon, and I am going to cancel plans and stay home and play it.
  I’m scared to download and begin using the Game Boy Advance pack, which is also included in this subscription. The moment I open Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team or WarioWare Inc, I am dropping all responsibilities and communication until every game/minigame/level/stage/quest is complete.

• HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS. Shush! Stop talking!!! Don’t ask questions! I said HUNDREDS of BEAVERS.

  This is a contemporary silent slapstick film. It is incredibly intricate and layered and nuanced. It is woven together so perfectly, an impeccable lacework of the stupidest jokes you’ve ever seen. It was made with $150,000 and far fewer beaver costumes than you may expect. Please, please, please watch it. There are parts that feel like you’re watching a video game tutorial, and also a Looney Tunes short, at the same time. You will have genuine moments of pathos, crushing sadness and terror and love. Also, the best subplots in film history. It’s like if Wes Anderson tried to make a Quentin Tarantino movie but no money. I can’t explain it. Please. Watch Hundreds of Beavers. It will improve your life.

• I tried my first Coucou French class, a drop-in, after months of saying “Wow, I really want to do that but I don’t have the time.” Not only was it a positive learning experience (I finally get the passé composé!!!), but the instructor and other classmates were very welcoming to me, a random lady who showed up during week 6 and started stumbling through grammar.
  AND! After signing up for a drop-in, I had a $40 coupon to use on a full-length class, as long as I signed up within 60 days of purchasing my initial trial. However, I won’t be available to take a longer class until July (or later). So, I reached out to Coucou customer service. They responded within 12 hours, were happy to honor the coupon code at a later date, and even offered to notify me when late summer/early fall classes go live on the website, so I don’t miss out. Super!!!

• There was soooooo soooooooo so much hype for Liz Moore’s book, The God of the Woods that I was a little scared to actually start reading it. The library queue gave me a couple nudges—Hey, are you ever gonna download this???—and when I finally did, I made sure I had time to sit down and start reading. And, uh, well, that was the right decision, because this is a book that deserves the annoying adjective “unputdownable.” In a book chockablock with characters, I cared deeply about the entire ensemble, all their decisions and the outcomes of their decisions. After you finish, the

  Emma Copley Eisenberg
  interview with Liz Moore over on
  Frump Feelings
  is well worth a read, especially if you are a writer (spoilers though!).

What I Did Not Buy This Week

You already know what time it is!!!!!!!!!!!!!

• My old pink Zenni glasses with new lenses, because they are “retired.” I will make time to go see my optician and get my OG pink glasses fixed, and I actually have a backup pair of the frames, just in case, which need new lenses. But…dang. I wish I could just upload my prescription, hit “order,” and have MY glasses back on my face for thirty bucks.

• This really cute ModCloth dress which reminds me of a swimsuit I had when I was 7 or 9?

• Any of Elaine Kraf’s novels…though when they inevitably come out as a box set…WOOF. I’m gonna need them because LOOK AT THE COVERS. Penguin is reissuing Kraf’s work throughout this year, as part of the Modern Library Torchbearers series. Right now, the only one available in a new printing is The Princess of 72nd Street, and I’m in the library queue for it. The descriptions all remind me of Divorcing, by Susan Taubes, if it were written by Sarah Rose Etter. And, I cannot emphasize this enough, the C O V E R S.

• This rainbow StitchFix cardigan

• Anything from This Is Not Legal Advice clothing, which appears to be made for my friend Amy

• Lululemon leggings I saw on eBay (outbid! I am unwilling to spend more than $11 on soft pants)

• A STICK OF BUTTER BEACH TOWEL!?!?!

• Some sort of …crab …croissant…plushie? which appeared to me in a targeted ad. GREAT. I’m on board!!!!

• This book, also ft. in an ad, described as “lesbian pirates must navigate the ultimate maelstrom—their own wedding.” Again, I’M ON BOARD.

• A set of Kiki’s Delivery Service post-it notes

• A stained glass jigsaw puzzle (also Studio Ghibli themed)

• A Wheel of Fortune handheld game which is being sold by a company called “educational insights.” Is this…educational??? I want it either way!

• Perfume in pretty apple-shape bottle (potentially evil)

• Periwinkle ink for my fountain pen (I DID get some emerald-green-with-gold-glitter ink though!)

• A LOWLY WORM NOTEBOOK (cry emoji cry emoji) at P&T Knitwear & Books

  

• Tickets to Italian Heritage Night at the Healdsburg Prune Packers, a Sonoma County collegiate baseball team. I love this offensive ad!

  

• Perfect leather shoes with leather bows on them

• This bee swimsuit which is, sadly, currently just a drawing

• Stratia Lipid Gold moisturizer, something I’ve included here before, am STILL debating whether to try, and just realized is a pun (I always thought it was just called…LIQUID gold. Bold. But not as descriptive!)

• Shoes that look like cherry pie (WHY must you be FLATS)

Okay, that about settles us, I think. Watch Hundreds of Beavers, remember to switch sides in your bed or Amanda Knox will get you, and remind me next week to tell you about my fairy hair. Bye bye!

1. Or, as Hazel from 30 Rock would say, Foxy Knoxy.

2. The three items I rented most from Blockbuster were Kirby and the Crystal Shards, Serendipity the Pink Dinosaur, and Once Upon a Potty, a potty-training video (this was WAY after I was potty trained, but I was fascinated by the way human waste production worked) (normal girl)