The Friday Dispatch: May 23, 2025

If your body wash were a person, would you hang out with them?

Hello, readers. Greetings. It is FRIDAY, and it is the FRIDAY before a LONG WEEKEND for me, and I am going to spend a big chunk of it READING BOOKS. Let’s get into it so I can slam the computer shut and stop looking at screens til Tuesday!

I love doing online focus groups. Often, the screening questions are more interesting than the actual focus group itself (and if you don’t get into the focus group, well, who cares! You got to answer a series of ridiculous questions about Who Buys Lightbulbs In Your House). Yesterday, I was filling out a pre-screening for a focus group about body washes & scrubs. After answering a dozen multiple-choice questions about body wash, each with 14 options to choose from, I got an essay question.

“Think about the body wash you are have been using most recently. Describe what the body wash would be like if it were a person.”

That’s a new one, even for me! Lately, I’m using the Nivea White Peach and Jasmine body wash. What WOULD she be like, as a person? My mind immediately summoned an image of Blueberry Muffin from the 2003 Strawberry Shortcake animated series, but with a skirt and glasses. I think Ms. Nivea would be a schoolteacher (art or music) who loves spending time in her classroom after school is done, just in case someone comes by to chat. Also, she spends lots of time outside but is very careful about sun protection. I think she would have a happy-go-lucky disposition but feel really shy in big crowds, and I think she would volunteer at a rescue for small animals, because she is patient and quiet and notices small things, like a mouse’s whisker density or a hamster’s favorite foods. And also, she would have a fondness for rodents, because she thinks they’re misunderstood.

The survey also asked me, “If you could have dinner with any three people from history, who would they be?” After answering the first question, I wanted to say “Uh, my Nivea body wash, because she sounds really nice!”

In doing this exercise, I realized what I want in an anthropomorphized body wash. Anna Nicole Smith. DUH. A quick search indicated she frequently wore two specific perfumes, Hanae Mori and Boucheron; the former is a woodier/citrusy scent while the latter is a heady white floral, VERY my speed. So! I should keep an eye out for it, and maybe for some sickly, sticky gardenia-heavy body washes.

I went crazy about Sanrio

A few weeks ago I hinted to

marina ramil

et al that I was planning on writing something…Sanrio-y. Well: here it is. Last night I published my S C R E E D against the Sanrio Character Ranking, with only days left in the voting window. I mean it when I say I was frowning and tut-tutting with disapproval and swallowed rage as I wrote this. An excerpt:

The Sanrio corporation is asking us to abandon all the principles they supposedly promote—friendship, teamwork, generosity—to gain attention through a popularity contest. On the official Sanrio social media accounts, audiences are encouraged to vote for their favorite characters, with brands and individuals campaigning for their chosen Little Guys. But the characters who don’t have a lucrative contract with, say, Build a Bear or Casetify aren’t receiving any cross-promotion. Compare that with the status of the old guard—your Hellos Kitty, your Bad Badtzes-Maru—who can sit back and enjoy their lifelong top-10 status while corporations and influencers go to bat for them.

Here. Take a look at the bottom tier of last year’s Character Ranking. These are the eight lowest-ranking characters from 2024. Look at their faces. Yes, that one there is just a family of bears who love to play games together. Look at their names. Button Nose. Tiny Poem. Mr. Bear’s Dream. A total of 57 million votes were cast in the 2024 Character Ranking, which means that millions of people, all over the world, looked at the Seven Silly Dwarfs and said “Ew, no.”

If you read the whole thing, please report back and tell me which underrepresented Sanrio character you secretly champion in your heart. Also, I forgot to include these guys in my write-up, but let’s all hope and pray a Sanriofied animated version of the Moby Dick opera comes along to answer our questions:

One week, two showers

Haha, do not allow my misleading subhed to make you think I am stinky!¹ No, no. Last week, as you may recall, I mentioned my Momma was in town. She was here for my bridal shower! It was a bee-autiful day, made possible entirely by the efforts of my mother, my friends, and my family/soon-to-be-family, all of whom contributed to a whole afternoon of games and treats and gifts and chatter and trivia.

Here’s me and Momma, in our bee-theme best (and a lei po’o on my head, courtesy of my Hawaii-based future mother-in-law, lovingly affixed with bee charms!).

And here is me, walking into my shower, getting hugtacked!

My friends Sophia and Chloe worked with my mom to put the shower together, and I want to give a special shout-out to

Chloe Brooks

for IDEATING, TESTING AND EXECUTING FOUR DIFFERENT DESSERT RECIPES SO FLAWLESSLY.

Along with beaucoup BBQ from the shower (Mighty Quinn’s! delicious!), Myles and I have been living off dessert leftovers for breakfast and lunch. Chloe made bite-sized pecan and cherry pies, cornbread cookies with honey butter frosting, AND rice krispie treats (my Gram Cracker’s, in fact, which were so well-executed it felt like receiving a perfect cozy hug from heaven). And per Hayes family tradition, a couple of trays of Wisconsin Cheeseman petit fours (spoiler for my wedding: we will have these).

Then, on Tuesday, my coworkers threw me a virtual shower! Over the weekend, I was pretty impressed by everyone’s performance at Hattie Trivia, but the Jeopardy game was where it got REALLY intense. My friend Emily did a great job of creating topics that were Hattie-related, but did not actually require knowledge of Hattie. Theoretically, ANYONE could’ve won:

(But I was the real winner because my colleagues are also such great friends!)

Emily also sent me this video, which she presumably watched under the guise of Jeopardy/hot dog/hot dog Jeopardy research, only to learn…nothing. We both got stupider from watching this. Worth it.

Choosing to believe this is NOT an AI voiceover but a beautiful and frightening woman raised by robots:

Suggestions

• I’ve been reading 1,000 Words,

  Jami Attenberg
  ’s book, in preparation for #1000WordsOfSummer² which starts next week! I’m enjoying it, and also still loving her newsletter—a recent excerpt on timing and preparation:
  “Everything I had been writing up to that point, all the research, the entire process of the past year, even, yes, all the many mistakes I’d made, all of it was important and relevant, and I had worked hard to even know what my book was about in the first place so I could ask the right questions when I finally met this person.”

• Do you miss Stumbleupon? Well, they BROUGHT IT BACK FROM THE DEAD! Kinda. There’s a site called TheWildernet which is an extension of the explorability/discoverability engines of the old internet. I am excited to play on it.

• Kermit the Frog delivered a commencement speech…or should I say…KERMMENCEMENT SPEECH…at the University of Maryland. I haven’t watched this yet! But I bet, when I do, I will cry!

• Shout-out to my dad, who recommended the band Pigeons Playing Ping Pong a couple weeks ago. Their 2014 album “Psychology” has been my work background music all week.

• I started reading Three Days in June yesterday. It’s the newest Anne Tyler and I’d first heard about it through the Ask a Manager blog, where it came highly recommended as a book that is “charming and cozy and ended too soon.” It IS a really fast read—I’m going to finish it after I finish writing this—and is making me feel good about my own (so far VERY easygoing) wedding planning! It’s enough drama to be interesting, not so much drama that it’s actually stressful. If you have any other cute/nice/happy wedding books, please recommend them!

• Speaking of stressful, The Maidens was a GREAT anxious read. It is just straight-up murder and deceit and angst and depraved sexual rituals from front to back. It’s like The Secret History if The Secret History were narrated by a true outsider. Finished The Maidens last week and am definitely interested in Michaelides's other murder-flavored bestseller, The Silent Patient.

• For my New Yorkers, Cambridge Chemists on the Upper East Side ROCKS. Great selection of imported beauty and health products. They have some fun events coming up, too, and a knowledgeable, helpful, friendly staff. Go visit!

• Myles and I watched the pilot of Psych this week—Molly, isn’t this one of your all-time favorite shows?—and it was a very cute modern comedy-mystery for a couple of Columboheads like us.

• This doorbell malfunction IS hilarious:

WIDNBTW

Well, I won’t need to shop for any meat for a while, thanks to the tightly-packed barbecue pork, brisket and turkey in my freezer! Vegetables, however, are another story, because it is salad season and I invented a new monstrosity ft. thinly-shredded carrots and cucumbers with crispy chickpeas.

But that’s not important right now. Here’s what I did not buy this week.

• Technically, I did not buy a curling iron! Last week, I successfully placed an offer for $9 for a 3/4-inch curling iron on eBay. But the seller forgot she was traveling and wouldn’t be able to ship it after all. So, she cancelled it. I’m going to log back on to eBay tonight and see if I can’t find the same thing from a different seller. I looked at Ulta and brand-new curling irons are…$100? No thank you! Give me a rod of metal mass-produced by Conair in 1998! If it’s pre-seasoned with a thin coat of Aquanet, more power to me!

• These Poky Little Puppy party supplies are DARLING.

• These Bee Movie tablecloths are…less cute. But should we still buy them for our wedding anyway? Maybe! The eBay listing keeps their bee-ness somewhat obfuscated til the last photo, for some reason.

• A hamster named Milk Dud, who is available for adoption from a shelter 50 miles from me. SOMEDAY, Milk Dud. SOMEDAY.

• This is an extremely cute mini dress but I wish it came in brighter colors!

• Lolita clown dress from Egglien Creations. Here’s the thing: I would never, ever take this off.

• The chocolate chip Pochacco (POCHACCOLATE CHIP) plush from Build-a-Bear workshop. Is there also a cotton candy Cinnamoroll? Yes, but I want to BE a cotton candy Cinnamoroll. I want Pochaccolate Chip to come live with me.

And that is that! Happy weekend to all, and to all a good weekend, whether it’s a long weekend for you, or a short weekend, or a regular-length one, or not even a weekend at all. Have fun and be safe and eat hot dogs, or at least watch the Oscar Mayer Wienie 500 on repeat all weekend. Farewell!

1. I AM stinky but it’s not related :D

2. Instinctively typed “1,000 Worms of Summer” and, hey, Substackers, hear me out,