There is an illustration that does the rounds on Twitter from time to time which tickles me in a profound sort of way. It’s from Arthur Lobel’s Frog and Toad series, the children’s books, and shows the pyjamaed Toad sitting up in bed frowning over the day’s to-do list. The caption reads: “‘I have done that,’ said Toad, and he crossed out: Wake Up.”
If you get it, you get it. Life needs divvying up sometimes, and top of my 2023 to-do list — after waking-up — will be to keep up with what’s going on a little bit better, because this year seems to have become the one I finally lost touch with reality. Proceedings for my divorce from real life began a year or so ago after I had lunch with Sir Richard Branson on Necker Island and someone giggled knowingly about something called White Lotus. It went forgotten until this Tuesday, when WhatsApp began sinking under a flood of Jennifer Coolidge memes. Oh, I thought, everyone else is in on this. I still don’t understand.
Other things have whistled over my head in the past 12 months. Wordle? Whatever, nerds. Don’t Worry, Darling? I didn’t, thanks. I’d need an assistant to keep track of Pete Davidson’s dating life (conversely and I think unfairly, Adam Levine’s cack-handed sexts did cut through). My mum messaged me this morning about LadBaby and I tried to work out the typo. Even Spotify Wrapped — which I could have sworn was actually called Spotify Unwrapped — offered another afternoon of embarrassment. I used to make a concerted effort to listen to each week’s trending hits; this year my top artist was Mahler. Yes, that one, the one who died in 1911.
Such insulation has its benefits: until yesterday I’d never heard of the deplorable Stephen Bear, the reality TV gobs***e this week found guilty of sharing private sexual pictures and videos with intent to cause distress. Why do these sorts get celebrated? His top Google result is him in an Asda-price pink suit stepping out of a white Rolls Royce which, apropos of nothing, did at least remind me that I still need to watch the trailer for Cocaine Bear. Another moment missed.
Soul-searching isn’t my thing; I’m more into scotch-and-repression. But I have been wondering what’s caused my interest in the outside world to wane so completely and utterly. Perhaps it’s the never-ending roll of dread that comes with turning the telly on: it’s the war, the cost -of-living crisis, the recession. It’s knowing that many people fell for crypto. It’s also the conflation of celebrity and callousness, and the attention it’s paid. It’s the big and little things. I don’t need to hear another round of Ye’s witless antisemitism (big), or know James Corden is rude to waiters (little). In switching off from the bad, I’ve shut out all the good and I’m missing the party. I’m missing the viral shows, the best albums, the Oscar-winning films.
Top of my new to-do list? Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Musk’s crown is slipping
It’s common knowledge that Twitter is a cesspit, which makes it all the more baffling that last week everyone on it was bemoaning the fact that soon it may collapse. Still, broken clocks and all that, and the site has at least done one amusing thing this week, insofar as it has allegedly distracted owner Elon Musk, left, so much he’s taken his foot off the electric at Tesla.
Accordingly, shares have dropped and Forbes’ real-time billionaire list presently has Musk not as the world’s richest person, but number two behind LVMH top dog Bernard Arnault. Anything taking Musk down a peg is alright in my book: the man pretends to be a protector of truth, but he picks and chooses his targets strangely (why, for instance, so silent on China? Why so childish about pronouns?). Lots of money is many things, but it’s no reason to agree with someone.
