Famous people #73: Matt doesn't visit the Liberty Bell
Lizzie: Kaitlyn’s “in awe of the blessings of life on Earth,” and I never am, and that’s probably my problem. While Kaitlyn spent her July 4th indulging in the pleasures of Jello and family time, I spent most of it thinking, “What happened to CSS?”. You know, “Music is my beach house,” etc etc. Does anyone know? What happened to Ponytail? Or Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head? Are they working at Capital One now? For some reason Spotify only has their demos.
This came up because I was in charge of the music on the drive down to Philly Friday afternoon. Matt’s learning how to drive again after letting his license expire for something like 5 years. He’s doing great. He says in Texas you never have to parallel park, so he’s getting a lot of firsts in. Michele’s street in Philly is only 3 feet wide and a giant planter sticks out into the middle of it, so you have to avoid hitting it every time you park, and you have to park halfway up on the curb. Like tires go on the sidewalk. Vroom vroom. It feels wrong, even in a Fit.
We go to a place called Sardine Bar where I eat some grilled sardines and crunch through the bones. I don’t eat the head but I do feel shame. We get caught in a rainstorm and find shelter at “the oldest bar in America” that has transformed into “the loudest bar in America.” I’m always accidentally screaming, but even I wanted to cry trying to order a beer. We keep talking about what neighborhoods we could move to in Philly because our landlord is ghosting us. We watch a horror movie starring only Mark Duplass and some other man and the power goes out at the same time you can see the shadowy figure of Mark Duplass through the glass door of the other man’s house. Michele brings out the only battery-powered lights she has: a neon flamingo and some pineapple string lights. We play Uno and eat Starburst — my favorites are the orange, and no one else likes the orange.
The next day we play tennis before the rain comes again. Michele says Matt is good at “rich people sports” like tennis and golf, and it’s true that he’s better at tennis than the rest of us. Everyone is better than me. But to be fair to me I am wearing Vans and they’re giving me a blister on my lower ankle. How many shoes am I supposed to travel with? My duffel bag is inexplicably designed to be heavy even when it’s empty.
The main reason we’re down here is because Tara and Chaz planned a tubing trip. As someone who doesn’t frequently “tube,” I was unaware of how much preparation was involved. We had to show up at our meeting spot at 9am and make sandwiches and pack the cooler and drive to the river and blow up the tubes and put sunscreen on and get in the water and tie all the tubes together in a giant circle with the cooler in the middle and be on the lookout for branches that would hit us in the face. Also because rivers don’t normally go in a loop, there has to be one car at the starting point and one car at the ending point. The river was a little wacky, I guess from the rain. Michele and Teresa fell out of their tubes and Andrew thought he was going to drown trying to save them while the rest of us were oblivious to their chaos. Also “Nookie” was playing. The “Brandywine” river in Pennsylvania is not a beautiful place.
Back at Tara n Chaz’s we have a barbecue. The boys bring out all the yard games. Normally I do like Kubb except when I’m not winning. That’s how I feel about most games and I also do feel bad about that. The first time I played, I was really good, and it’s hard to go back when it could turn out you’re actually not that good. They play Kubb on Summer House, but that’s not why we got it.
We drive home and find parking, even though Michele is sure that we won’t. We ignore the fireworks. Our landlord sends us the lease. The blessings of life on Earth.