In this mail bag you’ll hear a letter to an artist, a postcard asking for important information, and some suggestions to fix a repeated This week we have a complimentary letter about a feature at a casino, a postcard to an old friend, and request to restore a proper name.
Letter Talk is a short (~10 minutes) comedy podcast where a I write letters to anyone about anything, and I’d be honored to write one to you.
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- Letter Talk is written and produced by me, and my sister Amy edits my writing. This episode features music from Kevin MacLeod.
Letters
Dear Nugget Casino Resort,
I wanted to say hello and offer you an anecdote in case you want to use it in any of your marketing. But before I get to that, I want to let you know that there are three questions that come up on one of your Google Pages, and they’re all unanswered by you.
Question one says, “How many rooms”. No question mark, so I assume it’s just like another phrase to teach elocution like, “how now brown cow.” The comment is unanswered.
Question two just says, “lost and found.” Also without a question mark so that person was either shouting out to your lost and found department, or they had some sort of self discovery so “lost and found” refers to their Eat. Pray. Love. type experience. This as has also gone unanswered, but I might send this person my congrats on their new revelation.
The third question I saw was probably the best. It said, “please let Bernie Sanders speak here a lot more.” One like. Then someone named Julian Kalama (shouts to Julian!) answered it with “Why.” One like. What I love about this is that the question is a statement and the answer is a question. It really turns the concept of questions and answers on its head! Very avant garde!
But I guess I should stop dicking around and tell you my anecdote. When I was in high school I had a crush on this guy from another school. I know that makes him sound fake, but he really did go to another school. I don’t want to name names, so let’s just call him Alf. Then, if you’re not entertained by this letter, you can just pretend I was hanging out with Alf. Also, I know that makes him sound even more fake, but I promise he exists!
I met him on MySpace because I thought he had a cool, artsy profile picture. I tried to ask him to prom in high school, too. Actually, I wouldn’t say I really did. I thought I did, but really I just concocted a ridiculous plan that only the most contrived of movie characters would have been able to understand. Alf asked to borrow a flash drive from me. I said sure, and before I gave it to him, I put on an mp3 of Hellogoodbye’s “Jesse Buy Nothing … Go to Prom Anyways,” expecting that he would listen to it, get what I meant, and emphatically say to me, “Yes, Alyssa, I will go to prom with you!” via text message of course. It was all a stretch and kids these days are much better at promposals. Honestly, one of the most important elements of a promposal is that the other person understands that you were asking them.
I asked him if he was finished with the flash drive, and if he saw any files I left on it. He said no, and that he lended it his ex-girlfriend. Side note: Alf was definitely still in love with her at the time.
Wow, what a fucking disaster that could have turned into if anybody picked up on the mp3 message I was trying to convey. If they did, Alf’s ex might have seen it as a promposal, said yes, and she’d go to prom with him, when I wanted him to go with me. Or worse, maybe he told her that it was my flash drive and I would have had to go to prom with Alf’s ex. Luckily, nobody knew what the hell was going on anyway.
Ok, how does my crush on Alf relate to the Nugget? Well, one day Alf and I were going to meet up to have dinner with my sister and her boyfriend. I picked up Alf but didn’t tell him where we were going to eat. I pulled my car into your fine establishment’s parking garage and Alf got visibly uncomfortable. As I drove in circles, climbing to higher and higher floors of the garage, Alf began to weep. I parked and asked what was wrong. He told me that this was the place where he found out his ex was cheating on him with his best friend. For a while during the drive, I thought he just really hated the parking garage, which wasn’t a deal breaker, but probably something that would warrant a conversation to explore those feelings.
I know this story sounds kind of weird and sad, but be complimented that people use your parking garage to have important conversations. I actually regret NOT using that parking garage for other promposals or serious conversations. It’s perfect if you think about it. It’s outdoor enough to be ok to barf if needed, but there’s shelter in case of rain or snow. Also, people can leave ASAP. I never understood why people would break up or have shitty confrontations over dinner. You basically get to say, “This isn’t working,” and then you have to sit there and eat spaghetti in silence for 45 minutes. Also, if you have these conversations in the parking garage, your car is nearby and you can easily escape. Honestly, if you’re breaking up with someone, escape is probably something that’s important to you.
Let me know if you want to use this anecdote in your marketing! I think it would be a great pull for locals. “The Nugget Parking Garage: A Great Place for Hard Conversations.” Keep up the great work.
Yours in nuggs,
Alyssa
I wanted to see how many carrots you can fit into your largest storage tuHi Tom! We were friends on MySpace, but I haven’t seen you for a while. Are we still cool? I just wanted to double check. Let me know if you want to talk about it. I like you way more than Zuckerberg.
Dear American Disc Jockey Association,
I’m writing to you about a disc jockey I know of, who I think might be involved with some misconduct regarding his name. I originally knew this DJ from when I had a part-time, unpaid internship playing World of Warcraft 20 hours a week. The DJ was a friend of friends and he’d sometimes hang out in our voice chat. His gamertag was Yukinose, which if you look at it spelled out it kind of reads like “Yucky Nose,” which sounds like a work appropriate insult. Anyway the DJ would log on and just do player versus player combat, and not any of the quests, dungeons or raids. He wanted to be ranked highest on the server. High Warlord. The top spot! He wanted to be the very best like many people ever were, on many different servers.
He ended up quitting his job at one point, because he promoted himself to a volunteer position playing World of Warcraft full time, so he could reach his goal of being High Warlord. And what do you know, it happened for him. It just goes to show you that if you put your mind to something, and quit your job, you can achieve your MMORPG dreams.
After he was crowned with his new title, he changed his name on our voice chat server. The program said your name out loud in a computer voice to announce your entrance like you were some kind of robot royalty coming in to address your citizens. “High Warlord Yukinose has entered the chat.” We all congratulated him on his achievement. I thought that was plenty. The name seemed like overkill to me, honestly. So being the troll that I am, I decided that I too would be a High Warlord in the chat. “High Warlord Tom from MySpace has entered the chat.” “High Warlord Tom from MySpace has exited the chat.” It’s totally cool that I picked that name, me and him are friends, so I think he’d be cool with it. I think it’s totally fair.
Now, this brings my complaint to you guys. When he became a DJ, he started going by a different name. I don’t know the DJ bylaws, but shouldn’t he have stayed “High Warlord Yukinose”? I’m sorry, “DJ High Warlord Yukinose.” Instead he changed his DJ name to something completely different. I tried to Google his current DJ name and I got results for an elementary school in Williamsburg, Virginia, and when I tried to browse for him further in the results and ended up instead finding the elementary school’s staging of Aristocats.
Let me tell you, I know the story of the Aristocats, but production was very hard for me to follow. They did condense it down to 40 minutes, but I’m starting to realize that the Aristocats needed all that time to do what it had to do. There was also a lot of wonderful footage of someone in the front row doing all the dances with the kids, and I’m wondering if she was just way too enthusiastic or if she was guiding the kids so they’d remember the moves. I’m not going to lie, it was a fairly entertaining thing to watch with a few beers on a Saturday night. The production values were almost “school play in a Wes Andersen film” caliber. My only regret is that they couldn’t redo that scene in Aristocats where the cats are playing a piano and singing as they fall through many, many floors of a poorly maintained building.
Anyway, I propose you reach out to him and have him restore his proper, God-given DJ name. I’m sure “DJ High Warlord Yukinose” is way better for search engine optimization, anyway. How many elementary schools are called “DJ High Warlord Yukinose Elementary”?
Thank you for your help in this matter.
Yours truly,
DJ High Warlord Tom from MySpace