So, my best friend is famous, which you may be surprised to find I discovered only recently. This revelation is admittedly shocking and leads me to wonder if we ever really were friends to begin with.
I have a very boring job at a very boring desk in a very boring office in a very boring Chicago suburb. By the way, I love my job – in an insouciant sort of way. I mean, it’s cool. Actually, it’s pretty boring.
As an escape from so many mundane tasks, I enjoy calling my best friend, daily. During our discussions he regales me with stories of people he’s met and situations he’s encountered through decades of world traveling. I don’t respond. He talks for as long as I like.
We once spent an entire day sipping coffee at a diner and eavesdropping on other people’s conversations. He understands my ex-pat dreams of racial relief and plays up to my Italomania. He gets me; I get him. We get each other. That’s why we’re friends, best friends.
So imagine my surprise when I found a video of my best friend dancing (dancing? okay, we’ll say it was dancing) in no one other than Yoko Ono’s new music video. The Yoko Ono. I felt as if the hottest guy in my school secretly started dating my socially awkward best friend with whom I refuse to even eat lunch for fear I’ll lose my place in the social hierarchy. (By the way, Yoko Ono’s the guy in this scenario.) I mean, what could she possibly see in my friend? Does she call him? Have they been, like, hanging out without me and talking on the phone for hours about, I don’t know, Benghazi… or Beyoncé? Most importantly, the question I daren’t speak aloud, if my dork of a friend is cool enough for Yoko, does that mean I’m actually the social reject of our duo? Have our hours together merely been part of some twisted anthropological study he’s secretly conducting on the bottom feeders of American society. That totally sounds like something he would do, too. I don’t know what to believe anymore.
So, I wrote this letter to clear the air. Look, Ira, I don’t know who you think you are but never forget it was me who listened to your idealist rant on the plight of Chicago’s inner city schools – FOR TWO WEEKS! It was me who, knowing you were full of crap, still allowed you to insinuate that by wasting a full day at a diner, meddling in the lives of strangers, I was somehow reinforcing my cultural awareness. You said my plate of calamari was possibly made from pig butt – PIG BUTT! You’re so not cool, dude. Okay, I’m sorry. That was petty. I’m just hurt. I don’t know what’s up with you and Yoko but while enjoying your possibly fleeting moment of ascension to the top of pop culture’s mountain, don’t forget your buddy down here at the base…
I’ve gotta get back to work but I’ll end on this note: you’re a terrible dancer.
Ira Glass is the creator and host of This American Life, a weekly hour-long radio program produced by WBEX and distributed by Public Radio International. The show was recorded in Chicago, IL until 2007 and many of its programming is based on life in the city.
Ira and Kari have never met.
Opening image via Wall Street Journal, online. Original article and image of Ira Glass and Tavi Gevinson can be found HERE. Gif via Yoko Ono’s music video “Bad Dancer”. Full video HERE.