FEMA could just teleport us instead

🗳️ What I’m campaigning for: Webby awards

👀 What I’m watching: Company Retreat

🐰 What I’m hunting: Beer

🥐 What I’m eating: Blackhole Bakery

🧇 What I’m writing: Teleportation video

We’ve got a lot to unpack this holiday weekend (or the Monday after, for free subscribers). Top of mind for me is a top official of FEMA, who has now double-downed on claims that he once teleported to a Waffle House - as well as some other wild conspiracy theories.

But folks, even if the people in charge are lost in time and space, I’m here to help you navigate these various disasters - and point you to my favorite bakeries, traditions and TV shows, too! Whatever you do, do not order the T-bone steak at Waffle House.

I’m a very lucky guy. At The Washington Post, we won eight Webby awards for our work with the Washington Post Universe. And then, I was lucky enough to leave andsMicah and Lauren.

I’m pushing my luck again. I’d like to sweep our Webby categories and win FOUR. We were nominated in two categories:

For the mathematicians out there, or even the meme-maticians familiar with internet-speak, you might be thinking, “the math isn’t mathing.” That’s because you can win a standard Webby and a People’s Choice Webby for each category.

Right now, in the News & Politics category, we are neck-and-neck with Bryan Tyler Cohen in the People’s Choice voting. Our early head start has evaporated as his audience (which is about 10x bigger) has begun to descend upon the category.

Look, I am a competitive person. It’s what drives me to make five short videos every single week. The trophies are fun but this isn’t about that (though they are really cool and springy!). At the Post, these awards helped prove we were doing something important within a massive 148-year-old newspaper. It legitimized our work.

Now, at LNI, it helps to legitimize our brand new company as whole. Local News International doesn’t have the prestige or history behind it. With these Webby votes, you can help us plant our flag in the ground as a legitimate news source. These wins allow us to answer the question The New York Times asked back in July:

For the first time, in the other category, we’re up against the Jimmys of late night. As we prepare for our long-form YouTube series and work to prove that our online audience can eclipse that of traditional television, my hope is that a win here will solidify this moment.

So, please help out! Vote in both categories and PLEASE remember to verify your account via email after the fact. Even if you’ve voted in the Webby Awards before, it will still ask you to confirm your account. Here’s those links again, you know, just in case you missed them!

When Jury Duty came out a couple of years ago, it accomplished something especially rare in comedy: a new, completely original idea. What if The Truman Show existed, but it was a guy on jury duty? Everyone around him was an actor, including James Mardsen, who played a heightened, egotistical version of himself, also on jury duty. From two The Office writers, the show not only pulls of the stunt, it successfully made a hero out of its main character: Ronald Gladden.

For their follow-up season, they created an entirely new world and concept: a company retreat. The “hero” of this story is Anthony Norman. I’ve watched six of eight episodes so far (no spoilers, please!), and they seemed to pull of the impossible yet again. I’m not just talking about succeeding in tricking their hero, who believes he is working a temp job for a hot sauce company. I mean in casting one of the most likable people on the entire planet.

Anthony is perhaps even more charming than season one’s Ronald. Not only is unflinchingly kind to those around him, he’s essentially a wingman for this hot sauce company. His loyalty to the flawed but good people of the company is almost instantaneous. It’s sports team fandom toxicity. He just cares deeply about people, and clearly detests the outside forces that threaten them. I won’t spoil those outside forces, but let me just say those actors nail it too.

While it’s called a “prank show” my far more optimistic take is that this is a show about the good of humanity, in both the small and big moments. As much as I’m laughing while watching the show, I’m often saying out loud to my wife, “he is such good dude.” And that feels good to say!

Every Easter, the grandchildren flock to Grammy’s house to hunt for eggs in the front yard. Meanwhile, in the backyard, I go on a beer hunt with my brothers-in-law (brother-in-laws?). My dad, the ex-facto Easter Beer Bunny excuses himself shortly before the hunt to hide beer behind the house, as you do. And then we all run out with an empty six-pack holder, searching desperately for alcohol amongst the budding flowers.

I am not a good finder. If I were ever on Survivor, like Rizzo this week, I would have my own walking-past-the-hidden-idol moment. As a result, I usually end up with the worst beers. But you know what? That’s ok. Sometimes it’s the journey, not the overly hoppy IPA destination. And that’s what Easter is all about.

What are your Easter or Passover traditions? Lemme know at [email protected].

I grew up in Kansas City. But, like so many people, that means I grew up in the Kansas suburbs. After high school, I was never back for more than a week or so. Even in the summers, I took jobs elsewhere - not for lack of love for the city, just because I wanted to explore! And so, I really did not know much about downtown KC, Westport, or anywhere my school didn’t take us on a field trip. I never enjoyed the bars as an adult, and I was a very well-behaved teenager. So, when we moved back to the area a couple of years ago, I’ve basically been getting to know the city as an adult.

This means my wife, who is very much not from Kansas City, and I are constantly finding new treasures. Most recently, we stumbled across Blackhole Bakery, a bakery near Westport that opened in April 2020 and survived covid. The second you try any of their pastries, you instantly understand why. I’d recommend one thing, but the truth is that every single pastry we tried was outstanding. As far as I can tell, you cannot go wrong. Just start with one of their croissants and go from there.

“Teleporting is no fun,” FEMA official Gregg Phillips said on a conservative podcast, according to this write-up from The New York Times. And truthfully, based on all the science fiction I’ve read about transporting yourself from one place to another in the blip of a second, it does sound painful.

But we live in reality, you and I. A reality that is grappling with human-caused climate change and the increasingly worse weather disasters that come from it (just ask NASA!). In this reality, our preference is for a top FEMA official to not be a conspiracy theorist and election denier who spells his first name with three "G”s, but this is where we are (to be fair, “Gregg” as a first name is not actually bad, just a personal gripe).

In his telling, Gregg Phillips was heavily medicated for cancer treatment. Then God transported him to Waffle House. Now, to be fair, the first part of this makes total sense. I rarely arrive at a Waffle House in a normal frame of mind. To put it bluntly, I’m far more likely to show up at a Waffle House after an Easter beer hunt, than after drinking a cool glass of water.

Now, it would be amazing if, before a natural disaster, FEMA could simply teleport us to a Waffle House, or perhaps even a CBS-sponsored Applebee’s. But they cannot. We do not yet have the technology.

Anyway, of course this is the video I’m writing for Monday. I mentioned in our recent members-only quarterly town hall that any time you see a TikTok, Short or Reel in the room with the white desk and blue walls, that means I shot it late at night. I’ll be doing the same for this video, which I imagine will only add to the late-night bleary-eyed realism I’ll be attempting to recreate while telling this magical Waffle House tale.

This is a late night video because I’ll be at the University of Central Missouri Monday morning to speak with the students and faculty about journalism and storytelling. I haven’t been to UCM since my high school marching band went there for a marching band festival, so it will be a delightful reunion. Hopefully they do not ask me to play the entire 2007 Michael Jackson halftime show on my tenor drums, because I only remember the opening measures.

Here’s our Friday video on Oracle laying off as many as 30,000 people to double-down on AI, with a special guest surprise from former Attorney General Pam Bondi.