Tomorrow we’re hosting an Ayurveda salt scrub workshop with Los Angeles poet, creative and holistic healer, Jen Dale (RSVP here). Just as lungs need to be empty in order to breathe, our minds crave space in order to be creative and inspired.
This workshop is designed to empower you to explore how to heal and understand your body, while incorporating self care and community. We all want to be seen and heard, and learning the tools to heal your own body so you can be fully present and show up authentically is such a gift.
Come learn more about the 5,000 year old ancient practice, create your own salt scrub scrubs based on your own unique dosha, and be apart of the healing conversation. There will be 11 different essential oils to choose from, three different carrier oils, all catered to your skin type, two different salts, wine, tea, snacks and supplies to make your own labels.
When: 7-9 (kicking off at 7:15)
Where: S 1st and Havenmeyer (Address released to RSVPers)
Who: Any and all are welcome! No expertise necessary :)
Ticket: $65 (to cover space and all the ingredients!) - rsvp here
Organizer: Rachel via A Third Place

Tomorrow we’re hosting an Ayurveda salt scrub workshop with Los Angeles poet, creative and holistic healer, Jen Dale (RSVP here). Just as lungs need to be empty in order to breathe, our minds crave space in order to be creative and inspired.
This workshop is designed to empower you to explore how to heal and understand your body, while incorporating self care and community. We all want to be seen and heard, and learning the tools to heal your own body so you can be fully present and show up authentically is such a gift.
Come learn more about the 5,000 year old ancient practice, create your own salt scrub scrubs based on your own unique dosha, and be apart of the healing conversation. There will be 11 different essential oils to choose from, three different carrier oils, all catered to your skin type, two different salts, wine, tea, snacks and supplies to make your own labels.
When: 7-9 (kicking off at 7:15)
Where: S 1st and Havenmeyer (Address released to RSVPers)
Who: Any and all are welcome! No expertise necessary :)
Ticket: $65 (to cover space and all the ingredients!) - rsvp here
Organizer: Rachel via A Third Place

Someone once described Chuck as one giant plot hole, and they had a point. There are lots of loose ends and inconsistencies that we’re all prepared to overlook because of the overall genuine pleasure of the show. This is Chuck, not Chernobyl. We don’t really care that no one ever gets stuck in traffic in Los Angeles, for example, or that flying to Moscow seems to take maybe half an hour.
But still, people make mistakes, and there often isn’t an accounting for those mistakes. We may not want realism, but we do expect some degree of consistency. Ellie blew it big time with her CIA misadventure, which inadvertently led to her Dad being killed. What on earth was she thinking? We’ll never know. The entire chronicle of Sarah and Chuck the first two and a half years or so is a chronicle of mistakes that they eventually do put behind them, but it’s pretty fraught journey—particularly Sarah’s terrible taste in men (Casey gets this immediately,) and her double standard about Chuck. Morgan’s entire life trajectory is one blunder after another—he’s lucky Chuck doesn’t whack him from time to time, since many come at Chuck’s expense. Whatever happened to the potential lawsuits from Lester and Jeff’s interviews for new female staff? Who knows? The only person who ever seems to pay for any mistake is Casey, who is dismissed by Beckman for serious, but understandable and forgivable, offenses.
Which brings us to Beckman. How on earth did this person get to be a general? Her tenure seems to be a litany of bad judgments and downright blunders, one error after another. Starting with the remarkable judgment (shared by Graham, but not, importantly, enthusiastically embraced by Casey) to have Chuck killed, although he has, as Casey noted, served his country well, and never asked for the intersect in the first place. (Notice they don’t tell Sarah.) This is a completely bonkers decision. The argument that you can’t have two intersects around is nonsense—you probably don’t want them in the same room, but still, that’s no reason to kill the guy. Casey tries to resist the order, but she shoots him down immediately—refuses to even listen. This person is a military leader?
But by far the worst blunder is her repeated and bewildering confidence in Shaw. Not listening to Chuck and Morgan explain about the fake fight is pretty inexcusable, and nearly gets Sarah killed. Moreover, Beckman seems perfectly ok with Sarah working with Shaw even after she learns the truth about the death of Shaw's wife herself. In what universe is this a sound judgment? Shaw makes lots of mistakes, actually, and pays for exactly none of them until the bridge encounter with Chuck. (Shaw was a really good tragic villain, but his spy credentials are never catalogued.) Either Beckman is oblivious, or she’s genuinely stupid. I don’t think you become a general by being stupid. Well, maybe you do. And Beckman seems miraculously unscathed career-wise from any of these (in some cases, potentially fatal) blunders. We never again hear about Shaw’s elevator fake fight, or, more generally, the reasons for Beckman’s blind faith in Shaw when all the evidence should be suggesting otherwise.
Shaw isn’t the only example of Beckman’s poor judgments about people. We can forgive her infatuation with Roan Montgomery because that’s what it obviously is—the two seem to have been a thing. But Montgomery is an old drunk at this point, and even he knows it. Then there’s her belief that the Turners walk on water or something. How oblivious can you get, really. And who can forget Beckman’s expecting Chuck and Sarah to be back in Burbank the next day, following an excruciatingly harrowing experience and Sarah nearly getting murdered by Beckman’s favorite spy. They should have gotten three months off and the opportunity to work for someone less pathological. Instead, we get Beckman prepared to send them off again the next day. Really, doesn’t Beckman actually report to anyone?
And Beckman’s treatment of Sarah is pretty awful too. She knows Sarah’s strengths, but then we also have the ridiculous 49B exercise, which seemed designed mainly to show another attractive woman in skimpy outfits. As a plot device, it barely worked, and still it seems a bit of an over-reaction. Far worse was he decision to send Sarah off on her own to take down the Volkov empire, with Mary. Somehow the two of them were going to do something miraculous or something—it’s never completely clear. Of course, why Sarah agreed with this bonkers plan made as much sense as continuing to hang around Shaw even after he discovered the truth about his wife’s death. But at this point we’re used to Sarah making boneheaded judgments, so we let these slide.
I love Chuck--it's one of my three or four favorite shows ever. But a little more accountability for sheer stupidity wouldn’t have hurt the show one bit.

Tomorrow we’re hosting an Ayurveda salt scrub workshop with Los Angeles poet, creative and holistic healer, Jen Dale (RSVP here). Just as lungs need to be empty in order to breathe, our minds crave space in order to be creative and inspired.
This workshop is designed to empower you to explore how to heal and understand your body, while incorporating self care and community. We all want to be seen and heard, and learning the tools to heal your own body so you can be fully present and show up authentically is such a gift.
Come learn more about the 5,000 year old ancient practice, create your own salt scrub scrubs based on your own unique dosha, and be apart of the healing conversation. There will be 11 different essential oils to choose from, three different carrier oils, all catered to your skin type, two different salts, wine, tea, snacks and supplies to make your own labels.
When: 7-9 (kicking off at 7:15)
Where: S 1st and Havenmeyer (Address released to RSVPers)
Who: Any and all are welcome! No expertise necessary :)
Ticket: $65 (to cover space and all the ingredients!) - rsvp here
Organizer: Rachel via A Third Place

Paramount: Deal Rumors Aside, What About The Operations? Can The Company Turn A Profit?
May 21, 2024 2:41 PM ET
Summary
Paramount Global remains my worst investment, but I still believe in its potential for success.
Paramount's "lack of scale" is not the reason for its underperformance as it spends about as much on content as industry leader Netflix.
Paramount's loss last year was largely the result of one-off writedowns, both domestically and internationally. These losses will not repeat going forward.
Paramount's streaming operation suffers not from lack of scale, but an abundance of overload waste, which may be alleviated under new management.
The sports slate remains best-in-class, and CBS is still the leader in broadcast scripted. CBS Television City in Los Angeles, Ca, USA. JHVEPhoto/iStock Editorial via Getty Images
Paramount Global (NASDAQ:PARA) (NASDAQ:PARAA) remains my worst investment. Let's just get that clear from the start. I said two years ago it was madness not to buy Paramount. That was wrong, wrong, wrong. The fact that I recommended against buying the new Warner Discovery at the same time, and heeding that warning saved a lot of money, makes me feel a little better, but not much.
And no, the fact that Warren Buffett made the exact same mistake as me doesn't help much, either. Mr. Buffett and I are about to part ways, anyway. He is now completely sold out of Paramount, while I am hanging in. Yes, I am still buying. Get all the ribbing out of your systems, and then read on.
Although a few rounds remain to be played in the game, it is no longer inconceivable that none of the various deal permutations that have been put forward for Paramount will pan out, and that it will continue as an independent company. Essentially, Redstone will block a deal with Apollo Global Management, Inc. (APO) and Sony Group Corporation (SONY) and the 'B' shareholders will litigate a Skydance deal to death.
Because so many Seeking Alpha articles are already offering a blow-by-blow analysis of the deal talks - and I absolutely encourage you to read them - I wanted to turn back for just a minute to a more in-depth look at Paramount's actual operations. If it stays independent, can it turn itself around?
Scale Is Not The Issue I'm angry. Usually, when an investment goes wrong, I can manage to be philosophical or even dispassionate about it. Risks of the trade, can't win 'em all, pick your maxim.
But this one is really getting to me. I'm sure part of that is simply the sheer amount of my portfolio that has suffered - I bet a lot more on Paramount than I did on my typical investment, so sure was I that it had the tools needed for success. Fortunately, some of my other media investments have worked out much, much better, or I'd really be hurting. In fact, my Netflix buy has repaired all the damage my Paramount buy has done.
Still, I'm unusually angry, partly because of the sheer amount lost. But it's also that I still don't believe there is anything wrong with Paramount, at its core. It has become quite commonplace to speak of Paramount's "lack of scale" as the reason for its apparent impending demise, or at least subsumption. But I would still argue that that isn't born out by the numbers. Paramount spent roughly $16 billion on content in 2023, the same total as 2022, when $4 billion of it was spent on streaming. That is only slightly less than Netflix, Inc. (NFLX) which leads the industry in market cap and performance, if not in spending. While the gap with other studio peers is larger, I'm not sure spending at Netflix levels equals a "lack of scale."
What's more, a lot of that extra spending by other traditional industry players like Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc. (WBD) and The Walt Disney Company (DIS) is not spending that investors should necessarily cheer. As I've explained before, Paramount's lower spending total is almost entirely accounted for by its far more profitable approach to sports rights; a lot of that extra spending that Disney and Warner are doing isn't particularly profitable or even sensible.
What then, does account for Paramount's underperformance?
Stock Performance That depends on which underperformance you're talking about. First, the stock price. Paramount cut its dividend in spring 2023. That announcement, with its Q1 earnings, was enough to cause half of the past-year decline in a single day. Paramount went from $21 to $16 with the dividend cut and was still at $16 as late as December.
Since then, the other half of the decline has reflected the increasing evidence that Paramount is more or less ready to throw in the towel, and intends to be a distressed seller to another studio or private equity firm soon. More specifically, it is actually Shari Redstone, who exercises control over Paramount through her 77.3% share of Paramount's Class A voting stock, who is ready to call it quits. The perception that she has no leverage and will be forced to accept a fire sale offer has driven the stock lower.
Operations All that, however, merely explains the stock market decline; what is the operational explanation for Paramount's troubles? The company reported a $600 million loss for full year 2023. How is it that one of the Big Five movie studios, with the most popular of the Big Four broadcast networks, the most popular show on cable (Yellowstone) and the only profitable sports slate in American television, can't make money?
Accounting Element First, we need to acknowledge that there are some accounting factors in that 2023 loss. Paramount took a "programming charge," i.e., a write-down of the value of programming assets, of roughly $2.4 billion in Q1 and Q2 last year. That is money that would ordinarily be amortized over a period of years - it's mostly streaming originals, which Paramount usually amortizes over a 4-year period - that instead saw its red ink taken all at once. Had it been amortized normally, Paramount would have reported an operating profit of roughly $1.2 billion, more or less identical to 2022, instead of reporting an operating loss of the same amount.
Still, that write-down reflects the fact that the content isn't performing well, so those losses were always going to happen, and they're quite real; the accounting change is simply a timing issue. So Paramount is operationally deficient, even if perhaps not quite as operationally deficient as this one-time write-down makes it look. We cannot dismiss Paramount's operational issues by putting them down to accounting distortions.
TV Scripted Content Difficulties Paramount did not break down the programming charge, but outside reports have about half of it owing to the integration of Showtime in Paramount+ as a single service. It's not entirely clear which side of the ledger those losses are coming from; one of the less understood things about merging services is that it potentially makes content on both sides less valuable as it is replaced by more popular content from the other side. Showtime's Q1 2023 viewership was very top-heavy, with just two shows, Yellowjackets and Your Honor constituting 30% of all viewership. Presumably, those two shows reduced the value of some Paramount+ existing content while the rest of Showtime's library may have suffered from competition with P+ content.
Regardless of the exact source, Paramount's content is not performing. That's a little surprising considering that, as I said, CBS content is actually quite popular on the linear side. In fact, in the earnings call following the annual report now-former CEO Bob Bakish reported that CBS had the top 16 scripted programs and 18 of the top 20 in the first week of post-strike broadcasts. Paramount has disclosed in the past that CBS content makes up roughly half of the viewership on Paramount+; and this is despite the fact that P+ isn't even the sole beneficiary of CBS content; roughly $600 million per quarter of Paramount's licensing revenue comes from CBS shows as well.
One possibility that I perhaps did not consider sufficiently was the chance that the unique characteristics of CBS would make it harder for that channel to transition to streaming than its other broadcast peers. CBS is the most popular of all broadcast networks, but that popularity owes disproportionately to more elderly viewers; in the demo, it is actually Comcast Corporation's (CMCSA) NBC which takes the top crown.
With elderly viewers both less appealing to advertisers and less likely to make the transition to streaming, it is perhaps not so surprising that CBS is continuing to perform well on linear but having trouble translating that to streaming.
International Shortfall The damage isn't through yet, either. Paramount disclosed that it took another $1.2 billion impairment charge on content in the first quarter. This one has to do with the international side; a few years ago Paramount commissioned 150 new, original international shows and movies to try to boost international growth. Now, Paramount reveals that even international consumers spend no less than 90% of their time streaming Hollywood content; the local originals aren't doing very much for growth or retention.
About the only good thing that can be said about this complete and utter debacle is that it is a one-off; unlike Paramount's US content spending, which is ongoing and therefore must be made more efficient if Paramount is to survive and thrive, Paramount is gradually exiting International production. In fact, to help cover the losses on its international originals it is selling its share in Viacom18, the network that formerly served as Paramount's onshore operation in India, to its partner Reliance for a little over $500 million.
Where Are The Children? Yet another factor is children's programming. While many have essentially written off Paramount's entire cable channel group, and I agree the prognosis for MTV and Comedy Central is rather grim, I have argued that Nickelodeon remains a real asset, as one of the top two children's channels in linear TV. I believed that would be a powerful subscriber acquisition tool, alongside sports, as the streaming transition continued.
It hasn't worked out. Surveys consistently show the Big 3 for parents with children are Netflix, Disney, and the third is Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) of all things. Neither Paramount+ nor Warner Discovery's Max make the cut, despite ownership of top children's linear platforms/libraries Nickelodeon and Looney Tunes, respectively.
The prognosis here isn't entirely grim. Paramount has reported that half of their streaming subscribers touch kids' content regularly, so clearly Nickelodeon does mean something to the subscribers. It's possible it helps with retention, even if it doesn't drive acquisition. Paramount owns the number one brand for pre-school kids, Paw Patrol.
Paramount has shut down the separate Noggin streaming service and will presumably be amplifying the kids content on P+ as a result, so perhaps this trend will yet turn around. With so many other things going wrong, though, the inability to make kids content more central to the strategy is a painful blow.
The Mismanagement Of Streaming I suspect, however, that Paramount's single biggest defect over the past few years has been the competency of its management. In a streaming world, success hinges overwhelmingly on the efficiency with which a content budget is deployed. That efficiency, in turn, requires avoiding the trap of "overload," something cable doesn't have to worry about but which can kill a streaming service.
What Is Overload? In brief, overload is when a streaming service spends money on content that appeals primarily to those subscribers who were already subscribed and intending to remain subscribed, even without that content. Because revenue does not increase with more viewership, such spending is essentially wasted money. I have been arguing for several years that some economic models of streaming profitability fail to take account of this significant element.
Paramount seems to have had a lot of overload in the last few years. Specifically, its single most broadly appealing piece of content is the NFL, which Paramount is an anchor broadcaster for. Because NFL fans are accustomed to spending upwards of $100 a month on cable just to watch the NFL - over 10% of cable subscribers say that the NFL is the only reason they're still subscribing - Paramount's $6-$12 a month fee for streaming really doesn't need anything more than NFL games to attract these 40-50 million fans.
The Earnings Jaw-Dropper And yet, it seems that's where a lot of the extra streaming money has been going. On the Q2 earnings call last year, CEO Bob Bakish, watching the stock price steadily decline, seemed to be eager to reassure he had a handle on the situation and began describing some of the changes he'd be making. It started out well enough, really; he told investors that NFL viewers churn drops dramatically if they also engage with entertainment titles, which is what you'd expect.
But then, he stunned me and I expect just about everyone listening when he said, "we probably need to do less for [the NFL viewer] in the fall, and more outside the fall because we can rely on the NFL." Compounding the almost Looking Glass-feeling, he then went on to reassure everyone he would be "fine-tuning" the content strategy to address that point in the years to come.
It was, frankly, stunning. Both me and I suspect just about every analyst who was modeling Paramount had just assumed it went without saying that of course, any entertainment content targeted at retaining NFL viewers should drop in the other half of the year when the NFL wasn't playing on TV. My own calculations of the profit margin on CBS's NFL deal had always incorporated that.
And while that was bad enough, it also raised the concern that a management team that didn't understand that going in might have put a lot of other overload in other categories as well. Suddenly, it wasn't so hard to see how the best-scripted shop with the most profitable sports contracts was having trouble making money. Double-loading for 50 million households would be a major drag on the financial performance for streaming.
Light At The End Of The Tunnel Despite all of this, I still think there are bright spots in the Paramount picture, even without a merger. Its operations, as well as its merger discussions, don't seem to lack potential.

1: My Usual Paramount Bull Argument: Sports Profits

One thing that continues to go right is sports content. A few years ago, I wrote that Paramount was a strong contender to become a sustainable streaming business because it had the only profitable sports slate in the business. The stock hasn't gone where I wanted it to go, but that is the one part of my thesis that has been definitively borne out. In fact, many now say that it is CBS's sports deals, at least as much as Paramount's film/TV studio, that the prospective buyers of Paramount are after.
I've covered these in other articles already. The March Madness deal runs until 2032 and the NFL deal runs until 2033, although the NFL has an opt out after 2029 that it will probably exercise given the utterly ludicrous bids the NBA is receiving, so the last four years of that deal might have to be chopped off the profit projections. Even so, Paramount can probably generate $1.25 billion a year in profit just off of those two deals for the next six years.
Those are probably the biggest, but it doesn't stop there. Almost every sports deal Paramount has is profitable. For all the flak management has deservedly taken, Paramount continues to show discipline and focus on sports. You won't find Paramount throwing $2.5 billion a year at the NBA's 'B' package, which is more money than the NFL gets for its 'B' package despite having 10x the viewership.
For all its many, many missteps, a Paramount that can just manage to stay afloat long enough for some of these ludicrous sports bets at other companies to blow up may yet find itself with cards to play later in the decade.

2: Recouping Write-downs Via Preferred Conversion

Another small boon has been the official conversion of the preferred shares. The Paramount mandatory convertible formerly trading under the PARAP ticker was capped at 0.85 shares per common share. Given the initial price of the convertible at $100 per share, that effectively means that a preferred share that was carrying a $100 liquidation value has just been converted into 1.1765 shares of a common stock currently trading around $12. A total value per preferred share of around $14.
And they sold for $1 billion, so that's basically $860 million back into the common equity that management was able to get at the peak of the boom. That actually repairs almost all of the red ink from Paramount's doomed international originals push on its own.

3: An End To Streaming Waste

Finally, a lot of the waste in streaming may soon be ending. Bob Bakish was finally fired a few weeks ago, and while I never want someone to lose their job, he frankly had looked overmatched for a while. Bakish was a lifetime cable executive who seemed to be having trouble making the transition to a streaming-world mindset. Frankly, if I knew about it in 2021, the CEO has no business fine-tuning it into the strategy in 2023.
With international originals no longer draining the coffers and overloaded entertainment programming shifted to months of the calendar where it can be more productive, streaming may yet turn the corner.
Investment Summary I recognize fully that each fall in Paramount stock makes my bullish optimism seem ever more out of step. I do believe, however, that Paramount's failures are more failures of execution than lack of scale or structural disadvantage. Paramount CEO Bob Bakish simply wasn't up to the job. Ironically that wasn't what got him fired; Bakish was almost certainly fired for opposing Redstone's plan to enrich herself at the expense of other shareholders, probably the most competent thing he did in the last few years of his whole tenure.
Paramount has everything it needs to be successful; profitable sports contracts, which is just unbelievable in this day and age, a thriving scripted TV operation, and a viable, if recently somewhat mismanaged, streaming service. An end to overload waste, the continued exploitation of its favorable sports slate, throttling back unhelpful international originals and boosting kids content engagement may yet produce a different streaming picture going forward. Should older viewers start to get more comfortable with streaming going forward and following their favorite programs to Paramount+, that would just be icing on the cake.
It's been a depressing ride the last few years, but I'm sticking with Paramount.

Hi There,
I don’t know about you, but dating is HARD. Especially when you’re over thirty. That being said, dating apps are the worst. So I thought I’d try my hand here as I see a lot of awesome comments from fellow Redditors.
About me, I work a lot, have a graduate degree, no kids (don’t want), never tied the knot. I tend to be more on the bookish side with a desire to get super fit. I’d love to meet a nice guy with a similar lifestyle in the Central Valley or Los Angeles area (sorry, no out of state or Bay Area). If that sounds like you, let’s chat!

Where have you gone? Where do you like to go? Looking for some fun in Los Angeles - coming back for a visit and staying by dodger stadium.

A very attractive older couple (60yo+) reached out to me and we've corresponded for about a month. They're retired and have an RV they drive around the states. I (35yo) am currently living in Los Angeles, and their last trip is to an RV park near Yuma, AZ (which is about a 4-5 hr drive or $200 air ticket) before heading back home east. They seem like an amazing couple and the things they want to do with me sexually would be a dream come true and really high up on my bucket list. However, I feel uneasy about going to the middle of nowhere (especially a place I'm unfamiliar with) and being so vulnerable with a couple of strangers. I have autism and a part of me hates that I'm not adventurous enough, but I just am so paranoid of anything that could go wrong. As I'm growing older, I feel like I have less and less opportunities to do these things and I should go for it. It will still be a couple months until they reach their destination, so there's still time to decide I guess.

Do you want to audition for TÂUREANBULL ENTERTAINMENT to be in a Kpop, Tpop, Jpop, ETC… boy group?
Yes No
Thank you for your time to vote. This will help a lot.

Over the past year or so I've been keeping a keen eye out for any appearance of a bike in a movie. This all started while watching a movie titled Living on Tokyo Time which prominently features a character riding a bike. This list turned into the idea of Bike-in-Movies, a sort of double meaning where I share just the bits of movies where bikes appear but also a monthly event (in the Los Angeles area) where a movie is shown at a location everyone can bike to. Check out the list below and drop a comment of any movie you think belongs on this list! I look forward to organizing the first showing! See you all soon! follow here: https://www.instagram.com/bikeinmovies/
ET PeeWee's Big Adventure The Goonies Living on Tokyo Time Deep End Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid Maximum Overdrive Monster Trucks First Reformed Hereditary Juno Donnie Darko Night of the Comet Bicycle Thieves Shaun of the Dead Hot Fuzz Breaking Waves Little Odessa Cruising Checking Out Memories of Murder A Matter of Life and Death Def by Temptation Ghostbusters Afterlife Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles The Shining Kiki's Delivery Service IT Quadrophenia Code 46 The Hit Born in Flames The Shout Bringing Out the Dead Rad The Wizard of Oz Turbo Kid A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night 40 Year Old Virgin Island Etude The Comedy Your Name Karate Kid 2 The House of Tomorrow Vanilla Sky

Over the past year or so I've been keeping a keen eye out for any appearance of a bike in a movie. This all started while watching a movie titled Living on Tokyo Time which prominently features a character riding a bike. This list turned into the idea of Bike-in-Movies, a sort of double meaning where I share just the bits of movies where bikes appear but also a monthly event (in the Los Angeles area) where a movie is shown at a location everyone can bike to. Check out the list below and drop a comment of any movie you think belongs on this list! I look forward to organizing the first showing! follow here: https://www.instagram.com/bikeinmovies/
ET PeeWee's Big Adventure The Goonies Living on Tokyo Time Deep End Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid Maximum overdrive Monster trucks First Reformed Hereditary Juno Donnie Darko Night of the Comet Bicycle Thieves Shaun of the Dead Hot Fuzz Breaking Waves Little Odessa Cruising Checking Out Memories of Murder A Matter of Life and Death Def by Temptation Ghostbusters Afterlife Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles The Shining Kiki's Delivery Service IT Quadrophenia Code 46 The Hit Born in Flames The Shout Bringing Out the Dead Rad The Wizard of Oz Turbo Kid A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night 40 Year Old Virgin Island Etude The Comedy Your Name Karate Kid 2 The House of Tomorrow Vanilla Sky

So, I want to preface this by saying I write solely in third person, and write a minimum of two paragraphs per response. I recently turned 18, and I’d prefer whoever I write with to be between the ages of 16 and 22. This story won’t include anything sexual, but there will be a lot of romantic tension and ideally some emotionally heavy moments! Bonus points if you have an original character in mind for this, and want to build a friendship outside of just being writing partners! There’s two chapters to this story, we can obviously write both but I’m more than okay with skipping over to the second chapter.
Our characters have been best friends since kindergarten. I’ve been to every one of your birthday parties, we’ve walked home together ever since we were in the second grade, we’ve even invited each other to family vacations, etc. We’ve always been close, in spite of how different we are. You were always more of an introvert, but I couldn’t be any more different. My outgoingness even landed me a small acting gig in a local commercial, which ended up snowballing into something bigger.
The first chapter of this story opens with what your character thinks is just another sleepover. My little brother keeps pestering us, all while you’re in awe of him and cheering him on. You’ve always thought of him as your own brother, and he even has a mild crush on you. Slowly, over the course of the night, our characters start to uncover some romantic feelings for each other. It’s always been looming over us, especially when other people pointed it out, but we’ve never paid much attention to it. After all, why can’t a boy and a girl just be friends. Later on, things come to a boiling point, only for my character to tell you that he’s moving to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career. You’re understandably heartbroken. The morning after is awkward and uncomfortable for more reasons than one.
The second chapter of this story opens three years later. Once I left town, we didn’t stay in touch. That wasn’t really your call. Every time you tried reaching out, you would never get the responses that you expected. You suspect it’s because I were too busy to keep up with you. To fill up the empty space, you started getting into songwriting and playing the piano because you needed some way to put into words just how angry you are at me. Instead of letting it eat you up inside, you wanted to channel it into something creative. You put some of your songs up on social media and gained a small following. You started getting messages from people in the industry who wanted to sign you to a record deal and eventually, you decided to bite. While in the midst of sending out college applications, you signed with a record label.
You got an apartment in Santa Monica and started going to recording studios to work on new music. You put out your first song, that one song you’d written years ago that kept resonating with you. Obviously it was about me. All of our old friends could tell it was about me. Suddenly, you’re everywhere. Your face is on billboards, your name is in tabloids, it was... terrifying. You get an invite to an industry event, from some CEO. You figure it’s a good way to make connections. After all, you’re the new girl in town. Everybody wants to talk to you... except me.
From the minute we spotted each other across the crowded room, I never once looked your way again. It made your blood boil. You want to scream at me, make a scene, and let everyone know what an asshole I am... but you couldn’t. Instead, I’d beaten you to the punch. I gracefully made my way to you and pulled me aside.

Hi all, longtime listener, first-time caller. Please see my query and first 300 below.
My biggest question is this: 95% of the story takes place in 2014, but the book opens in 2020 when my main character receives a letter from the California Dept of Fair Housing & Employment informing her of an investigation into behavior at Chatpic. Receiving the letter spurs her to tell the story of what happened back then. The book checks back into 2020 in the middle as my MC tries to get more information about the investigation, and then it ends back in 2020 again when she decides what she wants to do about the letter.
The reason the story takes place in 2014 is because the time period--pre #MeToo/Donald Trump/the workplace reckoning of 2020--informs the decisions the MC makes back then, and she's looking back at it from a wiser perspective. If you've read The Rachel Incident, Caroline O'Donoghue does a similar thing as she retells a 2008 abortion story from the perspective of present day.
In the end, the investigation is not a driving force of the plot--so my question is how important is it that it's mentioned in the query? I ask because I've found that trying to add that piece to what I've already written starts to get convoluted, though obviously I can work at it. I think it's very clear once you read the first 300, but for agents who don't want a sample, is it clear in the blurb that this story is looking back to a time gone by?
Mostly looking for insight on this question specifically, but if you have further feedback about the letter for first 300, open to that as well. Thanks!
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Dear [Agent],
Thank you for the opportunity to submit my query for TERMS OF SERVICE, a true-ish fictional story about a young woman in a nearly impossible workplace a la UNCANNY VALLEY meets THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA (with shades of 9 TO 5). TERMS OF SERVICE is complete at 95,000 words.
It’s 2014 and down-and-out celebrity blogger Maggie Clarke is desperate for a fresh start. Not only is she broke in New York City, but at 31, she thought she’d be writing something a little less embarrassing than Justin Bieber listicles by now. When her longtime internet friend Aron York–recently named the world’s youngest billionaire–offers her a lucrative position at his massively popular social media app Chatpic that puts her at the center of his inner circle in Los Angeles, it’s exactly the step-up she’s been waiting for. As Maggie learns to manage the always-on hours, the slew of acronyms, and the unlimited access to free cold brew, she encounters another more complicated problem–the boys’ club. Except this isn’t the typical ham-fisted sexism she’s used to–this is the tech bro variety: insidious, inexorable, and infuriating. When she meets an ambitious young reporter who encourages her to speak out, Maggie has a shot at revenge. But in a world before mansplaining and microaggressions, is blowing the whistle worth the risk? And is anyone ready to hear it?
Like Maggie, I was also plucked from internet obscurity by the world’s (then) youngest billionaire, [redacted], to come work at his massively popular social media app, [redacted company]. I was a founding member of the company’s content team, and all I have to show for it is six footnotes in the [redacted company] biography [redacted title] and the brutal feminist awakening that inspired me to write this manuscript. Before that, I was a full-time writer in New York whose work has appeared on MTV, Rolling Stone and Elle. Currently I’m a content and editorial consultant in Chicago, and I’m also on TikTok where 21,000 people watch me rant about work and office culture. (It’s also where 2M people enjoyed my show-and-tell video about the “sentimental” stock certificates [redacted company previously mentioned] gave a few early employees–that were worth exactly $0.00.)
As the agent who represents [Author 1] and [Author 2], you have a strong list when it comes to complex female characters embroiled in complicated social dynamics. TERMS OF SERVICE would be a great addition to this track because, while similar themes of class and workplace are explored, my flavor of levity and sarcasm makes my work distinct from [Author 1] and [Author 2], bringing a new facet to your program.
If you are interested in reading TERMS OF SERVICE, I would be happy to forward a sample of any length you suggest. Thank you for your consideration!
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First 300:
Chapter 1
2020
A lot of people might revel in the idea of receiving a letter announcing an investigation into their ex-employer.
One might, for example, envision draping themselves in a mink stole, lighting the cigarette at the end of their old-timey cigarette holder, and dialing the investigator’s number from a rotary phone atop a solid wood desk under shadowy, film noir lights. One might then imagine whispering I knew this day would come into the receiver between bursts of psychotic, hysterical laughter as they rejoiced in the long overdue arrival of the long arm of the law.
But me, I wasn’t so sure. Maybe because I didn’t have a mink stole.
No, I was crouched on the ground of my parents’ musky basement in Des Plaines, Illinois, knee-deep in piles of old diaries and CDs when I received notice of one such letter. It was month four of COVID, and Dad and I were only halfway through his cleaning list. He was already a germaphobe so a global pandemic was all he needed to justify a top-to-bottom disinfection of the entire house. And since my routine trip home in the middle of March turned into a hapless extended stay when the world shut down, it was the perfect excuse to put me to work. Just like the good old days.
We wiped down every square inch of the place. We soaked the faucet heads in lemon juice, we scrubbed the coffee mugs with baking soda. We vacuumed the damn fridge.
Reorganizing the basement shelves was a beast. Every box was like a Russian nesting doll of useless crap: old TV Guides, corroded double-A batteries, dried-out cans of paint primer, an unsettling number of hand saws. I made decent headway through the “tools” and “electronics,” but I lost all steam when I got to my high school stuff—faded Polaroids and folded-up notes stopped me in my tracks.

Hello all, about a few years ago I was able to purchase these delicious, healthy patties 🤤... But now I can't find it anymore!
Just recently I learned that Costco still sells these, but only in certain warehouses. Does anyone know if I can be so lucky to purchase these again near my city? I would legit drive 1 hour if needed. Pasadena, Glendale, Burbank, Atwater, Commerce, etc.
Thank you
Tl;Dr Looking for these Grass-fed wagyu patties from Costco near Los Angeles, CA. If you know which warehouse sells it, within an hour drive, please let me know.

I saw Sergio at a grocery store in Los Angeles yesterday. I told him how cool it was to meet him in person, but I didn’t want to be a douche and bother him and ask him for photos or anything. He said, “Oh, like you’re doing now?” I was taken aback, and all I could say was “Huh?” but he kept cutting me off and going “huh? huh? huh?” and closing his hand shut in front of my face. I walked away and continued with my shopping, and I heard him chuckle as I walked off. When I came to pay for my stuff up front I saw him trying to walk out the doors with like fifteen Milky Ways in his hands without paying.
The girl at the counter was very nice about it and professional, and was like “Sir, you need to pay for those first.” At first, he kept pretending to be tired and not hear her, but eventually turned back around and brought them to the counter.
When she took one of the bars and started scanning it multiple times, he stopped her and told her to scan them each individually “to prevent any electrical interference,” and then turned around and winked at me. I don’t even think that’s a word. After she scanned each bar and put them in a bag and started to say the price, he kept interrupting her by yawning really loudly.