Dear Mack, Can Someone Cast Us as the Two Main Best Friend Characters in the Next Loser Teen Comedy Pretty Please?

Can someone cast us as the two main best friend characters in the next loser teen comedy film pretty please…

This past weekend, you came back home to visit the Bay Area after moving away two years ago (BOOOOO!!!!) and as corny as it might sound, there was never a dull moment. We are actually the funniest people on Earth I think. Every time we hang out, the shenanigans we get ourselves into are just so sitcom or movie coded. I’m convinced it’s the ENFP x ENTP best friend dynamic. Best combo ever. COME BACK NOW!!!!

Also I can’t believe sugar hangovers are a real thing. Our sugar intake over the past four days was absolutely insane. Especially the night we went to go see Anora in theaters last minute. We stocked up on way too many sweets at Walgreens beforehand. That movie was genuinely so compelling and interesting that it had me on the edge of my seat and munching on all the candy I had stuffed into my Baggu, which was a lot. Shoutout to Baggu, your crescent bags are awesome and oh so spacious it’s actually insane. I even was able to carry a huge bottle of Trader Joe’s berry lemonade in there. Anyway: Ani was such an icon, huge fan of her, and I love Igor. I don’t think his name is stupid!!! I think he’s honestly a sweetie pie!!!

I am currently writing this letter at my grandparents’ house while sipping a Diet Coke and my entire mom’s side is over to visit. I knew I was going to blank when I got back and sat down to write this, so I made a little list in my notes app the night before we both went home of some fun things this weekend that you were there for!!! Please keep in mind that I wrote this out at 2:00 A.M. #LOL.

It sucks so bad that we weren’t able to make it to the Dev Patel lookalike contest…I wish you had stayed one day extra so we could’ve gone together…the guy who won kinda looked like Dev combined with Adrien Brody which is so us coded.

Also, literally the day before our trip, I finished and turned in my comp exam essays for the master’s program. I am so incredibly nervous about the results, but I think I did pretty well. But I don’t wanna jinx anything so I don’t wanna say anything more about it!!! I am kinda nervous about graduation and everything because it makes the concept of reaching my goals all too real.

I was talking to a friend about this literally the other night—I am a pretty ambitious person with a lot of professional and creative goals, but actually reaching the point of completing those goals freaks me out because it’s like…okay so now what. Like it’s not as glamorous and as fulfilling as I thought it would be and the dream has been crushed in a way. I don’t know! It’s weird!! But here’s a little screenshot of what we had said about the topic the other night.

Sometimes I feel so old at 23 but at the same time it’s actually so young. I always think about that tweet that said 21 is the new 18 and 25 is the new 21. It made me feel kinda better about where I am in terms of my career, my creative goals, and maturity wise too. I do think there has been a huge generational shift when it comes to what’s normal to have done and achieved by the time you’re in your twenties, but I also find myself not being able to help but compare where I am now in my early twenties versus what my parents had done by the time they were my age. I think it’s normal to. But I have to actively remind myself that just because your path is different, doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

One thing that’s great about having the comp exam done and over with is that I have time to record music now, technically. As you know, I’ve been gradually working on putting together a project of sorts, so I guess it’ll be nice to have more time to work on that finally. It’s weird, though, because I have sort of a similar feeling when it comes to working on albums particularly—I’ve never recorded a Big Girl Album (my first album, Songs for the Moon, was made in high school with Garageband for iPhone and took very minimal effort to record) and part of me is afraid to actually work on it and finish it, because what if it’s not all it’s cracked up to be? I think that I just am generally pretty anxious, which comes as a surprise to no one.

In your last letter, you asked me if I would ever make a concept album, and what it would be about. It’s really timely that you ask this, because one of my comp exam essays was sort of about viewing Punisher by Phoebe Bridgers as a concept album despite it not explicitly being marketed as such. It’s clearly a very personal album filled with lore about her own life, but I do think she is playing a character in it simultaneously. I might share some of it on my Substack at some point, because it really is so interesting to me… but all this to say, if I were ever to make a concept album, I think I would try to do something similar. I’d want to find a way to work songs that are personal to me into a narrative that is somewhat fictional. But I also really love the idea of doing something like folklore by Taylor Swift, where she wrote songs from the perspective of three different people in a love triangle. I’m just now realizing that I haven’t listened to that album in a hot minute—I probably should come back to it because it is actually so good (despite me feeling weird about Taylor as a person as of late…lol). I think ideally, I’d like to write an album structured in a very The Last Five Years fashion—but not necessarily timeline wise, because I know that could be confusing upon first listen. Imagine an album where each song alternates between two perspectives of people involved in a falling out or breakup of sorts… or something… I don’t know. I just feel like that’d be kinda cool.

Circling back to the beginning of this letter and how I begged the universe to cast us as the two main best friends of a Superbad/Booksmart-esque movie…I challenge you to create a quick mockup of what our movie poster would look like—I know you could come up with something with all the photos we have together. Put those graphic design skills to use…I dare you… Also come up with a snappy title…it’s required…

Anyway! Miss you so much already it’s not even funny! Live ten minutes away from me again please!!!!

Over and out,