The Most Important Facts Are Stored in the Hello Kitty "Friends-Only-File"

Jen Jackson keeps track of the answers to life's most important questions. Plus recs for Artsy, Juice Weasel, and Albanian bunkers.

A NOTE FROM CHRIS: I am currently out on parental leave. Each week, a new celebrity guest writer is taking over Bright Spots. This week’s newsletter is being written by Jen Jackson. Jen is a comedy writer who has worked on shows like Our Cartoon President on Showtime, Miracle Workers: Dark Ages on TBS, and Animal Control on FOX. I am sure she will work on shows that air on many other networks and channels in the future! She is hilarious and so smart and was formerly a staff writer and video director at The Onion. I strongly recommend checking out Jen’s professional website which also includes detailed information about the Looney Tunes character Taz and has one of the all time great URLs.

Without further ado, let’s hand things over to Jen...

JEN TAKES OVER BRIGHT SPOTS:

When I (Jen) was in 5th grade, I went to New York City with my mom and sister to visit my aunts in Queens. I don’t remember anything about the trip other than that I acquired a precious object, which is to say, a Hello Kitty “Friends-Only-File.” For those unfamiliar with a Hello Kitty “Friends-Only-File,” it is a book with a puffy red cover depicting the eponymous Kitty, and it is filled with blank pages. At the top of each blank page is a high-level prompt such as ‘FAVORITE BAND’ or ‘CUTEST.’

The thinking behind the HKFOF is that you pass it around to your friends so that they can answer the prompts and then you know all of their secrets like who they think has ‘BEST PERSONALITY.’ I have kept this book for the past 26 years because I love revisiting the personal preferences of me and my 5th grade friends. Beth T’s favorite food was grapes. We all loved Austin Powers. And my favorite actor was apparently Michael Richards. Presumably this was because Seinfeld ended in ’98?? I don’t know??? Maybe the most heartbreaking entry is that for the prompt ‘I LOVE…’ 10-year-old me wrote, “The way things are.” Sorry, sister.

I eventually stopped asking my friends to tell me their ‘FAVORITE SPORT’ and instead, started filling in my own answers semi-regularly from 5th grade to present day. Full disclosure, I’m not the most consistent with my HKFOF. There was a particularly long dry spell between 2012 and 2018, so I’ll never know who was ‘TEACHER’S PET’ during that time. But it’s fun to remember what I was into and often, who I was into. Using pseudonyms for the names of my crushes was a habit I carried well into my twenties. Sometimes my answers are in conversation with each other, and it’s like I’m talking to a bunch of different versions of myself, one of which lists her ‘FAVORITE HOBBY’ as ‘chatting on AOL’ and another who, years later, prefers ‘drinking and being a second semester senior.’ Crazy that our younger selves beget our older selves. But cool that we all love pizza and The Matrix.

Anyway, I hope to write sporadically in this silly little book until the day I die. In fact, I hope I use my last moments on earth to scrawl the name of my ‘FAVORITE HANGOUT,’ which will presumably be the room in the nursing home with the TV.

This week’s list (Jen’s Version)

GREAT:

I love looking at fine art for purchase on an app called Artsy. I don’t buy any of it (except for one print one time!!) but the best thing about the Artsy app is that I can “favorite” a painting by Picasso as if I’m going to buy it later. Give it a look, it’ll make you feel like an active participant in the fine art marketplace.

FUNNY:

This Jim Carrey sketch called “Juice Weasel” honestly isn’t that funny, but my friend Tim showed it to his girlfriend Meaghan, and Meaghan assumed it was a very famous sketch. So afterwards, she started dropping “Juice Weasel” in casual conversation with other people, only to find out that nobody had seen this sketch. To me, “Juice Weasel” is the perfect term to refer to a particular bit of knowledge that YOU think is universal, but which is actually not AT ALL.

INTERESTING:

During the Cold War, Albania underwent an extreme "bunkerization" project at the hands of its very paranoid leader. Here’s a pretty neat photo-spread of some of the 175,000 abandoned bunkers that are still spread across the country today.

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That's it for this week. Thanks for reading! Please share Bright Spots with anyone you think might enjoy it.

JUICE WEASEL,

Chris Duffy (but mostly Jen Jackson!)

This has been Bright Spots, a newsletter.

FOR MORE FROM JEN: Learn about Taz here. Check out Jen’s Onion headlines here. Watch her Onion videos here. And make sure to keep your eyes out for her work on your TV!

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…wait, who are you?

I'm Chris Duffy, a comedian, TV writer, podcast host, and both a former fifth grade teacher and a former fifth grade student. I’m currently writing a nonfiction book about humor for Doubleday.