This Play-Doh Applicator Needs More Flair

Play-Doh is deleting comments from their Facebook page after parents expressed outrage over a new penis-shaped toy.

-Buzzfeed

11/20/14

Dear Bob,

Saw your sketch for the applicator tube the other day. Looks stark...needs more flair. Don't think kids will be able to hold it well, either. Can you make a ridge that circles up the tube for easy grippin'?

Thx!

Sam

11/20/14

Hey Sam,

It does look a bit plain, huh? I'll make that ridge for ya!

Best,

Bob


11/22/14

Bobby-boy,

We just got a memo from R+D re: beads which kids looooove these days. Can you make a ridge of beads that circles the tip of the applicator? Thanks bud.

Best,

s


11/22/14

Hi Sam,

I appreciate all the research you're putting into this and I'd love to design that ring of beads for you. This dough applicator is going to look really artful and interesting!

I'm just a teensy bit worried that, with the beads and the ridge, this applicator pen might start to look like an adult-oriented pleasure object? Just my POV, could be totally off. Don't mean to imply that's what you're goin' for. But...do you know what I mean?

Best,

Bob

11/25/14

Nope, can't say I do, Bob!

11/25/13

Okee-dokie, just my imagination then. Get your brain out of the gutter, Bob! Hahaha.

I'll get right on those beads.

11/26/14

Hi Bob,

I totally forgot about it, but we need finger holders at the base of the tube. Alright?

11/27/14

Ha, you must mean the base of the shaft? 'Cause this is what it looks like now:

11/27/14

Sorry, that joke was in poor taste. Sometimes I joke when I'm uncomfortable. It's a compulsion, really. My wife always complained about it (things were really bad when her Mother died).

Obviously, we are all just trying to create an object that allows children to use their imagination  + satiate their hunger with a little non-toxic dough now and then.

I didn't mean to imply whatever you think I meant to imply.

All the best,

Bob

11/28/13

YOU'RE FIRED BOB.

Just kidding: we love the new design! It looks like Rapunzel wrapped her hair around a beautiful tower.

Thx so much,

Sam

12/05/13

Sam,

I've been having dreams where plastic penises (penii?) fly towards me. Today one pierced my heart and I died on a trash can. When I woke up, my mouth tasted salty, like Play Doh, and I felt like vomiting.

12/28/14

WTF, SAM? I'm being crucified by management! You told them I wanted to put the beads on the fucking penis? You're the pedo creep who wanted to make a fucking sex toy for toddlers! I will fucking recruit Fucking Kim Jong Un to hack this mainframe and find the emails. YOU WILL WAKE UP IN A PENIS-SHAPED CASKET, MOTHERFUCKER.

Surviving Winter in Los Angeles

You're sitting on a repurposed car seat, typing on an IKEA desk. The bed next to you has legs that sit in circular plastic plates to keep out the bed bugs. Your legs are twitching. Earlier today, in a state of manic depression, you pretended you were giving a tour of your apartment on MTV Cribs. "Here's the couch we got," you say to an invisible audience of millions. "We found it on the street."

Sometimes, you compare your living situation to a prison because it makes you feel better. "At least we have a fridge," you think to yourself. You spritz some cologne in the stale air around your sad desk, just to try to remember what it was like being an upper-middle-class kid in the 90's. Then you sneeze because you're allergic.

A cold draft slips in through the windows -- that is the only punishment winter knows how to inflict on Los Angeles. It's more annoying than anything else, like a bee that wants to pollinate with your ear.  

Your partner is in the other room, immersed in a goddamn script. The sight of him so focused and full of passion enrages you. How is he able to write when all you want to do is reorganize the bookcase again, buy a wicker basket to hide the computer cables, paint the bedroom burgundy, then burn the whole place down and move to Venice? 

You take the pool float that's been taunting you from the corner of the room and stick it in the shower.   

You close your Netflix window, bidding adieu to the fantasy lives that provide momentary pleasure. You close your Twitter account, furious at the New York literati that never pay any attention to your quips. You close Facebook because you're neither pregnant nor outraged about something. You throw the New Yorker across the room because it's just too fucking good.

You sit at the computer and think, there's got to be something you can do with all of this.  You're not going to become a YouTube troll. You're going to use all this alienation and loneliness. You're going to be a Jenny Lewis song and rise up with fists. You're going to be a better listener, a better partner and you're going to treat the cashier at the supermarket with the kind of patience Sarah Koenig treats the investigation of a botched murder trial.     

You're going to survive winter in Los Angeles. 

Annie is DONE with L.A.

At the Target store, Annie had made sweeping declarations, dismissing entire departments of the store for selling stuff that was “depressing and cheap.” She didn’t want to buy a microwave or a TV at Best Buy and was adamantly opposed to any IKEA furniture. The light fixtures at Lamps Plus were “too ornamental,” and the waste baskets at Bed Bath & Beyond were “too corporate hotel lobby.” She didn’t want to buy a case for her new iPhone because scratches were just a part of life. “Do you want me to get Botox for my face too?” she’d asked Mark. “Can you not handle the aging process?”

Mark was quiet when he was overwhelmed, which was how he often felt around Annie. Her judgmental attitude towards Los Angeles, which she’d not-hilariously termed “Los Blandulous,” had made him a bit testy, to say the least. She seemed to want the relationship to implode but couldn’t wire the explosives correctly, so it would only cave in, and then he’d repair the missing pieces in time for her to flip the switch again.

Mark had wanted a juicer but Annie was convinced that juices spike blood sugar levels. “They go right through the roof,” she’d told Mark. So they settled on a blender because the pulp in a smoothie was fibrous enough to not cause artery problems. “Annie, you’re 27 and you don’t have diabetes” Mark had explained. “You’re not going to end up at the hospital from a smoothie.”

“Well, you’re trying to be healthy so I just thought I’d share that little tidbit with you,” Annie had said.

“Unwarranted,” Mark had replied.

It had been only their second full shopping day. They’d had great luck at Jewish funded thrift stores, especially Jewish women funded thrift stores, but today all they’d done were the big box retailers, which Annie had decried just as soon as she’d suggested them. On the 405, stuck bumper-to-bumper with a Grilled Cheese food truck, Annie had finally broken down.

“I can’t do this anymore!” she’d wailed. “I just can’t be around you any longer!”

“Annie, this is a stressful time for both of us,” he’d said. “I promise things will settle down soon enough.”

“No they won’t! This is our life now, scuttling from Target to WalMart, arguing about worker’s rights, breathing in pollution. I can’t have it! I won’t have it anymore!”

And then she’d opened the door of the car and stepped out, grapevined between the idling cars before running towards a thin strip of greenery on the freeway’s edge. She’d flicked Mark off before disappearing behind the foliage, never to be seen again.

5 Thoughts on Moving to LA

1
People in LA communicate more through windshields than they do in person. This is terrifying. My own relationship to driving has evolved considerably since arriving but IS THAT REALLY A GOOD THING?

2.

Yesterday, I came across a social media job application that asked, "Are you a huge fan of Lloyd Alquists's Epic Rap Battles of History?" and "Do you listen to PewDiePie on your way to work?" In fact, knowledge of Youtube subculture seems to be a prerequisite for many LA-based writing jobs. Can we just have a group crying sesh about this right now? I just really need to cry or barf or something and let it gooooo.

3.

When it's sunny and I'm sad, I can convince myself it's because River Phoenix died less than a mile from my apartment and not because I lack health insurance and oh my god I think I need a meningitis vaccination. 

4.

All of my Instagrams have the tinge of tropical vacation and thus seem rude. Really the smog (sorry, "marine layer") and strip malls would intrude a lot more if Instagram wasn't made of squares. This should not surprise anyone.  

5.

Mostly, though, I like it here, and I feel relaxed and pretty happy a good enough amount of the time to want to stick around a while. My anxiety is in check, I'm eating better than I have in forever, and I feel like there are tons of opportunities to get better at writing and even make a buck or two. I'm comforted by the fact that this is the land of the screenwriter and that so many creative people live here alongside the bimbos and snobs. I fell hard for Berlin and then it fucked me up. Here I just feel like I'm taking a nice, warm bath.