Welcome to the Fresh Hell Newsletter, where this week we offer some ideas for fun things to do to take your mind off gas prices and various WTAF’ery
Each year since we got married, the Boy Wonder and I have done one big, audacious vacation. We saved hard, gave ourselves permission to spend more than seemed reasonable and went nuts. Life is short. My parents put off all their really big trips until “retirement” and neither of them lived to see retirement. We want to see as much of this big beautiful world as we can while our knees still work and before some moron blows it up. So far, so good. Hellions, we’ve seen some exceptionally amazing shit.
But last year for the first time, in preparation for a planned home renovation (that is indefinitely on hold due to my recent defenestration from full-time employment) we took every single vacation through our OPH Network. OPH is Other People’s Houses. It was, overall, the funnest year of vacations we’ve ever had.
Unlike AirBnB or VRBO, which is also Other People’s Houses, the OPH Network is composed entirely of homes owned by our best friends.
I know that some people would call staying in a friend’s home for a week simply “visiting friends,” which it is. But one of the great parts of getting older (a short list) is that your friends increasingly own homes or second homes in amazing places you also really want to visit. Last year, we hit Colorado, the Muskoka Lakes in Canada, Newport, R.I., Gloucester, Mass., Alaska (on a cruise that we counted as “OPH” because our brother-in-law is the hotel director on the ship and signed us on for free.) We have, without really realizing it until recently, amassed a whole bunch of amazing friends with homes in amazing places. If you are of a certain age, you probably have an OPH Network, too. Age perk! Work that thing!
Now, this type of travel is not for everyone. You have to be a good houseguest and an even better friend. What does that look like? Most importantly, coupled-up Hellions, it means NOT BICKERING in front of your hosts. Even if you want to axe murder your partner, put that shit in a closet until you get home. This is serious. We do not invite people to vacation at our home if they bicker. It’s a hard pass.
Other ‘good guest’ tips: It’s sort of crucial that your hosts are on vacation when you are there, so ask your hosts when THEY can take vacation, then book your trip around their schedule, not vice versa. (Obvs, once we’re all retired, it’s OPEN SEASON!) Don’t ask your hosts to do anything for you, especially picking you up at the airport—just no. Rent a car even if they offer to drive you around. Offer to cook at least one fabulous meal for your hosts. Pay for your hosts’ meals every time you eat out. Pick up all the tickets to the shows or events, even if they fight you on it. Leave the liquor cabinet stocked.
Be the guests you want to see in the world. Leave them begging for your swift return, after a suitable cooling-off period. A week is the max length of stay, btw. Nobody wants even the coolest, awesomest people in the world to be in their house for longer than a week. So definitely not us.
Once a member of an OPH Network, you too will also be required to host your friends if you are so fortunate to live in an amazing place that people want to visit. When you do, be a generous, loving friend/ host and do all those tourist things you think are stupid. They’re actually fun when you are doing them with your pals, or, at the very least, they’ll give you some great stories to share over martinis.
Our OPH Network is a thing that makes the idea of retirement, and aging, a little less horrifying. I know the time will come when our friends will dispose of these great houses when they get too old to manage them. They’ll move into assisted living facilities and nursing homes and cemeteries and what not. So, Sweet Hellions, let’s make hay while that sweet OPH sun shines.
OPH Network: Highly recommend
Philomena Cunk is a British mockumentarian who produces comedy that rivals anything that Christopher Guest has done. She of the blue oxford shirt and plaid wool blazer, bouncy ponytail and somber delivery is the host of such important, hard hitting, incisive hilarity as “Cunk on Earth,” “Cunk on Britain,” “Cunk on Life,” and the upcoming “Cunk on Film,” due later this year. She apes the self-serious BBC’s pop-umentarians and faux-cheologists in a way that must make them reconsider their career choices. (I’m looking at you Bettany Hughes, Lucy Worsley and Dan Jones, you fucking posers. Mary Beard and Rory Stewart get a pass. They rock.)
In each series, Cunk demonstrates her lack of knowledge about pretty much everything, yet an indefatigable ability to talk about it extensively anyway.
Come for the malapropisms; stay for the interviews with legitimate experts, who she peppers with such important queries as “We know China has a wall, but does it have a roof?” They may, or may not, be in on the joke, but they all look uniformly exhausted by the whole thing. It’s glorious.
Other memorable moments: “It was in this ship that Drake became the first person to circumcise the globe. Which is probably why this sort of ship is called a Clipper.”
And: “This is the Good Old Testament, the first entry in the Christian Cinematic Universe.”
Or, my fave, “Subatomic particles can exist in two states at once; like Liam Hemsworth, who’s sexy AND boring.”
Philomena Cunk is played by Diane Morgan, a brilliant comedian and actor who should be much more well known in America. I know only two people in the U.S. who have heard of her. One is the Boy Wonder, but he doesn’t count cause he’s British. The other is a friend and former co-worker who used to trade Cunk one liners with me when shit got tense at work.
Anyway, my Sweet comedy-loving Hellions, let’s work together AS A TEAM to give Philomena the popularity here in the States that she so richly deserves. You can find the entire “Cunk On” Cinematic Universe on Netflix.
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