An interesting mid-week mix where nostalgia meets bliss in experiences, memories, and images. A prompt to remind you what your first crush felt like, another journalist entertains us, and we take you back through the years of McDonald's uniforms. Music to wash it all down; welcome to the first five minutes of Wednesday fun. Remember, crush it today!

-

In a first for With-A-Shout, we are writing about a response to the reader column in the NTY. An anonymous person wrote to the NYT for advice on a big office crush. The writer explains that this one seems more significant than other office crushes she has had and is looking for advice. The advice given by journalist Roxane Gay was the typical advice you'd suspect when writing to an advice column. What we liked about the short blurb was remembering what an office crush used to feel like. Many of us haven’t been single, or in an office setting where a hook-up was possible for a long time. It was fun to remember our own past, and the following discussions were part sneaky and part excitement, followed by some level of heartbreak.

Most of the crushes we remember began in high school: new part-time jobs, meeting people a few years older than us, and people who treated us like a grown-up. All those new experiences and new people all doing the same thing, working entry-level jobs, and hanging out with people who could all relate to bad bosses, customers, and situations. Add those ingredients to a hormone soup, and the attractions will follow. All that new information is packaged in someone you can relate to outside your normal groups. The heat goes up when you realize that a relationship with someone you work with is usually against somebody's rules somewhere, even if not explicitly forbidden; it's widely accepted that working relationships come with baggage. 

We would add a work crush, especially a young work crush up there with first dates and a first kiss. It's a game you have to play. All that excitement and energy has to be experienced, harnessed, and allowed to grow. The non-scientific numbers would probably suggest that more of these relationships don't work out, but a crush, especially a work crush is an opportunity you should not pass up. Here is a picture of my last work crush in 1991; I married her a few years later…

7 minutes of good cheer every day. Become a Fan to get daily posts and updates.

Another journalist highlighted today, Damon Beres, is a senior editor at The Atlantic who covers technology. When he's not busy digging through a massive tech take-over or anything that starts with "A-I," he appreciates a great 90s rom-com. As the weekly series in The Atlantic goes, Kelly Maria Korducki interviews a staffer, and the highlights demonstrate the human side of the cutthroat business of journalism in the 2020s. Welcome back to; The Culture Survey, by The Atlantic.

Beres first revisited the 90s movie Along Came Polly, starring Ben Stiller, Jennifer Aniston, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. We will never forget the basketball scene, Stiller's character is playing basketball with Hoffman, and Stiller gets a face full of a sweaty belly.

Beres finishes going by watching anything Ethan Hawke has done and claiming P.J. Harvey's Rid of Me as his best quiet and loud rock song all rolled up into one.

A new pub for us called Mashed wrote an article on the McDonald's uniform over the years. It's a good read that will surprise you with how many uniforms you recognize and how long ago they were used. We remembered the stripes from the 70s and the variety that came out of the 80s when McDonald's loosened the restrictions on uniforms for franchises. The 80s also included a menu expansion into pizza, which we did not remember.

The Foo Fighters have begun to hit the road with new drummer Josh Freese; while on the summer festival circuit, they decided to shake it up and started playing a cover of The Beastie Boys Sabotage. At least they started to play the cover until Dave Grohl realized he doesn’t rap. Story comes to us from Consequence Sound.

Brand New Tune!

Click on the Apple Music image to listen to the song on Apple Music or on the Spotify Image to listen to Spotify.

-

Thank you for spending a few minutes with us. Here’s one for the road!

With A Shout newsletter is written by Johnny Christian with the support of a thousand idea bits and the help of many people.

7 minutes of good cheer every day. Become a Fan to get daily posts and updates.

O/X