Highlights from 900 Plain English stories
This is the nine-hundredth Plain English story. So to mark the occasion, here are nine of my favorite stories.
Movies & TV shows
I like creating stories about movies and TV shows—especially the ones I’ve watched. These are great for me because I get to share things that I enjoy with you. I don’t write an episode about every movie or show that I like. But sometimes I’ll watch one that I think you’ll enjoy. There has to be enough to talk about without spoiling the plot—and there has to be a good reason to share it.
We did episodes about “Better Call Saul,” “Nomadland,” “A Star Is Born”—that was really good with Lady Gaga—and I shared my misgivings about the movie “Stillwater.”
But my favorite episode from this category, the one I really liked writing about, was the one about “Crazy Rich Asians,” lesson 130. Here, I’ll read you an excerpt from that episode:
The reason to watch this movie is not the plot: it’s everything else besides the plot. First of all, the cast: it’s the first all-Asian (or primarily Asian) cast since The Joy Luck Club, which came out 26 years ago.
Even if you don’t love romantic comedies, you’d enjoy this movie just for the scenery. Singapore appears at once high-energy and tranquil, as the main characters flit between energetic street markets and peaceful gardens, between thumping parties and romantic boat rides. The final scene takes place on the rooftop of the signature building in Singapore’s skyline: the Marina Bay Sands hotel.
Food & drink
Another fun category for me is food and drink. The craziest episode in this category was about camel milk—and no, I still haven’t tried it. I’ll let you know when I get a chance. I grilled a meatless burger and told you about it in lesson 184. JR and I did a taste test of Crumbl cookies. And in the height of the pandemic, we talked about what kinds of food are good for delivery. Here’s a hint: burgers don’t travel well.
But my favorite episode in “food and drink” was about hard seltzers. A few summers ago, these burst onto the scene. They’re lighter than beer, easier to drink than wine, and not as strong as a cocktail. They come in unique flavors like “pineapple mango.” So we did a blind taste test at home. JR selected several brands and flavors, and I tasted them all, without knowing what I was drinking. My job was to say which ones I liked, but I also had to guess the flavors. Here’s how it went in episode 475:
After tasting all of the samples, I knew I was doomed. None of the seltzers tasted clearly like any of the flavors. If one smells like lime popsicle, but tastes like cough syrup, is that berry? Or citrus? I thought hard about when I was a kid and liked flavored candy. What was the difference between watermelon and berry punch? I started to doubt myself. I changed my choices. JR looked on in disbelief. He didn’t reveal any of the answers. The only thing his face revealed was that he was clearly watching a train wreck. I didn’t get a single flavor right.
That was fun!
People
All right, I need to break this habit, but I often create episodes about individual people only after they have died. I don’t pretend to pick the most important people for Plain English: it’s usually people that I think you should know about, to understand American culture. Vin Scully was a baseball announcer; Jerry Springer was a politician-turned-trash-TV-host. Larry King was a famous journalist.
But I really liked creating the episode about Regis Philbin. He was somebody you almost definitely wouldn’t know about, outside the United States. But he was on TV in the United States a lot. He co-hosted a three-hour talk show called “Live with Regis and Kathie Lee,” which was on in my house as a kid, 9:00 a.m. Monday through Friday on ABC. He was a game show host. When he died the Guiness Book of World Records estimated he had been on television for 16,700 hours—more than any other person in history.
Here’s what I said about him:
Regis’s success on TV owed in large part to his personality as a relatable everyman—an unpretentious New Yorker that people across our diverse country could identify with. On his talk show, he engaged guests in friendly banter, talked about the news, chatted with his on-air co-hosts like old friends, and—it must be said—griped and complained about life’s everyday nuisances, a quality that endeared him to so many fans.
The man was comfortable on camera. He knew how to be on television. He had good looks, but not movie-star good looks. He was well-spoken, but not too smooth. He was empathetic and friendly, but never in a fake way. Many people in show businesses said he was one of the nicest people they ever met—and genuine. Anyone can be nice; it’s hard to be nice and mean it, like Regis did.
News
I try to make Plain English episodes evergreen: that means, if I create an episode today, people will still want to listen to them a few years from now. So I try to stay away from topics that will lose their relevance quickly.
Still, I do occasionally talk about things in the news—and I used to do it a lot more. Possibly my favorite episode in this genre was the McDonald’s Monopoly game scam. McDonald’s used to run a competition based on the board game Monopoly. When you’d buy a Big Mac or just French fries or chicken nuggets, you would get a game piece. And you could combine the game pieces to win prizes.
Most of the prizes were like a free milkshake or something. But some of the prizes were cash, often $25,000 but up to a million dollars. McDonalds used a printing company in Florida to print the pieces. And, well, this proved more tempting than a chocolate milkshake on a hot day for one employee of the printing company. Here’s how it went in the episode:
Like so many criminal schemes, it started with just one infraction. He gave away a winning piece worth $25,000 to his brother-in-law, just to see if he could do it. When it worked, and he didn’t get caught, he was emboldened. But he knew that he’d get caught if his close friends and family members near his town all started winning tickets that were supposed to be spread around the whole country. So he started recruiting associates who could find people at random—in their loose network of contacts—all over the country to claim the prizes, and then pay him, Jerry Jacobson, a kickback, a portion of their winnings. He often demanded the kickback in cash up front, before he delivered the ticket.
As you can imagine, some of the people he used to recruit so-called “winners” were some unsavory characters. One was a mob boss; another was a big-time cocaine dealer with a criminal past. There was a fortune teller involved. But others were just normal people, happy to participate in the scam. A lot of them couldn’t believe it was possible.
In the end, fifty people were convicted of fraud, and the mastermind—they called him “Uncle Jerry”—he went to jail for 37 months.
Jeff’s take
I had forgotten about the McDonald’s scheme. I’m not ranking these. But that might have been my favorite episode to write. I just remember laughing the whole time. I don’t know why it was funny. This was a crime. But the last place you would look for crime and fraud would be the McDonald’s game pieces. Maybe that’s why it worked—well, it worked until it didn’t.
So these were four of my favorites: lesson 130 about “Crazy Rich Asians;” lesson 475 was the hard seltzer taste test; lesson 291 about Regis Philbin; and then lesson 75 about the McDonald’s Monopoly scam.
Part of the reason I like that Regis one—not only was he on TV in my house growing up—my mom used to watch Regis & Kathie Lee—but he was the host of a very popular prime-time game show called, “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.” And I went to a taping of that show and had so much fun.
I will finish the list in part two, with the remaining five of my favorites.
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