Meet Samantha

by Mallory Ortberg · May 8, 2014

samanthaNext week Nicole is going to take a vacation (a real one; I don’t want her answering emails on the plane) and you are all going to have a guest editor, and so am I, I suppose. Her name is Samantha Powell and she has the laugh of an angel and we ate burgers together in Hollywood earlier this year before seeing Bell, Book and Candle, which was quite a lot better than I thought it would be. Canny readers of the site will recall this is not Samantha’s first visit here. She has, in fact, written for us twice before, and I highly recommend reading up on her work before getting a full dose of her next week.

From Trophies:

I chose the place where I felt that I would be happiest, where I didn’t feel as much like a trophy in the independent schools’ fucked-up games with each other to pull “the best and the brightest” of the underprivileged out of their situations to prove how progressive they all were. That wasn’t what I would have articulated to you at almost ten, but even if I couldn’t put words to my feelings, it was the source of the warmth that I had for the place. It wasn’t going to be all cookies and tetherball, after all.

From Queries:

I sat with my hands on my knees staring at the glass of water I had requested but would barely touch.

“So you were roughed up by the recession?”

A hollow laugh escaped. I wanted to reach out and catch it. Push it back down, but it was too late. “A little bit.”

She gave me a look. “A little bit?”

Okay, maybe a lot.

The whole tale is long and gross and its details are of little importance except that they landed me in front of a career strategist. She wrote notes on the back of my resume. I looked from her to my water glass to my knees to the lilac manicure on my fingers and back again, trying to find some grounding as I told the story. Trying to see if this time, what felt like the hundredth time of its retelling, would emerge some lesson that would make my path seem clear, or at least less full of bullshit.

“But you would be completely bored doing that.”

It was her response to one of the ideas I had thrown around as a possibility. I had heard it before, and although I understand why people keep saying it to me, I don’t understand its importance at this point. Eventually you don’t care about being bored.

Samantha writes about fashion and unemployment and is very thoughtful and happily ensconced in books (rather like Nicole, come to think of it, which will soothe my loneliness) and is rather a good egg. Here is an edited version of our gchat conversation last night.

Samantha! I demand that you tell us about yourself at once. What news shall I tell the people of you?

Hmm, well, most definitely that I moved to LA a month ago.

Okay. [literally ten minutes pass]

I’m here still and thinking.

MEET SAMANTHAI’m going to bed soon. 

I come from a family of all women. Sometimes I think we would make great protaganists in a Toni Morrison novel.

Man, if I were good at Photoshop, I’d do the “Meet Samantha” cover from the old American Girl Dolls book, but with your head photoshopped onto her fancy dress. 

I owned that doll because she had my name. And Addy because she had my skin. And I made my mother buy Molly’s glasses for them because I had glasses.

That is a great strategy to get your mom to buy you a lot of dolls. 

I mostly liked that they were dolls that came with books. I lost my original book that came with Samantha and am still broken up about it two decades later, because they changed the illustrations in later editions.

[Googles and finds it to be true] WHAT
THAT IS SOME REAL GARBAGE

P.S. Today is Samantha’s birthday. Wish her a happy one as you welcome her with open arms.


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52 Comments

  1. anninyn +28

    Happy birthday, Samantha, and I am sure we shall enjoy your temporary ownership of our hearts, minds and souls.

  2. dakimel +19

    Happy Birthday, Samantha! My arms are open, my heart and mind are open (except when it comes to re-tooled American Girls book covers), and probably that’s as much as you need to hear about me lest I become a tad too disturbing.

  3. safvn +12

    Happy birthday, Samantha! I hope you have all the right kinds of cake and ice cream and I am VERY EXCITED for next week.

  5. slowseptember +5

    Happy birthday and welcome, Samantha! Looking forward to having you around next week 🙂

  9. rubelang +6

    “Eventually you don’t care about being bored.”

    SO TRUE! Hopefully you won’t be bored with us! Happy birthday!

  10. pollypeachum +2

    Happy Birthday, Samantha! 😀

    *meanwhile silently fumes to herself about the ending of ‘Bell, Book, and Candle’, which I’m still angry about*

      1. pollypeachum +6

        BUT she loses her powers! And her interests! And her fabulous dress sense! And mostly importantly, HER CAT! And for what: old, westerns-doing Jimmy Stewart! Not even young, slightly debonair in an awkward sense Jimmy Stewart from “You Can’t Take It With You” and “Vivacious Lady”! So not worth it.

        1. malloryelis +3

          weirdly BB&C was the movie where I finally gave in to the Stewart/Novak pairing. I resisted it so hard through so many rewatchings of Vertigo, but for whatever reason, I just let it wash over me this time and it felt good.

          And that cat was a real boner. He sucked.

  12. EPWordsnatcher +15

    Happy birthday, Samantha! To celebrate, let’s all rage about changing ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING about classic American Girl books/universe.

    1. sdpowell1 +1

      That was my idea of the PERFECT birthday for at least five years. Well not the salt in the ice cream, but petit fours!

  15. brookshelley +2

    Happy birthday Samantha! Looking forward to your writing & curation

  17. sdpowell1 +24

    Thanks, everybody! I started the day off with a donut covered in rainbow sprinkles, so I think that’s pretty auspicious.

    2. mbculver +1

      YUM. Happy Birthday, and looking forward to sharing next week with you.

  18. hearyoume +7

    Samantha, we are birthday twins! Happy birthday, and I’m looking forward to your tenure as guest editor!

  19. elsamac +2

    Welcome, Samantha, and happy birthday! I loved your articles and am thrilled to see you back; hope next week goes swimmingly!

  20. tubatoothpaste +1

    Ahh I really liked both of those pieces – looking forward to an increased dose of Samantha!

  21. nicoledieker +3

    I, too, would like to discuss the new American Girl illustrations in some kind of scientific way that PROVES they are worse than the originals.

    (And welcome, Samantha!)

    1. sdpowell1 +6

      The originals were so crisp, almost like photographs. They worked really well with the near-glossiness of the book’s pages. There is a lack of definition to the new ones.

      (Yes I have spent two decades thinking about this.)

      1. nicoledieker +4

        And it’s not like they decided to go in a completely different direction, artistically. Many of the new illustrations are direct copies of the originals. Just… redrawn, for some ridiculous reason. (I really wish I knew why. I’m imagining some snafu when the company moved to Mattel. Some kind of reconfiguration of all the contracts, and the original illustrators got shut out.)

  22. logicbutton +1

    Hi, Samantha! Happy birthday! Looking forward to having you around next week!

    1. EPWordsnatcher +1

      (Psst! *img src=”picture url here”* but with < and > instead of * and *)

  24. sdpowell1 +16

    Quick story time. When I was a senior in high school, my French class got assigned a project where we had to write and illustrate a children’s book. Total bullshit senior spring assignment. My partner and I were not artistically inclined, so we rounded up all of our American Girl dolls (she had a younger sister and so had access to three) as well as those of a classmate who had two younger sisters, and proceeded to take photos all over our school’s building and courtyard to use to illustrate our story.

    We were the most popular people in school that day. Everyone from our own fellow seniors to the little fifth graders stopped to see what we were up to and basically play with us. One of the best days ever.

  25. Elyse +7

    I was so afraid when I saw the title of this post that this was another of Mallory’s demonic fucking with children’s literature posts because NOBODY MESSES WITH SAMANTHA (aka the only one of the historic girls’ dolls I ever owned even though I far preferred Molly and Addy, in that order)

    but then it wasn’t, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Happy birthday, Samantha!

  30. mch79 +3

    You are on the Toast! This is fantastic! Happy Birthday! I hope you are loving your LA birthday and not missing Boston too much. (The weather is still not great.)

  31. Lustful Cockmonster

    You are on the Toast! This is fantastic! Happy Birthday! I hope you are loving your LA birthday and not missing Boston too much. (The weather is still not great.)

  32. NicoleCliffe +5

    On the morning when I woke up without you for the first time
    I felt free and I felt lonely and I felt scared
    And I began to talk to myself almost immediately
    Not being used to being the only person there

    The first time I made coffee for just myself I made too much of it
    But I drank it all just ’cause you hate it when I let things go to waste
    And I wandered through the house like a little boy, lost at the mall
    And an astronaut could’ve seen the hunger in my eyes from space

    And I sang oh, what do I do?
    What do I do?
    What do I do?
    What do I do without you?

    On the morning when I woke up without you for the first time
    I was cold so I put on a sweater and I turned up the heat
    And the walls began to close in and I felt so sad and frightened
    I practically ran from the living room out into the street

    And the wind began to blow and all the trees began to pant
    And the world, in its cold way, started coming alive
    And I stood there like a business man waiting for the train
    And I got ready for the future to arrive

    And I sang oh, what do I do?
    What do I do?
    What do I do?
    What do I do without you?

  33. NicoleCliffe +7

    HAVE FUN, Samantha!!!!!!!! I look forward to reading your pieces before the weight of my sun-protection garments causes me to silently and gracefully drown in the water off Miami Beach.

    1. mbculver +3

      You’ll be fine, Nicole, just watch out for jelly fish. And if you end up drinking shots from someone’s belly button in South Beach, there better be pictures…

  34. sofie_fatale +1

    Happy birthday, Samantha! And welcome to LA—I went from NY to Silver Lake too 🙂

  35. Bittersweet

    You'll be fine, Nicole, just watch out for jelly fish. And if you end up drinking shots from someone's belly button in South Beach, there better be pictures…

  36. Bittersweet

    YUM. Happy Birthday, and looking forward to sharing next week with you.