If memory serves correctly, Ton Thoughts has been an on-and-off project of mine for over a decade now. For longtime readers, I won’t bore you again with the origin story, but my dive into blogging began in eighth grade when I discovered that my history teacher was running his own blog. I received a text from him on Christmas Day, and owing largely to a completely blank schedule that day, I decided to sit in front of a Word document and start typing again.

To say that I am returning to writing is not true. I write every day. When I was younger, the arena for my writing shifted between notebooks for classes to Blogger.com, where I was probably one of the youngest and most consistent users. Now, much of my writing occurs on this fancy platform called Outlook, where the aim of my prose is to get things from people so that I can pay my SoCal Edison bill and continue to live in the part of town that got spared.

My “semi-return” to Ton Thoughts a couple of years ago was too ambitious. Weekly posts? Was I out of my fucking mind? Probably. I was also advertising my writing. What an asshole! My writing should only be accessible to those who take the time to download the Substack app and create an account. Anyone else is just a pedestrian.

The other reason – you can call an excuse – as to why this umpteenth hiatus occurred is that life did actually get pretty busy. Sometime in 2023, I made an error at work and told my boss that “I was kind of bored.” Well, I don’t have much time at work to be bored anymore! It was hard to squeeze leisurely writing and world musings into my daily schedule, so I just removed it altogether. But I miss it. And I hope some longtime readers of this blog missed it, too – especially my readers in Russia.

When I started Ton Thoughts, I remember the writing schedule being something like: 1) finish homework, 2) eat dinner, 3) write on the internet. And, to my surprise, it was pretty manageable. I remember there was a one-year streak (2014 to 2015ish) where I published something once a day, every day, exactly by 9:00 PM PST. I know it was not quality writing, but it was writing.

Every morning, I would wake up and check the stats. Outside of the occasional post where he had absolutely nothing to say, my history teacher was the first (and often the only) to leave a comment. It was a nice routine, but life was certainly easier back in 2015.

I don’t think I have the time – or ability – to crank something out on a daily basis at this point in my life, but maybe I can try weekly again? (There’s certainly enough going on in the world.) Wait, no. That promise fucked me – and all of you – over last time. How about I write when I feel like it? I think that’s a more honest compact.

As we all begin this new year, I hope that life will be calm enough for me to practice my love of writing more regularly. I can talk about the White House again. I can tell you all about my thoughts on grocery shopping. I have a lot to say about rich kids. But if you don’t hear (or read) from me again, don’t hold it against me. We can try again in ’27.

I think the correct phrasing is to say the voice is starting to break, but more often than he’d like, his voice is cracking. I started noticing it a couple of months ago, but it has become more apparent in recent days. His tone as of late is that of a yeller, rage quitting over a good sniper shot placed against him in whatever the newest Call of Duty game is. I recently had to buy him some new Nike shorts, identical to the ones worn by all the cool kids at the mall; and now, especially as the weather has begun to heat up, I think an air purifier is next on the shopping list. He no longer says goodbye when I head off to work, not because he despises me, but rather because he’s discovered he can stay past 10:00 PM (well into 3:00 AM, apparently) to watch Twitch streams and episodes of The Rookie on Hulu. He asked me at dinner a couple of nights ago what gangs claim our hometown and even had the gall to ask if I had vaped before. Being the good brother that I am, I reminded him that I would be of no support if he went down either path. Stepping back and taking in these developments, I am constantly reminded that we both are becoming obvious victims of the passage of time and age.

I had already clocked in ten years when my brother was born. I think when my mom broke the news that she was pregnant, I cried and screamed out of disbelief. Before you judge, who wouldn’t shed tears when they receive such information after years of being singularly pampered and adored? Before the gender was even known, I had reconciled the thought of having a sibling by placing my hopes in a younger sister. Perhaps we’d end up like Dora and Diego. Or, we’d discover our talents soon enough and become the next Carpenters! Worst-case scenario, we could have become the first brother-sister crime duo to claim countrywide notoriety — like a real-life Thelma and Louise, but Lionel instead.

So when I learned I was getting a brother, man-oh-man, that was a hard pill to swallow.

To ten-year-old me, a younger brother was a rival. A nemesis, a competitor, a being I wanted to relegate to second place. A brother had the potential to steal my clothes and, perhaps, worst of all, wear them better than I had ten years prior. A sibling of the same gender always has the potential to outshine you in every manner. Such a defeat is worse when the winner is that much younger than you. They’re the newest thing on the block, they get all the attention, and, most disrespectfully, they look just like you. Haven’t you people seen Malcolm in the Middle? At least to compensate for these feelings of inferiority, my parents let me name the thing.

Luckily, Victor and I have turned out to be quite different. Thank goodness he has proven to be chronically horrific at dressing himself.1 Victor has his own pair of eyeglasses, albeit not as progressed as mine were when I was his age. He enjoys gaming, but he’s a PlayStation kid, whereas I grew up on Nintendo. His grades could certainly use some work — perhaps a whole summer’s worth of work if you asked his teachers. At the risk of tooting my own horn, I think I’m still the neighborhood’s favorite Ton creation, to say things mildly. For better and sometimes for worse, we have turned out to be complete opposites.

Regardless, I love my brother; I really do. What a turn of events, I know. I will generally be the first to tell you how great Victor can be most days, and most of the time, at least before his voice started to change, Victor could echo the same sentiments for me. “You’re my favorite brother” was always his go-to line, as if I had buried another sibling between when he was born and when he started to notice the world around him. I’ll obviously never not love my own brother, but some days, particularly most of the ones that have made up this year, he has turned unconditional love into quite the challenge.

In addition to the changing sounds and odors associated with children ages 11 through 15, Victor has begun to defy me. Not “defy” in the sense of the Middle Ages, where such a charge would lead to execution or war, but more so like using my credit card without asking me, or refusing to turn off his “Do Not Disturb” as I have instructed him to.2 My favorite act of early teen defiance? Telling me he’ll be ready to get picked up from his mall hangout at 6:00 PM, but then making me wait at the food court until 7:30. There’s no good food at this mall either, especially not at that time. He’s begun writing and reciting his own rap songs, which truly are the product of a C-grade English student.3 Victor has expunged “please” from his entire vocabulary in what is perhaps his cardinal sin. It must have been a new year’s resolution or something.

Putting more thought into it, however, changes are not exclusive to my younger brother. Years ago, 7:15 AM saw the two Tons cracking jokes over a bowl of cereal, right before heading off to our respective campuses. Now, 7:15 AM sees me tying a necktie and checking my briefcase while the younger one asks our mother for ten additional minutes in slumber. Quite the change in programming if you ask me. As Victor begins experimenting with hair gel, I have come to realize that my hair loss journey will begin at the spiral, ironically, the place where hair seems to have formed in the first place. His Amazon cart is home to dozens of unrealized sneakers. Mine has a couple of penny loafers and a new briefcase, all of which look like the ones I already have, just in different colors. He’ll still have a good number of friends to make, and I’m more than happy with the ones I’ve cut down to. Amongst other developments, it appears we’re both aging at an uncomfortable rate.

As obviously stupid as it may sound, Victor and I will always be ten years apart. In this year and the ones to follow, I will see how he charts a path I have already taken while he observes a life he’ll likely reject. He’ll make more mistakes, accomplish wonderful things, and learn many new lessons that I hope could come sooner rather than later. The same, whether I want to believe it or not, will likely come by way also. As the Earth continues to spin, two of its citizens will keep on living.

I find solace in knowing he has me, and I have him. We’ll never age out of buying boba milk, nor will I ever completely fail at making the little rascal bust into a hardy laugh. And, although my little brother may not be so little anymore, I find great happiness in knowing that I’ll always have Victor to call my own — my one and only sibling, the only one I ever really needed.4 Once his voice settles in, that voice which will never as quite be as deep as mine, I hope it’ll stay that way for the rest of my life.

I am writing to let you know that I do not have the capacity this week to produce a new blog post. This week, work-wise, was just crazy! Luckily, my annual salary is around $15 million dollars.

Instead of reading my work this Sunday, I recommend to you the following articles:

• “Stalking the Wild Madras Wears of the Ivy League” | W. David Marx of The New Yorker

• “How Montana Took a Hard Right Turn Toward Christian Nationalism” | Abe Streep of The New York Times Magazine

• “What is a Good Life” | Ronald Dworkin of The New York Review

I hope this won’t force you to unsubscribe. If these stories are hidden behind a paywall, and you really want to read them, do let me know via email, and I will send you a PDF copy. Otherwise, have a wonderful week.

Best,
Vincent

Of course, I’m not advocating for the deployment of our children to foreign countries to fight for the political agenda of domestic animals — that was so 2003! Trade the assault rifles for guns that dispense Coke products, combat boots for non-slip Skechers, and helmets for hairnets. Have the kids forego basic training in the sense of push-ups and buzzcuts, and instead, have them learn how to clean feces from a toilet bowl and why you never put raw meat on a shelf above the cooked products. In a world determined to teach the next generation how to survive, all Americans before turning 21 should complete at least one full year of restaurant service to understand better the society they’ll become a part of — and, as a result, a part of themselves.

Many people would have already fulfilled this proposed requirement in our current world. When I was in high school, for instance, a good number of fellow students worked for one of the numerous McDonald’s spread throughout Pasadena. Those not flipping patties for the cheeseburger clown found themselves working for the rat at Chuck E. Cheese’s or the Christian overlords at the local Chick-fil-A. Amongst a population who had virtually no income, our food service friends were sometimes considered within the 1% — especially if they were working just for mall money or cannabis cash, as opposed to actually supporting their families. And while they would often come into the classrooms tired and worn out, likely from a daily schedule that required 10+ hour days, I always considered these friends1 some of the hardest-working individuals on campus.

It wasn’t until I was in college that I was deployed into the food service industry.2 In the summer of 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic continued its global tour, I applied to be and got hired as a host at a nearby Mexican restaurant. In the course of these 13 months, I became immersed in the restaurant industry, practicing the semantics of food service while navigating a wide variety of customers, co-workers, and overall nuisances.

Every shift had a different plot line, a different conflict to resolve. As a host, I had to ensure that customers either received ideal seating arrangements or had their to-go orders properly packaged. During busier shifts, I attempted to be a server, a busboy, and, once, a delivery driver. For my co-workers, I was tasked with evenly distributing the clientele so that no server felt like their shift was simply a waste of time and, most importantly, a waste of tips.

Coming in through the doors of the El Cholo Café, we had the racists, the disgusting, the entitled, the deranged, and the obnoxious kids who decided a bustling restaurant floor was the best venue for a game of tag. Of course, I had a nice roster of regulars who made the job easier; but in the food service game, the wonderful are so few compared to the deplorable. No one in my team could forget the internet-anointed public health experts who decided to push back against common sense regulations by yelling at and berating the wait staff as if we were the personal foot soldiers of Dr. Anthony Fauci. That was the environment I found myself in during much of 2020 and 2021, within a team of individuals tasked with easing the masses and their problems by delivering tacos, tamales, and tequila.

In the grand scheme of things, not many people see their investment bankers regularly. Fewer consult with their lawyers frequently or make appointments with their surgeons. Everybody, however, goes to restaurants; and when everybody goes to restaurants, every body at the restaurants needs to learn how to deal with the everybodies who go to eat. In the battlefields known as the kitchen or the main dining floor, conflicts over missing sides or too-rare steak can often lead workers to their breaking point, a designated checkpoint located farther for them than compared to most. For work that is paid for what it is, too many find themselves berated, belittled, or, frankly, beholden to the insanity of the general public.

When one has to work with or around the needs of the local population, it can become quite an eye-opening experience. Within a team of cooks, chefs, bussers, and hosts, everyone finds themself leveled and as close to equal as possible. Whether your uniform is all-black Dickies head-to-toe or pressed shirts and ties, whether you came from rags or from riches, once you clock in, you’ll likely find income, race, gender, and any other separators to be irrelevant. During whatever shift you’re assigned, whether it’s a couple of hours or a double that takes up your entire Saturday, you’ll be arm-in-arm with your peeps in service to the public. You’ll revel in the smiles of a family who saved up to enjoy a birthday meal at your restaurant, and you’ll cuss out the UberEats driver who decided to yell at you for the lateness when he was the one who came 15 minutes earlier than expected. You’ll serve people some of the best dishes they have ever had or drop it right in front of them, if not on them. You’ll find poorly aimed excrement in the bathrooms, and try your best to clean it up without hurling some projectiles of your own. One time, while taking out the trash, I found an abandoned bra.

As youths, this environment allows you to see the world in which you’ll become an adult. It’ll teach you never to look down on the mothers and fathers who have to clean the bathrooms for your enjoyment, to refrain from raising your voice at a teenager who made a simple mistake while working a shift to help pay for her and her single mother’s rent. You’ll learn that reservations matter and that if you don’t have one at a place that offers them, you have no right to be mad about the wait time; because, whether you believe it or not, the hosts want to sit your annoying ass down just as much as you do. For someone to fully appreciate the joy and comfort that is eating out, you have to spend some time giving that experience to others. For someone who wants to fully understand how people behave outside their homes, you must find yourself on the receiving end of their demands.

In our country, a horrible stigma is placed upon those who work in food service. There is this belief that low wages equals low work, effort, and commitment. Most that hold this belief do so from desk jobs requiring little to no interactions with the wide cast of characters found in the real world. They hold these views while holding incomes that are the accumulation of years of work for others while “working” half as much. I have no doubt in my mind that my job at El Cholo Café was, and will remain, the most challenging job I have ever had to do — certainly much harder than running this blog.

Would you like an idea for a reality show? Take a crowd of tech workers typically making hundreds an hour and enroll them to work at the Cheesecake Factory in Glendale for two months. Tell them to put their protein smoothies and circle lights away. It’s time to grab a black button-up and a can of Red Bull! Call the show “Cheesecake It ‘Till You Make It” or something like that. Four contestants will have mental breaks by the first Saturday dinner service. Have you noticed that the servers at Cheesecake3 never have the time to vlog their whole day? They’re too busy dealing with the drunk asshole seated near the breezeway.

Kids, if you have no summer plans this year, go out to a restaurant and grab an application. Society will find a way to thank you later.

Music is often praised for making the day-to-day easier to handle, and such a gift is greater appreciated when it comes from the ensemble of characters already cast in our lives. However, within our social circles, we likely know or know of someone out of tune and out of touch with reality. From this, we find ourselves trying to solve the following predicament: How do you tell committed singers to quit their day job?

The good musicians are usually omnipresent3, always being reposted, praised, or streamed — and rightfully so. Whether natural or practiced, talent of any sort is hard to come by. But what happens to the bad musicians of our world? It is much easier to jeer at the untalented when they have no real connection to us, but when the musically damned is someone we know, weighing an oath to friendship against one’s sense of taste presents a tricky dilemma.

Like most people, I consider it a privilege to have musically talented friends. Everyone wants to duet with them at karaoke events, and car rides can become fantastic little concerts. Musically gifted friends almost always4 add joy and intrigue to the lives of their loved ones. When it comes to this fortunate demographic, the louder the soundtrack, often the merrier the listener. However, the world’s creator can only bless so many people — no one has an exclusively gifted contact book. The reason we revere the musically talented is that the musically ass are much more abundant; and whereas we have few friends who fall under the classification of the good, we have many more who are considered the horrific.

Typically, the bad musicians we know of are aware of their deficiencies. They sing for shits and giggles, knowing full well that their belting may shut down whatever music is being played to accompany a road trip or concert (see Erika Jayne singing along during the holidays). Returning to the karaoke bar, while the talented are great, the notoriously off-key (and often off-consciousness) produce better memories.

The moral debacle I alluded to earlier emerges when our friends believe they are anything but insufferable. They have the gall to release song after song, sometimes forcing their friends, who know better, to film promos and offer words of endorsements. At the very least, we cringe as we watch and listen; at the very worst, it keeps us up at night. On their part, this sort of ignorance is often to blame for many fractious moments endured in friendships. Narcissists never consider themselves to be one, which can also be said for our befriended gaslighters, manipulators, and bullies. It only makes sense that many misguided singers themselves believe they are on the right path. (Can you imagine how hard it must be to be friends with Jennifer Lopez?)5

This is the burden of the delusional mistalents.

Falling victim to this scenario is not uncommon. Often, the burden’s perpetuation is traced back to inauthentic kindness; and while the root cause is easy to identify, a solution is harder to prescribe. No one wants to tell a good friend that they suck at singing, especially if they dream of filling concert venues or hitting millions of streams. Doing so can end friendships and designate you as an asshole — even if killing the singer’s career advances the greater good of the hearing general public. That being said, however, no one, particularly no one who considers themselves a “real friend,” should allow their buddies to continue living with false hopes. Like many, I believe that friends always tell friends when lettuce and lipstick become stuck in between teeth, when boogers make unsightly appearances, and when professional decisions are detrimental.

If it is the case that you agree with these principles of friendship, then the solution to the burden of the delusional mistalents is found somewhere in breaking the news to the offender. On the question of “How do I tell my friend they suck at singing?” the internet provides creative solutions. One person advised that if sinful sing-alongs occur when music plays through a car radio, consider only listening to podcasts while driving. I once advised someone who was friends with a bad musician to call them out anonymously via Reddit, fully understanding that such a method could be considered cowardly. Some have asked, “What about recommending vocal lessons?” In agreement with the internet, I believe some people are beyond help. Maybe you will find that blocking them on all social media platforms and every streaming service is the best policy, but if you get to this point, I doubt the friendship is worth saving at all. Even if you nudge the friend toward exiting delusion, who’s to say they will ever act on your advice? Great, you’re back at square one, bad tunes and all.

Odds are, you had done this exact calculus before and concluded that there is nothing you can do to cure your friend from their misguided judgments, and frankly, you’re right. There is absolutely nothing you can do to change some people’s minds. Some people are simply stubborn with what they think they are meant to do, and in their defense, who are we to tell them otherwise? You can only tell an addict to put down the pipe oh-so-many times. It’s not our duty to tell friends which degrees to pursue, nor is it truthfully our right to object at weddings, even if the opportunity is offered. Humans deserve to experiment with various life purposes and decisions. Eventually, a process of elimination carried by the consuming public will either sway your disillusioned friend to quit what was never to be or better themselves so that a dream can become reality.

For worried onlookers, the burden of the delusional mistalent is painfully watching our friends pursue paths that we know will never materialize; and we often allow this dilemma to play out because we’re afraid of being branded a hater, or worse, an unsupportive friend. However, for the person on the path heading towards a cliff, this is simply a part of what makes life interesting. One day, our friends may try returning the dream they bought, realizing it’s time to become an accountant. To the chagrin of most involved, that day of turning around is not this one, nor will it likely be tomorrow, sometime next week, or in the next month. They are not done wasting space on Spotify.

Let the delusional continue; just close your eyes and test how good noise-canceling headphones really are. Only when it becomes insufferable should you report them to the authorities.

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Ton Thoughts began in the fall of 2014 on the dated— then and certainly now— Blogger platform, its name derived from a scene in The Office where Ryan helped Creed set up his very own blog.2 For almost ten years, with breaks in between, Ton Thoughts served as a vessel for publishing all kinds of observations and commentary— some regrettable, some impressionable, all original.

For many years, blogging was a crucial part of my identity. This project of mine began shortly after I discovered my eighth-grade history teacher was a blogger himself.3 For the first several months, Ton Thoughts was a way for me to practice my writing and to better connect with Mr. Freed, telling him through my posts that I had many more dimensions than just being an annoying and overly ambitious eighth-grader. In a way to keep me going at this, unless he thought there was nothing to contribute to, Mr. Freed would always leave a comment on these poorly written entries. Many of these comments were positively snarky, but a memorable handful were rather heartwarming. As my friends began to learn of my side gig, the blog started gaining traction. Soon, to my surprise and to the delight of my ego, colleagues and even teachers began praising some of my work. As I look back on those first years of operation, I must say those readers were likely just being too friendly or laughing at the whole thing as some kind of schtick. It was likely both; I cannot imagine anything of literary praise stemming from a middle schooler providing social commentary.

As the years went by, the viewership picked up— at a much higher pace than the blog’s quality. Imagine my joy as a 15-year-old writer learning that someone in Serbia was reading my daily musings Allegedly, there were readers as south as Guatemala, as crude as the French, and as far east as Japan. Or so I thought. It was quite the wake-up call when the readers turned into commenters, leaving messages behind about comfortable mattresses offered at foreign deals. Whether or not those were real readers remains to be definitively answered, but I am going to hedge my bets that my blog had a massive AI following before it was even a thing.

Aside from the robo-spam, there truly was a nice contingent of readers who made my blog a part of their routine. My girlfriend at the time claims to have read my blog anytime she could, particularly enjoying those posts where she served as the muse or ones focused on the brother-sister duo, Carpenters. One friend-turned-reader went out of his way to make an account impersonating Mr. Freed, leaving humorous yet uncharacteristically blunt critiques about my prose. Perhaps most wonderful was a grandmother who stumbled upon my blog from Mr. Freed’s. She always inquired privately to Mr. Freed about my whereabouts when I had taken an extended break4 and made a touching habit of comparing me, a person she had and has never met before, to her adored grandson.

Owing largely to writer’s bloc and other life responsibilities, those extended breaks occurred more often than I liked. For the span of some months, I was able to do the whole “writing daily” thing, although the quality of those posts likely suffered beyond whatever grammatical neglect was already endured. Additionally, writing everyday made blogging seem more like a chore than an actual hobby or pass time. Eventually, as I transitioned into college, I moved Ton Thoughts to the back of my priorities. By the winter of my second year, it was nothing but a former activity. Of course, I told Mr. Freed, but I never got a chance to update that grandmother on my retirement from the blogging world—nor did I tell the legion of mattress sellers in eastern Europe.

Between my last blog post and now, my life has undergone some pretty big updates. I finished college last June and am now happily employed at another university back home in Pasadena, California. Pretty major right? In working a regular 8-to-5 gig, I find myself (at least now) with more time to explore my the things I enjoy— some new, most old. Of course, it is always fun when you can find a way to make anew the bygone.

In the fall of last year, I experimented with bringing back Ton Thoughts through short writing pieces posted on Canva graphics and shared through Instagram stories.5 As in the past, the topics in this series revival had quite the range; and, in following with tradition, they were posted on a rather inconsistent schedule. There was a popular commentary on the dilapidated state of Ross stores and the disappointment of testing CDs in one’s car. To the chagrin of some, I briefly returned to political punditry, writing about the weird fascination of young men toward “alpha male” grifters and pseudo-intellectuals with podcast contracts. For what it was worth, these minimized blog postings were produced with an eye towards quality, developed from my time in actual writing classes. And, to my surprise, the writing was met with a generous amount of positive feedback. It was one form of satisfaction to be able to write again and share posts that were not singularly created for the purpose of achieving an academic grade or professional task. It is simply another form of joy to know that someone genuinely enjoyed the content I was putting out there, again.

In deciding to bring back Ton Thoughts, I had to reckon with the fact that Blogger may not be where all the cool kids dwell anymore. (Frankly, I don’t think the cool kids ever went to Blogger to begin with). While Substack has been known to be the platform for artists and writers to bank in on their products, I decided to keep my writing free to read.6 I have no writing awards of any sort, so charging a subscription fee seems a bit nasty for me to do. I'd rather you spend your hard-earned money on eggs.

To the old readers of Ton Thoughts, welcome back. For the new ones, I hope you find a way to make this a part of your weekly routine. Let’s see how far I take this. Either it’s going to be like Brooklyn Nine-Nine moving from Fox to NBC or it’s going to resemble that singular year when Punk’d got revived on Quibi.7 Frankly, I’m okay with either endings.

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