Help me help you

If you delete this email, you will be cursed for the next 17 years.

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Remember pre-beard Ted Cruz? No one did body horror like pre-beard Ted Cruz. The beautiful waxen sheen, the 30 percent too much skin no matter where you looked—I could not have dreamed up a more distressing subject if I tried. I’m not really going anywhere with this; I just think it’s nice to remember the good times.

Speaking of good times, there's lots to look forward to here in the extended Trashberg universe. Next week, I’m hoping to finally have for you an investigation that’s been a long time coming and that has forced me to become intimately familiar with every photograph that Lena Dunham has ever posted online. But this I do happily for you, dear reader.

There are plenty more white whales out there, though, and this is where you come in. A few stories in particular have eluded me for any number of reasons, and if anyone reading this knows the slightest about any of them, I urge you to email me at trashberg@substack.com.

• Remember when one of Rand Paul’s neighbors beat him up? It was one of the best stories in years. Unfortunately, that neighbor has refused to talk thus far. Do you know him? Because I sure wish I did.

• Teens! There’s millions of ’em, but a somewhat smaller number who are extremely online. Are you an extremely online teen? Do you know an extremely online teen? I’d like to build a floating panel of extremely online teens to occasionally consult about a variety of topics. Send me an email with the subject line “cool teens” if you think you can help.

• As long as we’re on the subject of teens, a few years ago, a teen baked her grandfather’s ashes into some cookies and fed them to her friends at school. Do you know one of the kids who ate grandpa? I’ve got some questions for them.

• Elon Musk, perhaps one of the least charismatic people on Earth, is going to be hosting SNL this weekend. I genuinely cannot wait. I also desperately want a complete rundown of every single second he spends back stage, as well as everything about his interactions with the writers. Surely someone out there is in a position to help me.

• Are we sure 9/11 happened? Reality is what we make it. Do you know something I don’t? Get in touch.

Of course, if you have something unrelated to any of these that you think deserves a look, feel free to shoot me an email at trashberg@substack.com, too. No tip too stupid—that’s the Trashberg motto.

Finally, when this whole thing got started, I pledged to put my share of each month’s subscriber revenue toward a good cause. A few weeks ago, paid subscribers voted to send this month’s money (which included all yearly subscriptions purchased to date, so we had quite a bit more to work with) to two great organizations: Trans Lifeline and the National Network of Abortion Funds. Each group received $3,368, and all of it was made possible by the wonderful miscreants who pay to stare at 200-year-old senators’ mouths.

And with that, I bid you all a farewell. We’ll be back to our regularly scheduled programming next week. In the meantime, you can tide yourself over with a little trip down memory lane.