Hello! Thanks so much for signing up for my newsletter, Mental Notes. I’m THRILLED that the first edition is slime-centric. Check out my newest (and silliest) Sports Illustrated article, on Nickelodeon’s growing relationship with professional sports.
Here’s an excerpt so you get the gist:
When riffing on Nickelodeon’s deep dive of the past few years into professional sports, one verb is unfortunately inescapable: Nickify. The word itself is an important branding exercise, and it also signifies the emphasis put on IP like SpongeBob and its associated visuals. Ashley Kaplan, whose job, in part, is to oversee unscripted TV at Nickelodeon, says there is almost no reason not to use famous IP (Nick seems to air a whole lot of Paw Patrol and SpongeBob these days) to put a twist on straight sports content. It’s a “yes, and” situation, she says.
Longtime fans may remember my 2019 Ringer start on the Nick beat—a romp of a profile of Marc Summers. Here’s what I wrote about Marc today and the mess he always so reveled in playing in:
Slime is goopy and gloppy and gross, but in theory it shouldn’t permanently ruin your clothes, your hair or the floor. It’s all temporary. And it’s key to Nickelodeon’s past and present, starting in the 1980s with You Can’t Do That on Television, which was comedy sketches, not sports. But Double Dare was sports, in its own disgusting way. It was catching pies in your oversized pants and shoving your hands up giant mucus-y nostrils to snag a tiny flag. (For kids of a certain age, because they’re universally gross and obsessed with gross things the more their parents want them to be prim and proper, absolutely nothing was more captivating than the sight and feel of those nostrils.) It was allowing Marc Summers (who made a recent NFL Slimetime cameo) to bring out the doofus in you and in himself. It was the best.
I’m not always good at articulating what drew—and still draws me—to Nickelodeon, be it SpongeBob or Double Dare or Rugrats. But I think in writing for SI in 2021 on the first NFL wild-card simulcast, my colleague Conor Orr nailed it: It’s about taking yourself (and, in this case, sports) less seriously. (His column earned a mention in The Year’s Best Sportswriting.)
As a token of my appreciation for clicking on my story, please have this, too: the world’s most charming video, of Marc at What Would You Do? being forced to go face-first down the pie slide.
Thanks due to …
[Extremely Oscars speech voice] Shout-out my friend and coworker Chris Almeida—who I’m convinced was born an adult—for the thoughtful edit, and Adam Duerson for the overall guidance and a parent perspective. My colleague Craig Ellenport also works for NFL Slimetime, so he showed me the ropes on set. Ringer veteran Alan Siegel gave me sourcing help. Sarah Kelly copy edited (it’s not easy copy editing your boss, so double thank you!), and Emily Schumacher fact-checked. Our art team and Nickelodeon made the gorgeous cover image.
This newsletter is free, so share with a frenemy and get them to sign up. Happy Festivus to all who celebrate!
Yours in slime, Julie