You know how it is when you're starting a new job. There are new rules and systems to figure out, a new overall cadence and a bunch of new people, and some number of other, stranger, newer things specific to that workplace that you can't really know about going in. When I was hired at the old site back in 2017, I had been through a couple of previous staff writing jobs and a great many recurrent freelance jobs and more get-me-over bullshit office gigs than I care to remember, and while I believed that would prepare me somewhat for the new job—and it did, sort of—I knew there would be stuff that I did not know how to do.
That was years ago now, and I remember worrying at the time that I was too old for it. I don't know that I have ever felt it more acutely than I did during my first appearance on the old podcast, where I joined Drew and Tim Marchman for a spirited round of The Price Is Right: Williams-Sonoma Edition. All those jobs I'd had and lost, the content management systems and corporate cultures I'd sort of figured out, the various flavors of shitty media ownership I'd endured—none of that was any help to me when I was tasked with guessing the price of a champagne saber from that year's catalog. I don't remember how wrong I was with my guess, but I do remember that I have seldom been more wrong about anything.
We have returned to the game many times since, and while I wouldn't say I have felt like I was getting any better at it, it might be that reading Drew's annual Hater's Guide to the Williams-Sonoma Catalog has finally made some kind of positive impact on my brain. Not just in terms of brand awareness about the extremely obnoxious and design-y SMEG line of products, either. After missing last year due to a timing hiccup, we brought back the Williams-Sonoma Price Is Right gambit for this, our last podcast of 2024, and I did kind of bizarrely well.
I don't know how to feel about this. As Drew admits early in the episode, his god-given Connecticut Instincts and NESCAC finishing make him uniquely well-suited for extended exposure to Williams-Sonoma stuff. I do not have these advantages, but it may be that, as I get older/dumber/worse, guessing the price of gussied-up rice cookers—this one claims to be "carbohydrate-reducing," thanks in part to a "diamond infusion"—and haute frozen appetizers has started to feel more comfortable, and even somewhat natural.
I suspect that this is more or less how HAL the computer felt while being turned off in 2001, but the results speak for themselves. The fun of this of course has more to do with me being wrong than being right, and more than that to do with the giddy and thrilling weirdness with which the Williams-Sonoma catalog does what it does. And while I am happy to report that I still managed to get a bunch of stuff very wrong—I have accepted that I will never have any real idea what a fancy pizza oven will cost, let alone one with Dual Cooking Zones—the real draw remains as powerful and as present as ever.
We've got Williams-Sonoma Elevating The S'more, and using the term "flavor profile" to describe the chocolate-y notes in hot chocolate, and charging fully twice as much for a professional grade stainless steel corkscrew as I would have imagined possible. The phrase "drink rimmer" is in there, and so is a "smoke box" for your home cocktails. There are some digressions in there, because you cannot simply guess the prices of frozen latkes (for caviar, darling) or stare down the SMEG product line for an hour without blinking. But for the most part, this is us playing our little game and laughing a lot. Getting better at it isn't really the point. As with everything else to do with the season, it's about how you relax into it, and learning to feel at home there.
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