060: Maple Suggests Fferins, etc.
An impressive gnocchi and more
~I'm Maple, I’m currently in Park Slope, Brooklyn 🫶 and this is a weekly deal where my friends and I suggest all kinds of things you should try~
Good morning. I shot another spec commercial. :)
Spec commercials, for all who aren’t familiar, are fake commercials, but made with all the bells and whistles of a real commercial — minus the ad agency sitting around. We make specs to showcase what we can do so we can get hired to do it for real.
Other commercials I directed this year you can watch here (VRBO) and here (Visit Folly Beach).
This one was a spec for Pillsbury, and it’s the commercial to round out my directing reel. After 10 years in post-production, it’s fun to switch it up. I’m proud. I’m excited. This past year has been the year of just doing the dang thing. It’s empowering to be able to.
I’ll share the finished spot asap. Give me like a month for post. For now, this week’s suggestions are:
1. Cuples Tea. BEAUTIFUL TEA.
2. The editing services of my very talented friend, Stephanie Kelly!! After about ten years editing at Dutton (an imprint at Penguin Random House), she went freelance and no Maple Suggests essay has been published without first crossing her desk. Whenever I get back the “SK Edit” version, I feel something like butterflies because I know her notes are going to be good and the next iteration of my essay is going to be better.
I don’t know how many of you readers are writers yourselves or have friends who are writers, but if you or anyone you know is ever in need of someone to spit shine some words, Stephanie is your girl. Was inspired to rec her this week since I’m in the midst of cleaning up my next essay via her notes (I’m sending out the polished version on Sunday).
And I can’t end this rec without mentioning Stephanie’s a writer, too. That said:
3. Please Buy This Mirror From Me. A short Stephanie wrote that made me laughhhh.
4. Fferins. I live in a neighborhood with a lot of young families and I’m slowly but surely ID’ing the businesses that cater to Parents™. Fferins is a candy shop. The owner is Welsh and imports a bunch of cool, cute candies I’d never heard of, but they’ve also got really silly stuff like a massive gummy snake for $20 which looks way more impressive in real life than it does in the picture on their site.
I am not a parent of course, nor a candy-lover, really — but will be frequenting Fferins because they also import my favorite chips, and now I can buy them anytime I want, right across the street!! Why don’t more places sell Walkers?! Lays are not the same!
5. The gnocchi at Provini. Some of my commercial crew and I had a wrap dinner here and the place is perfect vibes, plus the gnocchi was out of this world. Now, I will say I was also high on life at this dinner because we were done and the footage was beautiful and we were all in celebration mode, but…
Until next time,
xo Mapes