When things go wrong

One thing you can often rely on in the world, it’s that the best laid plans will go wrong. Plans that have barely planned at all will invariably go completely awry.

When things go wrong there are two ways to react to it: to laugh or to cry. Focus on the hilarious futility or become enraged by the injustice. To reflect this, the stories this week vary in tone from the serious, to the indignant to the downright priceless: as do all our reactions to these situations in a way that is not a million miles removed from the seven stages of grief.

TL;DR

Read Less; watch Planes, Trains & Automobiles; listen to Cautionary Tales; and watch Fyre.

READ

Less is a tale which focuses on all the things that can go wrong in an individual’s life and how it can very funny…to an outsider at least.

Despite winning the Pulitzer Prize in 2018, not enough people - in my experience - have read Less by Andrew Sean Greer. It is so funny and whilst it very much opens with a lot going wrong in the protagonist’s life, but what happens thereafter is both entertaining and heartwarming.

Our eponymous main character is Arthur Less. He is a failed novelist but that does not prevent him from having absolute notions about himself. And when he receives an invitation to his ex’s wedding, this pride won’t let him say yes as that would be too much to bear, but saying no makes him feel like he is the loser in the situation. Instead he says yes to a load of invitations he would have previously sneered at and ignored: interviews, conferences, award ceremonies and even a stint teaching. Needless to say: a voyage of self-discovery and sheer embarrassment begins. It’s such a lovely reminder that whilst life might not feel like it’s going your way, you just got to keep on keeping on.

WATCH

In terms of downright priceless, remember Planes, Trains & Automobiles? It tells the story of a shambles of a trip by Steve Martin’s straight man to John Candy’s good-natured nice guy where everything that could go wrong, does indeed go wrong

This is an absolute classic - though perhaps I’m recommending it at the wrong time of year. Martin plays an uptight marketing exec travelling from New York home to Chicago for Thanksgiving - but before he even leaves the Big Apple, things start to go wrong. Candy is a sweet but annoying salesman winds up next to him on the flight. Obviously, the flight gets cancelled, the pair embark on an increasingly farcical journey where the pair’s differences bring them to blows but - as this is a John Hughes film - they invariably wind up friends.

A lovely wholesome watch for a Sunday afternoon when it starts raining again.

LISTEN

For a more straight-laced, serious side to things going wrong, listen to Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford.

He’s is a clever guy; like ‘writes about economics for the Financial Times’ clever. But he’s also really unusual in that he makes the subject interesting as his column ‘The Undercover Economist’ tackles the subject through the lens of everyday life. He also hosts a BBC Radio 4 show about statistics called More or Less (which is also not dull).

Since 2019, he has hosted podcast series Cautionary Tales which talks about all kinds of failures: human error, failed scientific breakthroughs, pointless safety features. The production even features some serious acting chops in the form of Alan Cumming and Russell Tovey.

These stories are fantastic: the first episode of the first series tells of how a bloke being in a uniform can convince most people to do anything, another focuses on the failure of Segways (did you know one guy drove his off a cliff?!) and a more recent episode is about a 1920s con man convincing people in the United States that goat testicles were the ‘secret to male virility’. I know, the American people being taken in by a snake oil salesman telling them that something that is clearly bad for them will, in fact, solve all their problems?! Who woulda thunk it??

WATCH

And finally, let’s finish up with a story that very much causes the ‘indignation’ I mentioned at the outset: Fyre on Netflix. This documentary came out on Netflix five years ago and is very much evidence of how the truth is often stranger than fiction.

At first, Billy McFarland was seen as a business wunderkind. At the tender age of just twenty two, he launched a business which, no matter how much I read up about it, I simply cannot understand - yet he raised $1.5million in investment. His success led him to start planning a new music festival in the Bahamas in 2016 with Ja Rule as his business partner.

Some of the biggest names in mid-2010s influencing shouted about their excitement for the event on their social media accounts - but the likes of Kendall Jenner and Bella Hadid failed to mentioned that they had been paid to get so excited. (Ah, the heady days of pre-’ad’ Instagram)

But when the festival-goers arrived at the event, it transpired there were a few issues. With security, with food, with sanitation, transport, logistics, accommodation etc etc. Basically everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. And everyone there had a smartphone and social media accounts so the rest of the world learned about the fiasco in real time.

If you didn’t watch this at the time of release (it’s appearance on the platform came with huge fanfare so I’m sure the majority of folks have seen it), I would highly recommend it. Especially as McFarland is apparently due to stage Fyre Festival II in June 2025 - though the local authority (where it’s supposedly happening) has recently stated they haven’t issued any licences. So y’know, maybe save your hard-earned pennies…