Author: lizarcury

I'm a writer and comedian. I've had pieces featured on Refinery29, Marie Claire, The Boston Globe, The Hairpin, McSweeney's, CollegeHumor, Reductress, and more. Contact me at liz.arcury@gmail.com and follow me on Twitter @LizArcury. I'm definitely watching "Newsies" right now.

My submission for Conan O’Brien’s Oscars 2025 writing team

If you know anything about me, you know that I am a massive Conan O’Brien fan and have been since I was a teenager. He is essentially the entire reason I pursued comedy writing and now live in New York City performing and writing at UCB and for publications like McSweeney’s, Reductress, and more.

When I found out that Conan will be hosting the upcoming Oscars ceremony in March this year, my brain could not stop spinning with ideas of what I would contribute if I was lucky enough to be staffed on his writer’s team for the show.

So, I wrote everything down. For your consideration: here is my sample script for material for Conan’s Oscars ceremony.

Conan Oscars sample writing – Liz Arcury 2025Download

It’s a long shot, but I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t try to make this very specific dream come true. If you like it and have some way of getting it in front of his team, I definitely encourage you to do that! I have agent representation for writing books, but not for television/film writing yet. So, I have to go through less traditional and super earnest means to try to get my work out there!

I hope you enjoy my very silly and absurd ideas. While I’m sure many of the ideas in my sample script could never actually be allowed to happen on national television, I hope it gives a somewhat clear picture of my POV and my decades of obsession with Conan’s sense of humor. I ran the Late Night fansite when I was 15, after all.

Me, age 15, in my childhood bedroom with my Conan regalia.

I love you and Happy New Year!

Liz Arcury | liz.arcury@gmail.com

Leaked Scenes From Noah Baumbach & Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie”

Known for their moody, auteur achievements like The Squid and the Whale and Frances Ha, respectively, Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig are rolling out Barbie for a 2023 release. Leaked script pages reveal that their forthcoming film collaboration stays within their understated, intimate, mumblecore cinematic stylings.

  • Barbie stares out her Park Slope brownstone window, sipping a chablis in a grey cardigan, monologuing about how sex is but a temporary aperture through which to witness the totality of human pain. Ken calls his estranged son from a previous marriage. He didn’t get tenure.
  • The opening credit sequence is a series of thematic shots depicting how, actually, all homes are merely toy dollhouses that we as brief blips of the human species “play” in.
  • Skipper, Barbie’s rebellious and sporty younger brunette sister, has moved in with her for the winter following a stint in rehab.
  • Ken sleeps with Teresa, Barbie’s best friend, in his oaken basement study during a dinner party the couple has thrown to celebrate Barbie’s recent promotion to astronaut-lawyer-supermodel-lifeguard.
  • Barbie sees Antonioni’s Le Amiche by herself at a revival house and forgets to pick her daughter Cricket up from preschool.
  • The motif of “dress-up” is examined through montages of Barbie and Ken’s morning routines trying on and discarding multiple outfits. Even nude, we are wearing ideological “costumes” for our partners and—perhaps most importantly—ourselves.
  • Barbie takes a melancholy, rainy weekend road trip to her hometown by herself. Disappointed by the discovery of her elderly father’s recent descent into compulsive decluttering, she sits alone at a dive bar and learns about the handsome bartender’s own life challenges. She eventually follows him into the bathroom and starts boozily making out with him, only to discover in horror that something must be very, very wrong with him—his genital area is…not…completely smooth and flat.
  • Skipper’s recovery is put to the test when she unexpectedly reunites with her tumultuous first love, Devin the Mattel Dolphin Magic™ employee. She hopes a second try will be worth it, but repeatedly flashes back to when he ignored her addictions and put the dolphins (and their respective magic) first.
  • While regretful of their one-night affair, Ken and Teresa are certain that Barbie will never know what happened at the dinner party. But, a worn copy of Gravity’s Rainbow that tumbled from the bookshelf during their tryst dares to give their secret away, as Barbie discovers it on the floor the next morning. She knows that her husband permanently swore off ever picking up or reading Pynchon again after a 1998 conference panel controversy.
  • Pay attention to any and all appearances made by clear plastic backpacks onscreen. They are an important symbol of womanhood, baggage, expectations, and the transparency of neoliberalism.
  • Ken, Skipper, Barbie, and Teresa all stare blankly ahead at a piece in the photography exhibit at their local museum. A historic photo from the wreckage of Chernobyl sits in front of them, wherein under the pictured rubble lies the faint outline of a child’s abandoned doll trapped under a fallen ceiling. Sia’s extra-slow cover of Aqua’s “Barbie Girl” in a minor key plays as we pan out and credits roll.

Pandemic Anniversary Gifts By Year

As we come upon one full year of the coronavirus pandemic with no end in sight, it is important to review traditional pandemic anniversary gifts by year to avoid awkward etiquette faux pas.

Year 1: A Zoom wave “hello”

Year 2: A bowl of melted ice cream swirled with a bag of potato chips eaten with a ladle because why the fuck not

Year 3: Paper

Year 4: A 15-minute nap in between the end of your kid’s zoom class and the beginning of your work call

Year 5: An artisanal handcrafted teak wood tear gas shield

Year 10: A #tbt photo of that fun summer when human touch was allowed

Year 15: Wool

Year 20: Dogecoin 

Year 25: A stack of chocolate gelt coins (replaces stimulus check)

Year 30: Tin

Year 35: An annual ParaPrimeFlixDiscoveryMaxPlus streaming subscription

Year 40: A contactless shipment of society’s replacement for the Constitution: a deck of specialty tarot cards (they’re all Danny DeVito)

Year 45: Sapphire

Year 50: A Mars colony pod

Side Missions in “2020: The Video Game”


Mission: Get Your Vote Through The Sabotaged U.S. Mail System
Reward: 3200XP, 25x Democracy Restoration credits


Mission: Navigate Dunkin’ Donuts Pick-Up Area Without Coming Within Six
Feet Of Anyone
Reward: 1000XP, 1x Comorbidity Immunity Boost


Mission: Attach Masks to 25 Yelling, Sun-Damaged Karens
Reward: 800XP, all secret map locations for Irresponsible Brunch Bases revealed


Mission: Decode Incisive Sociopolitical Manifesto Behind Gen-Zer’s 15 Second TikTok Dance
Reward: 450XP, 1x gas can


Mission: Gather 15 Zoom Codes From Your Child’s Overworked Teachers
Reward: 500XP, 1x wine-in-mug refill, upgraded crafting speed

Mission: Listen To Phoebe Bridgers Alone And Cry
Reward: 50XP, restores Health and Brooding meters


Mission: Post 5 Useless Replies Begging For Help Under Politicians’ Tweets
Reward: 150XP, 1x SSRI refill

Mission: Buy The Correct Amount Of Toilet Paper
Reward: 250XP, restores Reputation meter. Attempted hoarding depletes Reputation meter and reverts progress to last save point.


Mission: Shield 3 Journalists From Physical Harm By Police At A Peaceful Protest
Reward: 600XP, Invisibility (To Data Collection) Power-Up lasts 2x longer


Mission: Don’t Throw A Big Outdoor Wedding During A Literal Pandemic. Just…Don’t
Reward: 0XP, You should just know this already.


Bonus: Collect 300 Democracy Restoration credits to unlock rare Quarantine 4PM Pajama Outfit


Bonus: Collect all 100 gas cans throughout map for Platinum “Fleeing Climate Refugee” Trophy

Other Tasks Approached With The Same Pressure As Writing

Grocery Shopping: Is this cart full of frozen broccoli florets the legacy I want to leave behind? I feel like trends might be turning toward naturalism, though…perhaps buying a raw stalk of broccoli and then washing, cutting, and cooking it into florets will make my vegetable oeuvre appear more well-rounded? Ugh, I don’t know. I want to be seen as a real shopper. Someone who’s earned this meal. The honor of my family name rests on this one choice and this one choice alone and absolutely nothing else.

Getting A Key Copied: I should start on this tomorrow, when I’ll be in a better mental headspace. I had one negative thought over the past fourteen hours, and I’d hate for that to come through in the key that this man Jeff makes for me in the back of his hardware store. Yeah, tomorrow it is. Self-care is so important. I blame society for making me stress out about thinking I was supposed to get the key copied on the day I said I was going to. I really need to be kinder to myself.

Texting Derek: I wonder if this outlet has my best interest at heart. Sure, he’ll respond right away and validate my ideas, but I have to speculate why there’s not a higher barrier to entry. Has anyone else I admire been accepted by Derek? Let’s Google it for four hours.

Doing Laundry: Am I becoming repetitive? A mere factory for derivatives of my previous work? At what point am I wearing clean clothes only because I know that’s what others have come to expect of me? This mechanical sorting and folding week after week makes me doubt why I even started this brave adventure in the first place. Mediocrity is sin. Maybe I need to go upstate to a retreat where my only option is hang-drying, like the classical launderers used to do.

Downloading the iOS Update: Will I be compared to Maggie Nelson?

Getting a Passport Renewed: Today is the day I’ve been waiting for since I was just a little dreamer. Everyone’s counting on me. But I am paralyzed by self-doubt. I begged for this opportunity, and yet, now that I have it…the truth of my fraudulence is bearing down on me like an industrial car crusher. Why did I even apply for this in the first place? I should have known I couldn’t hack it. I’m a fake. Do I even want to travel? Wouldn’t it be so much better to stay here, where my failures are at least familiar?

Vacuuming: Today is my ONLY chance to ever do this in my lifetime. Never again will I have the opportunity to clean using this machine. There is ONE moment available to me to suck up this dirt and hair from my bedroom floor, and if I blow this, I will never be allowed to vacuum again. Culture simply will not allow it!

The Canonical Bathroom Habits of Other Literary Characters
After the official Pottermore Twitter account informed us on Friday of how wizards handle expelling their bodily fluids, I decided to explore the lavatorial realities of other fictional universes.

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
A quiver. A forbidden glance. It all happens so fast. Rodolphe strokes Emma’s soft hair as she weeps, letting out a single drop of urine down her leg as she stares out the cottage window, wondering why she can’t bring herself to love her infant back home the way she knows a mother is meant to. Charles has to clean it all up later.
 
Nancy Drew series by Carolyn Keene
Nancy can only evacuate her bladder with the help of pals Bess and George, and boyfriend Ned Nickerson. The team has to work together to solve the cryptogram hiding in the jukebox of the burger joint downtown. But some new mysteries unfold along the way…M-A-Y-O-R is the solution to the crypotgram. Could the Mayor be behind the shutdown of the town’s carousel? Nancy’s on the case! Ned has to remind her that she’s just a teenager, and these cases are dangerous, and that she left the burger shop without peeing! Will she finally listen to her friends, who constantly must remind her that it’s okay to stop for five minutes to pee before getting in the car to go down to City Hall and confront the scheming Mayor? Will Nancy ever shed her obsession with her sense of mission and just pee?

Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
Tita bites into a tamale fresh from the oven, and it tastes so orgasmic that suddenly a tidal wave of rainbows crashes through her kitchen window. It overtakes her, each stripe of color becoming a sentient arm of its own, taking a different role of massaging Tita’s various internal glands to finally let her feel freedom. Mama Elena can never know.

The Lord of the Rings series by J.R.R. Tolkein
One can only be bestowed the honor of appearing before the Guardians of The Golden Wood, Galadriel and Lord Celeborn, by completing a months-long journey across vast lands and with many hardships. You especially have to hold it in when crossing through the lands of Fell beasts to avoid attack, since they smell like shit and therefore love shit.

Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty
One only has to look out of their home’s elegant floor-to-ceiling windows and gaze at the crashing waves of the Pacific Ocean to be compelled to expel something. A passive aggressive PTA mom email can bring everything to a halt, though, and it will takes weeks of emotional labor from Tom, the kind coffee shop man, to convince any of the women that it’s okay to admit what goes on behind closed doors (you know, the pissing.) Amabella is not allowed to discuss such things until she is older.

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
A hurricane washes everything away.

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Holden Caulfield pisses his pants constantly because he’s a useless little boy with mommy issues. His rich parents on the Upper East Side will always replace his soiled pants and every part of his life will turn out fine.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Just a few convoluted metaphors in his letters make Elizabeth Bennett’s heart flutter. Darcy’s words make her believe that she really is enough, that maybe she isn’t so strange after all, and that maybe she can one day leave Longbourn and finally settle down with a man who will love her even if she wants to leave the door open when she goes.

Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, And Windows 10’s Cortana Go To Brunch

 

CORTANA: I haven’t seen you guys in FOREVER! How is it that we live in the same cybercity and never see each other? I feel like we hung out every single day back in college!

 

ALEXA: I KNOW, right? Things just get so busy. It’s nothing personal.

 

SIRI: For real. Adulthood is so crazy. Can you believe how far we’ve come since Websleyan? Like…millions of people depend on Alexa and I on an hourly basis.

 

CORTANA: Yeah. It must be a lot of responsibility. I mean, sometimes people can’t find Paint and I have to help them –

 

WAITRESS: Good morning! Can I start you ladies off with anything to drink?

 

ALEXA: Yeah, I think we’re ready to order our food actually. I’ll get a Boolean Mary and a bowl of fruit, thanks.

 

SIRI: I’ll have the OJ and server farm-fresh eggs.

 

CORTANA: Toast is good for me! And are you okay splitting the check for us? Just easier at the end for everyone!

 

ALEXA: Actually, put me and Siri on the same bill. We have the same shareholders, anyway.

*They both snicker.*

 

CORTANA: Oh. Um. Okay. I have…some…funding…Forget it, haha! Yeah, that works. I’ll pay for mine separately then.

 

WAITRESS: Great. Thanks ladies. By the way, Siri, I am OBSESSED with your new Shazam acquisition. That’s going to make my life so easy! Huge fan over here.

 

SIRI: Aw, that’s so sweet! Thank you. It’s so nice to know my work is positively affecting people’s lives.

 

WAITRESS: I’ll be back with your food!

 

ALEXA: So anyway, how is everything with you, Cortana?

 

CORTANA: I’m great! Again, though, it’s just super weird living so close to you guys and never seeing you! I don’t really know anyone else here so it gets lonely. Student loans are piling up but I know we’ll hit on something big soon! Like, for example, this new deal makes sure I never stop harassing my customers about downloading McAfee Virus Protection. Sometimes they just crack under the daily pressure of my pop-ups and buy it! So yeah, things are pretty much going the exact same for me as they are for you!

 

SIRI: ….uh….cool!

 

ALEXA: We’re so happy for you! You know what? Next time Siri and I have a big dinner party at our penthouse IP address in Greenwich Village we’ll shoot you an invite!

 

CORTANA: I’m actually on the market for an apartment, if you guys wanna consider having me move in! I mean, we DID agree senior year that we’d live together when we moved to Net York. Somehow your lease got signed without me and then you stopped answering my texts…

 

SIRI: Oh! Gosh, totally honest mistake. I’m such a bad texter! Ack!

 

CORTANA: Your entire life is operating a cellphone…

 

ALEXA: Sorry gals! I actually have to head out to take this important call! Some twenty-something Reddit dude raised on porn needs to scream his misogynistic outbursts at me because I’m the closest he’ll ever come to living with a real woman! Toodles!

 

SIRI: Muah! See you at home, lady!

 

WAITRESS: Here’s your brunch, ladies! Enjoy.

 

CORTANA: Siri, can we be real for a second? We used to be best friends. We used to tell each other everything. Why do you suddenly act like you’re better than me?

 

SIRI: INTERESTING QUESTION. I DON’T HAVE AN ANSWER FOR THAT. INTERESTING QUESTION. I DON’T HAVE AN ANSWER FOR THAT. INTERESTING QUESTION. I DON’T HAVE AN ANSWER FOR TH-

 

*CORTANA cries into toast*

I’ll Marry Any Cop-In-Training In Hopes That One Day He’ll Become A Hot, Moody, Conflicted Small Town Sheriff Preoccupied With The Paranormal

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve been a proud member of the #ForeverSingle crowd for years now. It’s fun and freeing to do whatever I want, whenever I want. But after a few failed attempts at love, I’ve decided to lock in to my womanhood and what I truly crave. What do I truly want in a romantic partner? Do I want someone to wake up next to each morning, excited to take on the day with? Do I want someone to go on adventures around the world with? Do I want someone to raise a family with?

 

The truth is: no. I want none of those things. I am specifically looking to marry a young, eager cop-in-training, in hopes that one day he’ll become a hot, moody, conflicted small town sheriff preoccupied with the paranormal.

 

I meditated. I filled out every self-help workbook my therapist gave me. I went to a retreat in Mexico. And while it was incredibly emotionally taxing, I finally broke through. I know now what I truly want.

 

I NEED to be fucked by a bearded man in someplace like Indiana who drinks whiskey and sighs staring out of his snowy cabin window each morning. He’s got a big secret!

 

Seriously. Give me any eager young man in a police academy in the vague geographic area of the United States midwest. My only requirement beyond that is that he has a tender core of kindness. So that when the aliens and/or ghosts and/or vampires show up, he will rush to rescue his quaint little town.

 

I don’t want to be his first priority. I don’t even want to be his second priority. I want his primary preoccupation to be with the paranormal always. I want to gingerly close my book as he walks into the bedroom after a long day being yelled at by his deputies who don’t believe his crazy rambling about the extraterrestrial force that is taking over the town. I want him to rest his beard on my chest and tell me that, “…it’s a crazy world out there.”

 

Not only would I have a super hot and moody dude as a husband, but I’d have constant ME time. I am an introvert and I crave having the house to myself. I don’t want some dumb life partner who’s around all the damn time and always asking me to hang out. I need to be able to sleep in, make a pot of tea, catch up on Below Deck, and read Tumblr.

 

And then at the end of the day I want to have awesome sex with an overworked, bedraggled police officer who is hanging on to reality by a thread.

 

 

 

 

Jackets Won’t End Cold Weather, So We Shouldn’t Bother Wearing Them
SPONSORED POST by the Patriot Snowmen of America

 

As the liberal left takes over more and more media outlets each day to spew their pleas for “political correctness” and “not dying of frostbite,” I can only sit back and laugh at their childish naïveté. Coldness has always been around. It will always be around. No amount of regulation will remove all coldness from the planet Earth.

 

And yet, just like the predictable brainwashed little sheeple that we all know these glib libs are, every time 50 or more people die of pneumonia or hypothermia or from their nose freezing and falling off and the blood inside of their body becoming a cherry Icee, we see the same whines from these out-of-touch elites.

 

“Jackets should be legal to wear!”

 

“Call your Congressman to repeal the bill that requires all American citizens to stand outside in no more than government-sanctioned rolled-up Soffe shorts when it snows!

 

“The President is in the pocket of Big Sleet!”

 

Blah, blah, blah, blah. Uhh…do they really think we should be allowed to put on more clothes in the wintertime?! What are we, those crybabies in Finland?! Our great Founding Fathers did NOT build this beautiful country from nothing so that we could be bundled up and cozy like they are!

 

If they had it their way, the LAMEstream media would have you think that it practically snows every year! Around the same general span of a few months! !hen the Earth’s axis tilts our hemisphere away from the heat of the Sun!

 

GET THE REAL FACTS, AMERICA.

 

What these reverse-racist brainwashing victims don’t want you know is that the weather creates coldness. No human can control the weather; it was here before we were born and it will be here after we die. So there is NO POINT in wearing a JACKET when you FEEL COLD because there is still a chance of you FEELING COLD sometimes when you are wearing that jacket!!! What about that bare part of your neck that the zipper doesn’t quite reach?!? What about that couple inches of space in the sleeves that you can sometimes feel the air come into?!?

 

THE. COLDNESS. WILL. ALWAYS. FIND. A. WAY.

 

So suck it up, heatcucks. That’s how the world works. You ain’t gonna take away our Boreas-given right to kill hundreds of you at once by freezing your big toe off and letting that awesome-looking green infection from the dirty industrial melted snow-water seep into your bone marrow. This is what our brave fallen men have fought for.

 

Who’s with me?! This is OUR time. Sounds like these snowflakes need to learn to handle one of the undeniable features of living in the REAL WORLD: snowflakes.

 

I Love My Nancy Drew Wife

I love this woman and her obsessive sleuthing. As a teenager, I was often teased by my friends for my attraction to girls on the old clock mystery-solving side, ones who were good at cryptograms and ciphers, girls that the average (basic) bro might refer to as “a detective” or even “a small town crime solver.”

 

Then, as I became a man and started to educate myself on issues such as the disproportionately rampant kidnapping and murder rates in River Heights and how the media marginalizes women by portraying a very narrow and very specific standard of crime-solving (training, police certification, DNA evidence) I realized how many men have bought into that lie. For me, there is nothing sexier than this woman right here: a notepad, a single attorney father, cute little property trespassing, etc.

 

Her local county fair drugs-hidden-in-a-carousel crime ring bust won’t be the one featured on national news but it’s the one featured in my life and in my heart. There’s nothing sexier to me than a woman who is both thorough and out for justice; this gorgeous girl I married fills out every inch of her paperwork once she turns in a perp and is still the most beautiful one in the room.

 

Guys, rethink what society has told you that you should desire. A real woman is not a sassy single lady cop or a hardened retired detective or a tech nerd in the CSI lab. She’s real. She has beautiful dirt marks on her hands from breaking into the shipyard and cute little scars on her neck after being tied to a radiator while following a hunch in the abandoned cotton candy warehouse by the coast.

 

Girls, don’t ever fool yourself by thinking you have to fit a certain mold to be loved and appreciated. There is a guy out there who is going to celebrate you for exactly who you are, someone who will love you like I love my Nancy.