forbiddencomma

Perhaps nobody can accurately predict who would be a good romantic partner. That’s sort of why dating is tough, it turns out. But at least we can hazard some educated guesses on who would be the opposite. For instance, people with more felony convictions than years of employment. That’s probably not someone who immediately projects the idea of a stable relationship. And here’s a freebie for the…

There’s two things you MAGA ex-voters love about Trump: that he kicks ass and that he’s entirely evil, just like how you perceive yourselves. And I heartily concede to you the evil part. He’s twice-divorced and constantly cheats on Melania as he did all his prior ex-wives. He’s legendary for always stiffing his contractors and lawyers, not because he’s broke but just on the general principles of…

“Thank God you’re here!” When people start talking about the loneliness epidemic, they usually start by talking about smartphones and social media. They’ll talk about doomscrolling as a poor substitute for in-person socialization, about how the TikTok trend of shaming creepy men, or even men being in the same gym as women, led men to stop hitting on women IRL. This segues into the loss of third…

Dave Portnoy, the boss of conservative sports outlet Barstool Sports, Trump enthusiast, and firm dissident against the belief in verbal restraint, a few weeks ago called for the murder of Raiders head coach Pete Carroll after their 24-17 loss to the Denver Broncos. His long tirade across multiple social media posts also called for arrests or investigations regarding the Raiders and the entire NFL…

If all you know is social media circa 2025, then there is no musical act more washed than Katy Perry. The once-dominant star, whose Teenage Dream magnum opus remains to pop what Ok Computer or Yankee Hotel Foxtrot mean to yacht rock, these days seems more meme than artist. Her latest album, in which she tried and failed to recapture the energy of Teenage Dream by working with none other than the…

A few months back, I posted the following prediction: Let me put it another way. Trump could become the biggest confiscator of guns in American history, and dudes with Punisher and Don’t Tread On Me stickers on their pickup trucks will cheer him on. How? By framing it as an owning of the libs, or some other disfavored out-group. “Because of how solemn and holy the Second Amendment is to the…

“I am here for a fever.” The old man’s voice trembled with a clipped Germanic accent. He wasn’t just old, he was ancient; yet his long, sunken face still gleamed with intelligence and spirit. I looked at the carefully handwritten page with his all his medications and recent health issues, including his hospitalization a couple weeks ago for the same issue. The wrinkled yet precisely folded…

Imagine a loyal MAGA foot soldier like Hawley, above, or Mike Lee or Pete Navarro tweeting the following: “Starting TODAY, due to their stubborn resistance to becoming the 51st state, all Canadian citizens caught within USA borders may legally be caught, cooked, and served as cocktail wieners due to Daddy For Life’s newest executive order. Take THAT, libs!” There are roughly two types of…

The next move of the loose alliance of autocratic states couldn’t be more obvious if it were broadcast on all of MAGA-aligned social media sites simultaneously. After Trump’s widely anticipated betrayal of Ukraine came less than a month after his inauguration, Putin’s confederates in China, North Korea, Iran, and Venezuela know they need to get while the getting’s good. The situation remains…

I’ve been on a real pop-music bender for the last couple years and… look, I don’t always know where my obsessions come from. For a while I was obsessed with CGI despite having absolutely nothing to do with the movie industry. But seriously, CGI is usually so much worse these days than in 2009’s Avatar… and people just let them get away with it. Why? But I’ve been into this music even before the…

There is something odd about America that it is defined by existential battles arriving roughly every eighty years, or roughly every four generations, starting with its birth in 1776. The next one arrived at 1861, the one after that in 1941. We were due for ours in 2021. Somehow, due to a combination of the pandemic, Trump’s campaign strategy at that time, and general weariness of weekly if not…

So I was writing this book and wanted to give the main character a cool job, but not one of the obvious cool jobs like police detective, surgeon, etc. I looked up and Aaron Judge was on the TV, so “works marketing for the Yankees” jumped out at me. And I’m not even a baseball guy. But working the front office of your favorite team is any guy’s dream job, right? So I thought it’d be cool to have…

The following Reddit post broke the internet last week. Everyone, and I mean everyone, had a hot take on this. Misogynists declared that this is why women are terrible. Feminists replied it should’ve been obvious what she meant, and that men are terrible. But most of all, this post was a body blow to men who’d been sold the vision that there are two completely distinct types of guys: the ones…

Back in the hazily-remembered pre-pandemic days of December 2018, a curious hit emerged from a then-unknown rapper called Lil Nas X. It quickly became something you heard everywhere back then, from the radio to bars and clubs to children’s parties: Old Time Road. It was quite the spectacle nobody knew exactly how to classify. Here was a flamboyantly gay, Black rapper producing something that…

He jerked back, startled, as the file flashed on his screen. MCMURRY, SARAH. DOB 06/09/94. Wow. A name he hadn’t seen in… how many years? Barry clicked. University of Michigan, class of ’16, graduate in communications. Wow. This is really her. Sarah. Unbelievable. What were the odds? He scrolled down as memories of her floated into his mind. Sarah. Sarah McMurry. From college. How long ago…

programming note: this is part of a series of three unrelated mini-posts, the topmost of which is always guaranteed not to be about politics. promise! There’s something men just don’t grasp about growing up female that needs to be talked about more. No, not just talked about more. Needs to be downright pervasive. This topic needs to be as onerous and in-your-face and with as many ads/PSAs as…

NeverTrump writer Nick Cataggio has a cottage industry of trying to psychoanalyze why his former comrades on the right betrayed principle in the service of Donald Trump. One of his central themes is this question: are they just mouthing MAGA platitudes for cynical ends such as their political careers, or are they true converts no less fanatical than your typical zealot camping out for days for a…