You Don't Have Time to Read "The New Yorker"

It’s really heartbreaking how impossible it seems to create sustainable peace. Everyone knows the Americans are pissed off at Assad for killing his people in Syria. But he’s also a secular leader who opposes fundamentalist groups. If he vacates with no strategy in place behind him, it’ll be a one-way ticket to Isis-ville, population all of us poor fucks. But if he keeps fighting his rebels so violently, the Isis types will be even more galvanized. Or he’ll just keep killing people. What to do? That’s what John Kerry and the Saudi king and the Iranian prime minister have to figure out.

What else to know about John Kerry? He’s rich and old-school preppy, it’s true, and he has a ton of homes, but he sounds like a great fucking guy and really tried hard to get everyone’s head out of their asses about Vietnam and he really believes HARD in the power of building relationships and relating to other people – like Assad. Did we know that Assad was a London-educated eye doctor before he started killing people? Just goes to show – none of us are immune to doing weird stuff if we’re put in these crazy paranoiogenic power positions.

This guy makes “foldscopes” that you can use anywhere to look at microbes without all that fussy expensive equipment. Great!

Some people are a little skeptical about this actually having an impact on science in the developing world. “So you can see the parasites in your blood,” they scoff. “So what?” It’s part of a larger discussion about really hype non-profits like One Laptop Per Child that get all excited about science and technology available to everyone, but then it ends up not being that useful (case in point: it turns out that for most children, having a laptop introduced into their learning curriculum doesn’t really change their skills – but I can GUARANTEE it makes them better at writing silly blogs about magazines). Some people are even worried that if kids don’t see any germs with their foldscopes, they’ll mistakenly think something is squeaky clean, when in fact it’s just that the ‘scope can only view things over 2 microns large.

OK, fine, but isn’t it still really cool to have a cheap microscope so you can look at stuff?

Do we have a way to protect vocal atheists under asylum in this country, the way we would protect anyone persecuted for their religious beliefs? I hate to be an atheist-activist but it would be really despicable if we didn’t. A “hit-list” of bloggers critical of fundamentalist Islam and encouraging of rational thought are being slaughtered and attempted-slaughtered by people who might be linked to ISIS or Al Qaeda or a host of smaller groups in Bangladesh. And in a few instances the cops aren’t doing anything about it. In fact, it sounds like anyone running for political office is terrified of not cracking down at least a little bit on people who are Islam-critical because they’re so scared of the popular opinion being against them.

Guys, come on. I’ve long considered myself an Apatheist (i.e. someone who just doesn’t care if there’s a god or not) and though I have recently gotten into an “it’s complicated” friends-with-benefits are-they-or-aren’t-they Ross-Rachel type thing with god lately, I’m really starting to continue to think that religion as a big old whole might just be a net negative for us, all things considered. It’s heartbreaking, because here we have this beautiful thing that can bind communities together (although what, really, does “binding a community together” mean other than the exclusion of some Other Who Is Not Us?), bring solace to the suffering, strengthen our capacity for good, allow us to contemplate the infinite in a not-too-scary way, the little bit of Hope in our Pandora’s box. But I wonder if all the prophets are feeling a little like Oppenheimer after he works on the bomb, you know?

Hey what else is new? Everything is flooding and going to be ruined within our lifetime, AHHHHHHH! If you are near any water you better back the fuck up in the next couple decades because all your shit will be wrecked. Just go. Get out of Florida. Good luck getting any beachfront property insured. One more confirmation in favor of my irrational phobia of owning property. But nobody is taking any advice from me or the New Yorker, because people are moving to Florida in fucking droves. More people moved to Fort Lauderdale in the last two years than to San Francisco: it grew more than LA or NYC, percentage-wise (although I’m sure it costs a fuck-ton less). But also lots of people are putting down lots of dough, like millions, on beachfront properties that are basically going to be little islands if it starts flooding even a little. The sea is not our friend you guys!

I guess the main thing at this point is the argument between those who are trying possibly futile damage control tactics, and those who think it’s no use. The optimism of the stupid versus the defeatism of the depressed. The mayor of MB and others are totally gung-ho about drainage systems and new-fangled resins and feel pretty positive about human potential to figure out some kind of climate control or engineering magic to fix it. Meanwhile, a ton of scientists are shaking their damn heads. So what are people to do? Just leave their homes? Looks like it. I mean, the whole concept of Florida was shady from day one.

Did you know: That Miami, West Miami, South Miami, and Miami Beach are all separate cities?

Also: Do any grammar queens know why it’s I.P.C.C. and NOAA [different font]? Is there a difference in how they print national and international organizations? Or is there some other rule?

Look, we all love getting angry at Zucky. He represents the locus of so many anger-mongering things: wealth, youth, the nightmare acid trip that we call social media, a spergy personality. He brings out the evil that we each carry within ourselves as quickly as any Kardashian or GOP candidate. I know. BUT…

Guys, we have to kind of be nice when he gives away a ton of money. Is it right that the wealthy get to choose how their would-have-been-tax-dollars get spent, while we poor suckers are hunted down like dogs by the IRS so we can be forced to pay for corrupt politicians and dangerous schools? Maybe not. But this holiday season, let’s look on the bright side and practice gratitude, feel me? He’s pulling a Billy Gates and paying for, like, nets and stuff, or medicine, or getting Internet for everyone (though we scoff at this, we all wish for it desperately). Should that shit be our fucking lazy government’s job? Probably! But nobody else is paying for that shit because too many lobbyists are taking them on golf trips. So poor Zucks has to foot the bill – I mean, he doesn’t have to, of course. Would you rather he buy a bunch of boats? Or pay thousands of women to let him paint their toenails? (I can only assume that’s what he’s into.)

All I’m saying is, let’s choose to be proud of our nation’s billionaires when they do a good job, ok? It’s not Mark’s fault that this is the way things are.

And wow, James Surowiecki suggests that if we tax billionaires too much, a lot of these great social and medical programs will just get totally underfunded because the billionaires won’t be able to afford them anymore, and our good old boys in congress will probably mess them up anyway.

Folks, I’m obviously a few weeks behind (we haven’t talked about the Tech Issue or the Paris attacks cover, which I thought was a little weak as far as mourning covers go, but what can you do) so let’s just dive in here with the last New Yorker of crazy old 2015 and then we’ll see how things go over the next few weeks catching-up-wise, sound good? 

Talk of the Town:

·      Wow, Chicago’s cops are messed up! They’ve been fucking around violating people and lying about it for decades. There’s a whole culture of secrecy and non-snitching that is making the police force (and Rahm Emanuel) seem really gross.

·      Get this: One of Mr. Trump’s NYC hotels has a luxury hammam service – that’s a fancy way for devout Muslims to be cleansed before praying. The poor hotel employees and his daughter Ivanka seem a little fuzzy on the details of this practice, or even what fucking country it might come from, but it’s pretty exciting to catch this guy raging against Muslims while jumping on an opportunity to make money off of rich Muslims. We also take a tour of his buildings, dumbly named “Trump Place,” many of which are owned by non-American bajillionaires, and employ a large number of Muslims and other tolerant folks who really think he’s a baloney-man.

·      First of all, what is the McDowell Colony’s Chairman’s Evening? Has anything good ever been called a “colony” (bees notwithstanding)? Anyway it’s an event at the New Museum where guy-of-the-year Lin-Manuel Miranda performed, and suddenly a piece about L-MM becomes all about Martin Scorsese, who shows up and myopically fixates on the muddy boots he had to wear while filming a new movie about Jesuits in 17th century Japan – man, I can’t wait for this to drop. Nothing better than rolling Japanese countryside, am I right? Also did everyone know L-MM still lives “in the heights” near his entire family so they can get scammed into helping out with his new baby? Also they reminisce about old New York, West Side Story, and compare dueling a century ago to pot today (in the sense that they are both legal-ish).

Before we move on to the New Yorker with the Rube Goldberg coffee machine on the cover (from weeks ago! I know, it’s a problem, but I swear I’ll catch up this weekend), I do want to really quick talk about this story because the young lady snorts coke and every time she does she finds a little reminder of her Colombian drug lord family childhood inside the baggie. Actually very sweet, although I HATE how often I have to read these drug stories because they always show up at the worst times for me personally.

Wow this one is great. Two pretentious college kids in the 80′s were possibly behind a double murder of the woman’s parents, one of whom may or may not have sexually abused her daughter. These two kids wrote letters back and forth about how tortured they are and how they want to kill her parents.

So then the parents die while the kids are out of town and it really, really looks like they did it. Before they can do blood tests the kids flee the country and start living with fake passports and learning how to do bank frauds in foreign countries. Eventually they get caught and the guy confesses because he thinks he has diplomatic immunity (his dad is a German diplomat). But he doesn’t because we don’t play like that, so he gets life in prison and the girl gets like 90 years as an accessory. There’s some evidence that she did it and he confessed just to cover her. There’s a big fight over whether to get the guy extradited back to Germany where he could go free since they have no death penalty and he would have already done his sentence by German standards. 

The big thing is that both these people are really taken with this fantasy of a writerly sensibility and artistic temperament – who isn’t? For people like this, any tidbit of tragedy in your life can really stoke this flame of melodrama and I guess things can get out of control – that’s my cursory, non-expert assessment of this incredibly complex situation.

So what can we all learn? Maybe to chill out and not get into this romantic ridiculous affair with a fantasy of your life as a pulpy novel. Seriously, I know that sounds rude and reductivist and crass, but I really do think a lot of us get caught up in feeling like this because it’s so intoxicating. Does that make any sense? All I’m saying is don’t get your parents killed, even if they weren’t great, even if they were abusive. Maybe they deserve it, sure, I don’t know your life – but yours will probably get so much shittier if you have to go to prison.

On the other hand, does anyone NOT have occasional prison fantasies? Not about sex in prison, just about having time to contemplate and get stuff done and not really make any decisions about your life with too much freedom. Just me?

The One About Icelandic Volunteer Rescue Squads

Iceland, with 300K people and no army, has a lot of dumb tourists and also a big hiking/adventuring culture, and also they got so many falls and fjords and wild expanses of inhospitable moon landscape, so as a result a lot of people get all kinds of lost and stuck and a bunch of them die, so these rescue missions go out on runs and save people. People try to ford rivers and stuff in their cars on a whim, which seems like the kind of idiocy a nation without guns can only dream of. And actually these rescue squads, who have to do regular dopey fundraisers like everyone else who isn’t a government agency, are a little miffed about the increase in tourists doing dumb stuff putting a strain on this amazing resource for free.

 The One About The Congolese Orchestra

Ugh, I know this is a month late but everybody cut me some slack already!

Talk of the Town:

First Ladies Gotta go to Syria and Take Care of the Refugees

Obviously this New Yorker is from before the awful hatefests in Beirut and Paris, but I’m sure they will still stand with this attitude of taking care of refugees - everything’s just getting worse and worse if humans don’t take care of humans! We let in so fucking few Syrians compared to refugee crises of the past. Shout out to Rosalynn Carter for making this a thing in Cambodia just by showing up and having cameras on her - then all of a sudden we become hospitable, I guess because our dumb brains need to actually watch someone starve to death before it seems real. Thanks, weird way that empathy works and doesn’t work.

BTW anyone else think it sounds super fucked up to say “Give me a smile” to a starving person? Whatever, good job Rosalynn Carter!

Some Guys Who Used to Run for Office in New York, I Guess?

What or who is this about? From what I can gather a bunch of old timey guys in New York talk about old politics and how everyone used to get beat up all the time and go to restaurants?

Some Guy Collecting African Art in Bed-Stuy

Eric Edwards is starting an African art museum in Bed-Stuy He got into collecting through the funk music industry. Wouldn’t an African art museum be awesome in Bed-Stuy?

Some Guys Who Love Pencils

Speaking of neighborhoods I live/have lived in, the weirdly spelled Green-Wood Cemetery had a thing about pencil history. All the pencil snobs came out to talk about their favorite pencils, their pencil tattoos, how to rub graves with pencils, and see the tombs of all the great American pencil barons. I wish my live comedy show could attract as many guests as a pencil-graveyard event, but what can you do?

Some Guys in a Band I Probably Don’t Like

They are called Darlingside, nee Darlingcide after the writing advice to “kill your darlings,” and this factoid really sealed the deal in me not liking these guys (thanks a lot New Yorker). There’s just something about KYD that brought me right back to memories of obnoxious kids I went to high school with.

Get ready to not care. A bunch of guys at a restaurant trade rag created this “50 Best” brand and got sponsored by Pellegrino so that the restaurant world had an alternative to the stuffy Michelin system. Now all kinds of chefs are scrambling all over themselves to get on these fucking lists.

There’s a lot of controversy over whether there is anything resembling fairness in how these lists get assembled. Surprise! There are almost no women or minorities represented in the rankings.  All kinds of holes are poked into the logic of how many times each diner would have to eat at any given place for the numbers to crunch correctly.

Apparently the Mayo Clinic (or some big-deal hospital place) “finally” closed the 24-hour McDonald’s, which lots of yuppie well-to-do types lauded of course, but a couple people chimed in with the obvious worry of where people could get something to eat for little money late at night while they stayed with their loved ones in the hospital.

This gets to the heart of any effort to improve our eating habits on any significant scale. We have an increasing number of options – among them Sweetgreen, Lyfe Kitchen, and to a lesser extent, because of how salty and fatty all it’s meat is, Chipotle – that are affordable if you are, say, me, a twenty-something with an okay-paying job and zero debt or dependents on the horizon. For the zillions of people totally unlike me, I think things pretty much suck in terms of options that are affordable and filling.

Of course we open up with two young twenty-somethings who are almost like me minus the shame or decorum, who are truly, no-joke humiliated to admit that they occasionally go to McDonald’s when wasted.

Which brings me to a weird thing about public health – all my friends are college-educated and mostly white. Most have tried a juice cleanse and/or SoulCycle class. But we all eat French fries on the reg. We all cave and eat burgers. Most of said burgers are bigger and probably from cattle just as uncared for as whoever supplies McDonald’s. We all eat pretty crappily, if you stop and look at it. But for some reason we remain pretty healthy. Will it all catch up with us later? Perhaps? Are we healthy because our bills are pretty manageable and we don’t have kids and we more or less know where our income is coming from so our alleged “stress” is not that stressful?

My point is, people like to point to all sorts of data that those in poverty have way unhealthier lifestyles than everyone else, but I wonder if that’s true, or if we’re really giving ourselves too much credit. Do my freelance artist friends, with all their exposure to vegan philosophy and high-intensity interval training, really eat less fast food than your average poverty-line single parent with no post-secondary education? I can’t speak for everyone, but based on my very limited and totally biased anecdotal evidence, I’m inclined to say “nah,” or at least not jump right into “yah.”

And this is why I think “awareness” and education of healthy lifestyles is not really that effective. My friends and I have had maximum exposure to healthy initiatives and knowledge, but we barely eat vegetables. Most of us smoke cigarettes and binge drink. 

This prolific scientist Charles Spence, from a family of British carnies, is really good at proving (sorry, “suggesting” because that’s pretty much all science can do for us) that weird external factors have a huge effect on how we perceive taste. Highlights include: stuff tastes sweeter when in red containers, chocolate with a lot of the letter K in the name taste way too bitter, louder crunches taste fresher, round candy tastes too sugary, coffee is less sweet in a white mug vs a clear one, low pitched music makes things too bitter, food in blue containers make things taste saltier, and flavored foods taste more like their flavor when accompanied by a sound associated with the flavor it’s trying to achieve.

Obviously a lot of people are intensely suspicious of how the processed fucking food industry will fuck around with our will power and health with all these new tricks up their sleeves. But the part that really made me cry (I’m a super-empath) is the potential use to help the elderly enjoy their food as they used to. A really big overlooked thing for older folks is that their senses get way dulled down as they age and it’s hard to enjoy things the same way, but now if you manipulate the way they consume food and the sensory environs, they can have a nice time with their favorite foods again. It can also help the appetites of people undergoing chemo or people trying to lose weight.

Sorry for the delay you guys. I’m hosting a live comedy show these days!

Anyway FOOD ISSUE! This is one of the best Food Issue’s in recent years, maybe the best since like 2012 when they had that weird young heiress to that French bread fortune, do you remember her? 

The One About BBQ Arguments

But enough about me! We hit the dirt with a really fucking boring piece about barbecue: This place likes it like this, that place likes it like that, OMG what do we do? Who’s right?? HOW DO I KNOW WHAT’S REAL

Some places are getting fancy and “farm-to-table”/”artisanal”/”local”/”pretending we’re not in the South” but others are BBQ Fundamentalists like, “No, you can’t even barbecue chicken because that’s not barbecue!!” I just don’t care.

Although I was a teensy bit disturbed by Calvin Trillin’s really glib remark about how Moses thinks good barbecue is exempt from the pork rule of devout chosen people. (Is that the rule? I honestly get religious diets confused because I’ve never followed one!) And then he keeps repeating this joke like it’s hilarious, like hey it’s fine to ignore this rule that keeps you connected to your faith which has brought such joy and solace in your life, because it’s delicious. I’ll just say it: Deliciousness is not a good reason to change your mind about something, and we need to stop treating each other like it is. Every time a coworker has a birthday party and you’re on a diet, everybody gets on your butt about “special occasions” and how we have to be flexible and poison ourselves occasionally, but you see there is no “occasionally.” There hasn’t been “occasionally” for years. Right? Aren’t most things you love things that you either do once in your life or EVERY DAMN DAY BECAUSE YOU CAN? And doesn’t every fucking body you know have like constant birthdays? And aren’t people eating cake and drinking until they cry every night of the week anyway? Fuck “occasionally,” it’s not real.

Part of the BBQ zealotry has to do with the fear of “Bubbacide,” a term some BBQ historian invented to talk about the destruction of a certain breed of poor Southern white culture, which can be kinda hard to defend when one’s main cultural exports are racism and sexism and anti-Semitism. One of these BBQ groups is called the “Campaign for Real Barbecue” which sounds like the name of a white supremacy group, but what do I know?

The One About Seaweed

More enlightened territory – underwater! Did you guys know that kelp/seafood is carbon-neutral when you farm it right and packed with healthy shit? A weird fisherman guy has figured out that he can capitalize on it and provide a sustainable livelihood for fishers whose fish have all fucking died because of how shitty we do everything, nature-wise.

Scientists and vegans are in favor of trying to make kelp happen, but a lot of people are bitching that it’s too salty and tastes gross. To which this guy counters with the argument that kale, too, tastes nasty AF but we’ve all drunk enough of the kale Kool-Aid (Kale-Aid) to shovel it down our throats.

Did we know that dulse tastes like bacon when you cook it? (Lots of vegans were onto this from the start apparently.) So maybe there’s some real hope here.

S&M: Bernie Sanders Trick-or-Treating

I think my main issue with Bernie Sanders as a presidential candidate is my unfailing tendency to refer to him either as Larry Sanders or Bernie Madoff. Anyone else experiencing this issue? It’s embarrassing.