NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert is the MTV Unplugged for the internet age.
After a long hiatus, The Cranberries is about to return with a new album called Roses. But if this performance at the NPR Music offices is any indication, the group isn’t afraid to dip into its arsenal of early hits.
It wasn’t too long ago, when bored and inebriated, I decided to buy Beverly Hills, 90210, the complete season 4. Say what you will about Amazon, but they do enable purchases of this sort.
Some background: Season 4 was the last of the Brenda years, and the gang’s first year at California University, and where, among other things, Brandon joins the Task Force and has an affair with Lucinda Nicholson, Steve rushes KEG and is accused of date rape, Andrea loses her virginity and becomes pregnant, Kelly and Donna join the Alphas, David develops a problem with Uppers after doing the graveyard shift for KXCU, the campus radio station, and Dylan’s car is hijacked and he meets his long-lost sister. This leaves out Brenda, who in one year, transfers out of Minnesota University, becomes engaged to Stuart Carson after a three week courtship, is arrested for her new-found animal rights advocacy, and takes the lead in the campus production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roofed after rumors circulate of her affair with famed director Roy Randolph.
I love 90210 for a lot of reasons, not just the plot points. In some ways, it’s a window into the 90s, or some rich producer’s idea of the 90s. There are jean shorts, scrunchies and flowy dresses. It’s not just the aesthetics, it’s the politics: consensual sex, animal rights, and abortion politics. Out of all the things that strike me as unrealistic about the show, Andrea’s pregnancy is probably the most outrageous, even more absurd than David’s meth habit depending on fresh squeezed orange juice. Obviously, Gabrielle Cartes is about 33 when she’s supposed to be a freshman in college, and in every scene, this fact is impossible to ignore. And yes, she really was pregnant, so there wasn’t much chance of her getting an abortion. But still, the characters act as if her having a baby as a freshman in college is the only option and that Jesse threatening to break-up with her if she has the abortion is tantamount to a proposal.
Maybe since there was no internet and next day episode summaries, the writers aren’t too concerned with making the plot make sense. For instance, after rushing off to Vegas to elope with Brenda, Stuart Carson disappears for ten episodes. And what about that episode when Brenda discovers the diary of a young woman who lived in her bedroom decades before and casts the whole gang in her imagination as some version of this woman’s life in 1968? What of it? It’s hard to object any time Dylan McKay is in period clothing.
I’ve been watching 90210 s4 occasionally with a friend, and emailing plot points to another one in Bulgaria, whose career in Anthropology was in no doubt inspired by Lucinda Nicholson and her penchant for seducing younger men with a traditional feast from an aboriginal tribe in Guatemala. But like I did in the 90s, I’ve been watching this season mostly alone. There’s something oddly satisfying about watching something so unwatchable, and not even be able to confer with the internet about it afterward. It’s like the solitude of the mountains, but in my bed, on a laptop, on a lazy Sunday.
The best part of being from Westchester is when architecture critics hate on the new Penn Station.
To me, being a feminist is about being in favor of women, and luckily, more women aren’t afraid of the term. We’re such a big minority group that we often don’t see ourselves as one large body, laughing alone with salad.
This #Yale #football #Rhodesscholarship #rape story is amazing. It’s got all the things that make for good upper middle class journalism: higher education, sexual politics, the discretion of campus authorities and the discretion of the press, all over a college football rivalry.
It’s like the JoePa story for the effete class.
Related: At Yale, the Collapse of a Rhodes Scholar Candidacy
Diverging Stories of a Rhodes Candidacy
I could trace my entire adult life around Wilco albums. And seeing them on Thursday—my first big show in Denver, which I attended with my no longer new Denver friends—was like seeing an old pal.
(Sadly, it was like seeing an old pal for a quick coffee. There was some catching up on the new material, but not enough time to reminisce on all the old memories, that is, all of Wilco’s b-sides from 15 years ago.)
The show reminded me not just of the times when the lyrics of “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” limned the emotional landscape of my sophomore year of college or when my friend and I memorized the phonetic alphabet in the album’s honor our junior year, but also of seeing Oscar Robertson play basketball in an old timers game. Like watching the Big O thirty or so years after his prime, Wilco did not have the speed of their younger days, but still had an undeniable grace.
In chapter 1 of “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running,” my perennial desk side reading, Haruki Murakami asks “Who’s going to laugh at Mick Jagger?” This is in response to a silly thing a younger Mick Jagger said about singing “Satisfaction” at 45. That is, he’d rather be dead than be doing it. Of course now, Mick Jagger is over 45, still playing “Satisfaction,” and is not dead. Murakami’s point is that we all turn 45 or die, and who’s to laugh at a younger man for thinking he’d prefer the latter fate.
And while I wouldn’t laugh at Mick Jagger, Wilco is not still playing “Jesus, Etc.” at 45. That song, probably their most famous, was missing from Thursday’s set. Instead, what got most people to their feet was “Dawned on Me,” a song not about trying to get laid, but about being reminded of how much you love someone, and making a call to let that someone know about it. The new Wilco album isn’t about love lost, love poorly treated or love hard to achieve. Instead, “The Whole Love” is a record about the slow drama of maintaining love over a lifetime. That is, the kind of music a dad could rock out to.
Orange nails and a ridiculous looking first generation Kindle (Taken with instagram)
It’s not that I don’t appreciate technology. I’m typing on a beautiful white machine that’s not connected to any wires but is connected to the internet and is light enough to rest on my stomach. And I like reading about Alexis has recently eaten, which technology allows me to do. (And I like Alexis, who I even met once.)
It’s just that, how much technology do we need? Because at a certain point (maybe now?) they’re just inventing stuff so we’ll buy more stuff again. For the past 400 years, no one looked at a book, and thought, damn, that shit looks antiquated. But after four years, a first generation Kindle looks “ridiculous.”
My often wise dad once said, “We live better than Louis XIV.” Which is true when you think about indoor planning and access to tropical fruit. But it seems like all we’re striving for now is convenience and novelty. But something nice about inconvenient, old things: they’re not part of this absurd cycle of want that technology creates now.
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I wake up at 6:04, which is about 5:59, since my iTouch’s clock is fast. It’s still dark out, but I get out of bed and feel very proud of myself.
I check the internet for about three 15 minutes before reminding myself that the reason I’m up early is to write, so I set Freedom (without a doubt, the best $10 I spent in 2011) to 60 minutes.
And then I try to write. But I also stare out the window a lot and watch the colors change.
For a while, everything is just black, except for the diagonal streaks of light serving some sort of design purpose I can’t imagine/don’t agree with in the big apartment building on the corner of my street.
And then the sky starts turning navy, the kind of navy you want to believe is black if you made a mistake when purchasing stockings.
From there, everything gets bluer, though it’s still a dark blue, a blue that could pass for this season’s new black, and the naked branches of the trees become visible.
Then the sky is really blue, a blue that, if you were being gender normative, would do well in a baby boy’s room, a blue so light it would surprise you, considering how dark it still is.
And then, I’m not staring out into total darkness, but the house across from mine, though I can still make out my reflection in the window.
Each moment, the sky gets lighter and lighter, which feels like this betrayal of the night, which I suppose it is, as it’s turning into day.
And it’s just like that Hemingway line about going bankrupt, slowly, then all at once, and then it’s time to go to work.
How Visit From The Goon Squad Is This? -
Sadly, a recurring feature.