I’ve gotten physically assaulted by anti-trans psychos twice in the last few months, but… like the limo driver in The Big Lebowski, I can’t complain. We just got through a year with some truly amazing films such as Past Lives, Poor Things, and May December. (It was a great year for two words.). And at least I’m not in Gaza.
To the utter astonishment of the Brain Truest at ToM, people finally care about Palestine. The price paid by the humans on the ground is the essence of incalculable, but we see a dim hope that something might finally change in terms of US foreign policy and the balance of power in the Middle East. Some day, eventually. Maybe? Which is better than what we thought just a year ago. How is that for optimism of the will?
In the meantime, we have the rich pageant of American democracy at work before us. Donald John Trump looks inevitably to be the GOP nominee, and Uncle Joe’s fragile coalition be fragilin’. Jason Tebbe has argued that we’re getting into our “Brezhnev Era,” which makes sense given that the two oldest nominees in American history will be duking it out yet again, and so many things in US public policy seem frozen and sclerotic. Yet maybe we’re going into our Yeltsin Era — a dumb, fat lump who boogies his way into the vodka line and basically has no idea what’s going on. It’s a shame neither Trump nor Biden drinks.
Yes, it is a time for a stiff drink and a wizened amusement at human folly. As such, we should comment on the new film by longtime ToM favorite Alexander Payne, The Holdovers. Two of our editors loved it, but I have to say it didn’t work for me. It is the story of an embittered teacher at an elite New England prep school who smells bad and drinks too much. (Maybe it just hits too close to home.) It appears that Payne might be drawing on his own experience, considering that he attended the private, Jesuit Creighton School in Nebraska (in a set-up reminiscent of Wes Anderson and Rushmore). The movie feels like a warm blanket soaked in fentanyl — an idyll of the American past and a self-reassuring parable that says, hey, maybe the class war can be reconciled if a Black servant and a rich white kid can become friends. Crazier things have happened, I guess.
In any case, here are our reading picks for the week:
- The ‘walking route’: How an underground industry is helping migrants flee China for the US (CNN)
- Burn After Wearing: A mountain of used clothes appeared in Chile’s desert. Then it went up in flames. (Grist)
- Five Poems by Joshua Jennifer Espinoza (PEN America)
- Firm develops jet fuel made entirely of human poo (BBC)
- The Long Tail Theory, Debunked: We Stick with What We Know (Mack Institute)
- How Drake’s $100 Million Bet Saved the Long-Lost Art Carnival Luna Luna (NYT)
- It had to happen: Kansas State Eats Pop-Tarts Edible Mascot After Bowl Win
- Her story fueled anti-trans bills. Now, she’s fighting them. (WaPo)
- Critically endangered Manning River turtle lays first eggs as part of conservation program (ABC)
- ‘I get to tell my story’: incarcerated journalists are making podcasts, going viral and winning awards (Guardian)
- Are you a morning person? You may be a Neanderthal descendant. (WaPo)
- Losing the Plot: The ‘Leftists’ Who Turn Right (In These Times)
- Newfound Mathematical ‘Einstein’ Shape Creates a Never-Repeating Pattern (Scientific American)
- A Black Neighborhood in St. Paul, Upended by a Highway, Looks to Reconnect (Zocalo Public Square)
- 9 arrested after secret tunnel found at Chabad headquarters in Brooklyn (ABC7)