We're On a Road to Nowhere
Before we get going, another possible outlet for any generosity you may be feeling during this time of mass shutdowns: this is a site that will connect you with service industry workers in your area, and, if you’re drinking at home slash generally want to be helpful, you can directly send them some cash to try and get through these weird times. Just choose your city or any city really from the drop-down and pitch in.
The tweet and subsequent thread and riffs are linked here, but in the unlikely event it gets deleted I took a screenshot for posterity because what a pair of sentences. It went from “wait I think he’s just got the tv show” to “wow” extremely quickly. The ranch makes sense, RuPaul seems wealthy enough, but the—everything else, is a bit of a surprise.
Additional research turned up that the ranch is 60,000 acres which, really, who knows what an acre is that might not be so much, but then double-additional research and typing that into a calculator shows that it’s 94 square miles which is much more conceivable. Very odd that Wyoming has RuPaul, Kanye West and Dick Cheney’s entire lineage, and how you rank the three of them says something about you, clue: the Cheneys are absolutely dead last.
Watch/Listen/Generally Ingest: Everything David Byrne - One of the greats, Byrne has been responsible for some truly great works of art. From his work with Talking Heads to his current incarnation as a solo artist, with everything in between like writing a book on music theory, odd appearances on Netflix comedy specials and even as an advocate for public biking infrastructure, he’s creeping up on Renaissance Man territory. Two callouts in particular are STOP MAKING SENSE, a concert film that paired Talking Heads with director Jonathan Demme which you may know as “the one where he wears the very big suit” and the album for American Utopia, his most recent live show which takes its name from his most recent solo outing. In the latter, he basically turns his backing band and dancers into a barefoot color guard (from his experience coordinating and filming a documentary celebrating color guards) to re-imagine his/Talking Heads’ greatest hits.
After ending his tour for the show, American Utopia moved to Broadway, and had just recently concluded its run before Byrne announced it would be coming back in the fall (fingers crossed), and will see another incarnation as a concert film, directed by Spike Lee(!), for anyone who can’t make it to Broadway. Anyways, he’s great, STOP MAKING SENSE is free to stream via Amazon Prime and American Utopia is available wherever you happen to get music but here’s an Apple Music link anyways.
Thank you, Michael Jackson’s official Twitter, for the reminder about safe practices in this time. Also confusing for its very low-resolution photo of Michael, but maybe he password-protected the vault of archival pictures before passing, who knows. Like if you’re finding out about coronavirus from the official Twitter of the King of Pop, you have it already it’s too late I’m sorry.
Just like WrestleMania is when everyone comes out of the woodworks as a wrestling fan on my Twitter feed, so too did Animal Crossing’s release reveal nearly everyone I follow as a fan, and it was kind of disorienting but also adorable like we should talk about this more but then I also this MIDSOMMAR-inspired shot and I think maybe you should stop mixing things together.
I understand it’s tough out there as you self-quarantine, but it’s hard to imagine being horny enough to want a foreign military to impose an oppressive police state, yet at the same time…woof.
I’m curious what the uniform design process is like, or if they’re just all issued the smallest ones possible, or if they’re tailored, like the top doesn’t appear like it’s meant to ever be buttoned.
The alumni of Splinter (the news-focused offshoot of Gawker (RIP)) have brought the band back together, at least for the moment, at Discourse.blog, and one of their opening stories is about how weirdly absent Joe Biden was this past week, considering he had a pretty decent week to highlight how he’d handle things better than our current administration, which, really, take your pick maybe start by not calling the disease a hoax or Chinese every chance you get. Someone brought up that he does seem like one of those “you may not like him but you still have to respect the office during crisis” idiots, which you could at least argue if they were meeting some baseline competency here but at this point you’ve gotta come with bars, even if it’s like Macho Man’s “Be A Man” diss track against Hulk Hogan.
If there’s a theme today, it’s that it remains tough out here, and strip club workers currently out of work (because those places don’t seem like they’d be as fun with social distancing implemented, and robust cleaning schedules would really kill the mood) are now in the gig economy doing food delivery, through a service called Boober Eats and really I just hope things go well for them.
This thread from the r/Sneakers subreddit is cute, as a user is asking for a spare pair of laces for his Jordans after paramedics destroyed the last set. He’d been hit by a car, and the medics wanted to take off the shoe for damage assessment to his foot, but he asked that they not damage the shoes so the laces were the middle ground and really that’s a great embodiment of the culture. Sincerely. I mean at like ~$100 above retail on StockX right now I’d want them to explore all removal options is what I’m saying.
