Overkill
of men at work and media diets
I think about the implications
After my last newsletter, the inaugural one, I walked around for a week or so in a fog of, “I should write a newsletter about this.” Everything I encountered seemed ripe for a post, and, if I sent it early, wouldn’t my beloved subscribers be thrilled to see a new contribution? My benevolence cannot be contained to a mere schedule!
But I refrained, because the schedule is Part of It. This newsletter could not possibly hope to respond to current events as they spiral out of control. After the shock of the election wore off and the grim awareness that we would be in for a second round of trump took hold, I saw people - in life, on social media, in op-ed pages - debate how they might respond. Some said, I won’t look at the news. Some deleted social media, more aware than ever that it was captured by the oligarchs. When I saw a slick looking poster stapled to a telephone pole announcing an inauguration day protest, my first thought was “Absolutely not.” If in 2017 the desire was to be out, loudly announcing an intention to “resist,” with a hot pink hat on, this time the attitude was more resigned. Let’s just get through this.
The information comes, no matter what, because trump is a creature of the media. He loves to sit at the big boy desk, wielding a sharpie and talking to the rapt media, many of whom are members of the same right wing ecosystem that launders his worst actions and claims they are the brilliant moves of an expert tactician. “Slowly, then all at once,” goes the John Green quote about love, but this is the all at once. Stories bombard. The president rambles about trade as, in the corner, the stock ticker takes a dramatic dive south. You can’t keep up because you don’t have the capacity to monitor your life (What’s for dinner?) and the news (Vance skis badly?) and your job (Another reorg?) and where you’re shopping (Target eliminated DEI?) and your cat (I heard a puking noise but now I can’t find it?) with a brain that is shrinking just trying to keep up with society. Meanwhile, even if you told yourself you were only going to concentrate on the issues that concerned you most (climate change, trans rights, public health), whatever your particular personal area of focus, baby, it’s bad news.
I can’t advise people on media consumption because I have no ability to regulate myself, burdened as I am by the complete conviction that if only I can absorb every piece of information available I will be able to See the Truth and Effect Change, but the one thing we do have is the ability to set our own limits. I can’t expect to sit down every day and offer my opinion on all the events, I can only write my little newsletter and schedule it for Tuesday and send it out, and wonder if it’s going to take a meteor strike to get out of this spiral. The nice thing is this newsletter will be sent before the address to congress, and two weeks from now I’m sure I will have forgotten whatever nightmare garbage trump said, so that’s why we have the schedule, folks.
Enough! Here is a cat!
Yesterday I tried to explain to my son, who is 4.75 years old, what the Oscars were. Trying to explain an awards show to a kid is very fun, makes you feel slightly insane, I highly recommend it. "Grownups dressing up and giving each other statues for their jobs,” is what I landed on. He has been to the Academy Museum, where I took my eyes off him for a minute to look at the mandolin from The Godfather soundtrack and found him looking at a glass case containing the fake horse head from the film. (Mother of the year!) Of the nominees he has seen Moana 2 and Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, so as you can imagine he was very uninterested in the goings on.
In reviews, the entertainment press is trying to make sense of the ceremony, with its extreme tonal shifts, but that’s kind of where we’re at now. Apologies to Brecht, but clearly, in the dark times there will also be singing (about the dark times, or at least about The Wizard of Oz). With the film Emilia Perez speedrunning the critical darling to complete embarrassment path laid out by others (at least Crash got to win Best Picture before everyone started to ask what the fuck was going on), the attempts to pretend it wasn’t close to being one of the most nominated films of all time gave the ceremony a desperate, sweaty quality. Add in the Art Deco-esque stage design that looked like a fascist rally and, well, it was weird, but the Oscars are weird. The entire concept is weird.
Multiple winners emphasized the need to create things, to make stuff, take chances, etc. which is the kind of talk you usually hear at awards shows, because they are pep rallies for theater kids. But I do agree with those who said it was important (now! more! than! ever!) to make stuff, to work on the things you care about. This, more than a media diet, more than deleting Facebook, more than moving to a cabin in the woods with no cell signal, will provide the best results for the mind, I think. (Though those other things are great, too.) They say make art, but that can be a little intimidating. What if I don’t want to make art? What if I just want to ramble in newsletter? So I recommend: make newsletter, make art, make one really good bowl of pasta, make your cat a little mad by playing guitar directly next to him on the couch (see above).
A few other things:
For some reason, Easter is a competitive sport for parents now. Some people give their kids Switches? I’m fortunate that my kid is still too little to really do the comparison game, and I think I may give him some chocolate he will immediately lose interest in and then I will eat, but these breakable chocolate chicks from Williams Sonoma are very funny to me, personally, and I think you should see them and know they exist.
I went to college with the guy who founded Colossal, which is largely meaningless as we were not that close but lately I find myself checking the site more and more to break the doomscroll - taking a moment to admire some delft-style weaponry, for example - because if you can’t stop the cycle of clicking to news and clocking to your feed and clicking to news and so on, you can click over to look at the things other people are making. It’s the first step to maybe making something yourself.
For a long time I thought of the band Men at Work as a one hit wonder, but it turns out they had other hits like “Who Can it Be Now” and “Overkill,” which is recently a song I can’t listen to enough. The version linked about was recorded live with Rick Springfield (??) a couple years ago, and is charmingly shaggy, as Colin Hay, the primary Man At Work, flubs a lyric and Rick Springfield misses a chord during his solo, but it’s a little goofy and joyful and that’s a nice thing.
You know what’s nice? You. You’re nice, and I hope you have a great day, and there will be another newsletter in two weeks, so tell all your friends.
Love,
The nailbiter.