newyorker--2020-02-23--Bernie Sanders Scores an Impressive Victory in Nevada

As the votes were being counted in Nevada on Saturday afternoon , Bernie Sanders was appearing before a large and enthusiastic crowd in El Paso , Texas , which is one of the states that will vote on Super Tuesday , March 3rd .
After introducing his wife , Jane , as “ the next First Lady of the United States , ” Sanders called out some people in the crowd , including Jim Hightower , the veteran liberal activist , who served as the Texas commissioner of agriculture back in the nineteen-eighties .
Like Sanders himself , Hightower is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and the Vermont senator hailed him as a close friend of thirty years .
Over the decades , Hightower has supported a number of insurgent candidates for President , including Jesse Jackson , Jerry Brown , Ralph Nader , and Sanders himself , in 2016 .
In all that time , he has never backed a confirmed front-runner—until now , that is .
For as Sanders slipped into his stump speech , during which he described Donald Trump as “ a racist , a sexist , a homophobe , a xenophobe , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ appeared to be racking up a victory in Nevada that was so large and comprehensive it made him the firm favorite to win the Democratic nomination—and raised the question of when , rather than whether , some of his moderate rivals will drop out .
Shortly after 7 P.M .
E.S.T.
, news outlets projected Sanders as the winner in Nevada .
The early returns from the caucus precincts showed him getting more than a third of the first preferences , and , after the reallocation of second preferences , more than forty @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his rivals struggled to reach the fifteen-per-cent threshold that they had to pass to get any delegates at all .
If this pattern held through the final returns , Sanders would be allocated the vast majority of the state ’ s thirty-six pledged delegates .
As I noted in a recent post , this dynamic—Sanders getting a healthy plurality of the vote while his rivals divide the rest—is a recipe for him racking up a massive lead in delegates on Super Tuesday , which is just ten days away .
By Saturday night @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were putting his chances at getting the nomination at more than fifty per cent .
Of course , this is just a snapshot , and things could change .
But in some Democratic circles the talk was about whether anything could be done to stop him .
Unless at least some of his rivals drop out quickly , the answer may be no .
Even if some candidates were to quit , Sanders would still be in a strong position .
Of all the Democratic candidates , Sanders has always counted on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and his appeal appears to be growing .
In Nevada , his victory was impressive pretty much however you diced the electorate , according to the entrance poll conducted by Edison Media Research for news outlets , which was based on a large sample .
Sanders was expected to do very well among young voters , but the scale of his lead in this demographic was something to behold .
In the under-thirty age group , he got sixty-six per cent of the vote ; in the under-forty-five group , he got forty-eight @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more than seventeen per cent of the vote in either of these demographics .
Just over half of the caucusgoers were women , according to the entrance poll .
Sanders won thirty per cent of their vote , while Joe Biden got sixteen per cent , and Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar got fourteen and twelve per cent , respectively .
Among men , Sanders did even better , earning thirty-eight per cent of the vote , way ahead of Buttigieg , with sixteen per cent , and Biden , with fifteen per @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the importance of Latinos , who made up about a fifth of voters .
According to the entrance poll , Sanders got more half of the vote—fifty-three per cent—while Biden got just sixteen per cent .
This success reflected an extensive effort by the Sanders campaign to reach out to Hispanic voters , and it augurs well for his prospects in other states with large Latino populations .
The caucusgoers were pretty evenly split between college-educated voters and non-college voters .
Sanders finished with a big lead in both categories .
He even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a group with which he has been struggling , according to some opinion polls .
Some moderate Democrats may be tempted to console themselves into thinking that Nevada , as a caucus state , drew voters who skewed to the left .
But the entrance poll suggested that the electorate was nearly evenly split between people who identified as “ very liberal ” ( thirty per cent ) , “ somewhat liberal ” ( thirty-five per cent ) , and “ moderate or conservative ” ( thirty-four per cent ) .
In all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ biggest share of the vote , even among self-identified “ moderate or conservative ” voters .
( The breakdown of the opinion poll showed that one reason Sanders did so well among moderates was that he got the vote of almost half of all Latino moderates . )
As the race moves on to South Carolina and the Super Tuesday states , there are big questions about the viability of all of the moderate candidates .
Biden ’ s camp claimed a second-place finish in Nevada , but the results were not yet @ @ @ @ @ @ @ voters under forty-five .
Tom Steyer , who spent heavily on advertising in the state , ran well behind in virtually every category .
Buttigieg , Klobuchar , and Elizabeth Warren all did very badly with minority voters , according to the entrance poll .
Among Latino voters , Klobuchar got just four per cent , Warren seven per cent , and Buttigieg nine per cent .
Among African-American voters , who made up roughly ten per cent of the voters , Klobuchar got the support of just three per cent and Buttigieg @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like these , you would think there has to be a reckoning among the candidates who are now chasing Sanders .
On Saturday night , there was no indication of any candidates dropping out—yet .

As the votes were being counted in Nevada on Saturday afternoon, Bernie Sanders was appearing before a large and enthusiastic crowd in El Paso, Texas, which is one of the states that will vote on Super Tuesday, March 3rd. After introducing his wife, Jane, as “the next First Lady of the United States,” Sanders called out some people in the crowd, including Jim Hightower, the veteran liberal activist, who served as the Texas commissioner of agriculture back in the nineteen-eighties. Like Sanders himself, Hightower is something of a legend in progressive circles, and the Vermont senator hailed him as a close friend of thirty years.
Over the decades, Hightower has supported a number of insurgent candidates for President, including Jesse Jackson, Jerry Brown, Ralph Nader, and Sanders himself, in 2016. In all that time, he has never backed a confirmed front-runner—until now, that is. For as Sanders slipped into his stump speech, during which he described Donald Trump as “a racist, a sexist, a homophobe, a xenophobe, and a religious bigot,” he appeared to be racking up a victory in Nevada that was so large and comprehensive it made him the firm favorite to win the Democratic nomination—and raised the question of when, rather than whether, some of his moderate rivals will drop out.
Shortly after 7 P.M. E.S.T., news outlets projected Sanders as the winner in Nevada. The early returns from the caucus precincts showed him getting more than a third of the first preferences, and, after the reallocation of second preferences, more than forty per cent of the vote—while most of his rivals struggled to reach the fifteen-per-cent threshold that they had to pass to get any delegates at all. If this pattern held through the final returns, Sanders would be allocated the vast majority of the state’s thirty-six pledged delegates.
As I noted in a recent post, this dynamic—Sanders getting a healthy plurality of the vote while his rivals divide the rest—is a recipe for him racking up a massive lead in delegates on Super Tuesday, which is just ten days away. By Saturday night, the online betting and prediction markets were putting his chances at getting the nomination at more than fifty per cent. Of course, this is just a snapshot, and things could change. But in some Democratic circles the talk was about whether anything could be done to stop him. Unless at least some of his rivals drop out quickly, the answer may be no. Even if some candidates were to quit, Sanders would still be in a strong position.
Of all the Democratic candidates, Sanders has always counted on the biggest and most enthusiastic grassroots movement, and his appeal appears to be growing. In Nevada, his victory was impressive pretty much however you diced the electorate, according to the entrance poll conducted by Edison Media Research for news outlets, which was based on a large sample. Sanders was expected to do very well among young voters, but the scale of his lead in this demographic was something to behold. In the under-thirty age group, he got sixty-six per cent of the vote; in the under-forty-five group, he got forty-eight per cent. No other candidate got more than seventeen per cent of the vote in either of these demographics.
Just over half of the caucusgoers were women, according to the entrance poll. Sanders won thirty per cent of their vote, while Joe Biden got sixteen per cent, and Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar got fourteen and twelve per cent, respectively. Among men, Sanders did even better, earning thirty-eight per cent of the vote, way ahead of Buttigieg, with sixteen per cent, and Biden, with fifteen per cent.
The entrance poll also illustrated the importance of Latinos, who made up about a fifth of voters. According to the entrance poll, Sanders got more half of the vote—fifty-three per cent—while Biden got just sixteen per cent. This success reflected an extensive effort by the Sanders campaign to reach out to Hispanic voters, and it augurs well for his prospects in other states with large Latino populations.
The caucusgoers were pretty evenly split between college-educated voters and non-college voters. Sanders finished with a big lead in both categories. He even came out ahead among college-educated women, a group with which he has been struggling, according to some opinion polls.
Some moderate Democrats may be tempted to console themselves into thinking that Nevada, as a caucus state, drew voters who skewed to the left. But the entrance poll suggested that the electorate was nearly evenly split between people who identified as “very liberal” (thirty per cent), “somewhat liberal” (thirty-five per cent), and “moderate or conservative” (thirty-four per cent). In all three ideological groups, Sanders got the biggest share of the vote, even among self-identified “moderate or conservative” voters. (The breakdown of the opinion poll showed that one reason Sanders did so well among moderates was that he got the vote of almost half of all Latino moderates.)
As the race moves on to South Carolina and the Super Tuesday states, there are big questions about the viability of all of the moderate candidates. Biden’s camp claimed a second-place finish in Nevada, but the results were not yet final, and Biden performed woefully among voters under forty-five. Tom Steyer, who spent heavily on advertising in the state, ran well behind in virtually every category. Buttigieg, Klobuchar, and Elizabeth Warren all did very badly with minority voters, according to the entrance poll. Among Latino voters, Klobuchar got just four per cent, Warren seven per cent, and Buttigieg nine per cent. Among African-American voters, who made up roughly ten per cent of the voters, Klobuchar got the support of just three per cent and Buttigieg got two per cent.
With numbers like these, you would think there has to be a reckoning among the candidates who are now chasing Sanders. On Saturday night, there was no indication of any candidates dropping out—yet.


newyorker--2020-02-23--Sunday Reading: On the Nature of Grief

Sunday Reading: On the Nature of Grief

Grief is a universal and inevitable emotion in any life , and yet it is mysterious and various in its forms .
This week , we ’ re bringing you a selection of pieces on the nature of loss .
In “ Story ’ s End , ” Meghan O ’ Rourke reflects on her relationship with her mother and recounts how she gathered stories of her mother ’ s life and , through them , came to know her even more deeply after her death .
In “ Now We Are Five , ” David Sedaris writes about his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ death of his sister .
Kathryn Schulz examines the absence she feels in the wake of her father ’ s death , and Ariel Levy chronicles a heartbreaking loss that she suffers during a trip to Mongolia .
Finally , Jill Lepore explores the inner life of her best friend , who died from leukemia , leaving her laptop to Lepore in her will .
Taken together , these pieces demonstrate the scope and range of our ability to find grace and empathy in the face of loss .
My best friend left @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Twenty years later , I turned it on and began my inquest .
Reflections on two seasons of loss .
Adventure and heartbreak at the edge of the earth .

Grief is a universal and inevitable emotion in any life, and yet it is mysterious and various in its forms. This week, we’re bringing you a selection of pieces on the nature of loss. In “Story’s End,” Meghan O’Rourke reflects on her relationship with her mother and recounts how she gathered stories of her mother’s life and, through them, came to know her even more deeply after her death. In “Now We Are Five,” David Sedaris writes about his large, eclectic family and recalls the death of his sister. Kathryn Schulz examines the absence she feels in the wake of her father’s death, and Ariel Levy chronicles a heartbreaking loss that she suffers during a trip to Mongolia. Finally, Jill Lepore explores the inner life of her best friend, who died from leukemia, leaving her laptop to Lepore in her will. Taken together, these pieces demonstrate the scope and range of our ability to find grace and empathy in the face of loss.
—David Remnick
Photograph Courtesy O'Rourke Family
Writing a mother’s death.
A big family, at the beach.
My best friend left her laptop to me in her will. Twenty years later, I turned it on and began my inquest.
Illustration by Bianca Bagnarelli
Reflections on two seasons of loss.
Adventure and heartbreak at the edge of the earth.


newyorker--2020-02-23--“I Fail Almost Every Day”: An Interview with Samin Nosrat

Did it change your sense of what it means to be Iranian ?
I grew up in a suburb of San Diego that was adjacent to a very wealthy , very white suburb , and my mom figured out that if I took Latin I could go to the fancy school .
So I took Latin , and that allowed me and my brothers to go to these fancier schools .
It was very white .
There were also a lot of Iranian immigrant kids , but we were never like them , because our family had left Iran for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ family is Baha ’ i , and my family were religious refugees .
Whereas almost everyone else Iranian in our fancy school had families who left for political and money reasons , and they just were in a different socioeconomic reality .
I felt so intensely this sense of “ Well , I ’ m not like that.
” It makes me think of the book “ The Limits of Whiteness , ” by the sociologist Neda Maghbouleh , about slippery notions of whiteness within Iranian-American identity .
That ’ s another thing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I fill out any official documents , any census thing—technically , legally , I ’ m white .
And yet—I mean , look at me .
I have never once been made to feel like I fit in among white people .
After the Netflix show came out , somebody from my high-school cross-country team posted a picture of all of us in a hot tub at somebody ’ s house the night before a meet .
Sometimes I think , Am I over-narrativizing the extent to which I felt different ?
Am @ @ @ @ @ @ @ photo there ’ s maybe twelve of us in the hot tub .
Eleven very fair , young girls , mostly blond , and then me .
And , looking at this photo , I was , like , Oh , O.K .
I didn ’ t exaggerate .
I didn ’ t make it up .
If anything , I didn ’ t go far enough .
How does this come out in your work ?
What I tried to do with my show is convey this idea that good food around @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is different , and that we , as humans , are more similar than we are different .
The idea was that , maybe by learning about somebody ’ s food culture , maybe you ’ ll have some more compassion for them .
Well , that all felt real great in the moment , but the world keeps getting darker .
At the end of last year , the beginning of this year , all of what ’ s been happening with America and Iran—it was really hard for me .
Last @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the Times on the ten essential Persian recipes , and we had such a wonderful and positive reaction to it .
But then , well , it turns out that people can like our food and still want to bomb us .
A long time ago , cooking and working in food stopped being about food for me , and it ’ s been about people , and I feel now like I have to really hold myself to task for what I ’ m trying to convey with my work—does it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ difference ?
Is your next book going to try to answer those questions ?
The next book is all about going out into the world and cooking with other people , and helping them figure out their own circumstances in the kitchen .
It ’ s a book that ’ s trying to answer the question “ How do you know what to cook ?
” With “ Salt , Fat , Acid , Heat , ” in the end , I felt like I put every single story I had in that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t have any more stories , so I realized that for this book I need to go make some new stories .
Wendy MacNaughton , who illustrated “ Salt , Fat , Acid , Heat , ” is going to work with me again .
I ’ ve learned so much about listening and storytelling from her—the power of just standing in a corner and letting people do their thing , and to do what you ’ re doing right now , which is to just let the person keep talking .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ we ’ re going to go out and report together , into a whole bunch of different environments : a Meals on Wheels kitchen , the Zen hospice , a harried working mom ’ s house , someone who just had a baby , someone who ’ s had an accident , someone who is other-abled .
We ’ re going to see how everyone cooks , what their constraints are .
Who knows what will come out of that , but I know it will be special and beautiful , and much @ @ @ @ @ @ @ joke .
Which we ’ ll probably also do .
It ’ s funny—this Christmas , I had just gotten back from Mexico , and I gave Wendy a jar of epazote , because ever since the first book she ’ s come into really loving to cook certain things , including beans .
I was so happy to give it to her and say , “ O.K.
, so you add just a pinch for flavor—and also , it makes you fart less !
” Stuff like that always blows my mind @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in recipes that are way beyond just “ this tastes good , ” even if over time maybe we lose access to the knowledge of the functionality of an ingredient or a technique .
Or a tool !
I didn ’ t know this until recently , when I was doing research for something , but there is a reason that beans are often cooked in ceramic pots .
It turns out that a lot of ceramic cooking pots are slightly alkaline , and that alkalinity is what makes bean skins tender—that ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of baking soda when I make beans .
But it turns out that bean pots make good beans because there is alkalinity in the clay .
It ’ s amazing .
Someone figured it out along the way .
I love doing the homework on recipes and traditions and finding that stuff out .
And I really love figuring out how I can best communicate this to you—how do I translate this to you ?
I ’ m excited to sit there and read and research .
I love , as a reader @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Wow , there ’ s so much context here in what you ’ ve written , and I feel safer in your hands for it .
So much of saying things out loud in public , in whatever medium , is just asserting your authority .
And it ’ s so comforting to me when people back up their authority .
I ’ ve been thinking about this a lot , actually .
I just recently was in Oaxaca , and at first I was really disturbed by what appeared to me @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to appeal to a very particular and very narrow American audience .
Yeah .
Did you read that article a few years ago about this idea of “ airspace ” ?
I ’ ve been noticing that , over the last few years , in my travels , there is this very specific type of café , a very clear visual shorthand for “ Hello , we serve a certain audience in this establishment.
” “ Here is a place where you can Instagram your cortado.
” Yeah , exactly !
I had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was really excited to go .
And then I showed up , and I was really surprised by the degree to which I found a lot of businesses and traditional crafts oriented toward serving wealthy Western audiences and their particular aesthetic tastes .
For example , in Teotitlán , a weaving town near Oaxaca , all the rugs we saw were in a very particular neutral palette , the same one that ’ s in every store of a certain kind , in cities of a certain kind .
My best friend was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and a lot of his work has to do with colonialism and Mexico .
He said that , when he ’ d been to Oaxaca last , five years earlier , this neutral palette hadn ’ t existed at all .
I found myself really disturbed by this , especially because I had gone into this trip so excited to share it somehow , to write about Oaxaca or to make a show there , but then I felt like what I was seeing was , in a way , not real @ @ @ @ @ @ @ my responsibility was .
I was spilling my guts about it to my friend Niki Nakazawa , who was a producer for my show , and lives in Oaxaca .
Niki was , like , “ Samin , I really appreciate your earnestness , but there ’ s no black and white in Mexico .
There ’ s no good and bad in Mexico .
This has been happening since the beginning of time .
For you to want traditional artisans to only ever do their tradition and never evolve is another form @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that half of the Navajo rugs sold in Santa Fe , where the Navajo rugs theoretically are authentic , come from Afghanistan anyway .
It ’ s all just so complicated , and I am fully aware that I also have benefitted and profited from this by , for example , having a show with indigenous Mayan women , so I ’ m part of it , too .
So I ’ m just trying to wrestle with what ’ s the responsible thing for me to do .

Last year, the cookbook author and Netflix star Samin Nosrat left her longtime rental apartment in Berkeley and moved into a crisp, white-panelled cottage in Oakland. Her new home is nearly invisible from the street; to get to it, you have to go through a latched gate, then navigate a lush garden full of fruit trees, flowers, and raised beds for vegetable gardening, and then you have to figure out which one of the several houses before you is hers. The property is something of a modern commune, a true Northern California fantasia: four tidy homes positioned around a shared courtyard, populated by an intergenerational array of friends who cook together, collect each other’s mail, and watch each other’s children. There’s a communal fire pit. Next door, there’s a goat. When I arrived, Nosrat said, “Welcome to the house that Netflix bought.”
“Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat,” Nosrat’s first book, is a clear-eyed, conversational, often strikingly funny explication of the fundamental principles of good cooking, drawing on her years as a professional cook and cooking teacher. It was published in 2017—in the life cycle of cookbooks, an eternity ago—and yet, even now, it holds steady on the best-seller lists. (Last year, I named it one of the ten best cookbooks of the twenty-first century.) A Netflix series of the same name débuted a year later; it’s a four-episode travelogue in which Nosrat explores each of the book’s central topics in situ—learning about salt in Japan, acid in Mexico, fat in Italy, and heat back home, in California. When the show was released, it felt like everyone with a Netflix log-in fell in love with Nosrat all at once: her disarming grin, her unselfconscious enthusiasm, the way she threw herself so exuberantly into the sensory pleasures of both making and eating food. The show takes the book’s thesis of trusting your senses in the kitchen and extends it outward: onscreen, Nosrat celebrates hand-tooled equipment, artisan-made ingredients, and the slow, small, steady business of feeding oneself (and others) with earnest delight.
In person, Nosrat has the same intensity and candor, but there’s a sharper edge to her, a little bit less of a tendency to default to joy. Over a long lunch of potato chips and tuna salad from her local grocery store, and later by phone, we talked about the challenges of writing her next book, her relationship to fame, her attempts at veganism, and more.
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
Wow, this tuna salad is really good.
It’s so good. It’s so bad, but it’s so good. I can’t stop buying it. It’s romaine lettuce, tuna, cilantro.
And mayonnaise and—is that sriracha?
It’s canned jalapeños! I’ve tried to make it at home, but it just never tastes right. I’m obsessed with it.
You should probably write about it.
I should! I really only want to write about things that I’m truly excited to eat.
What else are you truly excited to eat right now?
Citrus, mostly. I’m really happy about citrus. These little Kishu mandarins—they’re one of my favorite things that come to the market every year, just these tiny little perfect fruits. And I love oroblanco grapefruit, but how much citrus can one person eat? So I started just making juice and drinking it. In the last year there’s been so much travel, so much overscheduling, that lately I think I’ve forgotten what I like to eat. So I’m trying to do tiny little things to find joy.
You’re working now on a second book. As your profile has grown, has your relationship to your work changed?
It has. I very much feel now like I’m the product. It’s a weird thing to come to terms with. It’s been important for me to learn how to trust that what an audience wants is just me being me, that who I really am is something that they can relate to. It requires that I be very honest about whatever it is that I’m saying, that I really mean it. Because I’ve noticed that, if I fib a little, or exaggerate my feelings about something, people then are, like, “I love that thing, too!” And that feels terrible. So one thing that I’ve realized is ultra-important is making sure I’m surrounded by, and that I work for and with, people who are going to protect me from the forces that threaten the honesty and threaten the realness—wanting to be liked, wanting to be successful. Sometimes I’m that threatening force! So I need to have people I can trust to protect me from my own sick brain.
Do you feel like you have a handle on fame?
It’s hard. I’m still coming to terms with it. I sometimes feel embarrassed about my success, but I’ve decided to be done feeling that way. My friend Tamar Adler was here over the holidays, and she said, “I can see how hard it is for you, because you spent your whole life being practically invisible, and now you’ve gone all the way to the other extreme.” It took me a while to interpret that, but it’s true. I grew up a brown kid in a super-white world. I was called a “terrorist” in second grade. I was always very aware that I was different, and I didn’t fit in, but I was also always trying very hard to fit in by being the nicest, the smartest, the most polite—whatever it is you need from me so that you and your people will accept me. I don’t regret that it’s how I coped with things, because it’s what makes me able to be available for all people—it’s a superpower. But I do feel like I’ve always been asking the world, “See me, see me, please.” And now I’m, like, “Don’t see me!”


newyorker--2020-02-24--X-Treme Rules of the X.F.L.

X-Treme Rules of the X.F.L.

Good news , football fans !
The X.F.L .
is back .
That ’ s right , the X-Treme Football League returned on February 8th with X-TREME personalities , X-TREME fans , and X-TREME game play !
But X-Actly how does the X.F.L .
revolutionize and X-Treme-alize the boring old No Fun League ?
To answer your questions , we have created this helpful guide to usher you through the X-Citing , X-Cessive , and X-Treme game of X.F.L .
football !
Each team gets only one helmet .
Perhaps you remember last year when Myles Garrett completely bonked what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ own helmet .
Well , some people had a problem with this , so to address the issue the X.F.L .
has dramatically reduced the number of helmets in the game .
Everyone stands for the national anthem .
And by “ national anthem ” we mean Kid Rock ’ s “ Bawitdaba , ” and by “ stands ” we mean shreds an air guitar .
No weather delays .
Imagine this scene .
Fourth and nine .
Late in the game .
Clouds roll in .
The running back catches the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ crashes all around him .
BOW !
BOW !
BLAMMO !
He shrugs off linebackers and weaves through bolts of pure electricity en route to a sixty-yard score !
I mean , that ’ d be pretty rad , right ?
Some players get to use wheels .
Whatever that means to you .
When you score a touchdown , you get to shoot a gun .
One time .
Anywhere you want .
It can be at the other team , but it doesn ’ t have to be .
Mandatory reality @ @ @ @ @ @ @ HBO hit “ Hard Knocks.
” Well , get ready for the X.F.L.
’ s own “ Knocks That Aren ’ t as Hard , but We Hope the Game of Football Is So Popular/Profitable That People Will Watch Anything Even Remotely Related to It.
” Coming this month to CBS All Access !
Unique salary structure .
I ’ ll tell you right now , we will not have enough money to pay our players .
So we ’ ll be passing a hat around the stadium to help these guys out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on the sidelines .
We have reached an exclusive deal to make Twisted Tea® the official alcoholic-iced-tea beverage of the X.F.L .
Hydrate responsibly !
Therefore , no Gatorade baths .
Twisted Tea® is too delicious , valuable , and refreshing to waste dumping on the winning coach .
Hope you like scalding-hot coffee , skipper !
Every team will be named for a racial slur .
In the N.F.L.
, Washington is the most notable franchise marketing itself using an outdated , hateful , and ignorant phrase .
Not anymore !
Keep @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the St. Louis ***** , and , of course , the Tampa Bay ***************** .
Old , old players .
Tom Brady says he wants to play until he ’ s forty-five .
Well , we ’ ve beaten the N.F.L .
once again .
They may not run fast , throw deep , or remember their children ’ s birthdays , but our players know where they were when Kennedy was shot .
Cheap franchises , perfect for real-estate moguls .
President Trump has long dreamed of owning an N.F.L .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ be a billionaire to do so .
Therefore , we ’ re dramatically lowering the price of an X.F.L .
franchise so Donny can get in on the action .
All replays handled by Dennis .
We ’ re tired of élite league officials in New York pushing their liberal agenda with these replay decisions .
In the X.F.L.
, if there is a questionable call on the field , we ’ ll text our pal Dennis to get his gut reaction .
He ’ s usually good with this stuff .
I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of “ The Bachelor ” every season .
The captain of the winning team gains the ancient right of primae noctis .
This one is pretty self-explanatory .
Premium defensive celebrations .
To insure that our sack and interception celebrations are second to none , each defensive player will be required to complete the acting program at N.Y.U.
’ s Tisch School of the Arts .
Ultimately , these celebrations won ’ t be “ entertaining , ” but they just might make you think .
Let ’ s give the ladies something @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fellas !
Weird uniforms .
If there is one thing that I can promise you about the X.F.L .
( and all future alternative football leagues ) , it ’ s that the uniforms will be jarring to behold .
There you have it !
Now that you ’ re an expert on the X.F.L.
, we ’ ll see you next week , when the ****** take on the ********** .
Presented by Twisted Tea® .
♦

It was a professional football league that lasted for one season 19 years ago, but memories of the XFL are surprisingly vivid. . . . The old XFL celebrated its edginess, even promising glimpses into the cheerleaders’ locker rooms. “We are gimmick-free,” the new league president, Jeffrey Pollack, said. “And we don’t even have cheerleaders.”
—The Times.
Good news, football fans! The X.F.L. is back. That’s right, the X-Treme Football League returned on February 8th with X-TREME personalities, X-TREME fans, and X-TREME game play! But X-Actly how does the X.F.L. revolutionize and X-Treme-alize the boring old No Fun League? To answer your questions, we have created this helpful guide to usher you through the X-Citing, X-Cessive, and X-Treme game of X.F.L. football!
Each team gets only one helmet. Perhaps you remember last year when Myles Garrett completely bonked what’s-his-name on the head with his own helmet. Well, some people had a problem with this, so to address the issue the X.F.L. has dramatically reduced the number of helmets in the game.
Everyone stands for the national anthem. And by “national anthem” we mean Kid Rock’s “Bawitdaba,” and by “stands” we mean shreds an air guitar.
No weather delays. Imagine this scene. Fourth and nine. Late in the game. Clouds roll in. The running back catches the ball out of the backfield. Lightning crashes all around him. BOW! BOW! BLAMMO! He shrugs off linebackers and weaves through bolts of pure electricity en route to a sixty-yard score! I mean, that’d be pretty rad, right?
Some players get to use wheels. Whatever that means to you.
When you score a touchdown, you get to shoot a gun. One time. Anywhere you want. It can be at the other team, but it doesn’t have to be.
Mandatory reality television. The N.F.L. produces the HBO hit “Hard Knocks.” Well, get ready for the X.F.L.’s own “Knocks That Aren’t as Hard, but We Hope the Game of Football Is So Popular/Profitable That People Will Watch Anything Even Remotely Related to It.” Coming this month to CBS All Access!
Unique salary structure. I’ll tell you right now, we will not have enough money to pay our players. So we’ll be passing a hat around the stadium to help these guys out. Please be generous.
No Gatorade on the sidelines. We have reached an exclusive deal to make Twisted Tea® the official alcoholic-iced-tea beverage of the X.F.L. Hydrate responsibly!
Therefore, no Gatorade baths. Twisted Tea® is too delicious, valuable, and refreshing to waste dumping on the winning coach. Hope you like scalding-hot coffee, skipper!
Every team will be named for a racial slur. In the N.F.L., Washington is the most notable franchise marketing itself using an outdated, hateful, and ignorant phrase. Not anymore! Keep an eye out for the Seattle ********, the St. Louis *****, and, of course, the Tampa Bay *****************.
Old, old players. Tom Brady says he wants to play until he’s forty-five. Well, we’ve beaten the N.F.L. once again. They may not run fast, throw deep, or remember their children’s birthdays, but our players know where they were when Kennedy was shot.
Cheap franchises, perfect for real-estate moguls. President Trump has long dreamed of owning an N.F.L. team, but you usually have to be a billionaire to do so. Therefore, we’re dramatically lowering the price of an X.F.L. franchise so Donny can get in on the action.
All replays handled by Dennis. We’re tired of élite league officials in New York pushing their liberal agenda with these replay decisions. In the X.F.L., if there is a questionable call on the field, we’ll text our pal Dennis to get his gut reaction. He’s usually good with this stuff. I mean, the guy guesses the winner of “The Bachelor” every season.
The captain of the winning team gains the ancient right of primae noctis. This one is pretty self-explanatory.
Premium defensive celebrations. To insure that our sack and interception celebrations are second to none, each defensive player will be required to complete the acting program at N.Y.U.’s Tisch School of the Arts. Ultimately, these celebrations won’t be “entertaining,” but they just might make you think.
Let’s give the ladies something to look at. Hogs out, fellas!
Weird uniforms. If there is one thing that I can promise you about the X.F.L. (and all future alternative football leagues), it’s that the uniforms will be jarring to behold.
There you have it! Now that you’re an expert on the X.F.L., we’ll see you next week, when the ****** take on the **********. Presented by Twisted Tea®. ♦


newyorker--2020-02-24--Adam Levin on Kids and Cuteness

Adam Levin on Kids and Cuteness

In “ Kid Positive , ” your story in this week ’ s issue , a narrator named Levin recounts various episodes from his childhood , all of which are basically rife with the duplicity and humiliation that characterizes being a kid .
Much of the sweetness of children is , let us say , elided .
What got you thinking about this aspect of childhood ?
I just spent a number of years writing a novel ( “ Bubblegum ” ) , in which , instead of there being any Internet , there ’ s this consumer technology called @ @ @ @ @ @ @ according to its manufacturer , “ that thinks it ’ s your friend.
” In many ways , the Curio is the perfect pet , but above all else it ’ s cute—extremely cute—and its extreme cuteness frequently drives people to .
.
.
extremes .
All of which is to say that I suspect I wasn ’ t , while I wrote “ Kid Positive , ” thinking all too directly about the duplicity or humiliation that characterizes being a child so much as I—having just come off a years-long stretch of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ considering cuteness as a set of behaviors in which children ( often strategically ) engage , the various ways in which such behaviors affect adults as well as other children who are subject to them , and the distinctions we make between being cute and acting cute .
None of which is to say that I don ’ t appreciate that children are frequently sweet .
( Certain children , at least . )
I think I probably appreciate the sweetness of children as much as the next guy .
I can ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that I ’ ve enjoyed hearing about a child ’ s sweetness , let alone have I ever , after witnessing a child ’ s sweetness , thought that strangers might enjoy reading about it .
Though the story is about a child , our distance from that child is often quite pronounced .
There ’ s a clinical aspect to the narration , such as in this instance : “ He was a behaviorist , the specialist , and so am I .
When I talk about behaviorism , some people feel @ @ @ @ @ @ @ trying to tell them that I think they ’ re puppets , when what I ’ m trying to tell them is that they think they ’ re puppets.
” What does the narrator mean by saying that he ’ s a behaviorist ?
The narrator is asserting that free will is an illusion , that the existence of the mind is no more or less demonstrable than the existence of God , and that every organism ’ s every behavior is brought forth by the interaction between the organism ’ s immediate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which the organism has previously been , the history of the organism ’ s behavior in those previous contexts , and the organism ’ s biological traits .
As for the distance between the narrator and what he describes , it ’ s pretty new for me , I think , and I ’ m fairly sure the distance came before the behaviorism .
That is : I think that—for ineffable or , more likely , nerdy literary reasons—I started writing down anecdotes in this more compressed and distant way than I usually @ @ @ @ @ @ @ started wondering what kind of person would , whether deliberately or not , describe or reflect on events from his own life at such a distance , and eventually I concluded that he would be a behaviorist .
A behaviorist with a beating heart .
Not a heart of gold , but neither one of ice nor stone .
The story ’ s evocations of the atmosphere of the nineteen-eighties are spot-on , and the details are funny , but you manage to avoid the temptation to play up the milieu for laughs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about balancing a culturally familiar setting with an insistently particular narrative ?
I think that I must have managed it—which , it ’ s very flattering to learn that you think I have—by really powerfully not wanting to have to manage it to begin with .
It ’ s hard to say for sure because , in general , I ’ m roughly as interested in the poignant or accurate bringing-across of this or that familiar cultural setting as I am in the sweetness of this or that child .
It ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ valued—much less sought out—as a reader , so it doesn ’ t really occur to me as something to try for as a writer .
I think that , when some period- or locale-specific object or behavior—like , say , a call made over speakerphone in a nineteen-eighties suburban American kitchen—is required to make a story or scene come across with greater economy of cause and effect than it otherwise could , I do my best to contextualize that object or behavior for readers to whom it might not be familiar , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the ostensibly pleasant bolt of recognition that encountering the object or behavior might provide a reader to whom it is familiar .
But that all sounds a little suspicious to me , and it might not make sense .
It might not even really answer the question .
A simpler and no less likely accurate answer is that , because a large part of my new novel is set in the eighties , I had , by the time I started working on “ Kid Positive , ” grown comfortable enough with writing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ its not successfully coming across when it needed to just didn ’ t occur to me .
The end of the story jumps forward to the recent past , when the narrator turns his lens not onto his own childhood but onto his friends ’ children .
He ’ s rhapsodic about how much , well , better this new brand of kids is than the ones he remembers .
His friends suspect that he ’ s making fun of them .
Why ?
Being friends of the narrator ’ s , they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ well enough to have heard many , if not all , of the anecdotes the narrator has just conveyed to the reader in the preceding sections of the story .
They ’ ve probably heard some of these anecdotes more than once , and if ( for some reason ) you were to press them to imagine what an autobiographical narrative of the narrator ’ s childhood would look like , they might even imagine it as the series of anecdotes “ Kid Positive ” comprises minus the scene in which they ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they wouldn ’ t imagine that scene is the same reason they suspect the narrator is making fun of them in that scene : they ’ ve never observed him watching kids play in a Splash Pad before .
He ’ s never even been to a Splash Pad before .
So they could not have predicted his response to watching kids play in a Splash Pad any easier than he himself could have predicted it .
His response , in other words , is Splash Pad–dependent .
Or , in other words @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
A response that , ( among other things ) helps , I hope , to convey to the reader or cement for the reader the narrator ’ s character , which may or may not be the same thing as his personhood or humanity—for me , that last part ’ s pretty debatable .
If I were you , I ’ d ask James Wood .
That is : if James Wood worked somewhere down the hall from my office , that ’ s what I ’ d do .
Is ask @ @ @

Photograph by Camille Bordas
In “Kid Positive,” your story in this week’s issue, a narrator named Levin recounts various episodes from his childhood, all of which are basically rife with the duplicity and humiliation that characterizes being a kid. Much of the sweetness of children is, let us say, elided. What got you thinking about this aspect of childhood?
I just spent a number of years writing a novel (“Bubblegum”), in which, instead of there being any Internet, there’s this consumer technology called the Curio—a “flesh-and-bone robot,” according to its manufacturer, “that thinks it’s your friend.” In many ways, the Curio is the perfect pet, but above all else it’s cute—extremely cute—and its extreme cuteness frequently drives people to . . . extremes. All of which is to say that I suspect I wasn’t, while I wrote “Kid Positive,” thinking all too directly about the duplicity or humiliation that characterizes being a child so much as I—having just come off a years-long stretch of thinking about cuteness for hours a day—was considering cuteness as a set of behaviors in which children (often strategically) engage, the various ways in which such behaviors affect adults as well as other children who are subject to them, and the distinctions we make between being cute and acting cute. None of which is to say that I don’t appreciate that children are frequently sweet. (Certain children, at least.) I think I probably appreciate the sweetness of children as much as the next guy. I can’t, however, recall a time that I’ve enjoyed hearing about a child’s sweetness, let alone have I ever, after witnessing a child’s sweetness, thought that strangers might enjoy reading about it.
Though the story is about a child, our distance from that child is often quite pronounced. There’s a clinical aspect to the narration, such as in this instance: “He was a behaviorist, the specialist, and so am I. When I talk about behaviorism, some people feel attacked. They think I’m trying to tell them that I think they’re puppets, when what I’m trying to tell them is that they think they’re puppets.” What does the narrator mean by saying that he’s a behaviorist?
The narrator is asserting that free will is an illusion, that the existence of the mind is no more or less demonstrable than the existence of God, and that every organism’s every behavior is brought forth by the interaction between the organism’s immediate context, the history of contexts in which the organism has previously been, the history of the organism’s behavior in those previous contexts, and the organism’s biological traits.
As for the distance between the narrator and what he describes, it’s pretty new for me, I think, and I’m fairly sure the distance came before the behaviorism. That is: I think that—for ineffable or, more likely, nerdy literary reasons—I started writing down anecdotes in this more compressed and distant way than I usually do in my first-person fiction, then started wondering what kind of person would, whether deliberately or not, describe or reflect on events from his own life at such a distance, and eventually I concluded that he would be a behaviorist. A behaviorist with a beating heart. Not a heart of gold, but neither one of ice nor stone.
The story’s evocations of the atmosphere of the nineteen-eighties are spot-on, and the details are funny, but you manage to avoid the temptation to play up the milieu for laughs too often. How do you go about balancing a culturally familiar setting with an insistently particular narrative?
I think that I must have managed it—which, it’s very flattering to learn that you think I have—by really powerfully not wanting to have to manage it to begin with. It’s hard to say for sure because, in general, I’m roughly as interested in the poignant or accurate bringing-across of this or that familiar cultural setting as I am in the sweetness of this or that child. It’s just something I’ve never particularly valued—much less sought out—as a reader, so it doesn’t really occur to me as something to try for as a writer. I think that, when some period- or locale-specific object or behavior—like, say, a call made over speakerphone in a nineteen-eighties suburban American kitchen—is required to make a story or scene come across with greater economy of cause and effect than it otherwise could, I do my best to contextualize that object or behavior for readers to whom it might not be familiar, and try to do so without interfering with the ostensibly pleasant bolt of recognition that encountering the object or behavior might provide a reader to whom it is familiar.
But that all sounds a little suspicious to me, and it might not make sense. It might not even really answer the question. A simpler and no less likely accurate answer is that, because a large part of my new novel is set in the eighties, I had, by the time I started working on “Kid Positive,” grown comfortable enough with writing about the eighties that the possibility of its not successfully coming across when it needed to just didn’t occur to me.
The end of the story jumps forward to the recent past, when the narrator turns his lens not onto his own childhood but onto his friends’ children. He’s rhapsodic about how much, well, better this new brand of kids is than the ones he remembers. His friends suspect that he’s making fun of them. Why?
Being friends of the narrator’s, they know him well. They know him well enough to have heard many, if not all, of the anecdotes the narrator has just conveyed to the reader in the preceding sections of the story. They’ve probably heard some of these anecdotes more than once, and if (for some reason) you were to press them to imagine what an autobiographical narrative of the narrator’s childhood would look like, they might even imagine it as the series of anecdotes “Kid Positive” comprises minus the scene in which they (the friends) appear. The reason they wouldn’t imagine that scene is the same reason they suspect the narrator is making fun of them in that scene: they’ve never observed him watching kids play in a Splash Pad before. He’s never even been to a Splash Pad before. So they could not have predicted his response to watching kids play in a Splash Pad any easier than he himself could have predicted it. His response, in other words, is Splash Pad–dependent. Or, in other words yet: it is an uncharacteristic response. A response that, (among other things) helps, I hope, to convey to the reader or cement for the reader the narrator’s character, which may or may not be the same thing as his personhood or humanity—for me, that last part’s pretty debatable. If I were you, I’d ask James Wood. That is: if James Wood worked somewhere down the hall from my office, that’s what I’d do. Is ask James Wood.


newyorker--2020-02-24--Briefly Noted Book Reviews

Briefly Noted Book Reviews

Brother & Sister , by Diane Keaton ( Knopf ) .
“ Revisiting Randy ’ s past feels like an investigation composed of hundreds of clues , often leading nowhere , ” Keaton writes in this memoir about her younger brother , whose lifelong psychological issues have defied easy diagnosis .
As a child , Randy saw ghosts ; the sound of planes overhead would make him hide under their parents ’ bed .
As an adult , he wrote poetry and became increasingly isolated : he drank , lived in squalor , and was tormented by sadistic fantasies .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ failing her brother— “ Or rather , how guilty was I ?
” There are no answers here , but this is a powerful account of one family ’ s struggle with mental illness .
Particularly poignant is Keaton ’ s depiction of their mother—a “ once-in-a-lifetime compassionate listener.
” Driving While Black , by Gretchen Sorin ( Liveright ) .
For African-Americans living under Jim Crow , public transportation was a ritual humiliation .
This excellent history illuminates how car ownership provided a measure of safety and independence and also played a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( The Montgomery bus boycott , beginning in 1955 , owed its success , in part , to a small fleet of privately owned station wagons . )
Black motorists faced unique dangers and indignities on the road—racist law enforcement ; denial of service by hotels , restaurants , and gas stations ; and random acts of violence—but passed information and warnings by word of mouth .
And , from 1937 to 1966 , many consulted “ The Negro Motorist Green Book , ” which , at its peak , had a circulation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Show Them a Good Time , by Nicole Flattery ( Bloomsbury ) .
The precarious lives of contemporary women animate this début story collection .
Flattery ’ s characters—a woman having an affair with her boss , a woman who ’ s forgotten how to make small talk—have tolerated their male partners and absurd jobs for too long , and are caught between caring and a sense that caring is pointless .
The book ’ s centerpiece is a long story in which two university students produce a satirical play about abortion , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ puts across finely observed everyday details with an absurd sensibility and has a talent for one-liners , as when one student confesses , “ I can ’ t explain exactly what my disorder is but it prevents me from absorbing any knowledge into my brain.
” Real Life , by Brandon Taylor ( Riverhead ) .
This début novel ’ s protagonist , a biochemistry grad student , contemplates abandoning the stifling world of the lab—leaving behind the structure that has guided him out of an emotionally damaging childhood and also some relationships @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lab mates are nice enough—until he gets in the way of their ambition , or reminds them of their roles in his mental anguish .
This tension constantly threatens to flare into violence , whether physical or existential , but conflicts resist easy resolution .
Taylor ’ s prose brims with interiority , and is dark and tender , like a bruise .

Brother & Sister, by Diane Keaton (Knopf). “Revisiting Randy’s past feels like an investigation composed of hundreds of clues, often leading nowhere,” Keaton writes in this memoir about her younger brother, whose lifelong psychological issues have defied easy diagnosis. As a child, Randy saw ghosts; the sound of planes overhead would make him hide under their parents’ bed. As an adult, he wrote poetry and became increasingly isolated: he drank, lived in squalor, and was tormented by sadistic fantasies. Keaton asks if she was guilty of failing her brother—“Or rather, how guilty was I?” There are no answers here, but this is a powerful account of one family’s struggle with mental illness. Particularly poignant is Keaton’s depiction of their mother—a “once-in-a-lifetime compassionate listener.”
Driving While Black, by Gretchen Sorin (Liveright). For African-Americans living under Jim Crow, public transportation was a ritual humiliation. This excellent history illuminates how car ownership provided a measure of safety and independence and also played a vital role in the civil-rights movement. (The Montgomery bus boycott, beginning in 1955, owed its success, in part, to a small fleet of privately owned station wagons.) Black motorists faced unique dangers and indignities on the road—racist law enforcement; denial of service by hotels, restaurants, and gas stations; and random acts of violence—but passed information and warnings by word of mouth. And, from 1937 to 1966, many consulted “The Negro Motorist Green Book,” which, at its peak, had a circulation of more than two million copies.
Show Them a Good Time, by Nicole Flattery (Bloomsbury). The precarious lives of contemporary women animate this début story collection. Flattery’s characters—a woman having an affair with her boss, a woman who’s forgotten how to make small talk—have tolerated their male partners and absurd jobs for too long, and are caught between caring and a sense that caring is pointless. The book’s centerpiece is a long story in which two university students produce a satirical play about abortion, defying anyone in their way. Flattery puts across finely observed everyday details with an absurd sensibility and has a talent for one-liners, as when one student confesses, “I can’t explain exactly what my disorder is but it prevents me from absorbing any knowledge into my brain.”
Real Life, by Brandon Taylor (Riverhead). This début novel’s protagonist, a biochemistry grad student, contemplates abandoning the stifling world of the lab—leaving behind the structure that has guided him out of an emotionally damaging childhood and also some relationships that kept him spiritually afloat. His lab mates are nice enough—until he gets in the way of their ambition, or reminds them of their roles in his mental anguish. This tension constantly threatens to flare into violence, whether physical or existential, but conflicts resist easy resolution. Taylor’s prose brims with interiority, and is dark and tender, like a bruise.


newyorker--2020-02-24--A Personal History by David Sedaris: Unbuttoned

I was in Paris , waiting to undergo what promised to be a pretty disgusting medical procedure , when I got word that my father was dying .
The hospital I was in had opened in 2000 , but it seemed newer .
From our vantage point in the second-floor radiology department , Hugh and I could see the cafés situated side by side in the modern , sun-filled concourse below .
“ It ’ s like an airline terminal , ” he observed .
Under different circumstances , I might have described the place as cheerful .
It was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , when I ’ d just had a CT scan and , in a few hours ’ time , a doctor was scheduled to snake a multipurpose device up the hole in my penis .
It was a sort of wire that took pictures , squirted water , and had little teeth .
These would take bites out of my bladder , which would then be sent to a lab and biopsied .
So “ cheerful ” ?
Not so much , at least for me .
I ’ d hoped to stick @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be too youthful or hale to fit in , but , looking around the waiting area , I saw that everyone was roughly my age , and either was bald or had gray hair .
If anybody belonged here , it was me .
The good news was that the urologist I met with later that afternoon was loaded with personality .
This made him the opposite of one I ’ d seen earlier that month , in London , when I ’ d gone in with an unmistakable urinary-tract infection .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the blood that came out when I peed .
U.T.I.s are common in women , but in men are usually a sign of something more serious .
The London urologist was sullen and Scottish , the first to snake a multipurpose wire up my penis , but , sadly , not the last .
The only time he came to life was when the camera started sending images to the monitor he was looking at .
“ Ah , ” he trilled .
“ There ’ s your sphincter !
” I ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ my insides were on the inside : so I wouldn ’ t have to look at them .
Therefore I said something noncommittal , like “ Great !
, ” and went back to wishing that I were dead , because it really hurts to have a wire shoved up that narrow and uninviting slit .
The urologist we ’ d come to see in Paris looked over the results of the scan I ’ d just undergone and announced that they revealed nothing out of the ordinary .
He also studied the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had in London , including one for my prostate .
My eyes had been screwed shut while it took place , but I ’ m fairly certain it involved forcing a Golden Globe Award up my ass .
I didn ’ t cry or hit anyone , though .
Thus it annoyed me to see what the English radiologist who ’ d performed the test had written in the comment section of his report : “ Patient tolerated the trans-rectal probe poorly.
” In the end , a quick prostate check and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to suffer that day in Paris .
After taking everything into consideration , the French doctor , who was young and handsome , like someone who ’ d play a doctor on TV , decided it wasn ’ t the right time to take little bites out of my bladder .
“ Better to give it another month , ” he said , adding that I shouldn ’ t worry too much .
“ Were you younger , your urinary-tract infection might not have been an issue , but at your age it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the safe side.
” That evening , Hugh and I took the train back to London , and bought next-day plane tickets for the U.S. My father was by then in the intensive-care unit , where doctors were draining great quantities of ale-colored fluid from his lungs .
His heart was failing , and he wasn ’ t expected to live much longer .
“ This could be it , ” my sister Lisa wrote me in an e-mail .
The following morning , as we waited to board our flight , I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from intensive care and put in a regular hospital room .
By the time we arrived in Raleigh , my father was back at Springmoor , the assisted-living center he ’ d been in for the past year .
I walked into his room at five in the afternoon and was unnerved by how thin and frail he was .
Asleep , he looked long dead , like something unearthed from a pharaoh ’ s tomb .
The head of his bed had been raised , so he was almost in a sitting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , seemingly bottomless hole and his hands stretched out before him .
The television was on , as always , but the sound was turned off .
“ Are you looking for your sister ?
” an aide asked .
She directed us down the hall , where a dozen people in wheelchairs sat watching “ The Andy Griffith Show.
” Just beyond them , in a grim , fluorescent-lit room , Lisa and my sister-in-law , Kathy , were talking to a hospice nurse they had recently engaged .
“ What ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” the young woman asked , as Hugh and I took seats .
“ He ’ ll be ninety-six in a few weeks , ” Kathy said .
Really ?
I thought .
My father was never super-tall , but I ’ d assumed he was at least five-nine .
Had he honestly shrunk that much ?
“ Well now he ’ s just showing off , ” I said .
The hospice nurse needed to record my father ’ s blood pressure , so we went back to his room , where @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Dad , were you napping ?
” When he came to , my father focussed on Hugh .
The tubes that had been put down his throat in the hospital had left him hoarse .
Speaking was a challenge , thus his “ Hey !
” was hard to make out .
“ We just arrived from England , ” Hugh said .
My father responded enthusiastically , and I wondered why I couldn ’ t go over and kiss him , or at least say hello .
Unless you count his hitting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with each other , and I wasn ’ t sure I could begin at this late date .
“ I figured you ’ d rally as soon as I spent a fortune on last-minute tickets , ” I said , knowing that if the situation were reversed he ’ d have stayed put , at least until a discount could be worked out .
All he ’ s ever cared about is money , so it had hurt me to learn , a few years earlier , that he ’ d cut me @ @ @ @ @ @ @ talked it over with me , had he said , for example , that I seemed comfortable enough , it might have been different .
But I heard about it secondhand .
He ’ d wanted me to find out after he died .
It would be like a scene in a movie , the wealthy man ’ s children crowded into the lawyer ’ s office : “ And , to my son David , I leave nothing.
” When I confronted him about the will , he said he ’ d @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but only if I promised that Hugh would touch none of the money .
Of course I said no .
“ Actually , don ’ t worry , ” I said , of the plane tickets .
“ I ’ ll just pay for them with part of my inheritance .
.
.
oops.
” “ Awww , come on now , ” he moaned .
His voice was weak and soft , no louder than rustling leaves .

When I confronted him about the will, he said he’d consider leaving me a modest sum, but only if I promised that Hugh would touch none of the money.
Of course I said no.
“Actually, don’t worry,” I said, of the plane tickets. “I’ll just pay for them with part of my inheritance . . . oops.”
“Awww, come on now,” he moaned. His voice was weak and soft, no louder than rustling leaves.
“I’m going to turn him over and examine his backside for bedsores,” the hospice nurse said. “So if any of y’all need to turn away . . .”
I was in the far corner of the room, beneath a painting my father had made in the late sixties of a monk with a mustache. Beside me was the guitar I was given in the fifth grade. “What’s this doing here?” I asked.
“Dad had it restrung a few months ago and said he was going to learn how to play,” Lisa told me. She pointed to a keyboard wedged behind a plaster statue of a joyful girl with her arms spread wide. “The piano, too.”
“Now?” I asked. “He’s had all this time but decided to wait until he was connected to tubes?”
After the hospice nurse had finished, my father’s dinner was brought in, all of it puréed, like baby food. Even his water was mixed with a thickener that gave it the consistency of nectar.
“He has a bone that protrudes from the back of his neck and causes food to go down the wrong way,” Lisa explained. “So he can’t have anything solid or liquid.”
As Kathy spooned the mush into my father’s mouth, Hugh picked the can of thickener up off the dinner tray, read the ingredients, and announced that it was just cornstarch.
“So how was your flight?” Lisa asked us.
Time crawled. Amber-colored urine slowly collected in the bag attached to my father’s catheter. The room was sweltering.
“Was that dinner O.K., Dad?” Lisa asked.
He raised a thumb. “Excellent.”
How had she and Paul and Kathy managed to do this day after day? Conversation was pretty much out of the question, so they mainly offered observations in louder than normal voices: “She was nice,” or “It looks like it might start raining again.”
I was relieved when my father got drowsy, and we could all leave and go to dinner. “Do you want me to turn your TV to Fox News?” Lisa asked, as we put our coats on.
“Fox News,” my father mumbled.
Lisa picked up the remote, but when she jabbed it in the direction of the television nothing happened. “I can’t figure out which channel that is, so why don’t you watch ‘CSI: Miami’ instead?”
Amy arrived from New York at ten the following morning, wearing a black-and-white polka-dot coat she’d bought on our last trip to Tokyo. Instead of taking her straight to Springmoor, Hugh and I drove her to my father’s place, where we met up with Lisa and Gretchen. Our dad started hoarding in the late eighties: a broken ceiling fan here, an expired can of peaches there, until eventually the stuff overtook him and spread into the yard. I hadn’t been inside the house since before he was moved to Springmoor, and, though Lisa had worked hard at clearing it of junk, the over-all effect was still jaw-dropping. His car, for instance, looked like the one in “Silence of the Lambs” that the decapitated head was found in. You’d think it had been made by spiders out of dust and old pollen. It was right outside the front door, and acted as an introduction to the horrors that awaited us.
“Whose turd is this on the floor next to the fireplace?” I called out, a few minutes after descending the filthy carpeted stairs into the basement.
Amy looked over my shoulder at it, as did Hugh and, finally, Lisa, who said, “It could be my dog’s from a few months ago.”
I leaned a bit closer. “Or it could be—”
Before I could finish, Hugh scooped it up with his bare hands and tossed it outside. “You people, my God.” Then he went upstairs to help Gretchen make lunch.
Continuing through the house, I kept asking the same question: “Why would anyone choose to live this way?” It wasn’t just the falling-down ceilings or the ragged spiderwebs draped like bunting over the doorways. It wasn’t the tools and appliances he’d found on various curbs—the vacuum cleaners with frayed cords or the shorted-out hair dryers he’d promised himself he would fix—but the sense of hopelessness they conveyed when heaped into rooms that used to seem so normal, no different in size or design from those of our neighbors, but were now ruined. “Whoever buys this house will just have to throw a match on it and start over,” Gretchen said.
What struck me most were my father’s clothes. Hugh gets after me for having too many, but I’ve got nothing compared with my dad, who must own twenty-five suits and twice as many sports coats. Dozens of them were from Brooks Brothers, when there was just the one store in New York and the name meant something. Others were from long-gone college shops in Ithaca and Syracuse, the sort that sold smart jackets and white bucks. There were sweaters in every shade: the cardigans on hangers, their sleeves folded in a self-embrace to prevent them from stretching; the V-necks and turtlenecks folded in stacks, a few unprotected, but mostly moth-proofed in plastic bags. There were polo shirts and dress shirts and casual shirts from every decade of postwar America. Some hung like rags—buttons missing, great tears in the backs, as if he’d worn them while running too slowly from bears. Others were still in their wrapping, likely bought two or three years ago. I could remember him wearing most of the older stuff—to the club, to work, to the parties he’d attend, always so handsome and stylish.
Though my mother’s clothes had been disposed of—all those shoulder pads moldering in some landfill—my father’s filled seven large closets, one of them a walk-in, and hung off the shower-curtain rods in all three bathrooms. They were crammed into dressers and piled on shelves. Hats and coats and scarves and gloves. Neckties and bow ties, too many to count, all owned by the man who since his retirement seemed to wear nothing but the same jeans and same T-shirt with holes in it he’d worn the day before, and the day before that; the man who’d always found an excuse to skimp on others, but allowed himself only the best. There were clothes from his self-described fat period, from the time he slimmed down, and from the years since my mother died, when he’s been out-and-out skinny: none of them thrown away or donated to Goodwill, and all of them now reeking of mildew.
I nicked a vibrant red button-down shirt from the fifties, noticing later that it had a sizable hole in the back. Then I claimed the camel-colored, moth-eaten beret I’d bought him on a school trip to Madrid in 1975.
“It suits you,” Hugh observed.
“It matches your skin and makes you look bald,” Amy said.
We were all in the dining room, going through boxes with more boxes in them, when I glanced over at the window and saw a doe step out of the woods and approach some of the trash on the lawn near the carport, head lowered, as if she’d followed the scent of fifty-year-old house paint hardened in rusted-through cans. “Look,” we whispered, afraid our voices from inside the house might frighten her off. “Isn’t she beautiful!” We couldn’t remember there being deer in the woods when we were young. Perhaps our dogs had scared them off.
“Oh,” Lisa said, her voice as soft as our father’s. “I hope she doesn’t step on a rusty nail.”
Gretchen served Greek food for lunch, and afterward we drove to Springmoor. It was a Saturday afternoon in late February, cold and raining. Our father was in his reclining chair covered with a blanket when we arrived, not asleep but not exactly awake, either. It was this new state he occasionally drifted into: neither here nor there. After killing the overhead lights, we seated ourselves around his room and continued the conversation we’d been having in the car.
“I asked Marshall to write Dad’s obituary, but he doesn’t feel up to it,” Gretchen said, referring to her boyfriend of nearly thirty years.
The rest of us glanced over at our father.
“He can’t hear us,” Gretchen said. She looked at me. “So will you write it?”
I’ve been writing about my father for ages, but when it comes to the details of his life, the year he graduated from college, etc., I’m worthless. Even his job remains a mystery to me. He was an engineer, and I like to joke that up until my late teens I thought that he drove a train. “I don’t really know all that much about him,” I said, scooting my chair closer to his recliner. He looked twenty years older than he had on my last visit to Raleigh, six months earlier. One change was his nose. The skin covering it was stretched tight, revealing facets I’d never before noticed. His eyes were shaped differently, like the diamonds you’d find on playing cards, and his mouth looked empty, though it was in fact filled with his own teeth. He did this thing now, opening wide and stretching out his lips, as if pantomiming a scream. I kept thinking it was in preparation for speech, but then he’d say nothing.


newyorker--2020-02-24--Slide Show: New Yorker Cartoons March 2, 2020

“ Any bag that can hold all my things becomes too heavy to carry .
”

“Any bag that can hold all my things becomes too heavy to carry.”
Cartoon by Amy Hwang


newyorker--2020-02-24--The TikTok-Ready Sounds of Beach Bunny

The TikTok-Ready Sounds of Beach Bunny

On the video-sharing platform TikTok , there are nearly seventy-four million posts hashtagged # promqueen .
Hundreds of thousands of these are set to a track of the same name , from 2018 , by a young indie-rock band from Chicago called Beach Bunny .
TikTok , which encourages users to post short , surrealist interpretations of memes and dance moves , has become an incubator of musical talent , or at least of persona and digital acumen .
Earlier this year , it helped send the rapper Roddy Ricch ’ s song “ The Box ” —which features a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the top of the Billboard charts .
But , unlike the idiosyncratic hip-hop that typically takes hold on the platform , “ Prom Queen ” is a doleful ballad .
The song dramatizes teen-age self-doubt and has the inverse effect of a pep talk .
“ Shut up , count your calories , ” Beach Bunny ’ s front woman , a twenty-three-year-old recent college graduate named Lili Trifilio , sings in a disaffected tone .
“ I never looked good in mom jeans.
” TikTok users , most of whom are in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ used the song as a backdrop for videos both literal and abstract .
In one , a young woman presents an array of prom dresses , prompting her followers to help her decide which to buy .
In another , someone splices together short clips of the food she ’ s eaten that day—quite literally counting her calories .
One user attempts to follow a Bob Ross painting tutorial ; another tries to cover up his face tattoos with makeup , sporting a sly grin .
Of all the confessional , female-fronted indie-rock @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Beach Bunny is perhaps the most shrewdly tailored to the whims of the social Internet , where everything , especially the misery and humiliation of youth , is molded into a bite-size piece of comic relief .
On “ Painkiller , ” a song from Beach Bunny ’ s 2018 EP , also called “ Prom Queen , ” Trifilio name-checks pharmaceuticals that might make her feel better : “ I need paracetamol , tramadol , ketamine .
.
.
.
Fill me up with Tylenol , tramadol , ketamine.
” It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ soundtrack of “ Euphoria , ” HBO ’ s breakout show about teen-age dereliction .
Trifilio is a potent lyricist who tends toward despondency , but her songs are deceptively snackable—each is a two-minute burst of honey-butter melody , often with a title that incorporates hashtag-worthy slang .
Yet , despite Beach Bunny ’ s pink bubble wrapping , the band ’ s début album , “ Honeymoon , ” which came out this month , outlines the silhouettes of despair and longing with an unusually refined emotional nuance .
“ Honeymoon ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stages .
“ Maybe we are getting too close , ” Trifilio sings on a song called “ Cuffing Season.
” The title comes from a term for the coupling up that occurs during the winter months—a cloying reference that masks the song ’ s subtle exploration of romantic uncertainty .
“ Sometimes I like being on my own / I ’ m afraid of winding up alone / But that ’ s not love , ” Trifilio sings .
Unlike many in her cohort , who favor lyrical complexity , Trifilio is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the album is “ Rearview , ” which begins with Trifilio strumming a guitar and describing a growing space between her and a partner .
Her lyrics are simple and blunt , as if she were teaching verb conjugation to a remedial English class : “ You love me / I love you / You don ’ t love me anymore / I still do.
” Partly because of the band ’ s name , Beach Bunny ’ s music has occasionally been characterized as “ beach rock ” or “ surf pop @ @ @ @ @ @ @ palatable and sweet the songs are .
In fact , the group hews more closely to indie-rock bands of the nineties and two-thousands like Built to Spill and the Strokes , which filled the spaces between grunge , punk , and emo , and probably avoided the beach .
Beach Bunny ’ s tracks are not exactly innovative—most contain an uncomplicated chord progression , a frenzied drum explosion , and not much else .
If Trifilio sounds like anyone , it might be the late Niall Quinn , of the Cranberries .
Trifilio @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to her words to make them fit a musical measure ; she sometimes turns the word “ love ” into “ lay-ee-ohhve.
” This Quinnian tic can be heard in guitar rock everywhere these days , though this is probably an accident , not an intentional tribute .
The Internet ’ s memory is rapidly shortening .
Beach Bunny may not even know that its name sounds like a reference to a time in the late two-thousands when indie-rock bands were naming themselves things like Beach Fossils and Wavves .
When a journalist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Phair in an interview last year , she admitted to being unfamiliar with Phair ’ s work .
Acts of earlier eras could more easily be traced to their predecessors , often by the artists ’ own admission , but Beach Bunny comes from a generation for which stylistic influence is absorbed through lifelong exposure to a mass jumble of online reference points .
Trifilio got her start in music by performing acoustic-guitar covers and uploading them to YouTube , as so many of her peers did before TikTok began pulling aspiring talents @ @ @ @ @ @ @ covered was Katy Perry ’ s “ E.T.
, ” a faintly industrial-sounding collaboration with Kanye West .
In a track on “ Honeymoon ” called “ Ms .
California , ” Trifilio sings , “ She ’ s your girl / She ’ s all in your pictures / California girl / I wish I was her.
” It ’ s hard not to hear this song as a kind of garage-rock photo negative of Katy Perry ’ s “ California Gurls.
” An homage like this would have seemed incongruous in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but Trifilio ’ s generation uses pop songwriting as a primary source rather than as a counterpoint , translating it effortlessly .
TikTok is a new platform , but its catchy , looping clips make use of an old music-industry trick .
Psychologists and music-theory scholars have long studied the brain ’ s response to repeated exposure to music .
As early as 1903 , Max Friedrich Meyer , a professor of psychoacoustics , showed that a piece of music ’ s “ aesthetic effect ” for participants in a study was “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In 1968 , the social psychologist Robert Zajonc coined the term “ mere-exposure effect ” to describe this phenomenon .
According to Zajonc ’ s findings , appreciation of a song increased the more the subjects heard it , no matter how complex the music was or how it aligned with their personal tastes .
This insight is the driving force behind the marketing of popular music in the modern era : FM radio stations and popular streaming playlists are most successful when they program a small pool of songs , inducing the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ On TikTok , the length of a video is restricted to sixty seconds , but most clock in at less than half a minute .
The app allows a seamless scroll through videos , demanding rapid-fire consumption .
It also groups together clips that contain the same song , encouraging you to listen over and over again .
The app ’ s success at making hits is partly due to its ability to accelerate the mere-exposure effect , making songs familiar at warp speeds .
Without TikTok , it ’ s unlikely that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could have reached the velocity it did .
The official video for the song now has more than seven million views on YouTube .
With increased exposure comes increased scrutiny , and the micro-virality of “ Prom Queen ” caused some listeners—maybe ones who caught only a snippet of the track—to question its message .
In one verse , Trifilio sings , “ I ’ ve been starving myself / Carving skin until my bones are showing.
” Last summer , Trifilio pinned a lengthy comment underneath the song ’ s YouTube video @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up I feel the need to address something , ” she wrote .
“ The lyrics are a criticism on modern beauty standards and the harmful effects beauty standards can have on people .
.
.
.
You are already a Prom Queen , you are already enough.
” The message was about two hundred words—a longer piece of writing than any Beach Bunny song .
♦

On the video-sharing platform TikTok, there are nearly seventy-four million posts hashtagged #promqueen. Hundreds of thousands of these are set to a track of the same name, from 2018, by a young indie-rock band from Chicago called Beach Bunny. TikTok, which encourages users to post short, surrealist interpretations of memes and dance moves, has become an incubator of musical talent, or at least of persona and digital acumen. Earlier this year, it helped send the rapper Roddy Ricch’s song “The Box”—which features a curious squeaking sound, perfect for TikTok—to the top of the Billboard charts. But, unlike the idiosyncratic hip-hop that typically takes hold on the platform, “Prom Queen” is a doleful ballad. The song dramatizes teen-age self-doubt and has the inverse effect of a pep talk. “Shut up, count your calories,” Beach Bunny’s front woman, a twenty-three-year-old recent college graduate named Lili Trifilio, sings in a disaffected tone. “I never looked good in mom jeans.” TikTok users, most of whom are in their teens or early twenties, have used the song as a backdrop for videos both literal and abstract. In one, a young woman presents an array of prom dresses, prompting her followers to help her decide which to buy. In another, someone splices together short clips of the food she’s eaten that day—quite literally counting her calories. One user attempts to follow a Bob Ross painting tutorial; another tries to cover up his face tattoos with makeup, sporting a sly grin.
Of all the confessional, female-fronted indie-rock bands to flourish in the past decade, Beach Bunny is perhaps the most shrewdly tailored to the whims of the social Internet, where everything, especially the misery and humiliation of youth, is molded into a bite-size piece of comic relief. On “Painkiller,” a song from Beach Bunny’s 2018 EP, also called “Prom Queen,” Trifilio name-checks pharmaceuticals that might make her feel better: “I need paracetamol, tramadol, ketamine. . . . Fill me up with Tylenol, tramadol, ketamine.” It sounds like it could be from the soundtrack of “Euphoria,” HBO’s breakout show about teen-age dereliction. Trifilio is a potent lyricist who tends toward despondency, but her songs are deceptively snackable—each is a two-minute burst of honey-butter melody, often with a title that incorporates hashtag-worthy slang.
Yet, despite Beach Bunny’s pink bubble wrapping, the band’s début album, “Honeymoon,” which came out this month, outlines the silhouettes of despair and longing with an unusually refined emotional nuance. “Honeymoon” follows a relationship in its turbulent early stages. “Maybe we are getting too close,” Trifilio sings on a song called “Cuffing Season.” The title comes from a term for the coupling up that occurs during the winter months—a cloying reference that masks the song’s subtle exploration of romantic uncertainty. “Sometimes I like being on my own / I’m afraid of winding up alone / But that’s not love,” Trifilio sings. Unlike many in her cohort, who favor lyrical complexity, Trifilio is exaggeratedly plainspoken. The strongest song on the album is “Rearview,” which begins with Trifilio strumming a guitar and describing a growing space between her and a partner. Her lyrics are simple and blunt, as if she were teaching verb conjugation to a remedial English class: “You love me / I love you / You don’t love me anymore / I still do.”
Partly because of the band’s name, Beach Bunny’s music has occasionally been characterized as “beach rock” or “surf pop”—a handy way of indicating how palatable and sweet the songs are. In fact, the group hews more closely to indie-rock bands of the nineties and two-thousands like Built to Spill and the Strokes, which filled the spaces between grunge, punk, and emo, and probably avoided the beach. Beach Bunny’s tracks are not exactly innovative—most contain an uncomplicated chord progression, a frenzied drum explosion, and not much else. If Trifilio sounds like anyone, it might be the late Dolores O’Riordan, of the Cranberries. Trifilio likes to add a light Celtic trill to her words to make them fit a musical measure; she sometimes turns the word “love” into “lay-ee-ohhve.” This tic can be heard in guitar rock everywhere these days, though this is probably an accident, not an intentional tribute. The Internet’s memory is rapidly shortening. Beach Bunny may not even know that its name sounds like a reference to a time in the late two-thousands when indie-rock bands were naming themselves things like Beach Fossils and Wavves. When a journalist compared Trifilio to the grunge icon Liz Phair in an interview last year, she admitted to being unfamiliar with Phair’s work.
Acts of earlier eras could more easily be traced to their predecessors, often by the artists’ own admission, but Beach Bunny comes from a generation for which stylistic influence is absorbed through lifelong exposure to a mass jumble of online reference points. Trifilio got her start in music by performing acoustic-guitar covers and uploading them to YouTube, as so many of her peers did before TikTok began pulling aspiring talents into its slipstream. One song she covered was Katy Perry’s “E.T.,” a faintly industrial-sounding collaboration with Kanye West. In a track on “Honeymoon” called “Ms. California,” Trifilio sings, “She’s your girl / She’s all in your pictures / California girl / I wish I was her.” It’s hard not to hear this song as a kind of garage-rock photo negative of Katy Perry’s “California Gurls.” An homage like this would have seemed incongruous in an earlier era of indie rock, but Trifilio’s generation uses pop songwriting as a primary source rather than as a counterpoint, translating it effortlessly.
TikTok is a new platform, but its catchy, looping clips make use of an old music-industry trick. Psychologists and music-theory scholars have long studied the brain’s response to repeated exposure to music. As early as 1903, Max Friedrich Meyer, a professor of psychoacoustics, showed that a piece of music’s “aesthetic effect” for participants in a study was “improved by hearing the music repeatedly.” In 1968, the social psychologist Robert Zajonc coined the term “mere-exposure effect” to describe this phenomenon. According to Zajonc’s findings, appreciation of a song increased the more the subjects heard it, no matter how complex the music was or how it aligned with their personal tastes. This insight is the driving force behind the marketing of popular music in the modern era: FM radio stations and popular streaming playlists are most successful when they program a small pool of songs, inducing the mere-exposure effect as quickly as possible.
On TikTok, the length of a video is restricted to sixty seconds, but most clock in at less than half a minute. The app allows a seamless scroll through videos, demanding rapid-fire consumption. It also groups together clips that contain the same song, encouraging you to listen over and over again. The app’s success at making hits is partly due to its ability to accelerate the mere-exposure effect, making songs familiar at warp speeds. Without TikTok, it’s unlikely that a song like “Prom Queen” could have reached the velocity it did. The official video for the song now has more than seven million views on YouTube.
With increased exposure comes increased scrutiny, and the micro-virality of “Prom Queen” caused some listeners—maybe ones who caught only a snippet of the track—to question its message. In one verse, Trifilio sings, “I’ve been starving myself / Carving skin until my bones are showing.” Last summer, Trifilio pinned a lengthy comment underneath the song’s YouTube video. “Since this video is blowing up I feel the need to address something,” she wrote. “The lyrics are a criticism on modern beauty standards and the harmful effects beauty standards can have on people. . . . You are already a Prom Queen, you are already enough.” The message was about two hundred words—a longer piece of writing than any Beach Bunny song. ♦
A previous version of this article incorrectly named the Cranberries singer to whom Beach Bunny can be compared.


newyorker--2020-02-24--Trump’s Proposed Face-Lift for Federal Buildings

Last month , the Trump Administration drafted an executive order decreeing that new federal buildings be designed in the neoclassical @ @ @ @ @ ranging from the White House and the Lincoln Memorial to Graceland .
Given how the @ @ @ @ @ between his public and private lives—his refusal to hire undocumented workers at Trump Organization properties @ @ @ @ @ Trump-branded products be made in America and never in China or Bangladesh ; his devotion @ @ @ @ @ by his evangelical base—we will surely see his most prized business properties get their own @ @ @ @

Last month, the Trump Administration drafted an executive order decreeing that new federal buildings be designed in the neoclassical style shared by beloved landmarks ranging from the White House and the Lincoln Memorial to Graceland. Given how the President always demands ideological consistency between his public and private lives—his refusal to hire undocumented workers at Trump Organization properties; his insistence that all Trump-branded products be made in America and never in China or Bangladesh; his devotion to the Christian morals espoused by his evangelical base—we will surely see his most prized business properties get their own makeovers very soon.
The stoic First Lady gets a stylish Doric makeover. The future Trump Library and Eternal Rally Site Complex (formerly the Trump Doral). The new XVIIIth hole at Trump National Golf Club and Sacred Grove, in Bedminster, New Jersey. Cutting-edge scholarship has revealed that ancient statuary was originally painted in colors that, though gaudy to modern eyes, were intended to have a lifelike effect. In this way, the President has long been a living proponent of the neoclassical style. A new imperial haircut is the perfect finishing touch!