AHP at Buzzfeed on the masculinity of teen idols, past and present:
Efron wasn’t the first to blend the beautiful face and generous heart — that’s provenance of the matinee idol, whose lineage goes all the way back to Wallace Reid and Rudolph Valentino. But Efron’s career struggles are the result of the impossible contradictions of total masculinity and total sensitivity we ask of our aging teen idols. There’s a reason that so many of them “bro out,” sometimes fatally.
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Roz Chast is a genius, and all of her work is amazing, and she sounds really fun:
“This is my amusing can collection,” she said on a recent afternoon in her house here, showing off a shelf devoted to exotic cans with unusual or potentially un-tasty contents, like squid. One, called “The Full Monty,” comes from the United Kingdom and purports to be an entire breakfast — beans, sausages, tomatoes, potatoes and onions — all glopped together in a single container. “My only rule is that it has to have been purchased in a supermarket,” she said of the cans.
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Mallory spent a lot of time confessing to a life of THEFT and VILLAINY on Twitter yesterday, you should catch up here.
once @Nicole_Cliffe got upset with me for eating grapes in a grocery store. Sometimes I still take rolls of toilet paper from restaurants
— Mallory Ortberg (@mallelis) May 4, 2014
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This is a good listicle.
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This is the MOST EXCITING obit of a 106 y/o man ever:
The gang’s car drew up at 8:30 a.m. Dalhover got out and entered the store. He was immediately seized and disarmed by Mr. Walsh and taken to the back by other agents. Shaffer and Brady, sensing something was wrong, emerged with guns drawn.
Mr. Walsh, meanwhile, approached the store’s front with a .45 in his right hand and a .357 Magnum in his left. But as he reached the door he realized he was looking through the plate glass at Shaffer. The glass exploded as both men fired simultaneously.
Shaffer fell, mortally wounded, to the sidewalk. Mr. Walsh, although hit in the chest, shoulder and right hand, stepped outside firing his Magnum at Brady, who was cut down in a thundering fusillade from all sides as he shot back wildly. Witnesses said he was still moving as Mr. Walsh put another bullet in him.
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The [many] tale[s] of two schools.
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The Boston Globe wrote a long piece on the fire that destroyed 87 Linden Street and killed Binland Lee:
Boston, defined in large measure by the students who flock to it, allows these eager newcomers to be put at risk in overcrowded houses that serve as shoddy substitutes for modern dorms. Such illegal overcrowding is rampant in student neighborhoods, a Globe Spotlight Team investigation found, a health and safety hazard virtually ignored by city inspectors and exacerbated by local universities that have in recent years, admitted many more students than they can house.
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Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/otta…
Comedy Gold: Canadian federal labour statistics, until recently, set by a [web scraper] robot reading Kijiji and deciding job postings there are largely legit.
Bwahahaha, oh god our country’s run by nincompoops.
The Foreign Worker Program: Brought to you by the Everything On The Internet Is Factually Correct machine.
Grapes are sprayed with all kinds of chemicals and pesticides and if Mallory knew what was on them she would NEVER eat an unwashed grape. You should never eat an unwashed piece of commercial fruit, period.
(This PSA brought to you by a California Girl who has actually picked grapes)
Relevant question: is there actually a proper way to wash fruit? I generally just kind of run some water over it if I remember, but it always seems like it wouldn’t actually do that much.
I put grapes in a bowl of water and soak for a few minutes to dissolve any pesticides and other stuff, then rinse in a colander under running water. But if you are really concerned about pesticide residue, then you should buy organic grapes. For other fruits like apples, I rinse and scrub with a little brush. I know it seems a little OCD, but they spray a lot of stuff on fruits and vegetables.
Seconded. I’m going to die of something horrible b/c my approach to washing fruit is occasionally and slapdash.
eating unwashed grapes kills the pestilence inside us
I’m doing it right now
Is this like how my daughter just explained to me that the good bacteria had finally finished using all the muck from the food she ate to build a house in her stomach to keep out the bad germs?
Just checking.
That seems like a remarkably correct explanation. GUT FLORA HOUSE.
I feel like ingesting the chemicals from unwashed shoplifted grapes would be a fitting superhero origin story for Mallory.
people are really up in arms about the pretzels in that buzzfeed listicle o_O
I just can’t get over Deats. DEATS.
i know 15 guitar chords please be my regular girlfriend i am a regular guy.
I also shook Barack Obama’s hand on two occasions and did not ever go to jail, I think it’s meant to be
I also know 15 guitar chords let’s start a terrible guitar band instead.
these are insane computer time’s we live in
wow,
i am 100% real and
not an insane computer
please ring me up
I stole toilet paper from the college bathrooms in undergrad a couple of times, so I get it.
I mean, maybe more than a few times.
Maybe lots and lots of times.
Maybe basically 90% the toilet paper I used during my four years of undgrad was stolen from college bathrooms, I guess is what I’m trying to say here.
100% my life. Did not have a car, so it was very difficult to buy the giant packs, and hated buying the small packs so often when they were always overpriced. You know what’s not overpriced? Free tp from the athletic center.
I had no car for most of that time too, and basically no money for all of that time so I felt very justified in the callow days of my impoverished youth. I wouldn’t do it NOW; now I can go to Big Lots and buy all the TP I want! I’m an aduuuuuult!
Our college provided us with free (aka paid for by your tuition dollars) toilet paper, cleaning supplies, and free use of the washer/dryers (you did have to bring your own soap). Suddenly having to buy these things after graduation was a rude awakening but I was a very clean undergrad.
I just assumed that we were supposed to TAKE EVERYTHING given all the bullshit fees that extend beyond tuition.
I did liberate kleenx, printer paper, and various office supplies from my on-campus job in the philosophy department. They were not paying me enough to put up with those people so I took it out in paper-goods.
Once I spent a year at a super-expensive private high school. Because I found it immensely stressful, I sometimes wandered around campus after hours and ended up taking some pastels from an art room at 2am. I figured that, because 1. everything was unlocked and 2. I was at a school where all the supplies had been purchased specifically for the students to use, it would be fine for me to take them overnight and then return them.
The next day I overheard other students talking about a THEFT in the ART ROOM and how everything needed to be locked down now. It was amazing to me that I’d apparently been able to accomplish a major art theft without even meaning to!
I never did return them, because I was scared of being found out.
I don’t feel bad about stuff like that at all (never stole TP, but I would occasionally go to meetings about…stuff?…just because they had free pizza. Which was really just bait in case they could also get me to participate. I never did!) because they got plenty of my money while I was there.
Food, though – I will grievously harm anyone who just takes my food without asking. I’m an animal and I know it. Def more angry about it in college since I was broke and car-less, unlike all of my roommates. Go get your own milk, jerks.
YES LORD. Someone stole my Totinos party pizza once. Not from the freezer, oh no. I had set it down in the communal kitchen while the oven was preheating and walked down the hall to use the bathroom. When I came back it was gone! GONE. Oh there was wailing and gnashing of teeth, I tell you what.
So… does this mean that someone stole a RAW pizza? And then ate it? O.O
I have no idea what they did with it. But it was indeed raw when taken.
Yeah, all the stuff about food on twitter last night really threw me. I thought Mallory was just playful evil. You know, a little murder here, a creeping stalking thing there, throw in some destruction of childhood dreams. Playful! But to steal another human being’s ice cream, that they purchased and saved and were probably looking forward to all day. Doing it over and over and showing no remorse! That is truly depraved.
lol id do it again too motherfuckers
Someone once took one of my treasured fudgsicles (which I kept in an opaque tupperware bin to dissuade theft) TOOK ONE BITE OUT OF IT, and then put it back in the freezer. I left an angry note on the fridge, and then the RA sent a community-wide email calling out “mean-spirited notes” as the problem, rather than flagrant, remorseless food theft.
This is the the culture that expels bullied children for “retaliating.”
Oh man, going to meetings just for the food. The only really good thing about the honors program I fled halfway through my freshman year was the food. They were seriously devoted to dragging people to events by going all out with the food – no mere pizza there!
All those boring lectures I sat through were totally worth it for the mini quiches.
I refuse to buy a bunch of grapes unless I’ve tasted at least one. What if they’re all tart and not at all sweet? What then?
(Then I’m stuck with a bunch of grapes that I won’t eat and I contribute to wastefulness of American society, that’s what.)
Freeze them! Somehow this makes the tart go all sweet in a weird way, plus they are the best food for hot days.
I am staring vengefully at most of a bowl of grapes on my desk for just this reason. I am thoroughly bad tempered about it.
Maybe don’t read the Globe piece about Binland Lee at work, guys. I was a wreck reading it yesterday.
Oh man. I just read that and the follow-up piece on overcrowding. I don’t think I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s piece on scofflaw landlords and the rage it will bring. But I’m already anticipating needing a soothing playlist so as to not burn everything down.
UGH I am so angry about it. I should have followed your advice and saved it for later.
“the more notes people put up the more i ate their food”
HOW TO CATCH A MALLORY
1. Prop up a large box with a stick.
2. Place some sort of foodstuff under the box.
3. Surround the box with notes saying “DO NOT EAT”
4. Wait.
I didn’t read the NYT Magazine piece because I saw the cover and was like “ughhh, you report on rich New Yorkers ALL DAY EVERY DAY, can’t the poor kid at least get her own article,” but if you guys say it’s good I’ll give it a shot.
Thank you Buzzfeed, for helping me meet my lifetime quota of Words I Have Read About Zac Efron.
I second this (having no children and being an Old). Now to reminisce about celebrity character crushes Wayne Rogers (ah, Trapper John, you were so much better than Pierce) and Detective Stan “Wojo” Wojciehowicz.
OMG Wojo… I was (am?) in love with EVERYONE on Barney Miller.
From the Two Schools article:
But when you tell someone’s story, that’s something precious, and you have to take care of it, you have to take care of them.
These kids are all really eloquent and thoughtful. It’s a lovely article.
Oh man I just finished that Boston Globe article. It was so, so sad and frustrating. I’m really thankful to have stayed far away from Allston/Brighton/Fenway during college, and now I live in Somerville, but I feel like the same sorts of things are starting to happen out here? Like, Cambridge/Somerville is getting so expensive that people crowd into those three-level houses and have a million roommates and stuff. But at least the large majority of Camberville residents are young professionals and families so maybe that will keep things from degrading to college squalor levels.
Yeah, I worry about the same thing happening – the young professionals and families get priced out, and then Harvard/Tufts/Lesley/MIT/etc. students pack in, and the spiral starts again.
Yeah, I don’t know. I used to put up with a lot of nonsense from my landlord when I lived in Brighton, and I don’t think I would put up with the same now — not necessarily because I know any better, but because I feel like I have more power as a person with a job and actual income.
My current landlord just raised my rent by a not-insignificant degree, and I decided to stay anyway. But if it gets much higher, I don’t know if I could stay — at least, not in my current neighborhood.
Last summer’s arsonist was a little unsettling, though.
That obit really is exciting. “Mr. Walsh, although hit in the chest, shoulder and right hand, stepped outside firing his Magnum at Brady…” He was shot three times, and he still kept going.
Ugh, I love Roz Chast! I got to meet her at SPX a couple years ago, and it was wonderful. I bought a random sketch from her (of a proud looking guy who just finished a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle), and told her how her wonderfully weird sense of humor/cartoons in The New Yorker had primed me for a love of cartoons/graphic novels. It totally made my day (and I hope, hers too).
We have that exact same overcrowding problem here in Toronto.
It’s a problem in a lot of places with high rents and high student populations. I lived in a similar (although not as extreme) house in Charlottesville, VA (which is a small town but has housing costs similar to the inner suburbs of DC)
Dorm food thieves are Hitlerian monsters but I more or less made my peace with them after I emptied a can of spray paint into a half-used gallon of milk someone was filching from and they DRANK IT ALL ANYWAY
Like, y’all deserve yourselves, clearly anything I say or do will simply get in the way of your endless karmic cycle of evil and punishment
The Zac Efron article vaguely annoyed me. Like, I can totally sympathize with the struggles of being typecast, but paragraphs like
“When a girl is first confronting her attraction to the other sex, it’s terrifying. The thought of the sexual act itself, all that physical action and mess, is terrifying. What you do want to think about is romance — a guy who thinks you’re special, who wants to do nice things for you, who wants to hold your hand”
are confusing to me. If this is true, where is all the fanfic coming from? And why ISN’T having a hand-holding relationship good in and of itself? : /
OH GOD THANK YOU. I am so sick of being told that I’m “sexually immature” because I like pretty men. I AM 32 YEARS OLD. And given what I want to do to those pretty men I’m pretty sure I can qualify at least in regard to sex as a Grown Ass Woman. Also am I the only woman who pretty much dove right in to an adult libido at puberty? I guess I’m just saying across the board that I don’t quite get the “safe hand-holding boy” thing.
I get the ‘safe hand-holding boy’ thing but it was as a result of crazy bad shit in childhood, not some kind of Natural Progression in which I did not have a libido until suddenly I met my true love or whatever.
The more I think about this the more I want to write angry screeds.
People who use that “safe, non-threatening” thing are engaged in some amazingly, unforgivably sloppy thinking — that you can read in this very article! What is created for a *market of 8-13 year olds* is NOT REFLECTIVE of *adolescent female sexuality.* Stop saying that. Just stop saying that. 10 year olds may love movies about chaste high school romances, but *stop saying* that you can learn anything about teenagers from that fact.
Also, take a look at her list of people who have allegedly followed this “safe, non-sexual” career trajectory. Robert Redford? Patrick Swayze? Joseph Gordon-Levitt? Ryan. fucking. Gosling. What kind of imperviousness to reality does it take to write in all seriousness that what women want from this type of fantasy man is “all love, all promise of passion, with little actual sex”? It’s such obvious bullshit that I can’t wrap my head around why people who’ve actually *spoken to women* would ever entertain it for a second.
yeah jesus christ, I don’t know that I “confronted” my attraction as just I thought about cocks all the time. Sure I hated real boys and sure I retreated to the happy safe space of my imagination. you know, my imagination where I thought about sex all day. that is what being a young girl is all about.
also you know what is the grossest thing in the world is describing teen idols as nonthreatening. Because the sign of a mature and thoroughly ripened adult female heterosexual sexuality is the ability to become sexually aroused in response TO A THREAT. let’s all consider the fearfulness of teenage girls who do not yet understand that they are supposed to become excited upon being threatened.
(I enjoy AHP’s writing very much in general, but I have just heard “nonthreatening” one too many times since I was an adolescent myself and I will have no more of it.)
Plus my god, those Tiger Beat boys (does Tiger Beat still exist) AREN’T PRETTY. this makes me so mad. They are soft and hairless but they are not any of them pretty. Anybody who thinks Zac Efron and whoever, Justin Bieber I guess, are pretty should be bled to death by paper cuts from a photo of a young Alain Delon. pretty, my eye.
[edit: let’s say montgomery clift instead. alain delon had a couple of bad angles sometimes.]
I know, it is a very weird view of female sexuality, where women DO NOT HAVE ANY. There were lots of things I liked about that article but the entire idea that what women really want is a nice guy who will not made them have sex because women have absolutely zero libidio is so freaking 19th century that it made me want to commit bigamous marriage and set fire to my stepson’s hotel.
(No, not really. Just in case my partner is actually reading this.)
I love all the positive comments on the Buzzfeed article. AHP transcends the internet divide!
I reiterate my above question: how do you get even a quarter of a moose through a doorway?
Hmmm, hadn't thought of that. I know someone who regularly thaws cougar/wolf carcasses in his gues bathroom. I should ask him about logistics. Maybe if you had double french doors leading to the kitchen. In which case, if your kitchen is that fancy, why the hell are you putting moose carcasses in it?