“All these toys belong to me.”
My nieces, who used to be very wee and are now tall gorgeous grown-ass women who dress as Social Justice Warriors for Halloween, are getting in on Thursday night and staying until Monday morning and I am like, GET HERE NOW. I inherited them from my husband, and cannot recommend Instant Nieces strongly enough, for those of you who do not have your own nieces already via siblings. Ask all prospective partners: “do you have nieces?” and if they say no, do not go on a second date with them.
But the narrative of cunning “bitches” arriving at the hotel room of a married man has a kind of resonance that drugging women on the set of a family-friendly television show does not. Similarly, the narrative of thuggish black boys in hoodies has a kind of resonance that child-murder does not. In fact, there is no real difference in claiming that a woman in a married man’s hotel room forgoes the right to her body, and asserting that a black boy wearing a hoodie forgoes the right to his. Brutality is brutality, and it always rests on a bed of lies.
What it’s like to be the “designated survivor” at the State of the Union (B.A.N.A.N.A.S.):
Members of Congress jockey for coveted positions along the House chamber’s center aisle, where they hope to grab a quick word with the president before he recites his policy wish-list and, invariably, informs Americans that the state of their union is strong. Supreme Court justices emerge from the cloistered world of the High Court, occasionally using the address as an occasion to grab some shut-eye (looking at you, Notorious RBG). Cabinet members ham it up for the cameras when the president discusses topics that touch their respective departments.
Each year, however, at least one member of the president’s cabinet skips the address to serve as the “designated survivor,” the person who would assume the presidency if the Capitol were hit by an attack that wiped out the other members of the presidential line of succession.
According to the Senate Historical Office, the practice began “at least” at the height of the Cold War in the early 1960s, but may have started even earlier. It wasn’t until the 1980s that the White House started publicly disclosing the identity of the designated survivor. The White House chief of staff makes the selection in the weeks leading up to the speech, but the pick isn’t announced until right before the address.
Female comedians and fashion:
Men aren’t expected to dress a certain way onstage — or offstage, for that matter. They can wear a button-down or a T-shirt and jeans, as Jerry Seinfeld and Louis C.K. have done on both the stage and their eponymous TV shows. Women haven’t gotten off as easily. From the time women took the stage during the days of vaudeville in the early 20th century, their wardrobe choices have shaped their public personae.
Early female comics tended to fall into two categories: those who were self-deprecating about their appearance, and those who portrayed a character with an identifiable costume, such as Jackie “Moms” Mabley a veteran of the Chitlin’ circuit of African-American vaudeville, and Minnie Pearl from Hee Haw, a country-music and comedy variety show that ran from 1969 to 1992.
Fixing the eye-witness problem:
The police wanted to assemble a series of mug shots that they could show to Murray. Cole’s mug shot was already on file. A few months earlier, he had been robbed at gunpoint while trying to buy marijuana. He flagged down a Lubbock police officer, who promised to investigate the robbery but also arrested Cole for marijuana possession and for unlawfully carrying a weapon. In mug shots, most people wear a blank expression or a scowl, but Cole posed with a loopy smile.
Worried that the smile would be a distraction, another detective, George White, went to Cole’s house with a Polaroid camera and asked him to pose in front of a wood-panelled wall. White didn’t mention that Cole was a rape suspect; instead, he said that the police were still looking for the people who had robbed Cole, and that another photograph would help with that investigation. Cole found the request strange, but he consented.
Etsy may be best known as the crafty little online marketplace (valued at a not-so-little$3.5 billion when it went public last April, but now, far less) where you can score vintage crochet bikinis, decorative wine glass markers, leather backpacks, and homemade art festooned with sparrows. But the site also has a burgeoning reputation as a destination for a quick psychic fix.
I think Mallory really brought her A-game to this Prudie question in a way that is very There Is A New Advice Sheriff In Town, And Her Name Is Mallory Fuckin’ Ortberg:
Q. The other woman: My husband of 10 years always liked to cross-dress; he did it when we dated and all through our marriage. It was casual, the occasional outing, a stress-reliever for him that I had no problem with. In the past year, all of a sudden he has ramped up his cross-dressing activities, ordering tons of clothes, going out at least once a week as “Pam,” and telling a few close friends of his proclivities. I know a lot of this is a reaction to our daughter we had two years ago and the new pressures and responsibility, but how do I deal with the resentment that Pam gets all his attention and his daughter and I are second?
oh my gosh people are still emailing Nikki helpful advice:
I do not know a bunch about speedrunning in the gaming world, but I learned a bunch from this! Also, this lady is rad:
Narcissa Wright used to be the fastest Zelda: Ocarina of Time player. Her best run was nearly perfect, the stuff of, well, legends. Cut to now: Wright has developed hand problems and can’t speedrun. She’s also decided to undergo hormone replacement therapy. Her life is fraught with change, and some of her viewers aren’t taking it well.
Please enjoy this Irish sex ed video from the 1980s:
Pete Wells just CAME AFTER Per Se (zee fanciest restaurant in NYC), by which I mean he removed two stars, and it is so much fun:
The kitchen could improve the bacon-wrapped cylinder of quail simply by not placing it on top of a dismal green pulp of cooked romaine lettuce, crunchy and mushy at once. Draining off the gluey, oily liquid would have helped a mushroom potpie from turning into a swampy mess. I don’t know what could have saved limp, dispiriting yam dumplings, but it definitely wasn’t a lukewarm matsutake mushroom bouillon as murky and appealing as bong water.
