Steve Dyer

You know how when you’re lying awake late at night and you can’t fall asleep no matter how hard you try because you are troubled by the bad choices you’ve made and the terrible things you’ve done and the knowledge that now there’s no way out of the prison you’ve put yourself into and you start to fantasize about how your life would be better if you could somehow go back and do all the things differently from the way you did them when you didn’t know any better but the more you think about it the more you realize that each decision you’ve made was predicated on an earlier, equally poor decision going as far back as you can remember and you start to understand that the only way anything could ever be okay for you and the everyone you’ve hurt—which is everyone you know—is if you were never born at all and so you shut your eyes and imagine a world in which you never existed and you see that it is good and you pull further out in your mind’s eye to view a vast unfathomable galaxy filled with stars and flares and spirals all shining on without you, finally you come to a state of brief but perfect, merciful rest? I don’t know what it looks like in your head but this is pretty much how I picture it.

by Megh Wright

Adam Scott and David Koechner are teaming up to star in the next Christmas classic. The Wrap reports that Scott has joined Koechner in Krampus, an upcoming horror-holiday film directed by Trick 'r Treat's Michael Dougherty based on the ancient legend of the Christmas devil who punishes misbehaving children. Scott and Koechner will play fathers whose kids go missing, and Allison Tolman, Emjay Anthony, and Toni Collette round out the cast. The film is slated for a December 4, 2015 release.

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West Coasters: 

East Coasters:

nevver:

Yep, it’s a baby weasel flying a woodpecker.

Dream date

“I know from experience that Internet events like this have consequences.”

Photoshop battle: frozen scenic viewfinder [x]

by Megh Wright

Having already mastered the world of Tinder, last night Conan O'Brien decided to give Grindr a try with the invaluable help of Billy Eichner, who helps O'Brien set up the best Grindr profile possible ("Frecklefucker" is a pretty catchy name) and connect Conan with his very first man date.

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The MBTA has been struggling to restore service after a massive amount of snow fell on the state, beginning with the blizzard in late January. Beverly Scott, MBTA general manager, said “tremendous progress” had been made in an “absolutely unbelievable recovery” effort. She also said that the commuter rail system is “still having challenges,” operating at a little over 60 percent. Scott said the MBTA woes this winter had sounded several “wakeup calls,” and that the system needs more investment. A look back at our recent public transit woes, due to an unusually harsh winter. -- By Bill Greene

Earlier in February, a snow-covered third rail caused a T train in Quincy to get stuck. Passengers had to be evacuated by the Quincy Fire Department. (David L. Ryan/Globe Staff)

I learned this idea from a mentor of mine, and thus I can’t give proper credit to whoever thought it up. Perhaps it’s one of those pieces of lore that’s been floating around between teachers forever and belongs to no one. In any case.

Anyone who’s been a teacher  for long enough has probably encountered a student that displays a certain degree of, for lack of a better term, performative eccentricity. Or you might look back to your high school days and think of someone like this. This is the kid who played up a particular kind of difference from the crowd, accentuating his or her “weirdness.” I’m not just talking about being different in general, and I’m not at all  suggesting that these people are not expressing sincere aspects of their personality. I am saying that there’s a way in which they broadcast their difference in order to make that the salient aspect of their personality in the eye of their peers. And I say this from experience, as in middle school, this was more or less me.

Butterfly theory is an attempt at an explanation for this tendency. To understand these students, think of how a  butterfly flies. If you study the path of butterflies through the air, it looks like they’re drunk. To get from one point to another, they never travel in a straight line; they zig and zag through the air, dipping down strangely and without warning. The presumed reason for this is a survivability advantage: if you are a creature as fragile as a butterfly, it’s a very bad thing if other animals can predict where you’ll go. Contrast with, say, a 1,000 pound moose. You might be prey, sometimes. Your physical advantage doesn’t make you invulnerable. But mostly you’re equipped to handle it if some other animal comes across your path. So you walk in straight lines. In a similar way, people who have certain social vulnerabilities — people who can be easily hurt thanks to the outward aspects that signal different types of social value, particularly when we’re young — have a vested interest in unpredictability. If no one knows who you really are, no one can insult who you really are.

Or, to put it in another way, when I was in 8th grade, I think my implicit thinking was “If they define me as the weird kid, at least they aren’t defining me as the kid with the greasy hair, with the bad clothes, the kid who smells.”

As I could tell you, from my middle school experience, this system of self-defense is inadequate. But I think both from my own experience and from my years of teaching, as a sub in middle and high school and as a college instructor, there’s a great deal of truth in this theory. And I’ve often struggled to know how to react to students who I perceive to be enacting this kind of behavior, not out of judgement, but out of sympathy. How can I make them feel that my classroom is a place where they are safe enough to move in straight lines? And how can I think of them in this way without acting like eccentricity and difference are things to avoid, or like they are all performance rather than an expression of genuine personality?

Because I was on the receiving end of the very worst way to go about it. One day in 8th grade, I was quoting from Moby Dick, because I had watched Wrath of Khan the night before. So while we puttered around doing exercises, I was saying some lines to the members of my group. My teacher pulled me out of class and gave me a speech that has only gotten harder to believe over time. My problem, as she patiently explained to me, was that “you’re different from other kids.” “You act so unhappy,” she said, but I was lonely because I acted strangely, and if I wanted to be happy, I had to stop. What bothers me in particular, with the weight of hindsight, is that while middle school was something like social hell for me, by then most of the people around me in classes had come to understand, if not accept, who I was. I’m still friends with a bunch of people from that very class. And I’m sure they thought it was odd that I was quoting Ahab, but they knew me well enough by then to leave it alone. As much as I was chased around and laughed at, for a couple years, none of my peers ever made me feel as bad as my math teacher did that day.

So I have some sympathy for fellow teachers who say that the personal or social eccentricities of students is simply none of my business, that the most humane and fair thing to do is not to acknowledge those idiosyncrasies. By the time they come to us at the collegiate level, students are adult learners, and deserve to be treated in the ways befitting the narrow exchange of pedagogical practice between teacher and student. The best way to avoid being like my 8th grade teacher is through benign neglect.

But context matters. There’s a funny reality of teaching freshman composition at a university like mine. So many of the classes our students take in their first couple years, at this huge STEM university, are giant lecture hall classes. I can’t tell you how many of my freshman have said to me, “You’re the only instructor here who knows my name.” That, to me, dictates a certain responsibility. I guess the punchline of this piece is that I haven’t really discovered a way to meet it yet. The best I can come up with is to act in a way that I hope all teachers would act: to try my best to remain aware of the social dynamics within my classroom that can be so hard for instructors to notice, to extend sympathy and respect, to make sure students know that I am accessible. Then again, I think to when I was a college freshman and try imagining going to tell a professor I was lonely then. Would never happen. I guess this is all weak brew.

Perhaps by the time they come to me it’s less pressing. Things got better for me, after middle school. I know the popular conception of high school is as a hellish wasteland of ceaseless cruelty, but things were OK for me, and they got better as time went on. Part of that was choosing to get more invested in my hygiene and my appearance — not for that teacher, or for the kids who teased me, but for me. Part of it was just aging into myself; I grew almost 4 inches in 18 months, my complexion cleaned up, I lost weight. But a lot of it, I perhaps naively think, was just that people started to give each other a better time. I became close friends with some of the very kids who had once chased me around. People let stuff go. I think people came to understand how rough life could be and resolved to just leave each other alone, more. You just grow up, you know? In any event, I got popular, to my surprise. I even started dating — although the first two women I dated came, not incidentally, from over the bridge in the next town over, and never knew me when I was the awkward kid getting chased.

So maybe by the time they come as college students, they are past some of this stuff. Maybe there’s a virtue to not seeing all of the same people in all of the same classes. Maybe it’s the simple reality of not having to ride the bus or eat in the cafeteria. I’d like to think that, at a certain age, the social cost of acting like an asshole overwhelms the insecurity and self-hatred that provokes it. But then, now I’m tall, and I’ve lifted weights for forever, and I dress a certain way, and I have absorbed the subtle rules of the social hierarchy, and I’m educated and male and white, and I have been told I’m attractive often enough to realize that there’s a certain kind of arrogance in self-deprecation. So from that stance of abundant privilege, my optimism is cheap, and I find myself wondering about the abundant social cruelties that may be multiplying right out under my nose. Reluctantly I come to admit that I am powerless to  understand, much less to prevent, the pain among the students who I cherish and do not understand.

Things have been hard since I got let go from TIME. Me and Kenyatta have been scrambling to hold everything together. Relationship is good—we've been in this situation before, so we're not as panicked as before. Samori is doing well—for all he knows I just have more time to spend with him, which he loves. But man I've been carrying around stress, like a ton of bricks. I don't have to lecture you on that, you know all about it. But one thing that has gone absolutely right since I got layed-off—this Bill Cosby piece in the Atlantic. It's running in the May issue and will top off at 7,000 words or so. I missed the cover, but that's OK. This piece has been a dream. Here is the bonus—the book drops in May, and so does the piece. The Atlantic is gonna do an interview with me on their site about both the book and the article. I just wanted to drop you a note and tell you thanks again, man. When I got rejected on this from XXXXX, I was so down. That connection you managed between me and James Bennet meant all the world.

—"A Note of Thanks (Again)," sent to David Carr on February 28, 2008

David Carr, incomparable, irrepressible, and now legendary, is my friend and my brother. I talked to him about everything—relationships, money problems, taxes, religion, drugs, alcohol, travel, writing, food, death. On Thursday night it was announced that David collapsed and died in the newsroom of The New York Times. On Sunday night, it was announced that I received the George Polk Award for Commentary for my article "The Case for Reparations." This award has my name on it, but it is the property of David Carr.

Let me tell you exactly what I mean.

"The Case for Reparations" is an argument by reported narrative, a genre of journalism I first began studying and practicing as an intern at the Washington City Paper almost 20 years ago. My tutor in that practice was David Carr, then the City Paper’s editor in chief. Before taking up my studies, I’d enjoyed a successful career as knucklehead, which is to say that before I practiced the trade of narrative argument, I practiced the art of fucking up. My résumé was impressive. On two separate occasions, in two consecutive years, I was kicked out of the same high school. When I was 14 years old, I was arrested for threatening a teacher. Two years later, I was suspended for the same thing. I was not a thug, to the extent such people even exist. I was the kind of kid who sat in the library reading all day, and then failed my literature classes. I was the kind of kid who minored in literature and then failed my literature class and my humanities classes. Adults often think children take a kind of rebellious pride in these sorts of antics. If so it is the pride of fuck-ups and knuckleheads, the shadow of a deep and abiding fear that your life is going nowhere.

But there was this thing called the Washington City Paper which made arguments every week: big, profane, arrogant arguments. And to this it married a kind of immediacy communicated through reporting, direct quotations, and vividly rendered scenes. And it did at this at incredible length—in 1996, the minimum City Paper cover story was 5,000 words. I read a lot of these words when I was supposed to be doing other things—like studying literature or working a job. I was obsessed with the words in that paper. The words were not organized like any readings I’d ever seen. Maybe I could learn to use words in that same fashion. It wasn't like I was doing anything else. It wasn't like I had ever been good at anything else.

In the February of 1996, I sent David Carr two poorly conceived college-newspaper articles and a chapbook of black-nationalist poetry—and David Carr hired me. I can’t even tell you what he saw. I know that I immediately felt unworthy—a feeling that never quite faded—because I was a knucklehead and a fuck-up. But what I didn't then know about David Carr was that he'd written and edited the knucklehead chronicles, and published annual editions wholly devoted to the craft of fucking-up. I think that David—recovering crack addict, recovering alcoholic, ex-cocaine dealer, lymphoma survivor, beautiful writer, gorgeous human—knew something about how a life of fucking up burrows itself into the bones of knuckleheads, and it changes there, transmutes into an abiding shame, a gnawing fear which likely dogs the reformed knucklehead right into the grave. Perhaps that fear could be turned into something beautiful. Perhaps a young journalist could pull power from that fear, could write from it, the way Bob Hayes ran with it, because the fear was not of anything earthly but of demons born from profound shame and fantastic imagination.

Carr was a master at activating the journalistic imagination. He was constantly imploring his writers—many of us under 25—to do something different, to tell stories differently, to break the form. He would have stories from Esquire or The New Yorker photocopied. He would distribute these photocopies to his writers, like the blueprints of imperial-army weaponry, and charge us, his rag-tag militia, with the task of reverse engineering. Then he would assemble us around a long table in the conference room, and quiz us on what, precisely, we’d gleaned from the future-tech of our enemies, and what of it we might use to turn the tide in the great war.

Carr loved the technology of storytelling and those who wielded it. He was the only person I could sit with and hash over the technical wizardry of This American Life. If you mentioned a great narrative writer in their element—say Gary Smith profiling Pat Summitt—his eyes would perk up like he’d just seen Carl Lewis mid-sprint and he would say, “Oh, he can go.” He once saw an article on how one might incorporate the tools of poetry into nonfiction. He tore out the article and left it on my desk with a note saying something like, “Still waiting to see some of this in your writing.” Another time he left a copy of The New Yorker on my desk—knowing my interest in hip-hop—with instructions for me to read a deeply reported feature on Tupac’s death. He would bring in writers from Vanity Fair and enlist them to break down our own stories and explain where we were going wrong and how we could make it right. David wanted us always moving faster, always getting stronger, always reaching higher.

Virtually the entire staff at Washington City Paper was liberal. That included David, but he was deeply skeptical of lefty activism concealed as journalism. David had no interest in objectivity, but he always believed that the truest arguments were reported and best bounded by narrative. Narrative was the elegant Trojan horse out of which the most daring and radical ideas could explode and storm a great city. An 800-word column demanding or rejecting reparations is easily repelled. Clyde Ross isn’t.

David made us feel like the writers at the big publications—at GQ, at The Atlantic Monthly, at Esquire—were no better than us. He pushed to go harder, to try match their pace, and he did this by activating fear and shame. David was a brutal and exacting boss. We didn't have fact-checkers at City Paper. There was a basic rule for errors. The first error you "introduced into the paper" earned you a talking-to. The second one earned you a lengthier talking-to and probation. The third one earned you unemployment. You did not need to “introduce” an error into the paper to earn “a talking to.” Once I flubbed two names in a music review. David chased me into an elevator and yelled at me until we got to the bottom. Another time, being 20 years old and wholly unaware of ethics, I promised a subject that a story would be “good for him.” David called me into his office and yelled for five straight minutes.

He yelled more than any other boss I’ve ever had. I was not exactly unfamiliar with his tactics. David once told a story about yelling at me over some error in my copy and noticing my face glaze over with a look of recognition. And he said he thought at that moment, “This is not the first time this kid has been in for the treatment.” It was not. My own parents ruled by fear, shame, and expectation. Even his rationales were familiar to me. He would say he was so hard on us because people already have low expectations for the alternative press. “They already think we make shit up,” he’d say, and that meant that we had a higher bar, which is to say, it meant that we had to be twice as good.

That went for reporting and for writing. A friend and fellow writer recalled David editing his copy and finding some clichéd phrase and writing in the margins, “I’m shocked to discover you think this is acceptable language to use at Washington City Paper.” I once got a tip that the people who did evictions were hiring homeless people to do the lifting and carrying. The homeless making people homeless was a perfect Washington City Paper story. “Find them,” David told me. I did not even know where to begin. Do you simply go find some homeless people and say, “Do you do evictions?” Evidently, yes, because that’s what I did, and this is the story I brought back.

What I remember about chasing that story is the fear—the fear of offending, of asking impolite questions, of intruding. But you could not work for City Paper without learning how to walk the streets of D.C., approach people you did not previously know and barrage them with intimate questions. This is an essential skill for any journalist—but it also one of the hardest things to do. But David had no tolerance of our fears, save fear of him. And if we could learn to be as deeply intolerant of our fears as he was, then a thousand glories lay on the other side.

This was represented in David himself, a man who was as effusive in praise as he was damning in condemnation. I still remember stumbling upon him in another editor’s office having just turned in a draft of that eviction story, and David looking up and saying, “We were just here talking about your incredible fucking story.” No one had ever said anything like that to me. I remember my mother calling the office one day to talk to me. And David, in his brusque, brutal way, grabbed the phone from me and said, "I just want you to know that your son is here working his ass off." No one had ever said anything like that to my parents about me. I was a fuck-up. I was a knucklehead. I was going to end up on the corner. I was going to end up in jail. I was going to end up dead.

And then I wasn’t.

David Carr convinced me that, through the constant and forceful application of principle, a young hopper, a fuck-up, a knucklehead, could bring the heavens, the vast heavens, to their knees. The principle was violent and incessant curiosity represented in the craft of narrative argument. That was the principle and craft I employed in writing "The Case for Reparations." That is part of the reason why the George Polk Award, the one with my name on it, belongs to David. But that is not the most significant reason.

It has been said, repeatedly, that David was a tireless advocate of writers of color, of writers who were women, and of young writers of all tribes. This is highly unusual. Journalism eats its young. Editors tell young writers that they aren’t good enough to cover their declared interest. Editors introduce errors into the copy of young writers and force them to take the fall. Editors pin young writers under other editors whom they know to be bad at their job. Editors order young writers to cover beats and then shop their jobs behind their backs. Editors decide to fire young writers, and lacking the moral courage to do the deed themselves, send in their underlings. Editors reject pitches from young writers by telling them that they like the idea, but don’t think their byline is famous enough. Editors allow older black editors to tell young black writers that they are not writing black enough. Some of these editors end up working in public relations. Some of them become voting-rights activists. Some of them are hired by universities to have their tenured years subsidized by aspiring young writers.

All of that happened to me. And I know that I am not alone, that I am just the tip of what happens to young writers out there. And I know that even I, who am no longer a young writer, do not always wear my best face for young writers. And among the many things I am taking from David’s death is to be better with young writers, and young people in general. Because every single time some editor shoved me down, David picked me back up. It was David who I called at his home out in Montclair, in 2007, with a story to pitch to this magazine. And I asked him who he knew. And he knew James Bennet. And this is my life. It was David I called after an editor-in-chief called me into his office to tell me I did not have “the fire” to cover housing policy and development, and instead ordered me to write a weekly column on “black men.” It was David who told me that the editor did not know what he was talking about, and it was David who confronted the editor directly.

"The Case for Reparations" is, before it is anything, a reported story about housing policy and development. It is the story that David was urging me to write 19 years ago. The award belongs to him because I would not be a journalist were it not for him. The award belongs to him because I would not be at The Atlantic if not for him. The award belongs to him because he urged me on for nearly my entire adult life—faster, stronger, higher—and his memory will urge me on for the rest of my natural life.

David, I keep thinking I am going to call you. I keep thinking I am going to wake up. David, I heard a song yesterday and I wanted to call you:

Well, I’ve been dragged all over the place,

I’ve taken hits time just don’t erase

And baby I can see you’ve been fucked with too,

But that don’t mean your loving days are through.

I miss you terribly. I do not want to say goodbye. Tony says you were our champion. How can we go on, David? How can all of it just go on? Who will be our champion, now?

This article was originally published at http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2015/02/king-david/385596/

by Megh Wright

Here is the trailer for @TrainwreckMovie #Trainwreck We are very proud. I hope you like it https://t.co/Sla2xMbGw2

— Amy Schumer (@amyschumer) February 11, 2015

Get ready for Amy Schumer's inevitable jump to movie superstardom, because Universal just released the first trailer for her starring film debut in Trainwreck, which was directed by Judd Apatow and features Bill Hader, Tilda Swinton, Colin Quinn, Mike Birbiglia, Jon Glaser, Vanessa Bayer, Jim Norton, and tons more. "There’s a moment early in someone's career where they will kill and die for what they're writing about," Apatow told The New York Times last year on his collaboration with Schumer. "That's why sometimes these first movies are the best ones." The film is currently slated for a July 17 release.

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How cold will it be this weekend? The birds in the trees will cease to sing their songs and the only sounds you will hear are the slow susurrations of starlings descending to the ground forever in a grim display of death. How cold will it be this weekend? The horns from cars that almost always signal impatience or displeasure will fall into disuse as the angry drivers who are so frequently prone to hammer upon them clutch their gloved hands together to conserve energy and warmth. How cold will it be this weekend? The urine that streams down city sidewalks will freeze and shatter, failing to even emit a small amount of steam upon its exit from bodies which will themselves immediately crack and collapse, victims of a titanic, inescapable cold the likes of which we have never seen before, a harsh, relentless chill which will show no mercy and yield no succor nor assistance to the afflicted or the comforted both. How cold will it be this weekend? It’s going to be pretty fucking cold. I bet this is the first you’re hearing about it.

by Nicole Dieker

I listen to Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off” a lot more than anyone realizes. I mean, I’m listening to “Shake It Off” right now. And someday, I may want to display my affection for The Song of Last Autumn by emblazoning the words “This Sick Beat” across my torso, probably in pink lettering on a white background.

Well. From this point forward, I can only buy products printed with the words “This Sick Beat” directly from the Taylor Swift merchandising empire.

As Vox reported, Taylor Swift has trademarked “This Sick Beat,” along with other Swiftian phrases like “Speak Now,” “Fearless,” “Party Like It’s 1989,” and “Cause We Never Go Out of Style.”

The list of Taylor Swift’s trademarks, including the items classified under each trademark, is fascinating. For example, Swift owns the words “This Sick Beat” as they relate to the following products:

Non-medicated toiletries; Non-medicated preparations for the care of skin, scalp, body or hair; Skin soap; Sun care products; Tanning products; Hair care products; Hair care preparations; Hair styling products; Hair color; Cosmetics; Make-up; Nail care preparations; Nail polish; Nail art products; Fragrances; Perfumery; Potpourri

[...]

Bleaching preparations and other substances for laundry use; cleaning, polishing, scouring and abrasive preparations; soaps; perfumery, essential oils, cosmetics, hair lotions; dentifrices.

I look forward to using This Sick Beat bleach. I’ve heard it gets your whites 20% whiter!

Your first reaction might be to grumble about trademarking. (I mean, my first reaction was to check and see if Strong Bad had ever said “this sick beat,” but that’s me.) Taylor Swift trademarking “Fearless” is like Candy Crush Saga trying to trademark “Candy,” right? Should people really be allowed to do this?

Vox points out that trademarks are one of the few ways musicians can still make an income in this day and age:

Now, this might seem like overkill by Swift, but it’s an important insight into the way the merchandise business works for musicians. For many (not necessarily for Swift), album sales and streaming are no longer ways to make money as a career. One of the dominant income sources for many artists — whether they’re top sellers like Swift or tiny singer-songwriters — is merchandise sales. Selling T-shirts turns a profit, but not if anyone can make knock-offs and sell them out from under you.

And yet—well, we’ve reported on Taylor Swift’s income before, and she’s the type of person who has enough money to both buy a reported $15 million NYC apartment (with another $5 million apartment next door for her security team) while simultaneously helping pay a fan’s student loans. The kid making This Sick Beat shirts on Zazzle isn’t getting in the way of that.

A more interesting question would be whether these trademarks help people further down the Taylor Swift empire. Look, you could probably sell an entire line of knock-off T-Swift T-shirts and Taylor Swift would be all “eh, fakers gonna fake, fake, fake, fake, fake.” But does this trademark, and the assumed associated profit from trademarked merchandising, help the people who bring Taylor Swift coffee, or set up her shows, or pack the officially licensed T-shirts and put them in the van? Does this mean they each get a little more money?

I’m already having doubts about this, because what I know about road shows includes “you’ve got your own core team, but otherwise it’s union guys hired through the venue,” and I suspect that Swift’s increased income doesn’t necessarily trickle down to everyone who works on a Taylor Swift show. (If you all know more about this than I do—especially if you know someone we can interview—drop your info in the comments or email me.)

But, for better or for worse, Taylor Swift owns the words “This Sick Beat” now. And “Fearless,” and “Love, Love, Love,” and “Party Like It’s 1989,” and “Speak Now,” and “Nice To Meet You. Where You Been?” and “Could Show You Incredible Things,” and “Cause We Never Go Out Of Style.” (That last one sounds like a Maybelline slogan.)

I look forward to buying my officially-branded This Sick Beat scouring powder, and using it on my toaster oven while I bop around to “Shake It Off” for the billionth time.

UPDATE: As the commenters pointed out, the list I referenced titled Swift, Taylor Trademarks shows trademark applications in various states of progress, not registered trademarks. By clicking on the various serial numbers associated with the trademarks, we learn:

—The trademark requests for “Fearless” and “Love Love Love” have both been abandoned (although “Taylor Swift Fearless” is registered)

—”This Sick Beat,” “Cause We Never Go Out of Style,” “Could Show You Incredible Things,” “Nice To Meet You. Where You Been?” and “Party Like It’s 1989″ are new applications

—”Speak Now” is registered

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