Steve Dyer

[Re-posted from earlier this week]

One of the things I’ve always tried to do at the Dish is to be up-front with readers. This sometimes means grotesque over-sharing; sometimes it means I write imprudent arguments I have to withdraw; sometimes it just means a monthly update on our revenues and subscriptions; and sometimes I stumble onto something actually interesting. But when you write every day for readers for years and years, as I’ve done, there’s not much left to hide. And that’s why, before our annual auto-renewals, I want to let you know I’ve decided to stop blogging in the near future.

Why? Two reasons. The first is one I hope anyone can understand: although it has been the most rewarding experience in my writing career, I’ve now been blogging daily for fifteen years straight (well kinda straight). That’s long enough to do any single job. In some ways, it’s as simple as that. There comes a time when you have to move on to new things, shake your world up, or recognize before you crash that burn-out does happen.

The second is that I am saturated in digital life and I want to return to the actual world again. I’m a human being before I am a writer; and a writer before I am a blogger, and although it’s been a joy and a privilege to have helped pioneer a genuinely new form of writing, I yearn for other, older forms. I want to read again, slowly, carefully. I want to absorb a difficult book and walk around in my own thoughts with it for a while. I want to have an idea and let it slowly take shape, rather than be instantly blogged. I want to write long essays that can answer more deeply and subtly the many questions that the Dish years have presented to me. I want to write a book.

I want to spend some real time with my parents, while I still have them, with my husband, who is too often a ‘blog-widow’, my sister and brother, my niece and nephews, and rekindle the friendships that I have simply had to let wither because I’m always tied to the blog. And I want to stay healthy. I’ve had increasing health challenges these past few years. They’re not HIV-related; my doctor tells me they’re simply a result of fifteen years of daily, hourly, always-on-deadline stress. These past few weeks were particularly rough – and finally forced me to get real.

We’ll have more to say – and we’re sure you will as well – in due course. I particularly want to take some time to thank my indispensable, amazing colleagues in a subsequent post. For the time being, auto-renewals have been suspended and the pay-meter has been disabled. While we’re in this strange, animated suspension, I just wanted to take one post to thank you personally, the readers, founding members and subscribers to the Dish.

It’s been a strange relationship, hasn’t it? Some of you – the original white-on-navy ones – went through the 2000 election and recount with me, when I had to explain the word “blog” to anyone I met; we experienced 9/11 together in real time – and all the fraught months and years after; and then the Iraq War; and the gay marriage struggles of the last fifteen historic years. We endured the Bush re-election together and then championed – before almost anyone else – the Obama candidacy together. Remember that first night of those Iowa caucuses? Remember the titanic fight with the Clintons? And then the entire arc of the Obama presidency.

You were there when it was just me and a tip jar for six years, and at Time, and at The Atlantic, and the Daily Beast, and then as an independent company. When we asked you two years ago to catch us as we jumped into independence, you came through and then some. In just two years, you built a million dollar revenue company, with 30,000 subscribers, a million monthly readers, and revenue growth of 17 percent over the first year. You made us unique in this media world – and we were able to avoid the sirens of clickbait and sponsored content. We will never forget it.

You were there when I couldn’t believe Palin’s fantasies; and when we live-blogged the entire Green Revolution around the clock for nearly a month in 2009. You were there when I freaked out over Obama’s first debate against Romney; and you were with me as I came to realize just how deeply wrong I had been on Iraq. But we also fought for marriage equality together (and won!), and for a new post-Iraq foreign policy (getting there), and for legalizing weed (fuck you, Hickenlooper!). We faced the brutal reality of a Catholic church engaged in the rape of children, and the bleak truth about the United States and torture. And I think we made our contribution to all those struggles. The Dish made the case for Obama in a way that actually mattered when it mattered. I think we made the case for gay equality in a way no other publication did. And we lived through history with the raw intensity of this new medium, and through a media landscape of bewildering change.

I want to thank you, personally, for the honesty and wisdom of so many of your threads and conversations and intimacies, from late-term abortions and the cannabis closet to eggcorns and new poems, from the death of pets, and the meaning of bathroom walls to the views from your windows from all over the world. You became not just readers of the Dish, but active participants, writers, contributors. You trusted us with your own stories; you took no credit for them; and we slowly gathered and built a readership I wouldn’t trade for anyone’s.

You were there before I met my husband; you were there when I actually got married; and when I finally got my green card; and when Dusty – who still adorns the masthead – died. I can’t describe this relationship outside the rather crude term of “mass intimacy” but as I write this, believe me, my eyes are swimming with tears.

How do I say goodbye? How do I walk away from the best daily, hourly, readership a writer could ever have? It’s tough. In fact, it’s brutal. But I know you will understand. Because after all these years, I feel I have come to know you, even as you have come to see me, flaws and all. Some things are worth cherishing precisely because they are finite. Things cannot go on for ever. I learned this in my younger days: it isn’t how long you live that matters. What matters is what you do when you’re alive. And, man, is this place alive.

When I write again, it will be for you, I hope – just in a different form. I need to decompress and get healthy for a while; but I won’t disappear as a writer.

But this much I know: nothing will ever be like this again, which is why it has been so precious; and why it will always be a part of me, wherever I go; and why it is so hard to finish this sentence and publish this post.

by Megh Wright

Lorne Michaels is producing a new pilot for HBO. THR reports that the pay network is currently developing a comedy pilot called Brothers in Atlanta from former Late Night with Jimmy Fallon writers Diallo Riddle and Bashir Salahuddin. The duo will star as "struggling entertainers and best friends Langston (Riddle) and Moose (Salahuddin) trying to navigate relationships and life in the black mecca of Atlanta." SNL alum Maya Rudolph and Jaden Smith have both signed on for recurring roles — Rudolph will play Moose's boss and former "R&B diva" Shirle, while Smith will play Curtis, Langston's "rowdy neighbor with unpredictable interests and suspicious income." Riddle and Salahuddin had a similar Atlanta-set pilot in the works at HBO in 2013, but the project was not ordered to series by the network.

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So here’s a sentence we never would have predicted we’d type: Leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints have come out (ahem!) in support of a Utah law prohibiting discrimination against LGBT people. Not surprisingly, there’s a catch — they also want to make sure that “religious freedom” is not infringed by any such nondiscrimination law.

Tell us more about this seeming madness, Salt Lake Tribune!

Utah’s predominant faith issued the plea for such measures at all levels of government during a rare news conference, featuring three apostles — Elders Jeffrey R. Holland, Dallin H. Oaks and D. Todd Christofferson — and a high-profile women’s leader, Neill Marriott, second counselor in the church’s Young Women general presidency.

This is where Yr. Wonkette breaks in and notes that lady people are not allowed to be “apostles,” because the angel Moroni doesn’t play that way. But let us look at their important statement!

“We call on local, state and the federal government,” Oaks said in a news release, “to serve all of their people by passing legislation that protects vital religious freedoms for individuals, families, churches and other faith groups while also protecting the rights of our LGBT citizens in such areas as housing, employment and public accommodation in hotels, restaurants and transportation — protections which are not available in many parts of the country.”

Mormon officials “believe laws ought to be framed to achieve a balance,” Oaks said, “in protecting the freedoms of all people, while respecting those with differing values.”

Utah is currently considering two bills on the matter: one would protect LGBT rights, and the other would protect the “religious freedoms” of citizens, protecting the right of individuals to refuse to perform same-sex marriages, “or provide services based on their faith.” So no pharmacist would ever have to fill contraceptive prescriptions for sluts, obviously.

As far as we can tell, the LDS elders didn’t address what’s supposed to happen when those two bills crash into each other — fine, no one can be forced to do a gay marriage. But what if God tells you that renting an apartment to a gay couple would be a sin?

Elder Oaks did make a fine statement about how awful religious discrimination would be, however:

“When religious people are publicly intimidated, retaliated against, forced from employment or made to suffer personal loss because they have raised their voice in the public square, donated to a cause or participated in an election, our democracy is the loser,” said Oaks, a former Utah Supreme Court justice. “Such tactics are every bit as wrong as denying access to employment, housing or public services because of race or gender.”

It would be just as bad as discriminating against gays, even! Honestly, we want to give the Mormon leaders the benefit of the doubt for saying some good things; Ms. Marriott condemned “centuries of ridicule, persecution and even violence against homosexuals,” and said that “most of society recognized that such treatment was simply wrong, and that such basic human rights as securing a place to live should not depend on a person’s sexual orientation.” So that sounds pretty darn forward-thinking.

But again, the other part of what they’re calling for seems custom made to provide such a broad exception to the antidiscrimination provision that it would be next to meaningless — hey, sorry, Jehovah is very clear that serving a sandwich to an obvious lesbian is an abomination, so get out.

For what it’s worth, state Senator Jim Dabakis, the only out LGBT member of the Utah State legislature, is pretty pleased with the announcement; his office released a press statement saying,

I am proud that the LDS Church has seen fit to lead the way in non-discrimination. As a religious institution, Mormons have had a long history of being the victims of discrimination and persecution. They understand more than most the value and strength of creating a civil society that judges people by the content of their character and their ability to do a job.”

So there’s that, at least. If nothing else, it looks like the next few years may be a great time to be a lawyer in Utah.

[Daily Beast / Salt Lake Tribune]

Littleton, Massachusetts, 9.20 am. Many more below:

Malden, Massachusetts, 11.30 am

Framingham, Massachusetts, 9.10 am

Cambridge, Massachusetts, 12.20 pm

Topsham, Maine, 11.30 am

Concord, New Hampshire, 9.38 am

Portland, Maine, 3.17 pm

Hull, Massachusetts, 9.30 am

“Okay, fine, it’s not really the view from my window. Just a cranky NYer. Martial law for 8″ of snow – thanks, de Blasio.”

You have until noon on Tuesday to guess it. City and/or state first, then country. Please put the location in the subject heading, along with any description within the email. If no one guesses the exact location, proximity counts. Be sure to email entries to contest@andrewsullivan.com. Winner gets a free The View From Your Window book or two free gift subscriptions to the Dish. Have at it.

by Megh Wright

Louis C.K. just dropped his latest standup special Live at the Comedy Store. As always, it's available to purchase via his website for just $5.00. Here's what C.K. says on what you can expect from the special:

I developed and prepared this material over the last year or so, mostly in comedy clubs. This special kind of goes back to when I used to just make noises and be funny for no particular reason. It felt right to shoot this special in a club to give it that live immediate intimate feeling. The show is about an hour long. The opening act, who is seen at the beginning (good place for an opening act) is Jay London. One of my favorite club comics going way back to the late 80s when I first started in working in New York.

I hope you like it.

UPDATE: C.K. just sent out a lengthy email announcing the special that's a detailed look at his standup career and why he chose to film his new material at The Comedy Store. Check out the full email below:

Hello. So below are my messy thoughts about my new special "Louis CK live at the Comedy Store" available here https://louisck.net/purchase/live-at-the-comedy-store for 5 dollars, all over the world…

So this is my sixth hour-long standup special. The truth is, I really love making these. I skipped doing one last year and I missed it. This one is different from the recent others. For one thing, it was shot in a nightclub instead of a theater. I love doing the theater shows. When I was a kid, my favorite thing in the world was Richard Pryor's concert films. The idea of being a comedian and doing a "concert" was a real goal for me. Performing in a theater expands your material and opens you up as a performer. The pressure of playing to thousands of people, I found, always makes you better. And every concert hall I've played has made me feel like I'm getting a whiff of that city or town's history. The whole thing can be very exhilarating.

But Nightclubs, comedy clubs, is where comedy is born and where comedy, standup comedy, truly lives. Going back to Abraham Lincoln, who was probably America's first comedian, Americans have enjoyed gathering at night in small packed (and once smokey) rooms, drinking themselves a bit numb and listening to each other say wicked, crazy, silly, wrongful, delightful, upside-down, careless, offensive, disgusting, whimsical things. Sometimes in long-winded, red faced hyperbole, sometimes in carefully crafted circular, intentionally false and misleading argument. Sometimes in well-chiseled perfectly timed trickery of verbiage. Pun-poetry. One line, one off, half thoughts. Half truths. Non-truths. Broad and hilariously wrongful generalizations, exaggerated prejudices and criticism of nothing and everything while a couple over here shares a pitcher of sangria, this table of guys order round after round of beers. These women over here are having vodka and cranberry. This guy drinks club soda and sits alone. He actually came for the comedy. It's a club. It's a bar. It's late at night. No one here is being responsible. These are the things we do when we are DONE working and being citizens. We go to a comedy club and pay a bit of money to laugh harder than we ever do anywhere else.

That is the standup comedy that I've been doing for almost thirty years. I have been working theater (and now arena) stages for the last nine of those thirty years but the amount of hours I've spent on a club stage outnumber the theater stage hours by more than I can figure.

I've been on comedy club stages probably more than I've stood on any other kind of spot in my entire life. I started in the Boston comedy scene, on ground that had been laid by great comedians like Steve Sweeney, Steven Wright, Barry Crimmins, Ron Lynch, Kevin Meany, Don Gavin, back in 1985 when I was 18 years old. I skipped college (still regret it), worked shitty jobs (will never regret that) and spent every single night at any comedy club in Boston I could finagle my way into. I would watch every single comedian and I would BEG to get on stage.

In 1989 I moved to New York. I discovered a bursting comedy club scene, where you could literally do 8 shows on a saturday night. (I remember Ray Romano held the record at 9 shows).

It was a glorious time for standup comedy clubs. Great comics everywhere. Colin Quinn. Mike Sweeney. Joy Behar. John Stewart. Charlie Barnett. Ray Romano. Dave Chapelle. Chris Rock. Brett Butler. Brian Regan.

All working out every night in clubs all over the city. There was the Improv on 44th street. On 1st Avenue, Catch a Rising Star and around the corner on 2nd ave, the Comic Strip (still there). Carolines was on the Seaport then. And in the Village we had the Comedy Cellar (still there), the Boston Comedy Club and the Village Gate.

I spent my early twenties bouncing from one stage to the other, from 8pm till about 4am, when Dave Attell, Kevin Brennan, Nick DiPaolo and I would head to a diner and eat breakfast.

The money was terrible. About ten dollars per show on the weeknights, fifty a show on the weekends. So every other week you had to leave town and work in another city. You'd go live in Atlanta, Columbus, Phoenix, Tampa, for a week. Most clubs would put you up in a condo behind the club and you'd work the whole week. Tuesday thru Sunday, two shows Friday, three shows Saturday. You could make about 700 a week as an opening act. A good headliner might make 2500 or 3,000 but that was rare. I worked in comedy clubs all over the country and I think I actually remember every single club. My favorite clubs were the smelly little beer soaked places with dim lighting and low ceilings. Go Bananas in Cincinnati. The Brokerage in Long Island (still there) Penguins in Cedar Rapids. The Comedy Underground in Seattle.

Then there were chain comedy clubs that were always too antiseptic and suburban. Some of them were literally inside of a mall next to a sunglass hut. The Improvs, the Funny Bones.

There were some comedy clubs around the country that were legendary. That lasted out the death of comedy in the 90s. The independent and truly great rooms where you can still smell the cigarette smoke exhaled by Bill Hicks. The Acme in Minneapolis. The Punchline in Atlanta. The Punchline (not related) in San Francisco. Cobbs in San Fran. The Laff Stop in Houston. Zanies in Chicago. Charlie Goodnights in Raleigh. The Comedy Works in Denver. These were the Meccas. When you could get a week at Acme, you know you could continue having the will to do this shit for another few months. A week at the Punchline in San Fran could get you through the next week at Harvey's in Portland.

There were club owners that were part of Comedy History. Who knew how to shape comedy. Mark Babbit, Lewis Lee, Manny Dworman, Lucien Hold, Silver Friedman, Bud Friedman, Ron Osborne, others.

I spent all of my mid to late 20s and thirties working out in places like these.

Later when I moved to Los Angeles, I discovered a scene out there that was creative and fun and also steeped in show business history. You could see Norm Macdonald. Charles Fleicher. Robert Schimmel.

In LA they have coffee houses and very cool rooms like Largo, where you can bring your notebook on stage and try just about anything.

People like Andy Kindler, Kathy Griffin, Patton Oswalt, Blaine Capatch, Craig Anton, Laura Kightlinger did outrageous stuff in those rooms.

I would sometimes go on stage at places like Mbar or Largo and come out with twenty minutes of new material, cheered on by the young, open and adaptive crowds of the "alternative" scene. But I never believed those jokes until I took them to the Improv, where the more average and basic character of the audience would cut the new material down to about three jokes.

And then there was the Comedy Store. I would take the last three remaining jokes to the store on Sunset. Maybe ONE of those would get a chuckle. And that joke, I knew, was the true treasure of the night.

I have always found the Comedy Store to be the most intimidating club of my life. It is what I thought comedy clubs to be when I listened to Lenny Bruce records as a kid. The black vinyl couches and chairs, the red formica stage. Andrew Dice Clay on stage playing to fifteen people in open defiance of their hatred and funny as hell. The Comedy Store is really show biz. As in Milton Berle with his bow tie undone around his neck show business. Mop your brow and say "tough crowd" show business. A guy being beaten up in the parking lot show business. The Comedy Store is where Pryor cut his teeth. Letterman fought to get spots there. George Carlin. Eddie Murphy. Marc Maron told me stories about living in the apartment behind the Store and how Sam Kinison pissed on his bed one night. This is the Comedy Store. The wonderful dark side of comedy.

The Comedy Store is the only club in the country that NEVER passed me when I auditioned. I auditioned at many clubs where I didn't pass but I always went back and finally did pass. The Comedy Store NEVER passed me. I just wasn't right for them. I didn't start working there until I became well known enough to circumvent the audition process. Until I became one of those guys who can just walk into a nightclub and go on stage.

So why did I shoot my new special in this place? I don't know. Maybe because, after thirty years of doing comedy, the most exciting feeling for me is going on stage, not entirely sure it's going to go well. To this day, when I work at the Store, I feel there's a one in three chance I might bomb. Like bomb hard. To a guy my age who has been doing it this long, that is exciting. So over the last tour I did this year, I started doing shows at the Comedy Store "Main room" to feel it out. The staff of the club is excellent and they really know how to run a traditional room. I loved working with them. Pauly Shore and his family were very gracious when we approached them about shooting my special there.

I really feel truly privileged to have shot this special on that stage.

Okay I didn't mean to write such a long thing about comedy clubs. The point is I prepared the material for this special on club stages. I went to the Cellar here in New York, and their new club, The Village Underground, about ten times a week with the occasional trip uptown to Gotham Comedy Club and "The Stand" on third avenue. I went out to LA to put that spin on it, working Largo, the Improv and finally the Comedy Store, hammering this stuff together in front of late night comedy club audiences. So it only seemed right to shoot it that way.

That's all. I hope you enjoy the special. Please see the movie "Boyhood". It's a great piece of filmmmaking and even literature. And take your kids to see "Into The Woods" It teaches the greatest lesson you could teach a kid: If you are paying attention, life is very confusing.

Thanks.

Louis CK

ps. I guess I didn't have to cancel the show at MSG tonight. I don't blame the mayor. That storm was a monster. We got lucky. When you consider the action taken by the government of entire north east, they got it right. To expect accuracy from each individual mayor is just too much.
For us in New York and us in my house and us at MSG it was overblown. But if you expand that "us" to everyone in the path is the storm, they were spot on. My family in Boston is part of us for me. So that's how I look at it.

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I mean, it's not like we've never heard Stranger editorial director Dan Savage singing the theme song to Alice behind the closed door of the executive bathroom, so it wasn't a complete surprise to learn this morning, while perusing the "trades," that ABC TV had picked up a pilot created and executive produced by Savage. It may surprise you to learn that the show, which remains untitled, concerns the homosexual confederacy.

According to the Hollywood Reporter:

On the comedy side, the untitled Savage comedy is a single-camera semi-autobiographical entry based on the LGBT activist/boundary-pushing columnist's life. It centers on a picture-perfect family that is turned upside down when the youngest son comes out of the closet. What seems like the end of their idyllic life turns out to be the beginning of a bright new chapter when everyone stops pretending to be perfect and actually starts being real. Savage is responsible for organizing the It Gets Better photo campaign following the passage of Prop. 8 and numerous other anti-gay legislation.

Slightly more concise detail, from the same magazine:

Untitled Dan Savage
Logline: Dan Savage's semi-autobiographical revolves around a picture-perfect family turned upside down when the youngest son comes out of the closet. What seems like the end of their idyllic life turns out to be the beginning of a bright new chapter when everyone stops pretending to be perfect and actually starts being real.
Cast:
Team: W/EP David Windsor, Casey Johnson; P Dan Savage, Brian Pines, Dan McDermott
Studio: ABC Studios, Hypomania Content, DiBonaventura Pictures Television
Format: Single-camera

UPDATE: Reached for comment, at an undisclosed location, Savage said: "Wait, what? I have no idea what you're talking about."

I, for one, can't wait to see the show. Sir.

ADDITIONAL UPDATE:

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YORK, PA—Enthralling all those around him with the riveting details of his past, sources confirmed Monday that 24-year-old Kevin Laver, a totally and utterly fascinating man, actually attended the same high school as professional basketball player G...

by Erik Voss

One thing that's forgotten about the early years of SNL was how much it was a show that anyone could host. While hosts from the old days were more often handpicked from Lorne Michaels' rolodex of awesome comics, like Steve Martin or Buck Henry, the show also took risks with host bookings that it never would these days. An 80-year-old German immigrant woman who won an "Anyone Can Host" contest in 1977. An 8-year-old Drew Barrymore in 1982. Ron Reagan, son of the president, in 1986. SNL even dared to allow directors like Francis Ford Coppola and Quentin Tarantino to host once, even though they led to catastrophically bad episodes (Coppola "hosted" by directing the episode from the tech booth — an experiment that didn't really work).

Given this eclectic history, it's a little sad to think that hosting SNL has become a sacred privilege reserved for A-list movie stars and superstar alums of the show. The only bookings to make us do double-takes in recent memory have been famous athletes who can barely read cue cards and Betty White, a beloved sitcom veteran who got the gig by being old, apparently. More recently, the show has fallen into a frustrating pattern of musician-hosts pulling double duty and people NBC really wants us to pay attention to. Considering how crucial The Voice is to the network right now, Blake Shelton hosting SNL isn't any more surprising than Adam Levine doing it two years ago. Not much better, either.

Of course, my pet peeves over SNL's safe host bookings shouldn't take anything away from last weekend's admittedly satisfying and often surprising episode. Despite being a bit of a stranger in a strange land, Shelton was effectively cast in roles that exploited fans' perceptions of the country singer, as if producers followed to the tee the playbook for a successful show that they used for Woody Harrelson last fall. Compared to last week's uneven outing with Kevin Hart — who, to be fair, possesses far more nerve and comedic ability than Shelton does – the show seemed more comfortable allowing experienced cast members (specifically Bobby Moynihan) to carry the weight when needed, resulting in a showcase of this cast's talent in the middle of a season that will hopefully see more of it.

Patriots Press Conference Cold Open. SNL's coverage of the NFL "deflategate" initially followed the belabored press conference formula, with Kenan's Bryant Gumbel throwing to Beck's Bill Belichick throwing to Taran's coy Tom Brady: "All I know is that a football is a pigskin, so I just assume that the air in the football is how much air was in the pig when it died." But things really took off with Bobby Moynihan's entrance as "assistant equipment co-manager" Dougie Spoons, who fired back at reporters with a delightful nod to A Few Good Men: "Son, we live in a world that has balls, balls that need to be inflated by men with pumps. … You don't want the truth, because deep down in places you don't talk about at Superbowl parties, you want me on that ball, you need me on that ball!"

Monologue. After a few nervous jokes, Blake Shelton teamed up with the cast in a Hee Haw jug band bit that enjoyably exposed the disconnect between the simple-natured country singer and the too-cool comedy world of SNL, with cast members taking the hacky two-liners about his family a little too far: "You know how Blake's grandfather is an IDIOT, right?" This would be a common theme throughout the night, with Shelton mocking his country good ol' boy image with merciless takedowns of Iowa and odd ballads about magical boots. While this isn't the first time a host has gotten by on charm more than true comedy skills, it's a trick that works well when the cast is ready to take the wheel. This week, they most definitely were.

Farm Hunk. The monologue led into a hilarious Bachelor-style show with Blake Shelton as a hunky farm boy cycling through equally shallow dates — all from Hollywood and with some background in porn — seemingly OK with the horribly mundane life that would await them in Iowa: "My town is really ugly and stinky and far away from things." "I love that." The women of the cast were notably stellar here, perfectly echoing each other in their reads of "Can I steal him for a sec?" And as usual, Aidy Bryant was a particular highlight: "I so glad we got some alone time, because I'm ready to — I'M SORRY MY DAD IS DEAD!" Best of the Night.

Wishing Boot. The night's strong first half continued with this bizarre music video about a magical boot that rescues troubled southerners. Written by Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider and directed by Rhys Thomas, the video was a pitch-perfect parody of everything that makes country music great: longwinded anecdotal verses, people getting saved by divine forces, and rustic clothing.

Celebrity Family Feud III. The episode hit a speed bump with this unnecessary impression based setup pitting the The Voice against American Idol – or in this case, the cast's stronger impersonators against younger cast members impersonating the hosts of a show no one watches anymore. As the laughs began to fade in the latter half, this sketch smelled like an excuse to remind viewers to watch The Voice, with Blake Shelton finding a convenient cop-out to avoid getting too physical with Taran's Adam Levine.

Weekend Update. In perhaps the most interesting news segment we've seen all season, Colin Jost and Michael Che both experienced unusual ups and downs — Jost with an awesome read on the line "This Wednesday was National Hug day… dad…" and Che receiving crickets after a joke about the late Saudi King Abdullah (the setup left out the critical reminder that women are forbidden to drive alone in Saudi Arabia… so while the joke wasn't sexist, a less-informed viewer — i.e., the kind of person watching on Blake Shelton night — might have thought otherwise). In a funny meta bit, Bobby Moynihan dropped in as Che's high school buddy Riblet, trying to steal his job: "Your job is reading. I've been doing that since I was 15!" If it weren't for Riblet's over-the-top reactions after each joke, Moynihan wouldn't make a bad Update host at all — at least, it was nice to see these two-liners read with some personality. Pete Davidson made a fourth Update appearance with an amusing story about his girlfriend finding gay porn on his computer, which led to some explorations of homophobia reminiscent of his first appearance: "Look at me, I'm the complete opposite of gay. I don't mean straight, I mean gross. You've seen gay people, they're beautiful! I might be a straight 5, but I'm a gay 1." (Pete's assessment of Jost as "a straight 8, and a gay 10" was perfect.) Sasheer Zamata closed out the segment as Nicole, a financial expert with tips that turned into bitter jabs at Che, her ex-boyfriend. Nicole didn't have much dimension other than her hostility toward Che, but as the bit gassed out she revealed her new boyfriend: Riblet. A fun ending to an atypically personal news segment.

Parole Board. Blake Shelton returned to straight-man mode as a member of a parole board in this replay of the Shawshank Redemption scene with an old Morgan Freeman-y inmate candidly examining his life — except here, the inmate is a vicious cannibal with no hope for parole. It was a funny twist, and Kenan's jovial confessions created some fun mental images: "Did I eat those people? Yes I did. Did I enjoy it? Immensely. Would I do it again? Point me to a homeless shelter." But given the confines of the parody, this read more as an amusing McSweeney's dialogue than a fully active sketch.

My Darlin' Joan. In another fun concept that struggled with energy issues, Blake Shelton played a songwriter who helped an elderly widower compose a love song for his late wife (based on the real-life story that went viral in 2013). The long build-up made the inevitable twist — the lyrics shift to focus on unflattering aspects about the wife ("Our dinners were silent and we never had sex") — too transparent early on, resulting in a long period of Shelton's uninterrupted singing, with Taran's approving harmony as the old man proving to be too little, too late.

Magician. The one off-type absurd character played by Blake Shelton this episode came in the 10-to-1 slot, as a heckler at a magic show who goes from skeptic to true believer, leading him to beg the magician to use his powers to make him rich and give him guns for hands. It was a clever script that Shelton handled faithfully, despite the fact that it's a pretty generic role that could have been played by any host. Once again, Blake Shelton chose to do something sexual off-screen, hiding behind the curtain while testing out the autofellatio powers he doesn't have. (Seriously, man, it's SNL at the end of the night. The people who listen to your music have gone to bed. A guy trying to go down on himself is hilarious. Just do it.)

Additional Thoughts:

• It's good to know that I'm not alone in spending my weekend afternoons watching A Few Good Men and The Shawshank Redemption on TNT.
• Best: "Farm Hunk." Worst: "Celebrity Family Feud." You'll See It Online: "Wishing Boot." Worth It For the Jokes: Cold Open.
• It's not often that I agree with SNL that its lead sketch (the first live piece we see after the monologue) has the strongest material, but "Farm Hunk" was a brilliant centerpiece for how the show would portray Blake Shelton throughout the night. (Though, to be fair, most episodes would lead with something like "Celebrity Family Feud," which I'm thankful was pushed back to a more tolerable time slot.) I mean, how can you not love it when nice-guy Blake Shelton has to say this line: "There's a lot of beautiful girls here, but tonight I have to send three of 'em home. Probably the two black ones and one of the curly haired ones."
• While I wasn't crazy about "Celebrity Family Feud," Kenan earned some big laughs as Steve Harvey, mispronouncing Maroon Five as "Marc Maron Five" and calling Steven Tyler "a dreamcatcher that came to life."
• "I'm a second grade teacher — in my pornos — and in real life I'm a third grade teacher."
• Bobby Moynihan (finally) led the screen time leaderboard this episode, playing an especially pivotal role in saving the cold open and Weekend Update. He scored huge laughs throughout the night, but for me none were better than his "kook with a jug" in the monologue: "I call this my giggle juice! He he he (hiccup)!" Meanwhile, Kyle Mooney had the fewest appearances — hopefully we'll see a Good Neighbor video at some point in 2015.
• You know, maybe the sound of Michael Che chuckling at Colin Jost's punchlines offscreen was all we needed to finally come around to this Weekend Update pairing. Right folks?

I'll see you next week, when J.K. Simmons will host with musical guest D'Angelo.

Erik Voss is a writer and performer living in Los Angeles. He performs at the iO Theater on the house teams Wheelhouse and It Doesn't Have to Be This Way.

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19 Things That Actually Exist

Dear Concessionist,

One of my friends is elitist. I don’t have very many close friends, and she’s only recently become one of them; still, I love her and trust her like any of my older friends. She’s a native uptown New Yorker who went to a prep school and later an Ivy League college. She’s really smart and hard working. She has a great job that I know she got only by making use of her own credentials. We met over four years ago now—we’re in our mid-twenties—and now we see each other at least every two weeks. We live in different neighborhoods, so it feels like we hang out frequently.

Everything should be great between us, but I struggle sometimes because she’s kind of an asshole about class. For instance, most of our acquaintances (common or not) live in Brooklyn. I find myself in the borough almost every weekend to hang out. She won’t go to Brooklyn, ever, under any circumstance. I’m not sure when was the last time she went. Maybe Smorgasburg in 2013? There have been over 20 house parties in the past two years that she’s been invited to but refused to attend. A couple of times I’ve co-hosted said parties. Still, nothing. Bushwick, Crown Heights, Prospect Heights, not even Clinton Hill she’ll do. When people ask me about it, I often say she works really hard and is a huge trek for her to come all the way from Tribeca to Utica Ave., even though I made an even longer trip from East Harlem.

The party thing above is kind of petty, but it’s her most repeated offense. Her lifestyle is questionable on Marxist grounds in other ways. She won’t live in a building without a doorman, or a bunch of other amenities. She won’t date people who didn’t go to “good schools,” which I’m pretty sure means “an Ivy League institution, save Cornell.” She is a member of private clubs in the city. She will judge you for wearing vintage clothes.

I brought this to her attention when it exploded, and she “kind of [saw] her point.”

She just doesn’t get it.

At the same time, she mustn’t abide by these rules 100% because I wear second-hand clothes, use the subway regularly, and, like, make under 40K, yet she calls me her friend. This makes it all the odder when I detect hints of elitism in her behavior. I call her out on it constantly, too, but she always replies with something along the lines of “that’s just who I am,” which, let’s ignore for the moment.

I’ve grown to love her but I’m not sure I can continue to call a friend someone who seems to be so out of tune with her (our) reality. What do you think?

A Friend In Deed

Dear Friend,

Your friend is absolutely identifiable to you, to herself, and to everyone on the avenue. She is queen of The Manhattan Snoots. Molly Ringwald with a rainbow of Birkins. I dig it. She is alien to you. But she totally and fully gets herself, and she is not ever going to take the G train with you. You would not want her to take the G train with you. You would be embarrassed, and she wouldn’t care. She knows what she likes.

Plus she grew up here, so her tastes and identity have cemented with a rigidity unknown elsewhere in the world except Paris, Tokyo, Singapore and possibly Beirut. She is utterly clear about this.

This is all quite central to who she is. These are not secrets. And… for some reason, you keep bringing all this up with her? This seems really rude! I mean, I’m glad someone’s ragging on her about not stepping on the necks of poor people on her way to the safety deposit box packed with conflict diamonds, but… is that really our job as actual friends?

Why is she putting up with this? And what are you getting out of it? And then why, when she says “yes, that’s who I am, enough already” are you persisting in picking at her and picking at her? That’s not a friendly thing for a friend to do. Even if you’re actually Brooklyn’s consensus-elected social justice sheriff, give yourself the night off once in a while.

Friends are, at a bare minimum, supposed to say “Yo, that is racist” when white friends say something racist. Definitely we are supposed to speak up when people start ranting about the One World Zionist Government. But actual friends are not supposed to be running after each other nipping at their heels for their behavior. Yes, it’s hard when someone says “I only date people from good schools” because, I know, it is so LOL-worthy. But you know already that the LOL is on them.

There’s a bigger question underneath here about whose New York we all live in. In many senses, the rich people were here first. New York may have belonged briefly to The People at a couple of junctures, but it most certainly does not now. Between the rental and the vacancy rates dangles the truth about #deBlasiosNewYork. It should not be a surprise that you and I aren’t coming up on top, pal. Upper middle class or actually straight-up rich people have been either entering or returning to neighborhoods their sort haven’t seen in decades, if not a century. The rest of us are just trashy froth on the sea of this great movement of real estate investment facilitated by deliciously low interest rates.

So what is this cool, vintage-clad, super-sensitive, rent-party-havin’ city of leisure-Marxists you think you live in? Hey, the subway costs ALMOST THREE DOLLARS NOW, whether you’re going to Ridgewood or the The Hotel on Rivington. I am sure that half your non-snobby 25-year-old pals are rent-subsidized by a force other than their own paychecks. Maybe you’re actually just living in a former slum, but all around you, the kids are just slumming it. You’re not dumb, you know this already.

On a slightly more shallow note, why do you hate nice things? I don’t really know what you have against doormen and private clubs. You KNOW how hard it is to get a fucking package delivered in this town. I’d kill to have a doorman. You know who would love a doorman to keep track of shit for them? Most poor people. Private clubs are so nice too, I love when people take me to a club and I get a very ridiculous mocktail and gaze upon all sorts of expensively sandblasted people I don’t care about and will never see again.

When was the last time you went somewhere snooty with Miss Snoots? Why aren’t you opening your horizons to the real money-laden freakshow of our city? Are you going to the enormous and unending galleries of Chelsea, our maddening auction houses, the great fabled stores of Madison Avenue, the silly boutiques of NoLIta? These are all TOTALLY FREE resources, where anyone can be educated on the very best in art, fashion, design and commerce. WHERE ELSE CAN YOU SEE $1100 JEANS? Don’t you want to know how and why they’re made? Why aren’t you going to parties and EATING FREE FOOD? That is the whole point of being 25 in New York City! And then, with a mind full of fresh ideas, you can go back to your Bushwick bedsit and boil some corn on your hotplate.

Because you have a tendency to be a bit of a pill. One little thing that’s really interesting here is that you’re making excuses for her not appearing in Brooklyn. “Oh, she couldn’t make it, she just works so hard you know.” Whaaat. You sound like a sexist 1940s cliché of an alcoholic’s wife! Why are you doing this? When I blow off a party because I don’t feel like dragging my ass to another borough or because I just don’t feel like it period the end, the last thing I want is someone making excuses for me. You know why I’m not at your party? I had something better to do. Maybe it was merging with the couch for 90 minutes because I just found out all of Friday is online. But I’m me, I’m intact as a human, and I can communicate regarding my presence or absence as I see fit, when I see fit.

I like you, and I realize I’ve just been ranking on you for ages here. YOU SEEM GREAT AND FUN AND NICE. (Even though I still sorta can’t decide if your letter is real or fake. I eventually decided I didn’t care, because it was so interesting.) Lemme leave you with a couple little obvious things:

1. It’s okay for people to be different. Not all my friends are marching in ideological lockstep with me! That would be really difficult to achieve. Plus the tribunals would get exhausting. What crime is too small to prosecute? And where does it stop? Do I have to cull my Tumblr followers? Do I have to block lots of people on Twitter who are miserable full-time victims? You know, the kind that is on the hourly hunt for offense and martyrdom, who are really just looking for people to scream at? Who have so terribly lost their way online that they don’t know what they’re even doing on the Internet anymore? Who have gone so thoroughly through the mirror in their pursuit of bullies that they have become that thing they hated? Oh right, yes, I do have to go block them all, good point, BRB.

2. SORRY, GOT DISTRACTED THERE. People change over time. They really do. I have seen really rigid friends soften, and vice versa. I can unblock those people I just went and blocked at any later date. They will change, you will change, I will change, she will change, who knows, maybe you’ll end up being a huge, rich, horrible Wall Street jerk. Kick me down a little something when that happens, okay? Meanwhile, chill.

3. There’s more to learn about what you like and care about. If I could ask one thing of you, it’d be to challenge yourself with a weekly expedition in discomfort. Discomfort is great! It’s like hunger, but it gets fixed by feeding your brain.

And if none of this advice works, then just remember this message from “Good Wife” actor Matt Czuchry:

Wherever you are, whoever you are, I want you to know you are an amazing and beautiful person. pic.twitter.com/JSYAM1k5h7

— Matt Czuchry (@CzuchryMatt) November 18, 2014

Ha ha, I know, the poor thing, he must be starving. Let’s go eat some food too.

The Concessionist is an adult human in New York City who is somewhat worn down and willing to make a good number of sacrifices for a peaceful life. Is it decision fatigue? Or just ennui? That’s probably a question for a psychiatrist. Anything else, ask me.

Here is Gawker’s new seating chart, put forward this week, and then promptly and blatantly leaked to us in a very passive fit of nostalgia and reflexive defiance.

Don’t get too attached to it—the company is finally moving out of its oddball, stair-intensive Soho loft building this year.

Here’s a seating chart from 2010, for comparison. Lots of changes!

Back then, Gawker and Jezebel shared a table—behind them, so did Gizmodo and Deadspin.

This old chart also has Gawker’s Alex Pareene sitting next to John Cook. And look how far they’ve come! OH WAIT, no, now they’re sitting next to each other again, ol’ “AP” and “Cook,” just at a different table, one now in deep blue for “management.” How fast they grow up. [UPDATE: Angry sources inside Gawker Media claim that Alex Pareene has never sat in the seat marked AP which is clearly his seat. When will Alex Pareene sit down like an important white man? Guess he shouldn't have dropped out of school.]

What else?

1. What’s most notable is that the real top honchos—Heather Dietrick and Nick Denton—have moved themselves downstairs, with the luxury class ad sales team and tech folks. That leaves Tommy Craggs as the top honcho on the floor. That’s a bit like leaving the zoo in the hands of the reptile house manager. I literally have no idea what that means!!! Honestly I bet it’s really relaxing having Nick off the editorial floor. Maybe people actually speak out loud in the office now.

2. There are sixteen Gawker seats. Isn’t that great? Wow, that’s huge. Can you name more than five Gawker writers? (JK, they have something called “editing” now, it’s crazy.)

2.5 Why do Caity and Hamilton have to sit in the seats by the bathroom where you always know when someone just took a huge unhealthy dump? (Glares at Deadspin.)

3. When we last checked in on Gawker’s seating chart, back in 2010, there was a whole desk of “video interns.” What was a “video intern”? That information is lost to history.

3.5 Ugh, the Jezebel table is so fun now.

4. Why does “management” (described by Nick Denton as “Tommy Cragg’s gerontocracy”) have to sit facing Jalopnik, of all terrible sights? (I SAID “SIGHTS.”) Can’t management move themselves into the lounge behind the bathrooms, or to some nice room on the third floor with the people who actually run the company?

4.5 Speaking of power… When Gawker employee Jason Parham wrote recently about the importance of diversity at Gawker, one of the only things I disagreed with was that he wrote diversity was important across the company but “especially in edit.” I get that he means “public-facing” and “giving voice” to people… but, honestly the day we see a single company have literally any kind of diversity in its ad sales department is the day things start to get better for real. That’s where the money, advancement, and power is too! Being a writer is just a trick to keep us all poor and powerless. We should all be rushing the business jobs.

5. Speaking of money, power and diversity… where does new Valleywag writer Dan Lyons sit when he comes to town? Is there someplace in some corner where everyone can throw trash at him for being so terrible?

serfborts:

Obama’s read kinda reminded me of Bey’s

via

vintagegal:

 ”Just what do you think you’re doing, Dave?”  2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

A reader gives it a shot:

Based off of substantial research – those look like funny cars! / green / mountains / Google: “towns in Iceland near mountains” – I believe this is Seyðisfjörður, Iceland. I don’t actually think I’m right, but Seyðisfjörður is probably the coolest name of a town ever.

Já. Another reader shivers:

I’m not sure if it’s an educated guess or a wishful thinking to get away from the snow and cold of a Michigan winter, but either way, I feel like it’s a street I have driven down in Cancun. Or maybe I’m just wishing I could.

Or maybe this charming locale?

Bumblefuck, Idaho

This contestant gets to the right hemisphere:

New Zealand. I’ve read the Dish for year and this is my first time writing in. I gasped when I saw this week’s VFYW. I travelled around North and South Island for six weeks this past summer and I miss it terribly. It’s an incredible country. The trip marked my first time backpacking and that that green encircled “i” was a constant source of help. It is a sign for an i-SITE, NZ’s immensely helpful network of information centers that even the smallest towns seem to have. After five minutes of searching I decided to give up- looking for pictures of all the notable mountains would take forever… Oh the NZ mountains!

Spinning the globe, this reader hits the right continent:

The construction techniques, vehicles, and topography all look like the Andes to me, and are particularly reminiscent of Cajas National Park, so let’s go with Cuenca, Ecuador.

Another gets the right country:

Could it be we’ve gone literally to the end of the earth this week? I’ve been Google-wandering Latin America today, and Ushuaia, Argentina is where I’ve landed. The mountains are tall, jagged and young, and the terrain is green in January: it’s either near the equator or somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere. Too mountainous and too snowy to be Hawaiian volcanos. The cars are left-hand drive, so it’s not New Zealand. License plates are shaped like North American plates, unlike Chile’s, Peru’s or Brazil’s. They’re light-colored with what seems to be a horizontal black streak: Argentina. So—Patagonia? And pretty far south: last exit before Antarctica, in fact. Google Street View seems to confirm matching architecture (vibrant colors on walls and peaked roofs) and sidewalks. I can’t get quite to the right street today…but for kicks, I’m going to guess I’m somewhere near the corner of Neuquén and Islas del Atlántico Sur. Unless I’m on the wrong continent. Either way, Ushuaia looks amazing, and I’ve now discovered a new town to put at the very top of my wish list. Thanks, as always, for this challenge.

To far south on the guess though. Here’s the right one:

Oh my fucking god, I got it! I’m not the type of person who gets these things, so I think you’ll have thousands of correct answers this week. Something said “Patagonia,” I Googled “patagonia argentina village” and got pics of El Chalten that looked right, decided to look around on Street View and dropped the little man right next to the hotel. The triangulation to find the right window (see pic), figuring out how to draw an arrow on the picture and export it, and composing this email took way, way longer than finding the location. Cleverly, I scribbled a superfluous “here” on the picture in an attempt to get featured:

That’s the right window too. Another reader adds, “what an welcome change”:

A view where I’m not on wild goose chases researching page after page of minarets. I think, being from Minnesota, I’m better at finding cold places than warm. I can sniff out Nunavut or Halifax no problem, but Dakar or Turkey leaves me bewildered. This week is no different. This week’s view shouted high Andes at me. Don’t know why, never been there. A really good hunch. This looked like the kind of place that outdoor adventure seekers would flock to, as evidenced by the mountain bike leaning on the building in the foreground. A Google search for “Andes mountain hostel” led in short order El Chalten, Argentina. With the aid of Street View and I found our hotel, The Chalten Suites Hotel.

Indeed, no one seemed to mind looking through Patagonian imagery this week, as summed up by this former winner:

Those mountains! If you told me that was a painted background I’d believe you.

Another sets the scene with a digital background:

Hotel Los Cerros is circled in red and the Chalten Suites is circled in green with an arrow indicating the direction of the view:

And a rookie gets his first ID with this impressive entry:

Okay, I’m new to the contest. But I narrowed this one down to four windows. I couldn’t read any of the signs, but I could see that they were written in the roman alphabet. And it was probably a language in which “i” stands for information.

First, I ruled out countries that drive on the left side, so it couldn’t be New Zealand or South Africa. Next, I ruled out real northern mountains (Canada, Alaska, Norway), because of the lack of evergreen trees, and the lack of snow. Right now, it’s winter here in the Northern Hemisphere. A place at this altitude would be covered in snow and ice. So I figured it was South America. My first hunch was Chile. So I started looking at Chilean license plates, but they didn’t look right. The license plate in the picture looks like it has a black spot in the middle. I googled photos of traffic in Argentina. Cars in the distance, ones whose plates are too far to read, appear to have a black spot in the middle (because the plates are black with white letters, and there’s a large black space between the letters on the left, and the numbers on the right). So I googled Patagonian mountain town images. One of the first towns I found was El Chaltén. Everything looked right: the snowcapped mountain, the greenery, the architecture. I confirmed it when I kept seeing photos of the building with the huge red roof (in the top right corner of the VFYW photo).

In the view, there’s a sign that sticks up over the larger yellow building that looked like it said “coffee.” So I googled “El Chaltén Coffee Shops,” and found a guy’s Twitter photo of him sitting in a hammock outside of Mathilda, a coffee shop, in El Chaltén. Mathilda is the yellow building next to the information center. You can see the information center in his photo, and I knew I was there. It was scintillating stuff. Then I used Google’s satellite map, found the roofs I was looking for – it’s not a large town – and used Street View (lucky) to put myself on that corner. I was staring at El Chaltén Suites Hotel.

There are four rooms with balconies like the one in the photo. I tried to do some kind of geometric voodoo to figure out which one it was. I think it’s one of the two closer to the center of the building. I’ll go with the furthest right of the balconied windows.

Team Facebook is back as well:

I was fixated on Iceland until someone set me straight … the moral of the story is: have well-travelled friends who can recognize Patagonia at a glance:

More on El Chatlen:

Argentina founded the village of El Chaltén in 1985 to solidify its sovereignty in the area amid a continuing border dispute with Chile over this part of Patagonia and the Southern Patagonian Ice Field to the west. Although Chile and Argentina made progress in defining their border in the 1990’s, tensions rose over the undefined border in 2009 when Néstor Kirchner’s government unilaterally issued maps displaying Argentina’s claims.

BTW, the donuts at the nearby Panaderia Que Rika look amazing.

Also:

It’s proximity to Los Glaciares National Park as well as the Cerro Torre and Cerro Fitz Roy mountains explain why it’s known as the region’s “capital of trekking”. The town operates primarily as a tourist destination for climbers, hikers and adventures. Your reader must have sent you the photo after they returned to a more travelled location. The cell phone service is so poor that it warranted mentioning on Wikipedia’s entry for the town. How are you supposed to Instagram your morning hike if you can’t get a signal?

Another Dish contest, another new destination on my “I want to go to there” list. Thanks!

Just like every week and every place, other readers have already been there:

I’m a Dish reader, so of course I have visited Torre del Paine, but only from the Chilean side, by bicycle, many years ago now. You only have to do this contest a few times to scoff at the TV shows and movies where the intelligence agencies zoom in on a tiny area of a low-res photo, hit the mysterious “enhance” button that I can’t seem to find on my keyboard, and voila: the image resolves to show paint flecks on a license plate. Chumps.

Heh. Another reader:

It’s a neat little town with amazing hiking and other mountain activities in the area, but this picture doesn’t do it much justice. As one of my friends and traveling companions said, “I don’t think they could have taken an uglier picture of a beautiful place.”

It was actually submitted and chosen for exactly that reason. We’re tricky devils. And don’t worry, another reader sent in a more traditional photo of the area:

This reader is pretty excited:

Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God! I know this one!!! I’ve been there!

My personal rule when I play VFYW is that if I don’t have a gut reaction or an intuition when I first see the picture, I don’t play (but I still check in on Tuesday to find out where the picture was taken.) But when I saw this picture this morning it reminded me of Patagonia, and I felt I had been on this street before. In 2011 my partner and I went on a hiking trip there as a reward for losing weight and getting in shape. It looked to me like the VFYW was taken in one of the small towns we stayed in on this trip. But one of the towns that was on the edge of the Andes. A quick review of our photos from the trip brought me to El Chalten!

We stayed a few nights in El Chalten so we could go hiking around Monte Fitz Roy and Cerro Torre in Parque Nacional Los Glaciares. Turns out even in a windswept town this small and remote, Google street view has driven around a few of the main streets. So I went for a “drive” starting from the west edge of town on San Martin and found where this picture was taken! Because of the railing in the bottom of the picture, it appears to have been taken from a third floor balcony of a room at the Chalten Suites Hotel. Judging by the angle of the shot I think it is probably from the third or fourth room in from the corner of the building on Trevisan Street.

BTW windswept doesn’t even begin to describe this little town. More like wind blasted! On one short afternoon hike along De La Cascada (there is a lovely waterfall in a protected canyon at the end of the hike so it is worth being scoured by the wind to get there), it was blowing so hard we started jumping up in the air just to see how far the wind would push us when we were airborne. The wind NEVER lets up! Here is a link to a short video I shot of this unceasing wind Patagonian Wind (I had to hunker down behind a pallet of bricks just so I could hold the camera steady enough):

Another memory:

The weather was always overcast when I was there. In fact, it rained and/or snowed all seven days. On the final day there was heavy snow, and I had been putting off the main hike to get a view of Fitz Roy and the three lakes in the area. I was bummed that I wouldn’t be able to do it, but at noon I said “screw it” and hiked in the snow. I hustled because it was late, and was falling all over the place, slipping and sliding up the mountain. I was the only one on the trail. When I got near the top the snow stopped and the clouds parted, revealing perfect views of the three lakes. It was an amazing day.

The view hit this Dishhead in the heart:

I’ve been reading The Dish ever since I moved as an Australian expat to Peru in January 2008, just in time to follow your coverage of President Obama’s campaign and win minute-by-minute from my tiny flat in Lima. In all that time I’ve never even got the country right in the View From Your Window Contest. But I know exactly where this one is. Argentina is close to my heart.

I worked as a tour guide and travel book writer in South America for two years, and visited El Chalten twice, once while writing Patagonia chapters for that rapidly shrinking field of publishing. The other time I was travelling with my geography-teaching girlfriend where I spurned a golden chance to pop the question at a waterfall off the Fitzroy Glacier not far from where this picture was taken. Could there be a better spot to ask a geographer to marry you?

Turns out there was. I found my bravery in the stunning high-altitude desert city of Mendoza a month later (my wife is also a sucker for great urban planning) and we now have two beautiful girls who have never seen mountains or snow. We live in Darwin in the Northern Territory, about the furthest point on the planet you can get from Argentinian Patagonia without crossing the Equator.

This week’s winner is going to pleased with his last-ditch effort:

Oh man, I simply got lucky on this one. I almost gave up, but I really hate losing so I had to try one last time. And while making one last-ditch Google search for “school with red roof and skylight”, I ran across a travel page with a picture of the Los Cerros Hotel on it. Not a school after all. Before that, I had been looking around the Grand Tetons and western Colorado. I mean, what could be more American than an old travel trailer sitting up on blocks in your back yard?

Then there is “Porter”. The sign across the street both in front of and on the rustic log building. I was wishing I had that “zoom in and enhance” feature from Bladerunner. Would have saved me a lot of time. It’s “guide” in the US.

So the picture was taken from the Chalten Suites Hotel, street address San Martín 27. Google street view shows it under construction:

So which window? Obviously one of the balconies, so a little triangulation:

Looks like this one to me. Hotel looks a lot nicer completed too.

Thanks for the challenge. I’ve come to really look forward to this game.

And it can even get better after you win, as our submitter attests:

I was surprised to find that I was more excited to have my picture selected than I was when I had my one contest win a year ago. Now I have to find a new goal!

My stepson and I visited Patagonia over the New Year to do some backpacking and hiking. Our first stop was in El Chalten, Argentina, where we spent one night in town before backpacking up to the South Patagonia Icefield for four days, to climb a peak called Gorra Blanca (incredible experience, for those considering a trip). El Chalten only came into existence in 1985, solely because Argentina wanted to keep an eye on the disputed border with Chile that lies just to the west. It is now a tourist town catering to the many trekkers and climbers making the pilgrimage to the Fitz Roy massif. We were staying at the relatively new (less than a year old) Chalten Suites Hotel. Our view was spectacular except for the clouds on the first day, without which this view would have been easily identifiable. When we returned from our icefield trip, the clouds were gone and I snapped this picture from the same window, and you can see the spectacular view of Mount Fitz Roy on the far right, and Cerro Torre on the far left:

I’m hoping this was a semi-challenging contest, though the unique Argentinian license plates surely helped to solve this. For those venturing a guess, our room number was 304, and the specific window is highlighted in the picture here:

And if Chini is in form, perhaps he guessed that it was taken at 3:30 pm on December 29 (though don’t ask me the heading). Love the VFYW contest and the Dish – keep up the great work!

Thanks so much. For the record, Chini didn’t get the timestamp, but he did get the heading. He also submitted a Poem for Contest Tuesday:

HANDS, do what you’re bid;
Bring the balloon of the mind
That bellies and drags in the wind
Into its narrow shed.

-W.B. Yeats, The Wild Swans at Coole

An appropriate poem for a small milestone I’ve been closing in on. But to get there, I had to summit one final climb and find this week’s view. A climb that began in…Canada. My first guess was Canada. AGAIN. Seriously subconscious, you need help. So yeah, when that didn’t work, I ran off to Wyoming, again. Which also didn’t work, because, Wyoming? On and on it went like that, fruitless step after fruitless step. In the end, the secret lay with…Djupivogur, Iceland? Well, whatever works baby, whatever works.

This week’s view comes from El Chalten, in Patagonia, Argentina. The picture was snapped from a top floor room of the Chalten Suites Hotel and looks almost due west along a heading of 276.95 degrees. Amusingly, the iconic peak of Cerro Fitz Roy is hidden just out of view at right. Bird’s eye, panoramic and marked window views are attached, along with one of El Chalten’s very own Mystery Machine:

Oh, and as for the milestone? Well, let’s just say when it comes to Van Halen, I went one louder.

We hope everyone else has a milestone week as well. Until Saturday …

People drop things on the Internet and run all the time. So we have to ask. In this edition, writer Roberto Baldwin tells us more about living in a state of Uber confusion—which is to say, California.

Pulled over to text wife. Someone got in my car thinking it was an uber. Le sigh

— Roberto Baldwin (@strngwys) January 3, 2015

Roberto! So what happened here?

At some point every car in San Francisco will be an Uber and every citizen, a driver, so I shouldn’t have been surprised when a random stranger walked up to my car, opened the passenger door, and started to take a seat. Actually, it’s really my fault. I pulled over to respond to a text from my wife a few yards from the famous-for-charging-too-much-for-toast coffee shop, The Mill. If you’re a car near The Mill, you’re probably picking up or dropping off a very important startup founder or VC. 

Still it was a bit surprising when a gentleman who was on the phone started to get into my car. Before he actually took a seat, he peered into the vehicle and I asked, “Can I help you?” His response, “Oh shit!” He then quickly closed the door and ran off. I mean ran in the literal sense. He actually ran away from the car. 

As he ran off (actually running) he mumbled something to the mysterious person on the other end of his phone call. Maybe he told the person he almost got into a private passenger vehicle thinking it was his Uber. I like to think he told the person that he was almost kidnapped and it was only his quick thinking and sprinting that saved him from a life of basement bondage.

The weirdest part is that I drive a Fiat—the small one with only two doors. Not exactly a car made for driving random strangers around (or kidnapping them), and yet this has happened before. 

Wait, this has happened to you in the past? Does it always go down in the exact same way? And have you thought about running some sort of prearranged bit the next time this occurs?

Not only has it happened before, but other people are telling me that this happens pretty often in San Francisco. The last time it happened to me it was about 10 p.m. at night and I was South of Market. I had just gotten into my car and started it up. I was selecting music on my iPhone when a guy walked up, opened the door and began to sit in the passenger seat. I just looked at him iPhone in hand, The Smiths blaring out of the speakers, thinking it was someone I knew hopping in the car to say hi. Nope, just some random dude who decided that getting into a stranger’s car in the middle of the night without first making sure it was his ride was a smart idea. He quickly realized his mistake, apologized, and got out of the car. 

I’ve decided that next time this happens I’ll just drive off with the person and start asking if they have the money for the “stuff.” As they stutter that they’re not sure what I’m talking about and that they must have gotten into the wrong car, I’ll tell them: “Yeah, I bet Dave told you to say that. You know what? You can tell Dave he’s not getting his pets back until he pays what’s due. In fact, I want you to put that fancy-ass phone to your ear right now, call Dave, and tell him I said that.” At that point I’m pretty sure they’ll just jump out of the vehicle. Or, they’ll call Dave and tell him what I said. 

Another option is to treat it like a car-jacking and scream at the individual that I have a wife and kids and that they can have my car, just please don’t hurt me. 

Lesson learned (if any)? 

I suppose I should start locking my car doors while I drive. People will still try to get in the car, but a locked door will hopefully snap them out of their trance and allow them to see that this Fiat isn’t their ride to the Battery or startup party or wherever the hell they’re going. 

Just one more thing.

The next iteration of this is someone knocking at my front door because they think I’m in their Airbnb. There’ll be confusion and phones will be double checked because “I’m sure this is the address.” Eventually they’ll leave. Well, hopefully. 

This is just a symptom of everyone in San Francisco walking around in a smartphone-induced haze. Sure it happens in other places, but this is the birthplace of the technology that begs for our attention. And because we can never be unconnected or bored, we gleefully give it over. So instead of paying attention to what’s going on around us, we jump into the car of a random stranger because an app said that’s where our ride would be located. 

I’m just as bad as everyone else, with my face buried in Twitter as I walk past the bar I was supposed to meet friends at for the third time. How long until someone actually drives off with a confused Uber customer? I’m sure it’s happening right now. But at least they’re not being charged surge pricing or a safety fee.

Photo by Joakim Formo

Join the Tell Us More Street Team today! Have you spotted a tweet or some other web thing that you think would make for a perfect Tell Us More column?Get in touch through the Tell Us More tip line.

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So my prediction is that both Selma and Boyhood will be nominated for Best Picture in the Oscars, they will be the two runaway favorites, and their status as such will prompt an endless, wearying, vituperative inter-liberal squabble that will bring out absolutely everything wrong with contemporary media progressivism. It’s going to suck so hard. We’re in for a months-long trip on the Problematic Hot Take Express.

And I’m not even predicting an outcome, here. I’m not picking a favorite. Both movies are going to be hurt by this. If Selma wins, it’ll get people whining that it only won because of political correctness, which sucks, but it’ll also get the more subtle liberal version, where people condescendingly refuse to evaluate the movie’s actual virtues and secretly make their appreciation all about them. If Boyhood wins, it’ll get destroyed for being about white self-obsession, mostly by self-obsessed white writers. They’ll be infected with the modern contagion where everything becomes a symbol of culture war. The only thing worse for these movies than losing will be winning.

We’re not going to get to actually appreciate them as movies. Selma has already rapidly become one of those artistic objects that our chattering class will not allow to exist simply as art, and instead is used as a cudgel with which to beat each other over various petty ideological sins. I’d like to just watch it, first, before I have to run it through the second-order meta meat grinder. Yes, I get it, there’s a debate to be about the nature of history and the responsibility of nonfiction film makers to stick to it. (And I’ll just mention that most people seem to be on literally the opposite side of the fence they were when it came to Lincoln and the question of historical accuracy, and along predictable political grounds.) That stuff’s important. But the way we argue about these things now, where your opinion on Beyonce is this all-encompassing acrostic on who you are as a political and moral being, is least likely to actually produce insight.

So much of this is going to proceed from the fact that our media is filled with people who presume to speak for those who lack privilege but who enjoy it themselves, racial and economic privilege. The difference in stakes between those who suffer under racism and classism and most of those who just write about them distorts the conversation over and over again. Which leads to things like last year, where people preemptively complained about the racism inherent in 12 Years a Slave not winning, whining about American Hustle and white privilege, and then actually seemed disappointed when 12 Years did win. You know you’re a privileged person when the fun of complaining about injustice outweighs the pleasure of a just outcome.

Could there be a national conversation the various issues playing out here that was edifying, smart, and meaningful? Sure. Will there be? Hahahaha, no! There’s tons of important things to be said about the relationship between art and politics, about the continuing racism of Hollywood, about what it means to be universal in the way that Boyhood is frequently praised for (and largely black films usually aren’t), about what it means to be Oscar-bait in the 21st century…. But I can pretty much guarantee you that we won’t have an effective conversation about any of it, because lately our whole apparatus seems broken. When those two cops got killed in NYC, I thought to myself, “we are not equipped for this.” I knew we did not have it in us, as a national conversation, to talk about it in a productive way. Obviously, the stakes there were far higher. But more and more, I feel like the problem is not just that we live in a broken world, but that our systems for talking about how to fix it are broken themselves. Even the daily outrage cycle seems more exhausted than destructive, at this point. Everybody’s spent.

I’m just gonna tap out, on this one. I’m just gonna avoid all of the takes to come. I haven’t got it in me.

This piece from New York magazine about a daughter-father sure is… something. As you might expect, it’s produced a feeling of visceral revulsion in me. I also think that since the uncoerced and informed consent of all parties is the only criterion for whether sexual conduct should be permissible, I think it should be legal. In those two opinions — that the relationship is viscerally unpalatable to me and that it should be legal — I imagine I am joined by a majority of progressive types.

But I also think that it’s very healthy for me to be feeling grossed out by other people’s consensual sexual practice. It’s good from the standpoint of living in a democratic society; it’s always beneficial for one side of controversial political questions to  actually experience the stakes of the other side. I am part of a social and political movement that thinks we should permit those sexual practices that involve the consent of adult, informed, uncoerced partners, and that do no harm to others, and further that we should be tolerant towards those who practice sexual acts that we don’t. But in the realm where this has had the most widespread valence, sex and marriage between partners of the same sex, the negative consequences for me are very low, because I don’t feel any revulsion towards those things. It’s easy for me to advocate tolerance towards them because for me they don’t require tolerance at all. So this experience, of feeling grossed out by practice that I think we have to tolerate, is a healthy way to experience the other side of that equation.

Now some will immediately say that there is a qualitative and substantive difference between same-sex relationships and incestuous relationships, differences in power and in rarity and in civic need, etc. And I agree completely; those two things are not the same. (You can expect, of course, a deluge of tweets saying “deBoer thinks gay sex and incest are the same!”) The point is not that I think that these behaviors are comparable, but rather that the feeling of revulsion I feel towards the act described is (as far as I know) similar to the feeling of revulsion that opponents of same-sex relationships feel towards those acts. And that, fundamentally, is a healthy political experience. It’s not like I hold these two revulsions to be equal from my own perspective; I would not tolerate the public expression of revulsion towards gay sex from people I am friends with, while I would be very surprised if I had many friends who didn’t feel revulsion towards father-daughter incest. But as a matter of genuinely understanding what I have long insisted other people should believe if they want to be enlightened and moral political beings, I find the comparison useful.

I find political learning for me is precisely as useful as it is difficult. No political lesson that ever came easy to me has had much use. Politics really mean something when they hurt. And one of the problems with politics is that most of our lessons come easy and pain-free, whichever side we’re on.

I also think that we need to get used to hearing more about these things that gross us out. Because consent, as powerful and essential of an instrument as it is, does not have the power to make sex palatable for all of us. And when you think that civic morality should not have any place in dictating consensual adult sexual practice, that will inevitably have consequences beyond the ones you intended. That’s life, that’s politics.