What Happened This Week?
by Alan Hanson
The Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree
Every time I am silent or seemingly thinking or chewing or barely breathing and unoccupied what I’m really doing is praying fervently that our country devotes itself to dendrolatry and muck our polished patellae in a worshipper’s kneel unto Trees. And where does the Holiday Axe factor into this religion? I’ve always felt like Woolf’s Septimus, felt that they “beckoned; leaves were alive; trees were alive. And the leaves being connected by millions of fibres with [my] own body….” So this morning as the vile Vargoshe family hauled the cut carcass of a 12-ton Norway spruce like a bloodied buck on the roof of a station wagon into Rockefeller Center, I couldn’t help but mourn. 75 years old! Rising high and commanding the farmland of Shelton, Connecticut! However, the Death Ritual of any religion is equally important as any other rite, and yes, something about the Naturalness of It All, and once it beams bright again with electric candle and shaved metals strung about, we of its congregation huddled with cider-hands and stone-cheeks, maybe a ruddy face nuzzled into our shoulder nooks, will nurse a new warmth in our chests from this celebration of Death. And that is Good and Worthwhile, too, even if the husk of Al Roker is scuttle-butting around its arrival.
Rob Ford
Speaking of death celebrations why don’t we stuff an ever-expanding burlap sack full of the three trillion tweets, posts, wisecracks, auto-tuned anythings, rushed-out whatever-the-opposite-of-a-think-pieces, and flashy tabloid newsbite videos that have come out in the past month and then burn it in effigy to high hell. Then, require each participant to carry an identification card that states “I Am A Human Leno Monologue” and devote all their Comedy Time and Hard Hitting News Time back to talking about something substantial, something one iota more important than this man and this fire sale on sensationalism. Or you know what? Screw it. Uproxx, praise be to you, you are so g-d right, this is the Rob Ford remix of Jay-Z’s “Tom Ford” I’ve been waiting for! *fucks off into eternity*
Electronic Devices on Airplanes
Oh, you beautiful, out of my league, ex-Blackberry-owning, entitled, mostly white people with your Business Faces and your Me First, Me Most-ness, what on Earth will you solve next? I beg of you, eliminate all of the minor inconveniences in all of our lives. I am serious, my salad suckers! Only then will this be worthwhile. Only then, when they have all been crushed and pulverized, when all of the wayward fractions of minutes can be collected fully, will we have Some Time on our hands. And we will join those hands, with that time, and enjoy each other’s mirth and tell friendly tales of the Olden Days when we lived to be 200 years old, because that’s how long life used to take, and we can knit sweaters and sip ciders and finger each other under blankets like we did in middle school.
Jennifer Lawrence Has a New Haircut
She’s such an older-sister’s-friend babe such a let’s split a spliff and watch Whoopi narrate the universe babe such a honey I’m over it baby let’s skip town babe such a Real Guy’s Girl such a Eats A Burger sweetie such a Chugs A Domestic Beer on Gameday baby, and yes, I’m all for it, sell her to me, Hollywood, make her real, make her normal, make her sexy, make her everything, but I won’t pull Cool Guy Shades over my eyes and pretend like half of that bullshit isn’t oddly misogynistic projection and that any worship of her is better than the worship of any Fake celebrity because Jennifer Lawrence Fandom is Fandom regardless and Katy Perry Lady Gaga Royal Family Kardashian Kingdom don’t become low-brow garbage trucks in the shade of your Refined Celebrity Taste. That’s entertainment.
Alan Hanson is a Californian writer living in Harlem.