A Week So Bad That An Actual Superhero Had To Come Save Us From It And Ourselves

by Alan Hanson

Do you remember what happened this week?

Beyoncé

I’m not necessarily in the Beysus congregation but I sure as debt don’t knock it, either. When our beloved ‘net is doubled over in self-fondling and editorial side stares during the slime-time of year called My Ranking Of Niche Garbage Ranks Higher Than Yrs, it’s gorgeous to see a Member of Modern Camelot release quality you can count on that spreads happiness and excitement throughout my visible spectrum. Tear up all your lists! Joy to the world, the Bey is come.

Golden Globe Nominations

Knives out! Award season is upon us, let the parade of faces begin! Good faces, everyone. Yes. Nice one, Julia. Good smirk, Greta. The shiniest part of the Globes, however, is definitely its name. Golden. Globes. You can really wrap your mouth around that one! Like a Werther’s OG. These ceremonies should be fire-filled, brimstone, and grim, is a thought I had. But I’m practicing pointed meditation and trying not to drown in all the pixel potshots to come. So, I’m focusing on one thought when I hear the word “globe” and this one thought is more like a fantasy of mine, which is better than any award of any kind, and here is how it goes, you golden spheres: First, and safely, the entire Earth is stripped of all adornment. Every man-made structure — whoosh! — gone, wiped away. Trees, too! A giant razor dragged across the gnarled surface, leaving only hills, valleys, mountains, and canyons. Pure contour. There it sits: a rugged, rocky, knuckle ball pitched through black. Then I mount a special motorcycle with impeccable balance and impenetrable tires that can travel thousands of miles per hour. And I bullet across the surface of the Earth in whiplash latitudes. When I’m satisfied and rumbled with my moto-cut, I grow. I grow to near-equal size of the planet. And I am in space. And I am hugging the barren Earth like a bear. I am wrapping my entire body around it, my hug strong and deep. I am naked and similar to many gods.

Private Instagram

The Instagram team watches intently from FB HQ as their new v5.0 with Instagram Direct messages hits the app stores pic.twitter.com/4GXaqGK1TQ

— Josh Constine (@JoshConstine) December 13, 2013

Give me a fun time. Make a fun room with my favorite things. Pass me a lil’ picto-chat-room friendly-flirt love note. The secret societies are the only ones that get me salivating. Now my lust gets drunk and wicked. What is he building in there? What’s behind you? After all the wonder, Noble Anxiety Goblin comes knocking on the door, holding a large poster, motioning me to look at it, even after I’ve really looked at it, spurring an isolation and wormy pain. It reads: “do you ever get the feeling that there’s something going on that we don’t know about?”

The Christmas Parties

The fact that in every city this week and the next there are these company sponsored grope-fests occurring makes my heart warm each and every year. When you think about it, perversely, most holidays are about fucking in some way. Valentine’s, obviously. Mother’s Day, Father’s Day? Thank you for sticking around after fucking. Fourth of July? This is all sort of awful but we’re here and have some freedoms so we might as well be fucking. Thanksgiving? Something about stuffing turkeys. And Adult Christmas is just the same. But this one is the real twist of flesh, nestled on the precipice of face-smacking winter, scrambling to plug our plugs into each other’s plugs balanced on gin-tint ice cubes or wrapped in rose scarves, sprinkled with pine needles, needing to baton the distances the year dashed outward and away, needing to be unwrapped even if it’s by whoever’s aiming lowest in the office.

The Raveonettes, “The Christmas Song”

Let’s wrap up with my favorite modern Christmas song. It sunk its aughts-sharpened teeth into my growing chest circa one lonely college winter. Like most fondness stoked in the fires of our formative years, it has stuck around accumulating interest in a Nostalgia Account. I listen and then I’m again pacing an empty campus with a click-wheel iPod a fresh bag of weed a nearby Taco Bell and an Eric Foreman haircut smiling to myself pleased in the knowledge that a lonely holiday is one of my favorite things. So maybe I’m self-obsessed. Don’t diminish my glow.

Alan Hanson is a Californian writer living in Harlem.