This is cheating, but here’s the most recent Dad Magazine, in case you missed it while eating. This, and the next installment, were sponsored by A Very Generous Reader.
A pretty fun critique of my second-favourite holiday movie:
Despite [National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation‘s] intended broad appeal, it’s really a portrait of bourgeois crisis, specifically white bourgeois crisis (the sole character of color is a police chief who’s literally first seen opening a car door for a rich white woman), and it’s remarkably mean-spirited towards characters who deviate from the traditional “fun, old-fashioned” WASPy values Clark projects. The most affection Clark can muster for his redneck cousin Eddie and his family is a grudging paternalism that leads him to bankroll presents for Eddie’s poor, lip-fungus-y kids.
Exporting the N-word:
But where did the boys from Bosnia-Herzegovina fit in? They used it as a greeting. They were not a threat to me or my well-being. They didn’t represent any white-power structure — their country never had any slaves or colonies, and furthermore you’d be hard pressed to find any point in the past 100 or so years when the average Slav was better off from a material standpoint then a black American. If the word’s power comes not from any intrinsic value but from the power structures behind it, why was I so angry?
The curious story of the Max Headroom Hacker.
Cats that look like pin-up girls.
Coming out as biracial:
So I didn’t discover my otherness through being teased by peers or by having after-school-special chats with my parents. I discovered it in other ways, like when strangers would mistake my mother for my nanny, would stare at a black woman holding a white child’s hand in the middle of a crowded flea market. Or when I finally figured out why Mom always stayed home whenever we visited Dad’s parents in Florida. I figured it out when I began obsessively clipping photos of Tyra Banks from my mother’s Victoria’s Secret catalogs and when I began hoarding pictures of my aunt, who I didn’t even like but thought was beautiful. I was collecting portraits of black beauty I couldn’t have for myself.
The cast album for Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 is on Spotify. Tyler Coates and I both think this track is the prettiest damn thing. You should see it, if you can (you do not need to order extra food, do not be fooled by your server, but you should probably order extra vodka.) It’s a great time, don’t be turned off by the cab ads.
On Yoruba naming customs.
Our own Gretchen McCulloch on a subject dear to our hearts.
So, too, will you attack your male enemies.
