Contributor
Elements of Stale: Having Had Been Buffaloed 2010-02-05
A friend emailed me last week. The subject line read: "Have you seen this?" The body of the email was without text—just a pasted in Wikipedia entry for “Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.” (READ MORE) 29
Elements of Stale, with Luke Mazur: Leaving the Green Lane Country Club 2010-01-13
Maybe some of that $15 million Columbia University just received for a center devoted to digital journalism can be used to figure out why there are, as of now, two Jersey Shore posts here on this website, over the course of just two days. The same grant can pay someone to parse how Avatar, Katie Roiphe’s favorite authors and pop sociology intersect with any of this. Until then, let me do my part.
We know, from reading Newsweek, and from looking around, that our institutions and communities are eroding. (READ MORE) 8
Elements of Stale, with Luke Mazur: Sister, You're A Poet 2009-12-04
So last Sunday I read an op-ed in the Times, where some dude argues in favor of Catholic priests saying Mass, while facing the direction opposite of the congregation. Now, this op-ed was most wacky to me not because of anything inherently awkward about facing away from the people you're talking to. (But, yes.) Or because Kenneth J. Wolfe assumes that there is very much of a congregation these days not to face. (Ha, I think.) But because I remember learning back in high school that the Catholic Church had already reversed this practice once before. (READ MORE) 9
Elements of Stale, with Luke Mazur: The Text 2009-11-19
So in high school we were forced to buy this English language handbook called Warriner's. The book was bright red like an biohazard needle drop box, but that has nothing to do with the fact that the faculty revered it. Some teachers, particularly the much older ones, referenced it regularly. The Jesuits, who could be iffy on the existence of God and other metaphysical questions, were dogmatic about whatever the hell Warriner's decreed. Its rules of grammar and composition were gospel. (READ MORE) 17
Elements of Stale, with Luke Mazur: Extreme Bar Exam Makeover 2009-11-12
So late last week, I learned that I failed the bar exam. I don't remember a ton from those two days in July. Which isn't too surprising, because apparently (we now know) I wasn't remembering much during those days either. I do remember, however, that at lunchtime thousands of future lawyers poured out of the Buffalo Convention Center and onto Niagara Square. There were more people outside in downtown Buffalo those two days than I could ever before remember. And they were from downstate too, and they were eating outside in the summertime just like they do in New York City. Even though I was failing a bar exam at the time, I do remember thinking that it was kind of neat that we were all gathered this way. (READ MORE) 33
Elements of Stale, with Luke Mazur: The Mayor of Lovejoy 2009-11-06
So last week I was wondering to what extent, geographically speaking, Beggars' Night was celebrated. Growing up in Buffalo, we always went trick-or-treating the night before Halloween, October 30th—Beggars' Night. And on Halloween…well I don't really remember what we did on Halloween. Watch Home Alone? Maybe we went trick-or-treating again? As a kid, I pretty much thought that the way we lived was the way everyone did. Our nasal, elongated vowels. Ordering chicken wings together with pizza. Living in the same place as basically all of your relatives. Six-years-old-me believed Beggar's Night was everywhere. (READ MORE) 16
Elements of Stale, with Luke Mazur: The Big Book of Friends 2009-10-26
So remember how someone clever-ish wrote that with respect to social networking, Facebook is like your home and Twitter is a bar? That is, Facebook is for friends, family, Farmville and Mafia Wars. Twitter is for David Carr and Rainn Wilson tweeting movie titles, but with one letter off. You know: "Annie Hell" instead of Annie Hall, or "Chafing Amy" instead of Chasing Amy. Or "The Frying Game." (Spoiler alert: the egg has two yolks.) The possibilities are, like with any good bar game, endless. And also like This or That, Will It Float?, and Categories, the possibilities are also only funny or fun if you're hammered, or if you're Sarah Silverman. Somehow "Children of the Coon" works at all hours coming from her, and doesn't work coming from me.
But lately Facebook has been turning into a bar too—specifically, a bar the night before Thanksgiving. (READ MORE) 44
Elements of Stale, with Luke Mazur: Rush Rules/Obama Challenge 2009-10-20
So I stayed in to watch Saturday Night Live last Saturday. I know you believe me, because, like my bio says, now I live at home with my parents. But that notwithstanding, I like to watch SNL, well, live. I'm sort of a news junkie and the 90 minutes of sketch comedy/whatever really tees up the Sunday morning talk shows for me. Remember that one Road Rules/Real World Challenge when Ayanna freaks out about sleeping in her game day clothes? Where she's so ready to compete that she sleeps in her uniform? Well, that's me every Saturday to Sunday. Except my uniform is sweatpants. And my competition is Jake Tapper tweeting about Peggy Noonan. (READ MORE) 7
Elements of Stale, with Luke Mazur: The More Famous Flu 2009-10-16
So I have swine flu. I mean, probably not, but I did get horribly sick last Tuesday. It's more logical that I just have the regular flu: more people get that one, and the symptoms as far as I can tell are pretty much the same. But because I've always been a sucker for common experiences—American Idol, paying attention to Major League Baseball playoffs, totally missing The Wire the first time around—I'm declaring this bout swine flu. Swine flu—not regular flu—has captured our imagination this year. Swine flu—not regular flu—is what gets Matt and Meredith talking on the Today show. And I want to be part of the conversation. (READ MORE) 12
Elements of Stale, with Luke Mazur: "Sorry" 2009-10-06
I always considered David Letterman a sort of father figure. With two baby boomer parents, I basically have two moms: first, my dad who blogs and reads Sufi poetry and cooks with ghee and wears bright colors, and second, my mom, who is saint for signing up for this. And so, growing up I depended on late night talk shows for the little genderizing that actually happened to me. Letterman, his shoulder as cold as the notoriously freezing Ed Sullivan Theater, represented for me a sort of fucked-up machismo. Where you come to work hammered and laugh at your own jokes and swallow your ailments and anxieties and hurt so that the only part of them we see is the times you're mean to that Hello Deli guy. You don't blog. You don't wear pink. (READ MORE) 11
Elements of Stale, with Luke Mazur: "How You Doin'?" 2009-10-02
I guess I knew about Wendy Williams in the same way that our culture makes little girls know they should wear princess dresses or little boys know they should play with trucks. The kind of knowing that results from those culturally hegemonic signals that fall somewhere between English teacher favorites "nature" and "nurture." You know: how orphan Pip, bouncing from here to there all those years, was ever socialized. For example, I had heard Will Smith or Jay-Z or Lil' Wayne rap about a Wendy. And I remember how an old colleague of mine tuned into some Wendy for "you know, the gossip." (READ MORE) 7
