Appearing here Wednesdays, Turning The Screw provides existential crisis counseling for the faint of heart. "Don’t make me come over there!"
Dear Polly,
Recently one of my best friends since childhood started dating my sister (whom I am also super close with). They seem pretty serious about each other and I want to be okay with it, but I'm having a really hard time with it. The main issue is I just have this primal response of UGHGHG NOOOOOOO which doesn't feel totally logical when it happens, but here's what I think it's about:
1. I talk to both of them constantly, all the time, about everything. Particularly dating, [...]
• "Don’t you miss the time of love letters, mostly at school? The face of love was so tangible and inseparable from pen and paper. The poor chap whose heart was bleeding in love, often took his time and chose his words carefully on what was always attractive on paper." • "People want to go back to the day where you're sitting at a coffee shop, make eye contact and there is this mysterious moment where you don't know each other." • "I miss the days before everyone was offering their [...]
"My mind isn’t a sponge, it’s a parasitic death-starry glob that is big and wet and angry much of the time, feeding on itself and allowing only the choicest and most-vulnerable bits in when its blood sugar gets low." —MTV Hive editor Mike Ayers, "pessimistic cartoonist" Dustin Glick and art director Nicklaus Deyring helped Will Oldham (a.k.a. Bonnie "Prince" Billy) make this video to accompanying a song from his most recent album, Wolfroy Goes to Town, and the wonderful essay"To Hell With Drawers," that he wrote for The Poetry Foundation this year. It's about bunny rabbits. That is all, nothing more. Just nice little [...]
"Relationships often change people, but this was a weird one, because I was the same before and after it, but very different during." —The Lena Dunham story in the New Yorker (subscription-only) is totally worth it on a lot of levels (both "laughing at" and "laughing with," though mostly John Cook has the "laughing at" covered quite grumpily), but it's also a good addition to what I think is the best part of her projects about youth: what is it about the certain kind of person who can completely annihilate their personality because of love? I was like this when I was younger and it's completely alien to [...]
The other morning I was walking my kid to school and we crossed Court Street in Brooklyn in front of a car that had an interestingly shaped air-freshener hanging from the rearview mirror. It was hanging at a slight angle behind the windshield, and so I looked at it for a good few seconds, in effort to confirm that it was what I thought it was. Sure enough: it was a cardboard air-freshener in the shape of fist with a raised middle finger. Like the giant foam hands they sell at sports games or Key West or wherever.
The guy driving the car had a Yankee cap pulled low [...]
This photograph was taken back in early June. DO YOU THINK THEY'RE STILL TOGETHER? Do you think she still smokes? Do you think he later took a Gotham Writers' Workshop class? Do you think they'll let me be their houseboy? WHERE ARE THEY RIGHT NOW? I'm guessing either at work or maybe just now leaving for the weekend with their respective spouses.
Two hearts, separated by time and history, yet united by later time and later history: This is the story of America's most beloved public figures, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, and the deep relationship they shared.
It was a different time, in the 1990s, and our society was not ready for these two men to publicly show such affection for one another. Like so many before them, Clinton and Nixon confined their relationship to letters and the occasional televised media event at the White House. Correspondence between the two star-crossed presidents is part of a new exhibit at the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, California.
You kill the bear, eat the bear meat, and then put on the bearskin. The power of the bear shirt—or ber serkr in Old Norse—gives you the strength and fury of the great animal. This is what berserk means, "bear shirt." Do you actually turn into a bear-human hybrid? Maybe. Nobody liked to go to war against the berserkers, that much is known from the stories of the Roman Empire's long border conflict with the barbarians, which means not "bear brains" but "foreigners."
The human-bear combination exists in North American and Siberian tribal religions, too. These stories go back to the Bear Sons, born to an animal-god father and [...]
"She looked sharp, in a new blonde Mohawk and high-heel boots. But her body language felt halfhearted. She was dithering. Uh oh. And then, just as surprisingly, she opened up and radically redefined her course. From there on the concert was good, occasionally very good." —The Times's Ben Ratliff reports Tuesday night's Cat Power concert at Hammerstein Ballroom as a comeback story. Attendees commenting at Brooklyn Vegan gave mixed reviews. She certainly sounds great performing "I Don't Blame You" in the video (passed along by Awl commenter "zspace," thanks.) above. It's very nice to see her smiling, too. Nothing would make me happier than if I [...]
"We all know that a broken heart hurts — from the stabbing shock of being dumped on Valentine's Day to the deep grief following the loss of a loved one. But, there is increasing evidence that shows some people may actually die from heart failure in the wake of extremely emotional events."
"There can't be answers today. While I was still alive writing this, I was sad to know I'll miss these things—not because I won't be able to witness them, but because Air, Marina, and Lauren won't have me there to support their efforts. It turns out that no one can imagine what's really coming in our lives. We can plan, and do what we enjoy, but we can't expect our plans to work out. Some of them might, while most probably won't. Inventions and ideas will appear, and events will occur, that we could never foresee. That's neither bad nor good, but it is real." —Vancouver writer Derek K. [...]
The Rolling Stones played their first concert under that name on July 12, 1962. That's fifty years ago today. There are lots of different ways to feel about this. I'm choosing acceptance of the imperfection of even life's very greatest joys. They are rehearsing for their next tour because they've sort of gotten themselves into a position where they can't stop until Mick or Keith dies.
"The Bobo Diaries chronicle the adventures and exploits of a private detective known as Bobo Love in this live action comic strip come to life. Bobo's specialty is love related crime. Every relationship is a crime scene waiting to happen. When it does, sometimes Bobo gets the call."
