by Stephen Whitlock

If you’re reading this, Mom — and I’m sure that you are — I hope that you’re proud of your boy. I could have been a Middle Eastern extra on “24.” And way ahead. But when the I.T. guy came and wiped me out — everything: me, just gone — I remember trying not to think about how easily you can be erased. “Exactly what you need,” he said. Then we strapped the kayaks to the roof of the car, got in and sat for a long time, heater blasting, weighing our options. As I watched the improvised refugee camp shrink in the rearview mirror, I noticed one of the tents had the Pakistani flag hoisted on the tent pole.

I have no idea how, but I’ll just take it one day at a time. It’s the lifetime that counts. You really wish it would work. And yet it might turn out to be the best job I’ve ever had. Meanwhile, I watched for other sangak lovers who, unlike dinosaurs, were still roaming around looking for an opportunity. To our right, another herd moved up the hill toward us. Unwilling to waste a second, I raced up to the house and phoned the sanctuary.

We’d both been on the road through Oak Hill, W.Va., yet for some reason, I got to keep going. I like to think of it not so much as a lack of carefulness as a wish to move forward. All of which, it now seems to me, was inevitable, or at the very least, predictable and probably foretold. I didn’t mention my son’s remark to my parents because it seemed emotionally manipulative, but I have it in my back pocket just in case. But he was already gone, disappeared into the crowd. And that is how I felt.

I’ve been so afraid that being a mother is causing my brain to dissolve, but this morning it knew I needed to be put to sleep in order to wake up. Drunk or sober, I am absurd. And while all this is happening, you find yourself thinking more and more about something else that could have: you could have crashed and killed someone, including yourself.

“I thought your hair looked longer,” she said, and dove into her éclair au chocolat. Infinite points for this, I thought. “You’re O.K. to stop humming now.’’ With gratitude, we eat. My word, imagine to be that age, in love and alive. She said the chairs were in their bedroom. “Let’s go back inside.” I tipped her well. That she never forgot. And she was smiling.

“I swam a hundred miles to get home,” he said. “It’s my leg.” What a difference, I couldn’t help marveling, one letter can make. He went to bed still musing. Of how all this came about. But regarding the mystery of what he discovered in his study of the cosmos, the prison library was completely silent. The guy looked me up and down and in front of everyone said, “No thanks, I’ll take the bus.” And they did.

Before flying home, I went to a fancy drugstore and bought a basic makeup kit — a compact, mascara, lipstick, Issey Miyake perfume in a tall conical bottle — in anticipation of having to compete with a transsexual sibling. It’s a loving relationship, Dave’s and mine, but one in which one partner, without testicles, will always scream at the other, who has them, for no apparent reason. And so I went inside the hotel to take a nap.

I stared at the small high window, through which I could see nothing but clouds. I should probably jot it down somewhere.

Stephen Whitlock is a freelance writer who lives in Stockholm and New York. He has written for the New York Times, Financial Times, Conde Nast Traveler, Travel + Leisure and Wallpaper, among others.

Photo by takomabibelot, from Flickr.

I really don’t want to share this with you, but I guess I probably have to: “There’s a worrisome uptick in the incidence of certain head and neck cancers among middle-aged and even younger Americans, and some experts link the trend to a rise in the popularity of oral sex over the past few decades.” Please don’t let this news affect your positive feelings about blowjobs. I’m sure they’re working on a cure right now.

by Josh Kurp

• Remember that you’re seeing the first full-length concert in over a decade from the man behind one of the greatest albums of the ’90s (if not the greatest) at the greatest music festival in the country. So, be happy.

• But not too happy. After all, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea and, to a lesser extent, On Avery Island, are great albums that coincide nicely with feelings of depression. Meaning, it’s totally okay to cry, which a lot of people did during Mangum’s performance at the Chris Knox benefit at Le Poisson Rouge last year. Again, sobbing, totally acceptable, but what’s not acceptable, and I can’t believe I even have to tell you this, is talking and worse, shouting out requests. Neutral Milk Hotel only recorded two albums; you can probably guess songs you’re going to hear.

• And please, dear God, don’t think you’re funny by shouting out, “Play something from Orange Twin Field Works: Volume I!”

• Singing along is fine so long as you keep the volume low enough that the people around you can hear Mangum singing “Oh, Comely,” not you belting a song that sounds vaguely familiar, but changes the “powerful pistons were sugary sweet machines” line to “powerful Christians were sugary cheat machines.” (Yes, I actually once heard someone sing it that way.)

• While waiting for the performance to begin, don’t talk about how much Neutral Milk Hotel means to you. We all have a personal anecdotes concerning Aeroplane, which is one of the reasons why the album’s so beloved — and why no one cares how you lost your virginity to “Holland 1945” in 2002.

• Actually, that might be a pretty good story.

• It’s cool to wear plaid. Encouraged, even.

• When Mangum takes the stage, don’t give him a ten-minute ovation. After a polite round of applause, quiet yourself down because the longer you cheer, the less he plays.

• You are allowed to go batshit insane if Bruce Springsteen shows up (it’s Asbury Park, after all), and he and Mangum perform an acoustic version of “Incident on 57th Street.” Otherwise, let the man play, and know that you’re actually going to hear “Two-Headed Boy, Pt. 2” live, which, up until very recently, seemed like an absolutely impossible dream.

Josh Kurp knows you’ll behave yourself.

Photo by Hughshows, from Flickr.

Did you know Ted Haggard started up a new church last year? And that he is still with his intact heterosexual family? Either way, you should really be reading this profile in GQ. Also he cries all the time! Also he did not have sex with that man, because handjobs (and drugs) are not sex I guess. Also? He is maybe doing church right! “During the offering, when most churches pass the plate, Ted instead has his saints give money to one another. Today the gifts included a $500 donation to fix one man’s car and money for another man to pay his electricity bill.”

Times executive editor Bill Keller weighs in, in full, on the paper’s relationship with Julian Assange — such as it is, as he describes Assange as “arrogant, thin-skinned, conspiratorial and oddly credulous.” The relationship, well! Assange was pissed that the Times wouldn’t throw a link to the Wikileaks website, and then he got too big for his britches. Oh, and then he started wearing “skinny suits.” Unfortunately, Keller reads the Swedish sex charges against Assange rather glossily to my taste: “Two Swedish women filed police complaints claiming that Assange insisted on having sex without a condom; Sweden’s strict laws on nonconsensual sex categorize such behavior as rape.” That is not really how I would describe their testimony. In any event, the Times makes much of its willingness to choose and redact Wikileaks data that might embarrass the government or private individuals who provided information. They agreed to not publish things “like a cable describing an intelligence-sharing program that took years to arrange and might be lost if exposed.” Gosh that is intriguing! I sure would like to know more. Keller also makes an excellent case against the many popular stupid charges against the Times: “The journalists at The Times have a large and personal stake in the country’s security. We live and work in a city that has been tragically marked as a favorite terrorist target…. Moreover, The Times has nine staff correspondents assigned to the two wars still being waged in the wake of that attack, plus a rotating cast of photographers, visiting writers and scores of local stringers and support staff.”

“Sometimes apologies are offered not to make amends with victims but to signal to an external audience that one is a good person.”
 — You can read this interesting Scientific American article

about how “apologies are not inherently as valuable as we believe” if you want, but trust me: It is totally wrong and not true.

Hearken ye, children, to a true tale of woe. While you nestle comfortably into your warm domiciles and places of business, a weary traveler finds himself in the grip of nature’s icy claw, forced by a fate too cruel to contemplate to seek shelter in a terrible town with no cheer. Pray for this miserable unfortunate in his hour of need.

by Claire Zulkey

I started writing TV recaps and reviews a few years ago when a friend of a friend at a major newspaper told me they were expanding their TV coverage and needed people do cover a few shows, so I picked up two programs I already watched a lot, ‘The Office’ and ‘ER.’ It sounded easy enough, writing my thoughts on shows I already had opinions on anyway, although it took several tries to get the tone right — sometimes it still does. Some publications want a lot of recap, and some prefer that you assume that the readers saw the show and just touch on the major points. Some editors encourage plenty of sassmouth and snark, whereas others won’t tolerate even a hint at a swear word.

Typically, I’m assigned to review either an episode or a series of a show. I watch the show, and as quickly as possible, but as thoughtfully and with as much “voice” as possible, record my impressions of the quality of the episode along with the recap.

It’s a fun job, one that I’m lucky to have, period, let alone make a few bucks off, but like any writing gig, it comes with its own writey lessons.

• Long scripted dramas and reality TV shows are the easiest to cover. Half-hour comedies are some of the hardest. It can be difficult to stretch a recap of a half-hour show into several good paragraphs and you can only say “…and it was funny when…” so many times. Also really hard to turn into something: results shows that aren’t finales.They’re usually all filler except for the results — the best reality TV competition shows are figuring out how to make the results shows worth watching because otherwise people will just skip and read about what happened online. With a drama, though, you can usually find something to say about the season (or series) as a whole even if the episode didn’t give you a ton to work with.

• Screeners make life so much easier. I think I automatically relax and like a show more if I know I have a day or two to think about it after I watch it than if I only have an hour or two to write it up. Knocking out a writeup on a two-hour episode of ‘American Idol’ an hour after seeing it and making it comprehensive, entertaining, and spelling-error free is sometimes a challenge.

• Livechatting reality TV show finales is way more fun than writing about them. As great a job it is to write about television, actually talking to like-minded people in real time and trying to one-up each other with jokes and observations is more fun. They’re like TV-watching parties but without that pesky real live interaction that goes along with that whole having-to-put-on-a-bra thing.

• If you truly love a show, don’t review it. I get asked occasionally to review ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ but I won’t, at least not full-time, because I like saving that show as pure entertainment, just me and the TV and no notes or observations. Because even though writing about TV isn’t especially grueling work, it’s still work, and if you really love letting a show take you away for a little while, it’s best just to keep it as entertainment without turning it into an assignment, to remember what it’s like to just watch something without taking notes. I do like subbing for people who cover shows I watch just for fun, though. There’s less pressure to come up with something new to say, and you get to come at it from a fan’s perspective, not a critic’s. Plus, if for some reason you rub the readers the wrong way, it was just a one-time thing and they won’t be back next week to tell you what an ass you are.

• Commenters will eat your soul if you let them. I have other critic friends who can avoid comments completely or not let them get to them. I am not one of these people. Why do I read comments on my pieces? Because I’m a masochist, that’s why. I guess I should stop being surprised when people use the internet’s anonymity to be jerks. Being told that your mother should have had aborted you when she had the chance because of your opinion on ‘Lost’ (this didn’t happen to me, it happened to a colleague) never goes down easy. I learn to laugh a day or two later but I’m still naively shaken sometimes by how rude people can be (My opinion on one episode of ‘SNL’ made one person decide that I am “literally retarded”). That said, I also feel crappy if a commenter politely points out that I made a mistake or missed something.

• Whenever people find out you’re a TV critic and ask you what’s good, without fail, you draw a blank and then you feel like an idiot. I feel like I can’t keep saying ‘The Wire’ for forever, I’m afraid to admit to how loyal a ‘Bridezillas’ viewer I am. Alternately, they haven’t heard of any of the shows you do recommend. Or, they watched a few episodes of your favorite show and hated it and then you say “Oh, well,” and secretly judge them.

• Network swag is fun to receive, and then you throw it away. It’s entertaining to receive a big silly package from a network in the mail, until I realize that I have to dispose of all the packaging that it came in and what do I need with some of this swag, anyway? Except the time that a network sent me some pancake mix and syrup for Christmas. That was great.

• Going out and having a few drinks before you go home to write sounds like a much better and more enjoyable idea than it is. For something that sounds so fun and easy, you have to take it pretty seriously in order to do a decent job at it, especially since there are probably 200 people who would gladly take over covering for you. This goes double if you have a day job and can’t afford to sleep in because you started watching the two-hour ‘Idol’ “event” at 10 PM.

• Change is good. ‘American Idol’ is only two episodes in but the consensus amongst reviewers is that, so far, it’s not too terrible. In my experience, a reality TV show changing up its format, if even slightly, is a good thing, at least from a writing perspective. When ‘So You Think You Can Dance’ incorporated its All-Stars last season, it might not have been for the best of the show, but at least I could evaluate the changes and ask the readers what they thought. When a show rests too long in format you can get too comfortable (Eventually I had a hard time finding much to say about ‘Project Runway’ for the first 75% of each episode, since it started to feel like everything prior to the runway was pretty irrelevant, unless Tim Gunn did something noteworthy).

• Tim Gunn, over the phone, is as nice as you’d hope he’d be. Better, even. Classy, charming, intelligent, friendly: I was so excited after I interviewed him that I did a horrible job spell-checking the interview and let it get posted when it really shouldn’t have. I just wanted to brag to the world that I talked to him. Also very nice, despite probably being richer than anyone else I know: Nigel Lythgoe.

Claire Zulkey lives in Chicago. You can learn so much more about her here.

Photo by Powi, from Flickr.

Illinois governor Pat Quinn is miffed by a series of commercials running in his state that star New Jersey governor Chris Christie and criticize Illinois’ recent tax hikes.

“I don’t know why anybody would listen to him,” Quinn said of Christie. “New Jersey’s way of balancing the budget is not to pay their pension payment, not to deliver on property tax relief that was promised, to fire teachers, to take an infrastructure project — building a tunnel that had already been started — and end it and have to pay money back to the federal government. I don’t need that kind of advice from that guy.”

I am loath to take Chris Christie’s side on anything, but Pat Quinn is dead wrong here: Chris Christie refuses to pay any money back on the tunnel he canceled.

Photo by Hoboken Condos, from Flickr.

Today in lines I did not see coming: “He still loves his wife. But after 25 years of marriage, he has lost his enthusiasm for sex with her. Still. It is Valentine’s Day. And she has been hinting. So he takes her to a nice dinner, uncharactertistically orders an after-dinner drink, and feels extra discouraged when it only makes him more tired. He is 55. And so tired. Upon returning home, he wants more than anything to just fall asleep, but damnit, he makes the effort. He surprises her with a gift, lights candles, and dutifully makes love to her in the fashion he thinks that she will most enjoy.” I promise you, you don’t know what’s next.