16th
While I Was Out
I just got home from a mandatory trip to Flushing. It was a huge waste of my time, but at least I got to visit a part of the city that’s fairly new to me. (Fun fact: There are loads of attractive white kids in Flushing who would like to convert you to Christianity.)
Anyway, when I returned home I flicked through the tumblr dashboard for a bit to catch up on things, and it’s basically overrun with two things.
1) Guys, this Pitchfork book thing? It’s kinda old news. It’s been on Amazon for a while now. I know it’s the internet and you want to be snarky, but geez, cut these people some slack. It’s just a book about 500 songs. There’s nothing to get defensive about, at least not without having read it. At the very least, there’s going to be some stuff by some very talented writers in there. Maybe it’ll be great, like a modern and far less ambitious version of the Spin Alternative Record Guide, or maybe it’ll just be a thing that you’ll see filling up the shelves at a used book store someday. Either way, cool out. It’s not a big deal.
2) Helen Mirren is an attractive woman, and I’m not opposed to seeing a photo of her in a swimsuit. That said, when I see lots of people in their 20s getting all excited about it, it strikes me as a bit suspicious, as if the message is either “Wow, I can’t believe women can still be attractive at that age!” or “Wow, aren’t I great for wanting to throw it in some older broad?” It feels a bit like having to hear some annoying, defensive white guy trying to impress you by talking about his Black Friend or similar. Maybe I wouldn’t respond to it this way if it didn’t seem like such a default option — everything about Mirren in the past few years has been about emphasizing how hot she is for an older woman, so it’s not exactly showing off individual thought, and I’m not seeing any other similarly attractive women in that age range getting the same treatment.
