Welcome to the 11th edition of Content Nausea. Last month, I wrote about my summer vibes mix. Listen to it! It’s fun! I started to write this a while ago while drinking two-for-one margaritas in Greenpoint and then just didn’t finish it, so things are pretty disjointed. But we should be back on track now. This is going to be a long one. Here is what I am trying to do.
I don’t want this to become a newsletter about nostalgia because I don’t know who would really want to read about what I am nostalgic for. But they say to write what you know, so who can argue with that? I’ve been thinking about this Instagram post from Vivian Girls singer/guitarist Cassie Ramone over the past couple weeks:
Obviously, I can’t be 100 percent sure on what she is referring to, but I wish she would find a way to articulate her answer well eventually. But I feel like there are a number of areas where I relate to it. There was a certain mystery about the internet — and by extension, the world — during those years, and it’s something that isn’t coming back.
I’m a creature of habit, and when I visit places, I have the tendency to go to the same places over and over again. I went to New Orleans twice in three months, and both times I ate breakfast at Muriel’s and then walked to French Truck Coffee before going to the Superdome for work. It worked the first time, so why not mess anything up the second time?
Of course, that’s not always the best approach for somewhere like New Orleans, where I had never been to and won’t know when I’m going to be back. But for somewhere I’ve been a ton of times, it works. I can see the changes. I can see which faces stay the same and which stay the same. So obviously, this is going to segue into something about Williamsburg.
Five Leaves brunch is still good. But Variety moved to the end of the block into a new space on Graham Avenue. There are also more Varietys (Varieties?) in the city. The coffee is still great. But it’s not the same space where I nursed my fledgling career as a blogger nestled in the back of the coffee shop in 2011. (As an aside, I just remembered when The New York Times reported on the “phenomenon” of people working on their laptops in coffee shops in 2010 and called it “Laptopistan.” I vaguely remember Hipster Runoff skewering it, but outside of a couple tweets, I couldn’t dig anything up, but I also didn’t really try).
So Variety was different. And so is everything else. That’s what is supposed to happen, though. Nothing stays the same.
It had been 10 years since my first real Brooklyn weekend. We saw Vivian Girls at the old Whitney on July 31, 2009. Then, we saw The Babies, Lovvers, That Ghost, The Sundelles and The So So Glos (did I miss someone) at Death By Audio the next night. On Aug. 2, the JellyNYC Pool Party at the Waterfront was the Dan Deacon, No Age and Deerhunter round robin (aka No Deachunter), but it rained and rained, and instead of seeing them in the afternoon and catching a late bus back to Maryland, we saw them at 11:30 p.m. at Brooklyn Bowl, and I caught an early bus to make it back for the U.S. history class I was taking at community college that summer. Also that weekend, we went to Relish (RIP), and I ordered, like, a chocolate milk because I was a 17-year-old who had no idea what alcohol tasted like yet. s/o Sugar Boots.
In the 10 years since, it’s an area I always go back to. I’ve always been an interloper — if some writing gig wants to pay me enough to live in New York, let me know! — so I’ve been exposed to only the veneer, and I never had to deal with the day-to-day hassles of living there. But that weekend, plus 2011 and 2012 (lol), was a formative experience that’s worth hanging onto. I always walk around Vice and up 2nd Street from Kent Avenue for a glimpse at where DBA was. It’s nice to visit the grave of a friend sometimes.
OK, I’m losing steam on this one. Reading about New York isn’t that fun, and writing about it wasn’t that fun either. I started to write this on my phone while drinking two-for-one margs during Calexico happy hour (another thing I always go to!), but then I got self-conscious about writing a bunch of stuff on my phone, so I stopped. And the overall idea for this died there, too. I still think about Cassie’s Instagram post, though.
I’m toying with the idea of starting a mailbag that isn’t really a mailbag? Like not a Q&A, but sending me prompts of something to write about, and then I do that? I think it could be a good exercise? You can respond with something if you think it’s a good idea.
Some things I wrote this week
There was a fight at Eagles practice.
An NFL player talks about feeling wanted.
“I’m fixed, but I’m not healed yet.”
I’m aboard the Miles Sanders Hype Train. Choo-choo.
Some other things I read or listened to or watched or thought about
Heavy rotation for me over the past month or so: Miss Universe by Nilüfer Yanya; Immunity by Clairo; Patience by Mannequin Pussy; Clarity by Kim Petras; and Dookie by Green Day.
The other Eagles player from Bismarck, North Dakota.
The dead body on the doorstop outside his childhood apartment in Memphis signaled it was time to move. Jay Liggins was 11 years old. His mother had already considered uprooting their family, which then included 10 children, away from the growing violence in the area. He awoke one morning and saw the corpse.
Another Hell World that does not make you feel good. I am excited for the book.
This feature on David Berman from July, and then these remembrances from The Washington Post, The Fader and The New Yorker. During adolescence, I ended up more as a Pavement kid than a Silver Jews kid. Pavement was more exciting to me and less country, and at the time, those were really the two things that mattered the most to me when I was listening to music. Also, Pavement’s wit was a little more up front, while Silver Jews were more of a slow burn. It didn’t really penetrate my consciousness. I bought American Water in 2014 when I was driving home from California, mostly because the cover art resembles (or is) Monument Valley, and I liked it. But I started listening to Purple Mountains last week, sunk back into American Water this week and am going to comb the internet for PDFs of David Berman’s writing. It’s sad, and I’m sad for all my friends.
A Villanova basketball star who gave everything up to become a nun.
Jia Tolentino does The Grub Street Diet. Jia Tolentino talks to Elle. I started reading Trick Mirror earlier this week, and it is good so far. The Guardian excerpted an essay earlier this month that I finished earlier tonight. I also have interviews with her/reviews of the book from The Paris Review, Vox, Esquire and The New York Times in my Pocket queue, so I will just link those now instead of next week when I still haven’t read them yet.
The bad day is a great time to think about all the stupid things you’ve done in your life and all the choices you’ve made—or chose not to make—that brought you to this point. In fact, when you look at everything in the light of the bad day, it only makes sense that you’re unable to achieve what’s expected of you and what you expect of yourself. The only real surprise is that you were ever able to achieve it at all or fool other people into believing that you were competent at it in the first place. In fact, when you give it more consideration, it only seems fair that you’re finally exposed as a fraud and a failure, because deep down in your heart you’ve always known that’s who you are. The people you’ve hurt along the way—and there are PLENTY—will be so happy to learn that everyone else is going to know the terrible secret about you that only they’ve been aware of since you first made them your victim with your indifference or incompetence. At least someone will be happy, here on the bad day.
Rolling Stone has an in-depth interview and profile of Vivian Girls upon their return (which is super exciting!). The profile is good and focuses on the misogyny they faced when they were coming up in 2008. I was oblivious to it at the time, and that pains me a little bit. I’m writing the bottom before the top here, so I might have already written about Vivian Girls above, but I walked around Williamsburg listening to the self-titled earlier this month, and it was a disconcerting experience.
I posted lyrics to “Fireflies” as my Facebook status on Nov. 1, 2009, and I am not going to delete that status. It needs to exist as a monument to who I was at that time because I danced with a girl to that song at the Halloween dance the night before while wearing a problematic costume.
A good interview with Hanif Abdurraqib, who has another poetry collection coming out soon. It will need to join my reading list for football season:
He also wrote about LeBron James’ school in Akron.
Mina Kimes on Baker Mayfield. We’re starting to get into things I read in mid-July on a flight to Denver.
Rethinking time. I think I had a lot I wanted to write about this, but I didn’t write any of it down or take any notes, so.
Why has this sort of distortion arisen? Possibly it has something to do with the way in which the internet continues to run, for the most part, parallel to the everyday — it has not yet sucked the whole of the everyday in. Different people are differently Online, but most people will just dip in and out, with the internet and social media being just one facet of a life also lived and worked in Offline. And yet — the internet runs on truly 24-hour time, never stopping for anyone to sleep, or relax, or stop paying attention even for a second. Unless your existence is completely dominated by Online, whole swathes of culture can blossom and die — even in areas of the internet you usually hang out in — without your ever becoming aware of them at all. Log off for a couple of days, and there could be Wife Guys whose entire existence remains, to you if only you, completely obscure.
A crazy story from Louisiana about oil and family.
Some old Facebook statuses:
Putting a thinkpiece about newsletters in this newsletter that I want to be a thinkpiece. Newsletters are fine, stop complaining.
A big AOC interview I don’t really remember reading? Who knows.
OK, yeah, this Hunter Biden feature from The New Yorker is wild.
I got really good at reading books in a single day while I was traveling. I did A Visit From the Goon Squad coming back from Miami, Normal People on the way to Oregon and then Emergency Contact by Mary H.K. Choi on the way back from Denver. The story was good, none of the characters felt pointless or worthless and it felt true to life.
I also finished Ballpark, which was a history of baseball stadiums in America and how they fit into the urban fabric of cities. It was great and eye-opening. Camden Yards rules, and it would rule more if you didn’t have to watch the Orioles play there. I saw Gio Urshela from the Yankees hit two home runs there last week, and I had no idea who Gio Urshela was. I’ve seen some bad baseball in my life, but the Orioles might be the worst of it.
Another iced coffee update:
Thank you for reading the 11th edition of Content Nausea. Please tell me if there are any typos or what you liked about this. It will get better.
It comes through the window
It comes through the floor
It comes through the roof
And it comes through the door
—D.G.