“The people who receive the disproportionate share of government spending are not big-government lovers. They are Republicans. They are senior citizens. They are white men with high school degrees. As Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution has noted, the people who have benefited from the entitlements explosion are middle-class workers, more so than the dependent poor.”
Frank O’Hara reads “Having a Coke with You.”
“And if you’re the kind of person who hesitates when you’re walking across coals and freaks out, then definitely don’t do it.”
Oooooh. Then okay, I won’t. #wtf?
![theparisreview:
vintageanchor:
Gore Vidal and Tennessee Williams at Cafe Nicholson in New York City (1949).
Gore Vidal: “Yes, I like the company of other writers. Christopher Isherwood, Tennessee Williams, and Paul Bowles have been friends. But I am not so sure [Henry] James meant that Hawthorne’s isolation had to do with not knowing other writers. I think James meant that the American scene was culturally so thin that it was hard to develop intellectually if you had nobody to talk to. This explains the solipsistic note in the work of so many American writers. They think they are the only ones in the world to doubt the existence of God, say—like Mark Twain, for instance.”](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m8395iAvTr1qd9a66o1_500.jpg)
Gore Vidal and Tennessee Williams at Cafe Nicholson in New York City (1949).
Gore Vidal: “Yes, I like the company of other writers. Christopher Isherwood, Tennessee Williams, and Paul Bowles have been friends. But I am not so sure [Henry] James meant that Hawthorne’s isolation had to do with not knowing other writers. I think James meant that the American scene was culturally so thin that it was hard to develop intellectually if you had nobody to talk to. This explains the solipsistic note in the work of so many American writers. They think they are the only ones in the world to doubt the existence of God, say—like Mark Twain, for instance.”
(Source: vintageanchorbooks)
Why do people have to be so “people-like” all the time?
One more Christmas song.
Happy German Christmas. This picture makes the candles on the tree look like lightbulbs..
This tension is pretty much impossible to dispel in a world so big, especially when issues of commerce are involved, but they did result notably (and amusingly) in the formation of the Barbie Liberation Organization, which, in 1993, switched the voice chips in three hundred Teen Talk Barbies with those from Talkin’ Duke G.I. Joe “action figures.” The Teen Talk Barbies were then under fire, as one of the pre-recorded phrases that the doll would speak was, “Math is hard.” Now, math is hard, of course, but out of a Barbie’s mouth it’s a horizon-limiting moment. Out of G.I. Joe’s mouth? Weary, existential observation.
-12/8/11 The Awl
“What is happening behind that door?” (dancing lights and Bruno Mars music are flooding out of room).
“That’s the game room.”
“Should we go there and play foosball?”
“Oh yeah.”
“After we get nachos.”
“Yes.”
…This is not a party. It’s a scene from one of those films from the 90s where a kid has rich parents or finds some way to come into millions of dollars, and then uses it to make the awesomest place on earth, where you are surrounded by fun things and chocolate and soda. Only, there was plenty of booze.
