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If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries…
While I’m pleased to see McSweeney’s morphing into a middle-aged publication, some of the humor hews too closely to Gen X Erma Bombeck for comfort. Then again, satire has never resonated with me much.
This is dangerously close territory to “I’m trying very hard to understand this generation. They have adjusted the timetable for childbearing so that menopause and teaching a 16-year-old how to drive a car will occur in the same week.”
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Younger Redux
Season 5 of Younger, a rich source of “Screen Time” material, managed to slip through the cracks for me last year, but I was finally able to stream the show. It did not disappoint.
Watching it from Portland, though, I worried (just a bit) about how at some point I will no longer recognize NYC venues or have first-hand experience with au courant references.
Bar Pleiades Liza: No weird hipster places where you have to walk through a fake barbershop to get to the bar.
Kelsey: Don’t worry, we’’ll go to one of your places.
Checking out the millennials 
Lauren: Oh my god. I’m sorry, is this an assisted living facility? What are we doing here?!
Kelsey and Lauren leave and get a car to The Cock while Liza decides to go back into the bar. She sits next to the ogler.
Guy: I saw you and your friends making fun of me. I used to make fun of guys my age.
Liza: I’m 41.
The truth is freeing.
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Interior Design Edition
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Pinch Me
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Naturally
I was served this ad in Seattle, which I assumed was targeted, but then saw a billboard with the same image. Needless to say, I like it though not enough to click through.
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My Work Is Done Here
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Ok
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Sounds Right
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Invisibility Isn’t a Superpower
The whole invisibility thing is still upsetting to me, no matter how many older women claim that it’s empowering. Emily Flake isn’t there yet either in her rebuttal to the gross French guy story.
Unfuckable is one thing, invisible is quite another. The idea that you just look through a person if you don’t want to put your dick in them—again, not a shocker, but a fucking gut punch as a human being no matter how many times it’s been drilled into your head that your worth is determined by your sexual desirability.
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We Were Harassed, and We Liked It
It’s not surprising to me that Janeane Garofalo is defending Louis C.K., similar to sentiments voiced by Sarah Silverman earlier.
Also, Garofalo and Silverman are friends with Louis C.K. and relationships are more nuanced than all-in or ostracizing, despite the current vogue for black-and-white thinking.
I’m definitely not excusing Louis C.K. or any other sexual harassers, but this is just one of many subjects where I’m starting to see a stark generational divide. Gen X were socialized to just suck it up or be tough or gloss over any abusive behavior while younger women aren’t putting up with badly behaved men anymore. It’s hard to change your worldview when you’re so years’ deep into it.
Frankly, I’m jealous of the young women coming up who’ve always thought their voices matter.