The Weekend in Foolish Attention

Bits and bytes of the week

May 04, 2024

DATING APPS ARE FOR THE BIRDS. The experiment is over. I’m either not interested in the work involved in dating or I’m simply not ready for it. Whatever the case, I wrote about the brief experience here.

“If there is a discovery within this experiment it is that I'm just not ready for this right now. Not in a wounded bird sort of way but in a wholly apathetic mindset. "You're five blocks from my apartment? Hmmm. I'll pass. I'm looking for someone, like, two blocks away. Too much effort to go that extra three blocks, y'know?" I'm genuinely enjoying my quasi-misanthropic existence. I like living by myself at this point knowing fully the pitfalls of having a partner sharing the space. I'm almost mortified at the prospect of going on a date and making flirty smalltalk.”

MAYBE SOME CARDIO? An unfortunate circumstance on Michigan Avenue this week. A (possibly) homeless man in a screaming rage about… something… is confronted by a couple of bike cops when he starts pulling garbage from a nearby trash can and throwing stuff at cars driving by. As the police parked their bikes and, from my vantage, tried to deescalate the scene and calm the guy down, the guy drops to the ground and starts yelling “I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!” The officers remained about four feet from him as he continued. No one seemed to be filming it on their phones.

“Why should the university be obligated to provide food to people who have taken over a building?” King-Slutzky replied, “First of all, we’re saying they are obligated to provide food to students who pay for a meal plan here.”

“I guess it’s ultimately a question of what kind of a community and obligation Columbia has to its students,” King-Slutzky reflects. “Do you want students to die of dehydration and starvation or get severely ill even if they disagree with you?”

THE WORST MOVIE OF 2023. Sydney Sweeney was phenomenal in the real life dramatization Reality. Glen Powell was winning and charismatic in Top Gun: Maverick. The rom com they did recently—Anyone But You—is easily one of the worst films with both turning in performances befitting a community theater in El Paso. What a piece of shit. They look nice (especially Sweeney) but I wish it had been a silent film or simply stricken from my short term memory.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, YOUNG-ISH MAN! Tomorrow is the infamous Joe Janes’s birthday (no, he was not involved in a Mexican war of any kind). Like rings on a tree, Joe is still gathering up years and is rocking it in his 2024. Can’t make his birthday? Go see him this month at one of his one-man shows in various independent bookstores around Chicago!

It’s negative advertisement. Starving people love Applebees! Our food beats the hell out of rice and bugs!—My Mom regarding this week’s Survivor

ANTI-PERSUASION. A man was sitting in his car, late for work, waiting for protesters blocking traffic to make their point. The protesters were mostly young, mostly white, and very passionate about the United States divesting from Israel in support of the Palestinians. He noticed that some of what he thought were women wearing the keffiyehs required of women in Gaza without irony. Signs for "Dykes for Divestment' and 'From the River to the Sea' were displayed by masked up twenty-year olds balancing the placards with one hand and their smartphones in the other as they TikTok'd their presence on the highway.

Despite the fact that he currently had roughly $100 in his bank account, three maxed out credit cards, and had to turn his own phone to silence all unknown callers to avoid the barrage of robocalls from debt collectors, he realized that the kids were right. This will make the difference. These kids blocking traffic will shift the discourse and force Israel to give up and throw themselves into the sea. My mind has been changed!

Never happened, ever. Never will.

ROSIE TUCKER. Himmel invited a few of us out to the Beat Kitchen on Belmont to grab some drinks and catch a new-ish band. Headed by the singer/songwriter Rosie Tucker, the sound is reminiscent of Amy Mann if she sounded like she was twelve and they were solid. Great songs, better lyrics. You can find their latest album Utopia Now! on Apple Music.