The Weekend in Foolish Attention

Bits and bytes of the Week

THE CANARY HAS TO BUY COFFEE TO URINATE. Looks like Starbucks finally went dark on the idea of being the country’s public restroom and home for people with no other place to go when it rains. Last week Starbucks announced an updated “Code of Conduct,” which mandates that the coffee shop’s spaces—including “cafes, patios and restrooms”—will soon be for paying customers only. “There is a need,” Sara Trilling, the president of Starbucks North America, wrote in a letter to store managers, “to reset expectations for how our spaces should be used, and who uses them.”

There is outcry but something got lost in the greenwashing Starbucks attempted in order to become ‘America’s communal space’—it is a business and businesses, flanked by empty storefronts, need to make a profit to survive. When most costumers of the brand would rather do the drive-thru for their Oat Milk Lattes with a shot, the community that filled the semi-comfortable seats was one that was looking for free Wifi and a toilet.

This is significant. It impacts far more people than theoretical policy changes in government. With so many corporations turning away from the overcorrections of the Leftist Activist cohort and cities once enthralled with the DEI-ification of crime getting tough on it again, I’d argue the canary in the coal mine is this simple shift by a coffee chain.

“15 years ago, the internet was an escape from the real world. Now, the real world is an escape from the internet.”— Noah Smith

A NIGHT OF QUESTIONABLE VIEWING. On the first full weekend off by myself in months, I spent my Saturday sleeping (a lot) and not showering. I also decided to dive in to two movie musicals that had split audiences like the political scene of the past fifteen years: Joker: Folie a Deux and Emilia Perez.

While working for the Chicago International Film Festival, I heard Robert Zemeckis speak on artistic risk and the merit of doing something unique. Last week, an artist known for taking those huge risks to create the bizarre, the unseen, the untried, got his severance package yet left us with films no one has ever seen nor will ever see the likes of again. Art is personal so the reviews and pans from other perspectives only count in the marketing.

I started with Emilia Perez. The Oscar favorite this year, the film received thirteen nominations including Best Director and Best Picture. As a musical, it didn’t much work for me but at least the music was consistently mediocre. On the other hand, it was a Big Swing and I tend to like those. The story is completely bonkers—a drug cartel leader calls in an unsatisfied woman lawyer to help him become a woman, she helps him, then four years later the now woman finds her to get her family back, they start an NGO to help find the corpses of the thousands murdered by drug cartels, then shit goes sideways—it’s like Steve Bannon’s biggest nightmare rolled up into a musical with notable lyrics that list all the many surgeries needed to transform a man into a woman. Zoe Saldana is excellent which shouldn’t be a surprise—arguably, without her in the film, no one alive would have even heard of it. I’m consistently underestimating her and she continually delivers great performances even when not covered in makeup. Bottom line, it isn’t a good movie and it’s a lousy attempt at a musical but, like the head of a decapitated motorist in a ditch, it’s hard to look away.

I was then fully prepared to despise Joker: Folie a Deux. So many genuinely hated Philips’s sequel to, in my view, one of the most misunderstood films since Fight Club.

I loved it. I mean, really loved it. Another Big Swing, I found it completely consistent with the first film (which I loved) and dug the musical numbers. Put simply, it was a love story: Boy Meets Girl, Boy Gets Girl, Boy Loses Girl, Boy Gets Shiv’d in a Prison Hallway. Of the two, this was the one I’d watch again. Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga are great together. Philips goes for broke and, in my opinion, nails it. Filled with the classic love songs of the early 20th century, a dreamlike focus on how love can inspire anyone in any circumstance to view the world a bit shinier, and a departure from a narrative that would set things up for endless crime and mayhem, it worked for me.

THE LANDLORD ECONOMY. As the son of a real estate family, I have long held that buying a house with any intent to hold onto it for life is a fool’s errand. Owning a home, to me, has always been paying rent but having to fix your own toilet. Looks like purchasing a permanent place to hang your hat is back to the days of the writing of the Constitution—if you ain’t rich, you ain’t buying.

Rising prices and high interest rates have made housing drastically less affordable, as this report in The Wall Street Journal makes clear: “In January 2012, the household income required to afford the typical home in the U.S. was $39,223, according to Redfin. As of November 2024, home buyers need to earn $126,764, a 223% increase.”

As I wrote over in LiterateApe.com:

“And let’s not forget the real kicker: the middle class only got its golden years because of government intervention. The GI Bill, strong unions, and affordable higher education didn’t happen by accident. But as soon as people started getting too comfortable, the powers that be started pulling the rug out. “Trickle-down economics” wasn’t just a bad policy—it was an inside joke. Spoiler: you’re the punchline.”

Most of us aren’t laughing but I guarantee the motherfuckers jacking up the price tag on homes to those in L.A. who lost everything they had are having a rib tickling good time. As soon as you get comfortable, your date expects you to buy her kids a meal with only the promise that you’ll be polite enough (and perhaps hopeful enough) to drop the dime and then she laughs her ass off when the kids complain that it’s cold.

SNUBS THAT MATTER (TO ME, SORT OF). While not terribly invested in awards for art, I do follow the Oscars out of morbid curiosity. The films and performances culturistas find to be snubbed is always fun to read. For my money, the only two films handed a big pile of ‘fuck you’ from the Academy this year were two of my personal favorites: Challengers and Dune II. Both were smart, ambitious works with both vision and an artistic swing that paid off. Both were incredibly popular. Of course, they were left out of the awards.

GOOGLE HAS ALWAYS SUCKED. My experience as a Senior Copywriting Manager for a company that mined, purchased, and sold Google data to advertisers caused me to completely un-Google myself. No more Google search, no more Gmail, no more Chrome. Google has become what all incredibly successful organizations do—a corporation designed to grow and profit at the expense of any and everyone. They went from the future of democracy to a shill no different than any other vapid corporate entity. As we enter into the four-year reign of the Apprentice, my gut at the time is proving righteous:

New YorkCNN —

Google is complying with President Donald Trump’s executive action that renamed the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Soon, the name change will appear on Google Maps.

Fucking sycophants. In Chicago, it’s still the Sears Tower, Comisky Park, and Marshall Fields. We don’t play that shit ‘round here. On the other hand, complaining about new ‘branding’ while clinging to the old ‘branding’ seems a bit silly. I did a personal search and discovered that I’ve referred to the Gulf of Mexico in conversation exactly three times in the past forty years so I’m thinking it’s a bit of a molehill…

NO. NO, HE WON’T BE PRESIDENT FOR A THIRD TERM. I recall when I was apoplectic about George W. Bush using the preemptive war in Iraq as an excuse to indefinitely be president. There were so many arguments and theories to support the possibility. It kept me up at night. I wrote thousands of words about it (with at least 30% being variations on the word ‘fuck’) and bored the shit out of anyone around me as I tried to convince them it was absolutely going to happen.

Today I read theories about how Trump could become President for a third term. It ain’t gonna happen. Not because of the containment of democracy or the ethical backbone of members of the political class. He won’t exceed his term limit because A. he’s fucking old and B. you can’t underestimate the rest of Washington’s thirst for power and greed. Sure, the Dems shit the bed this go round but they are not stupid. I’m absolutely counting on the most unscrupulous of our side to find a way to gain their own gravy train.

ON THE ROAD AGAIN. I’m not sure there’s much more I can tell you about the trip to Kansas that I haven’t already written. It is a solace. It is a cascade through a part of America I’ve trekked hundreds of times. I always look forward to the drive and love the warmth of my family. This one is different only that it is a trip to celebrate turning fifty-nine years old. In the drumbeat of time, a year can seem daunting until it has passed and one year ago I celebrated my 58th in the Sky Lounge of my loft apartment in Wichita.

I was on the cusp of coming back. The ensuing 365 days have been filled with thoughts of survival back in the city of my life, scrapping around to find work, finding that work, working it. Ephemeral chance encounters with my past, long walks through neighborhoods that have changed in cosmetics but stayed solid in the bones, carving out a new and interesting day-to-day one bite at a time.

This drive through the midwest delivers reflection on the year in ways others have not. Some things are exactly the same—the on again, off again physical melee of weight, the lingering and persistent distrust of romantic pursuit, the pernicious nagging of money to be made and money to be spent. Others are quite different—the sculpting of a third act on my own without a partner in crime, the thousand yard stare into my sixth decade, thoughts of the turning the page into a new chapter. Who knows what 2025 and year 60 has in store? I’m really looking forward to it, though.

All to a soundtrack of an unapologetic Gen Xer hitting asphalt to the sounds of Jimmy Page and Robert Plant.

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That’s my week and hopefully you aren’t losing your mind over the shock and awe version of Trump’s reign. Take a breath, already. If it infuriates you, go listen to some birds or get a freaking massage. On the eve of my 59th, I can definitely attest that life is too short to waste a minute on the actions of an asshat.