A Step in the Right Direction
There are two distinct phases of my life that I believe have shaped my world view entirely. The first was my final two years of high school, where instead of doing classic teenager things like smoking blunts behind the cafeteria or trying desperately to get laid, I was heavily involved with my church, leading retreats, organizing youth group meetings, and serving as an altar boy right as the priest sexual abuse scandal was...
To Be Clear: In Praise of Reza Aslan
“Ma’am, you may not have heard of me,” Reza Aslan told Fox News reporter Lauren Green on the internet show Spirited Debate, “but I’m actually a fairly prominent Muslim thinker in the United States.” Well, that’s an understatement. Aslan is not only a “fairly prominent” Muslim thinker but arguably the most widely- and well-respected religious scholar we have. Thinker being the operative word, because Aslan is neither a...
The Classroom Effect
Don’t lie- you do it. Everybody does it. You walk onto the subway,you take a look around, and then you choose who you want to fuck, marry or date (depending on the day). You’re looking around and then BOOM you spot him and oh my god he’s so cute. Look at how nice that watch is. He must be in finance or maybe he is the CEO of some really cool innovative company and he doesn’t really pay himself well now but he knows he’ll have the last...
Disneyland
Oh it’s the week of Ted McLoof. We’ve been fortunate enough to have some back logged short stories of his. Hope you enjoy. This one was originally posted in Gertrude, Spring 2011. Disneyland By, Ted McLoof When I was sixteen I still hadn’t grown breasts, but I had already fallen in love for the first time. Beneath that flat chest beat a heart to be reckoned with, and Penny, the girl I’d fallen for, was hell-bent...
Eleven Genres of Facebook Posts
Eleven Genres of Facebook Posts So Annoying that They Make You Not Only Want to Block a Person’s Statuses but Full-on Unfriend Them on General Principle Look, I get it: it’s Facebook. There are buttons called “share” and “like” and “comment.” The whole point is that it’s a forum for ideas and personal information, a place to let other people know about a cool link you’ve found, what’s going on in your life, where you’re living these...
#tbt: Four Loko
It is better to have loved and lost, than never love at all. Four Loko was purely the definition of a “Demon in a Bottle,” and while I no doubt miss it almost every weekend, for my heart and my inability to recover from hangovers, it is probably for the best. I still remember the first time I had Four Loko. It was the Fall of 2009 and I was at a friends apartment in Williamsburg. We were all playing beer pong, as 23-25...