Daily Briefs: Unnecessary Roughness
By CHRIS PACKHAM
The Old Man and the Roller-Derby: Pictorial quiz: Who recently visited Brooklyn’s hipster Williamsburg neighborhood?
Answer: The Kansas City Star‘s Charles Gusewelle. After visiting his daughter’s apartment in Williamsburg, he turned in this Sunday column. %{[ data-embed-type=”image” data-embed-id=”57150c4b89121ca96b961ec2″ data-embed-element=”aside” ]}%I don’t want to dwell too much on it, other than to say that Gusewelle could have visited Darfur at the height of the ethnic purge and still obstinately produced a gossamer cloud of float-away paragraphs like this:
“In the evening, there’s a little rush of young people coming from their work, glad to be home to the quiet. And women in head scarves, carrying plastic shopping bags. And old men outside the bakery, talking in the soft syllables from Napoli and Sorrento.”
Gusewelle would have seen that tableau no matter what. It runs behind his eyelids like phosphene flashes. See above, re: Darfur. Plus, nothing says “youthful vitality” like an abundance of specific knowledge about birds, and the column doesn’t disappoint: “One wakes here in the morning, not to sirens and rumbling trucks but to the chortling of pigeons and their wild cousins, mourning doves, perched on the iron railing just outside.” HIPSTER GO HOME!
What Price This Tote Bag? My favorite part about the KCUR 89.3 pledge drive is when the shlubby on-air volunteers extinguish their entire repertoire of positivity and resort to outright passive-aggression, saying things like, “Maybe you don’t like A Prairie Home Companion. Maybe you don’t like Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me. Shows like Car Talk and Thistle and Shamrock wouldn’t be on the air if nobody pledged.”
Because at that point, KCUR is totally singing my song. I just nod right along and agree with everything and pretend it’s not a guilt-generation ploy: “Yeah! He’s right! If people would just stop sending in money, they’d probably take Thistle and Shamrock off the air! And smelly old Michael Feldman! Imagine if he had to work, instead of panhandling twice a year! Filthy hippie. GET A JOB!”
Utopia Now! The Missouri General Assembly likes the idea of rigorous alcohol treatment programs ordered by DWI courts as an alternative to incarceration. But isn’t this just another way for Gordon Parks’ Superfly‘s “the Man” to control the populace? And while we’re on the subject, can’t we all agree that open container laws are unconstitutional, like anti-gun legislation and funeral protest restrictions? A 40-ounce bottle of Stroh’s on the driver’s side does not equal drunk driving. And so-called “drunk driving” is not the same as hitting and potentially killing a pedestrian, which should be the minimum standard of proof for drunk driving in an ideal world in which the government pays for my silicone thigh implants and I don’t have to drive to Kansas to purchase a 40-ounce Stroh’s.
Mommy, Wow! I’m a big kid now! There is nothing more unsympathetically awkward on the planet than a 12-year-old boy deliberately belting out a romantic pop ballad with perfect vibrato delivery:
