Author Archives: Danny McCarthy

Essay, Life

“ONE—TWO—THREE!”

Neon-green teeth against deep, dark violet skin. A ceiling fan broken from too many hands flinging into the air. Too many bodies crammed into too little square footage, forcing the heat to climb upwards until your white shirt has turned filmy as it clings wetly to your skin.

We see the host, and I grab the drink out of his hand to take a sip of artificial margarita. We set up residence against one wall, some girl’s long strands of hair whipping against the small of my back as she dances with someone else.

Talking becomes a post-lingual experiment. The mouth forms words that will never reach someone else’s ears, instead swirling out and upward into the collective cacophony. You communicate by mouthing simple words, by pointing, by the arching of eyebrows.

That’s a college party. Sound so big it forces you into the corner, heat so high everyone loses water weight against their will, and a Babel tower of red Solo cups.

It’s the kind of thing that could only occur in college. Only occur when there’s an uneven distribution of wealth. Top-shelf liquors mixed with liters of lukewarm Sprite, the kind that our teachers brought in for class parties. J.Crew button-downs with beaten-down Converse splashed with various liquids. You bypass the club with their $10-covers and instead cram in with sixty of your Facebook friends-of-friends and sweat it out to Childish Gambino.

It’s the kind of thing that could only occur when you’re on the razor’s edge between childhood and adulthood.

Before, we stood in her bathroom, me balancing a water bottle of Patron and two shot glasses on the ceramic lid of the toilet tank. I poured the Patron into the glasses, alternately labeled in ridged letters “Don’t Mess with Texas” and “Malibu”. I took care to make sure they were level with each other before handing one off. In between her putting black eyeliner on, we licked the bony tops of our thumbs and dumped salt on the damp.

“One—two—three,” I said as we clicked the shots together.

Lick the salt. Suck down the Patron. Hold the two in your mouth for a second before gulping. We didn’t have limes so I grabbed a bottle of lemonade. The sickly-sweet-sour taste of the lemonade, from concentrate, cuts through the tequila as I made a hasty gulp before passing it on to her. We stagger the second round of shots so that we can have equal access to the chaser.

Lick. Suck. Gulp.

I perch behind her as she tries to balance out her eyeliner. I pull thick swathes of auburn hair into place. We preen, and something warms in the outline of my ribs.

Later it was a bottle of red wine that we passed back and forth. We had to clench our teeth to avoid consuming the coils of foil from the twist-top that had fallen to the bottom of the deep dark red. Afterward, we would have to comb our tongues free of the aluminum scraps.

We went to a birthday pre-game first, one we drastically overestimated the punctuality of its occupants. By the time we strolled in at 9:45, they were already platonically grinding to Top 40, and That One Girl was yelling at people to start requesting their Ubers.

“FIVE MINUTES PEOPLE, CALL YOUR UBERS,” she waded through the clusters of drunk people. “FIVE MINUTES.” This was not a Lyft crowd.

We had enough time to say hi to Birthday Girl & Co and mooch some Smirnoff Raspberry into thrown-together cocktails. But they were annoyingly punctual, and by 10 p.m. we were the last ones to swirl out of the apartment, shoving potato chips into our pockets for snacking on the sidewalk.

At the second party, the purple light burned through the window even as we were approaching from outside. Inside, sweat mixed with liquor mixed with burnt weed. Hawaiian shirts glowed hotly against dark violet skin. Synthetic leis lit up the undersides of chins and matched eerily with the neon whites of people’s eyes.

Inside, everyone is a stranger, even the people I know. The darkness coats everything, so that familiarity becomes a moot point until they’re in your face. I run into people from class, old half-forgotten acquaintances, and former besties. In a party, old frictions are limned over in the alcohol haze.

She and I stand by the bar counter, a square hole in the wall between the living room and the kitchen. Separated by a narrow line of strangers are friends from my collegiate nascence. Friends whom I knew when I hardly knew myself. That clogging nostalgia rises from my chest and coils behind my tongue. The sense is that identity is a series of rolling hills.

You climb one with some cluster of people, crest over the top and skid to the bottom. Then you begin again. And suddenly people begin to drop off. After one hill without them, they become a little blurred. After two and three, you have lost sight of them entirely. But they’re on their own hills, cresting and skidding endlessly over and over. Run up, hover, run down.

And eventually you realize that if you keep looking back, as the hummocks replicate, you’ll trip. So you force yourself to look forward, cresting with new people, ending at the bottom of the hill with new people.

Sucking the foil from my tongue, I lean down to say something to her and come face-to-face with a yelling landlord. Party’s over, he says. The purple light weakens as yellow-bulbed rooms are opened up, the crowd thins, but the music thumps on, as loud as before. It blankets over the scurrying people, grabbing coats, appearing from cracks in the walls and hidden spots like cockroaches.

As I wrestle our coats from the pile, she spills a cup of something over me, her and the floor. Margarita, probably, or Sprite. Something sticky and sweet that dots my jeans like rain.

As we leave the purple light party, our laughter trailing behind us at this long-ago failure of a night, we cut through back alleys to our familiar place. Two identical beers and nearly identical burgers—fries to split between two people.

Our hills have neatly aligned, I realize as we tuck into burgers, the kick of spicy secret sauce hitting the ridged roof of my mouth. Bite of burger, snap of fry, sip of beer. Sloppily sopping up that secret sauce, too drunk to care about appearing proper.

Balancing between childhood and adulthood is like that. It’s the razor’s edge, the series of hills. The ravenous eating of two dollar burgers after wine and tequila and beer. Patron in plastic and curls of foil on tongues. Too many metaphors because I haven’t learned yet that one will do. It’s the here now and the not there yet.

We stand at the bottom of the hill and I reach my hand out towards hers. She clasps it, sweat against sweat. Chipped baby-blue nail polish.

“One—two—three.”

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Politics

THE AMERICAN HEALTH CARE ACT GOES TO VOTE TODAY, FRIDAY MARCH 24

Update 3/25: the American Health Care Act was pulled from the floor and did not go through the voting process. Speaker Ryan has stated that the Affordable Care Act will be the law for the “foreseeable future.” President Trump has since stated that he will wait for the ACA to “explode” and then create a “greater healthcare plan.”

Today, Friday, March 24, 2017, the House of Representatives will vote on the Affordable Care Act replacement bill—the American Health Care Act—with significant changes having been made last night and without the Congressional Budget Office analyzing those changes. Previously the CBO offered projections of, despite a decrease of ~$337 billion in the deficit, roughly 24 million people without coverage by 2026. Even by just repealing the ACA leaves 18 million people uninsured.

The bill underwent multiple changes after receiving severe blowback from all Democrats and several factions of Republicans. GOP moderates felt that the plan was too ill-thought and would leave too many people uninsured. GOP conservatives felt the bill did not go far enough, and dubbed it “Obamacare-Lite.” Those divides postponed the vote, which was supposed to take place yesterday. Ryan and other proponents of the bill did not want to go forward without the votes.

 

The new bill would defund Planned Parenthood. The rationale for this is restriction of abortions. However, Planned Parenthood puts no federal funding towards abortions. They do put federal funding towards reimbursement for services like birth control, contraception, and cancer screenings. Patients use public health programs, like Medicaid and Title X, go to places like Planned Parenthood that take that coverage. They use the programs, Planned Parenthood sends the claim to Medicaid (for example), which reimburses them, and then Medicaid sends the bill to the federal government. Abortions, which account for roughly 3 percent of all PP services, do not get reimbursed.

So when the GOP says that they will defund Planned Parenthood, they are doing it out of spite, because what they’re actually doing is stopping people from being able to use Medicaid for non-abortion services.

Vice President Mike Pence, formerly the Governor of Indiana, recently posted a photo of himself and the President meeting with the Freedom Caucus. The Freedom Caucus is made up of the GOP conservatives who are dragging their feet about the bill.

To get them on the side of voting yes, those in charge of the bill—House Speaker Paul Ryan, VP Pence, and even Trump—have struck a deal with the Freedom Caucus. If the Caucus agrees to the bill, the Essential Health Benefits list will be removed from the bill.

What’s the Essential Health Benefits?

It’s a holdover from the Affordable Care Act. It requires insurances to cover—at the bare minimum—the following 10 items:

  • Emergency Services
  • Hospitalization
  • Ambulatory patient services
  • Maternity and newborn care
  • Mental health and substance use disorder services
  • Prescription drugs
  • Rehabilitative and habilitative services
  • Laboratory services
  • Preventive and wellness services
  • Pediatric services

There has been no analysis on the future consequences on striking off the Essential Health Benefits because the CBO has not been given enough time to conduct research.

Trump has put pressure on the GOP to push this bill through. It would solidify his stance as a deal-maker—something he ran on during the campaign—and would show his control over the rapidly dividing Republican party. He has also threatened that the Republicans will lose their majority if the bill does not pass. That pressure has forced massive overhauls to the bill. House Republicans and Democrats are set to vote on a bill that they haven’t read in full, or had sufficient or significant research on.

But perhaps the scariest part of this whole thing is that photo that VP Pence Tweeted out. Him and the President meeting with the Freedom Caucus. With the strength of the Freedom Caucus, the American Health Care Act is that much closer to being passed.

A circle of wealthy, privileged, heterosexual cisgender white men, deciding the fate of women, minorities, cancer patients, those with mental illness, and the vulnerable. We might not have seen the finished bill, but we have seen enough of the consequences. The AHCA would mostly affect the elderly and sick—premiums would rise due to declining assistance—while the young, healthy and wealthy would see tax benefits. In addition, according to Forbes, over the next decade, the plan outlines an $880 billion tax cut, with $274 billion going directly to the richest 2%.

If the AHCA, the new healthcare plan, only benefits the young, healthy and wealthy, while leaving premiums rising, care decreasing, targeting the elderly and the sick, and ~24 million uninsured—then it’s possible that this isn’t the best plan.

But this is the world we live in—the decision of this small cluster of white men, for whom this healthcare plan will only benefit, will impact the rest of us.

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Essay, LGBTQ, Life

“WHAT KIND OF GAY ARE YOU? CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT!”

I took a “What Kind of Gay Are You?” quiz because, in a world that is rapidly changing and mutating, I needed at least one answer in my life.

That sounds dramatic, but that’s only because it is. So you’re astute. Congrats, hon.

It was a slushy snow day. We were huddled around a tall Starbucks table, damply drying off and cradling inappropriate iced coffees in between our hands. It might be winter outside, but my sweat glands knew no season.

I was taking a “What Kind of Gay Are You” quiz on my phone, because—frankly—I needed to know. After selecting one that seemed thorough—I didn’t want your run-of-the-mill quiz; I wanted a deep dive—I started checking boxes.

The problem, if it’s a problem even, and the reason for this erudite season is that my body exceeds gay boundaries. I’m tall and rangy—thirty pounds and three inches ago I might’ve been a twink. But as I stretched upward, the hours at the gym making me dense with muscle and bone, it became a lot more difficult.

I couldn’t find a physical category that seemed to fit. I’m not stocky enough to be a bear; not hairy enough to be an otter; neither hairy nor muscular enough to be a wolf; not effete enough to be a twink; too big to be a twunk; not geeky enough to be a gaymer. I could go on; I won’t.

Jock. Pup. Gym Bunny. Cub. Silver fox. (Just kidding; I went on).

Nope. Nope. No. Nope. No.

You might think that with as many categories as that, finding a niche would be easy—or at least possible. But instead my long, lean body—toned but not muscular, solid but not stocky—spills over any box, muddying the distinctions. I wanted some answer that might offer me a semblance of geace™ (gay peace).

So this outside, impartial source took in my body weight, my height, my musculature, my style, my activities, the timbre of my voice—average but deceptive because the pitch wildly vacillates based on whatever mood I’m in. But before I could get my answer, it produced the dreaded text:

Register an account to find out your answer!

“Fuck that,” I said, finding a small button at the bottom:

Proceed without account

I clicked it and the small circle at the top of the screen spun. The same screen popped up again. Clicked again. But every attempt to click the button led to a Sisyphean cycle of reloading that same page.

Eventually, I had to give up. I’m not made of steel—I rarely put energy into anything that isn’t writing, Real Housewives, or grilled cheese—and my phone battery can only withstand so much blunt trauma.

But I was disappointed—much more disappointed than I realized I would be, and more disappointed than I think anyone should be about any Internet quiz.

Would this one Internet quiz have changed my life? No. Would I be able to order a custom license plate with my assigned tribe and be inundated with romantic pursuits? Likely no but one can dream. It’s not like each category requires you to pay dues, or offers you any networking possibilities. There’s no “Bears In Media” except for Smokey. The only thing that’s likely is that I would’ve been disappointed with any answer.

But still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it would’ve been nice to have at least one answer in a life that seems to hold very little for me right now. Days later, I was having a conversation with classmates about baby names. I really like the name Betty, spelled Bettie. One classmate offered up “Bette” as also being cute.

“But then people will always wonder what kind of gay I am,” I argued. “Am I a Bette Davis gay or a Bette Midler gay? ‘Cause that’ll affect how people try to pronounce her name.”

As I’ve been applying to more jobs, I’ve been in stasis, uncomfortably but evenly pulled between my Imposter Syndrome and my inescapable anxiety about being jobless.

The former tries to stop me from submitting my application, and the latter reminds me that if I don’t do this, my future remains as cloudy and voided as it currently is. So I remain largely in the middle, occasionally jolted into movement by a particularly strong wave from either end. My limbs—those rangy long limbs—are pulled to their full extension, tendons popping and bones straining at the joints.

I’m in a drawn-and-quartered life crisis.

Too tall to be a twink, too slim to be a jock. Too lively to be the reporter I’m training to be. Too timid to be an opinion writer. Too dumb to be a genius, too smart to be an idiot. Too cocky for my own good, too self-conscious for my own health. Too good in too many things, not good enough in one thing. Perfectly at the center of so many identities, sticky strands of confliction pulling at so many different parts of me.

Everything is up in the air. On social media, all I see are these static pictures of people in their things. The red-carpet one. The photographer one. The writer one. The engineer one. Steel. Silk. Definitive things. Not some thing, but this thing. Do I go for this or for that? Do I put all my energy into one path, or do I spread my eggs like it’s Easter Sunday?

I want answers to questions that haven’t even fully formed yet. For the first time in 21 years, my life is opaque. And the more people I talk to, the more common I realize that feeling is. So I might not be a thing one, but I’m not the only one.

I closed the tab of the “What Kind of Gay Are You?” quiz, quick darkness swallowing the cartoon drawing of a jock intertwined with a twink. I didn’t really feel like a twink or a jock. Or a bear or an otter or a silver fox or an otter.

I really only felt like myself.

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pop culture, Review, television, Thinkpiece

“PARIS”—KEEPING UP WITH THE KARDASHIANS

On March 19, Keeping Up with the Kardashians aired the episode centered around the Oct. 3 Paris robbery and assault of Kim Kardashian. The episode, titled “Paris,” was cut together clips of the Wests’ personal videographer, KUWTK film crew and camerawork done by Kim’s assistant Stephanie Sheppard. The result was 42 minutes (no commercials) of the most powerful reality television I have ever seen.

The episode was so effective because it was drastically different from how the Kardashians usually portray themselves. The blurry, ‘80s-style videography from Kanye’s personal archives is not typically (or ever) utilized in a KUWTK episode. Everyone holding a camera is a friend, rather than a crew member, meaning that Kim is much more open. That closeness between friends, Kim interacting with the camera, translates to the episode feeling much more dynamic and intimate.

The show also made the smart decision of not beginning the season with the Paris incident. In the episode-and-a-half period before the robbery, the show intentionally showcased more of Kim’s personality. She has often remarked that the show portrays her as dumber than she actually is, so this portrayal feels more authentic. We see her smiling, nosing around Khloe’s new relationship, thumbing through racks of clothing, laughing about her bodyguard tackling the butt-grabbing prankster to the ground. So when Kim finally gets robbed, and as the story gets retold through Kim and the people around her, we have become so attached to the bright, funny, sharp side of Kim that the robbery burns even brighter in comparison.

The Kardashians have built their careers on documenting their lives, but as they’ve gotten bigger, they’ve gotten better at hiding their true feelings. They say less, and everything they show is very edited. “Paris” is so raw and real and sad, that it’s antithetical to everything else they’ve ever shown.

Some people will criticize her for showing the robbery aftermath in the same way that people criticized her for documenting her life, claiming that she was the reason she got robbed. The common critique of “She flaunted her wealth” permeated every news title, the beginning of every argument. But in the same way that “she flaunted her body” is not a valid excuse for rape, flaunting anything should not be reason for inviting assault.

The gut reaction to victim-blame stems from this hatred of Kim Kardashian for being confident in her womanhood, particularly in her sexuality. Ask anyone who dislikes Kim, and it all begins with, “She’s famous for a sex tape!” As if she released it herself; as if she promoted it; as if Ray J is the most famous man in the world even though, through that logic, it should’ve promoted his career as well. A sex tape in 2007 does account for being arguably one of the most famous people in the world in 2017.

It’s the fact that Kim refused to be shamed or cowed by her sex tape. She didn’t let it define her. We as a society have such a visceral reaction to the notion of a woman not being shamed into the restrictive box set aside for female sexuality. And I truly believe that Kim refusing to be adhere to social norms led to resentment, and that resentment led to hate, and that hate led to victim-blaming.

Even though the sex tape wasn’t mentioned, it hung over the entire retelling. Because Kim is both a celebrity and a woman, the seriousness of the robbery becomes intersected with the threat of sexual assault. When the robbers came into her room, she was naked but for a robe. She detailed one robber pulling her down to the edge of the bed towards him by her legs.

“He pulled me toward him at the front of the bed and I thought, ‘OK, this is the moment they’re going to rape me,’” she said. “I fully mentally prepped myself—and then he didn’t.”

If this had been a male celebrity, I doubt that we would say that he was responsible for his assault. The notion of “asking for it” is so deeply associated with the feminine—blaming victims of rape for their assault by asking what they were wearing, how much they were drinking, who they were talking to—that anything done to a woman, especially a woman so closely linked with her sexuality, leads to victim-blaming. Because we see her “asking for it” in one sphere, and we transpose that onto another.

The Paris robbery has always turned into blaming Kim; blaming her robbery on her flaunting her wealth and life on Snapchat. But it needs to turn into a conversation on how we view women. How we shame and condemn women for owning their womanness; how we get angry about it. How we think, maybe in the darkest recesses of our inhumanity, that she had this coming.

Kim Kardashian did not have this coming. No amount of flaunting ever necessitates robbery or assault. She did nothing to deserve this. And as painful as I’m sure this reliving was for Kim, it was valuable. This is a woman who has an unparalleled platform and access. And instead of shying away from it, she used it for the broader good. She’s (hopefully) changing the way we talk about survivors of assault. Not with victim-blaming but with empathy and understanding.

“I took a tragic, horrific experience and did not let it diminish me,” said Kim on Twitter after the episode had aired. “Rather grew and evolved and allowed the experience to teach me.”

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Humor, pop culture, television

PRUSTEN (N. A NON-THREATENING VOCALIZATION) AND VANDERPUMP RULES

There’s a product on Amazon called the Baby Shusher. It’s roughly the shape of a bowling pin, bright orange and white, and—when twisting the top half—emits a loud shushing noise that’s supposed to calm down a crying baby. The loud rush of white noise counteracts their own crying and comforts them. The shushing is supposed to mimic the sound in-utero—the rushing blood of the mother’s body makes a sound louder than a vacuum cleaner—which babies have grown accustomed to in the womb.

 

Beyond the baby, various noises go so far back into the psyche that they provide instant comfort. Content tigers make the vocalization Prusten, otherwise known as chuffing, a staccato expulsion of hot air. The noise is used by mothers to calm their young, by two cats greeting each other, or in courting rituals. Trainers have found that mimicking Prusten keeps the tigers relaxed, and tigers often respond with chuffs when they see their human keepers.

For me, reality television is my Baby Shusher. It’s what I entertained myself with this past snow day. I can put on the sounds of relatively wealthy white women fighting and my anxiety goes from a boil to a simmer, my dopamine levels spike, and I become as docile as the doped-up kid from that YouTube video going, “Is this real life?”

You might think that someone with anxiety and depression would respond poorly to the sounds of people fighting. And largely, that’s true—in real life. But there’s something so deeply ingrained in my soul that reacts to people fighting that when I hear it through the computer screen, it sinks into the core of my bones like a warm bath. Likes call to likes, and external anxiety only serves to relax my internal anxiety.

 

I’ve started watching Vanderpump Rules this season. I’m a Real Housewives devotee, but Pump seemed too messy—too much drama and not even wealth—for me to engage in. And that’s true: two of the cast members live in an apartment where you can’t have the air conditioning on at the same time as the microwave because the power will go out. One person regularly has his credit card declined—though he had enough money to pay for plastic surgery to get rid of the lumps in his over-pumped pecs from “taking too many supplements” (wink, wink).

But strangely, once you get past the fact that none of them are likeable—even remotely likeable—which I previously thought was a must for watching reality television, I was irrevocably hooked. And now, I would go so far as to even say that Vanderpump Rules is possibly the greatest reality TV show…ever.

It’s six-to-eight servers (SURvers) at a popular West Hollywood bar who are all aspiring “models” or “actors” or “singers” but they’re in their mid-thirties. They get drunk and fight; get coked out and fight; fuck each other’s sig-others and fight; get engaged and fight; go to charity events and fight. And yet, they’re tied together in a Rat King-like tangle of limbs. Extricate one and they all die.

 

The editing, the tacit conversation between the producers and the audience, as we both watch these dicks drown in their own incompetence, proves more comedic than any Comedy Central special and more masterful than any Oscar nominee.

Usually there’s a Point of No Return for reality television where it gets so dark that it’s not even funny anymore. One example might be Teresa Giudice going to jail for her husband’s tax evasion. Or Kim Richards getting arrested for shoplifting at Target. These are moments so dark that they pull at the internal meat of our hearts—going beyond pathos or empathy and turning into complete, heart-rending disgust and sorrow.

But for some reason, because you start out hating every single character on Vanderpump Rules, there is no moment too dark to take pleasure in. It’s Schadenfreude at its finest. Not when Scheana is talking about how she and her husband went to couples’ therapy once and didn’t need it ever again—knowing that months later, he would clear out her bank account and go Zero Dark Thirty on her, ending in a nasty divorce. Not when Toms Sandoval and Schwartz are literally sobbing—in full drag—at Schwartz’s New Orleans bachelor party because he hates his fiancée so vehemently. Not when Stassi gets turned off by a guy because while he’s not “murder-y,” he’s not “manslaughter-y” enough for her.

I watch these people go from bad to worse—furthering down the path of irredeemable-ness—and instead of being turned off, it soothes me in such a deep way it’s scary. It’s the reflection and fulfillment of your own oilslick soul playing out in (relative) real time, while you can nestle into your comforter and just watch the trainwreck smolder. The sounds of their fighting—over boys and money and liquor bottles at clubs—unlocks my rigid spine and ungirds my muscles until I’m a dazed, big-eyed mess.

giphy

Source: Giphy//Note, this is the MOST normal cast member.

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Politics

TRUMP’S 2005 TAX FORMS ON THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW AND WHY THEY’RE IMPORTANT

 

I didn’t watch The Rachel Maddow Show live when it was revealing Trump’s 2005 tax returns—because I don’t have a TV and also I probably wouldn’t have anyway—but I was scrolling through Twitter in the hours before, during and after, and from what I gathered, it was a bit of a letdown. After months of intense wondering about what Trump’s tax returns would reveal, the paltry two-page report from 2005 did not live up to the hype.

Celebrities tweeted that the reveal was unimpressive, and journalist Joe Scarborough suggested that Trump himself could’ve leaked the returns to distract from his current agenda, as well as to silence those still asking for the full receipts. David Cay Johnston, the journalist who first received the 1040, offered up that same theory as one possibility as well.

But just because the 2005 Form 1040 didn’t have any explosive revelations doesn’t mean that it’s not incredibly valuable in understanding Trump’s finances.

Because I care—about our country, and about you—I did some research so you don’t have to. I literally know nothing about tax returns, so I did some digging around to see what the hullabaloo is about.

The 1040 is the basic tax return system, documenting Trump’s annual income, his losses in income, and the amount of money he filed in taxes. Against an income of roughly $153 million, Trump reported $103 million in losses, which according to the Washington Post could include depreciation and sums carried over from previous years, and paid $38 million in taxes.

Here’s where things get interesting. Trump paid that $38 million in taxes because of something called the Alternative Minimum Tax, a parallel tax system that, according to the Wall Street Journal, is “designed to make sure that high-income individuals can’t use legal deductions and credits to avoid all income taxes.”

From what I’m able to understand, the AMT recognizes that, for most people, having roughly 67 percent of your income in loss (the $103 million loss against the $153 million income) would be detrimental. However, the AMT is designed for wealthy individuals, and forces them to pay taxes accordingly. Without the AMT, Trump would, due to his losses, paid a little over $5 million, according to David Cay Johnston—the investigative reporter who first had the tax returns dropped in his mailbox. $5 million is 3.5 percent of Trump’s income, which is less than half of what people who make $33,000 a year pay in taxes.

So the AMT prevented Trump from taking advantage of his losses and paying next-to-nothing (for him) in taxes. And the most interesting part is that Trump proposes to cut the AMT in his upcoming tax plan. Republicans in Congress, like Speaker Paul Ryan, want to get rid of the AMT in their next goal after healthcare. I don’t really understand why they would pursue tax cuts for the extremely wealthy, except that it would be a harkening back to Reaganomics.

In my VERY preliminary research—so if anyone has more information, please let me know—Reagan gave cuts on federal income tax and capital gains tax, along with a decrease in government regulation and government spending, with the idea that—with more capital—companies would invest more money into their spending, their workers and infrastructure. This is also called supply-side economics, which argued that economic growth comes from investing in capital. Reagan was dealing with stagflation, and from what I’m able to understand, his economics brought an end to that recession. And while Reagan saw a decrease in poverty, the level shot up after he left office to higher than before, and Reaganomics—while it did increase GDP—did not benefit the middle class in the way that it promised to. While still impressive, job creation under Reagan was lower than under Clinton and Carter.

But this isn’t an economics class, and even though when I wear a turtleneck and glasses I look like an economics professor who was Seventeen Again-ed, I’m not an economics professor.

 

So let’s focus on why Trump’s tax returns are important, even if they weren’t as flashy as one might’ve hoped. They’re important because they show us his motivation. Trump would’ve saved $33 million if the AMT were eliminated. That’s a pretty impressive amount. And while Trump has already claimed that utilizing tax loopholes makes him very smart, that’s still capital that is being lost in the economy. The GOP says that even with the elimination of the AMT, closing other tax loopholes will make up for that loss. But when we have a president who won’t release his full tax returns, how can we trust anything they say?

Releasing full tax returns would show exactly how much Trump has given to charity (he claims to be very charitable, and giving to charity is a tax write-off), from where he gets his income, and exactly what entities he might be beholden to. Since we don’t know any of this, we don’t know what policies Trump makes that would be beneficial to his benefactors or his businesses. We know nothing. Every presidential candidate since 1976, besides Gerald Ford who only released summary tax data, has released their tax returns. The Clintons have released tax information dating back to the 1970s. It alerts people to possible red flags and conflicts of interest. By withholding his own, Trump is hiding his own possible conflicts.

Johnston, towards the end of his interview with Maddow, said, “I’ve been at this for 50 years…Every time some high-level politician wants to hide something, it always turns out there’s a reason. They’ve got something to hide.”

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pop culture, Rambles, television

THE KARDASHIAN AQUARIUM

Written late. I’m going to blame this going up late on the time-change, which is not at all true but you’ll never prove that. I mean, I just admitted to it, but will that hold up in court? Unclear.

This morning (my morning, your mid-afternoon), while I bustled around getting ready (doing dishes in my towel because I’m using this weird in-shower tanning moisturizer because clearly I don’t know when to quit while I’m ahead re God’s choices for my body; making my bed; choosing what plain t-shirt to overwear today) I watched the season 13 premiere of Keeping Up With the Kardashians. It’s been, like, so long since it’s been on—and so much has happened since then, even though the premiere was probably filmed in late September—that I almost forgot what it was like to watch KUWTK.

For instance, I don’t even need to be paying attention. I was doing dishes while it played, because by now, I understand that what happens in the “Coming Up” segment is essentially all you need to know for the next portion of the episode until the following commercial break. Also, they speak so quietly that I had to put on subtitles, and when I wasn’t looking at it, I knew that they would be lying on their sides lithely, picking at their acrylics, wearing hoop earrings, that I wasn’t missing anything.

Watching the Kardashians is like going to the aquarium. The main reason you go to the aquarium is because the fish are pretty, and it’s a glimpse into a world that you would know nothing about otherwise. To live amongst the fishes, you must forgo oxygen. To live amongst the Kardashians, it’s kind of the same thing. I don’t have elaborate parties at Prime One Twelve in Miami for my personal assistant. I don’t occasionally drop into my New York brick-and-mortar shop.

By the by, the Kardashians should sell DASH to Nordstrom. To not to that would be so fucking dumb. Make like Topshop and put that shit in a department store. Pls.

I don’t arrange for four extra rooms in a luxury hotel for my NBA player boyfriend and his crew. I don’t have a crew.

For these reasons, amongst a thousand others, I watch the Kardashians. Kylie and Kendall weren’t in the episode at all (apparently Kylie is gunning for a Kyga reality show—because that worked so well with Khlomar) and Kris only popped up at the end to wear power blazers and talk about baking cinnamon rolls. My family is boring and not even we have conversations this boring.

But I watch, and in the moments where I’m not fluffing my duvet (not a euphemism) or picking a cologne (out of two options) I’m glued to the screen. There’s something so alluring about these people—like watching Galatea come to life and talk about beanies. They’re hyper-human; they’re hyper-beautiful; they’re hyper-rich. And the fact that they have the most mundane conversations is part of the appeal; that people with this much beauty, influence, wealth and power could actually be so boring. STUN.

I think what I’m most excited for (besides the Paris saga) is Blonde Kylie. I was a huge stan for Blylie, and every day I miss that blonde bombshell moment she went through. Best few months OF MY LIFE. Also, I just realized that months ago, I tweeted that if Kylie did not release a line of highlighters called “KyLighters” that everything she’d done would be for naught. And guess what!!! It’s not for naught because she released Kylighters!!!! I can’t believe I’m psychic.

Side bar—there was a point sophomore year that I was legitimately convinced that I was psychic and I truly believed I could predict the future. So maybe this is my second wind!

I like how all I thought to write about was the Kardashians and even with that, it’s taken me, like, an hour to get this far. Not all heroes wear capes though, because I’m managing to finish this 4 my fans. Actually, though, I totally would wear a cape—very chic. Although very fall.

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Source: Danny McCarthy// My current background

Is there anything left to say? I switched out my phone cases because “if I had to look at my clear phone case for another second, I would’ve flipped out” and that’s too extreme of a reaction to have about anything. My new one is silicone-y and says “Chill pills” which isn’t basic of me because, technically, I am on chill pills. It’s ironic and subversive. Fuck off.

I love my life. I love the Kardashians. I love cauliflower.

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Source: Twitter//Peep the time-stamp; who’s gonna tell my Twitter about Daylights Savings?

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Review, television

REVIEW of RIVERDALE EP. 7, “In a Lonely Place”

Grade: C+/B- (Because it’s getting better)

This episode was titled, “In a Lonely Place”, but it could’ve easily been an homage to The Searchers. Everyone is drifting restlessly—the Cooper & Co search brigade looking for Polly, Jughead going from the drive-in to the high school to his home to Archie’s, Veronica torn between dueling familial loyalties, and Polly, hiding in the Cooper attic because no one thought to look right under their noses. Even The Blossom family, who show up to the Find Preggo Polly Forest Walk with Ramsay Bolton’s hunting hounds (chic), are somersaulting between cartoonishly evil and mournful.

For the past few episodes, I’ve been sorely disappointed in Riverdale. All the drama and progressiveness that they promised (and delivered) in the beginning have dusted over and I’ve been lagging in enthusiasm for the last few weeks. But this episode I realized the overall structure. The first episodes were the first foot dropping—the loud clang of Jason Blossom’s murder, the salacious affair of Archie and Ms. Grundy. But these last few weeks have been dredging up an undeniable dread as we wait for the other foot to drop. If that first foot jolts you out of hazy slumber, then this is the heavy pause as we wait to find out if it’s just the creaking of the wooden floorboards, or if someone unwanted is just on the other side of the door.

And judging from the person watching from the bushes, there is.

In a welcome change of pace, we’re shifting our focus this week from tyrannical moms—your Mayor McCoys, your Alice Coopers—to hot, deadbeat dads. We were introduced to Fred Andrews a while back—“you gotta choose between music and football!”—and now we’re getting acquainted with Juggie’s adorable, alcoholic father, FP Jones.

As Jughead intones in his voiceover about the concept of home—he’s currently sleeping Harry Potter-style in a Riverdale High closet, we are treated to a 1950s dark-thriller version of Riverdale. The characters are in their classic comic couture, except Archie has a massive steak-knife in his back. And given what’s later revealed, that knife might’ve landed in the wrong person. Jughead’s secret was apparently well-hidden until Archie, sweaty but NOT shirtless, found Jughead brushing his teeth in the boys’ locker room. That catapults the main drama of the episode—getting FP a second chance at Andrews Construction and letting us know the scraggly, sexy Southside Serpent a little better.

I feel like we’re losing touch with Archie, and that makes me sad. The writers have a hard time balancing characters, because the people I was most interested in, Archie and Kevin, have faded to the background (Kevin completely) when other characters are brought forward and fleshed out. Archie is stagnant in character development—he’s largely reactionary—while we’re getting deeper into Veronica’s vulnerabilities and loyalty to her father, and Jughead’s family life, and Betty’s steel core about her sister. Kevin has disappeared completely—possibly he has been stabbed to death by the Southside Serpent he made out with—when it’s easily possible for him to be tagging along with the gang solving this murder. Has he been busy with Calculus?

But the Prodigal Gay returns in the only way Riverdale seems aware of how to deal with him—as a prop. In retaliation for Hermione forging Veronica’s signature on the paperwork to give the drive-in lot to Andrews Construction, Veronica goes full Cady Heron-house party. She gets her best black friend, the TRAGICALLY UNDERUTILIZED Josie McCoy, and a hot meathead, Reggie Butler, and the town gay, Kevin, to go out with her to—I’m assuming—a teen club to make her mom jealous. Using minorities for plot progression obviously works, because in the end, the Lodge household is hunky-dory.

But that’s (maybe?) the B-plot. Honestly, there are so many different threads it’s impossible to keep track. But in dueling lowercase a-plots, the boyz are trying to get their fathers back together, while Betty and Cheryl figure out what to do with Preggo Polly and J.J.’s baby. Just kid stuff. After Preggo Polly Hulk-Smashed her way out of a two-story asylum room, her family was understandably concerned. Did she land on her feet, the ground beneath her cracked at the impact? Did she rise up, flipping her gossamer blonde hair out of her face, readjust her headband, and waddle away like the Marvel superhero she is? Because that’s the only way Polly wouldn’t have had her legs shattered from the impact of being a heavily-pregnant teenager dropping twenty feet in the air.

Cheryl is down to help with the baby because she’s Cersei-obsessed with Jason, but realizes too late that her parents have more sinister machinations at hand with the Coopers. So the girls decide that Polly can’t be out in the open, so they ship her to the Pembrooke with the Lodges.

Archie and Jughead get their fathers together where it comes to light that Andrews Construction was co-founded by both men until Fred bought FP out of the business while the latter was in jail. The action was taken to protect the business and the Andrews family but, as Archie points out, unhooking yourself from a drowning man doesn’t mean that all the innocent (i.e. Jughead) get saved.

And as The Tragedy of Jughead continues, Chief Keller unfairly and stereotypically attempts to pin the murder on Jughead. He and Betty both had prints at the car, but since Jughead is a latchkey kid, Keller pulled his file to find out that, AS A TEN-YEAR-OLD, Juggie was playing with matches and almost burned the school down. That, alongside Jughead’s bad grades, record of being bullied and unfortunate first name, means that he is the only one to be able to commit Jason’s murder. Because when in doubt, blame a victim.

This is ludicrous, of course, but this is coming from a man who had a laissez-faire attitude towards his son cruising for dick in the woods and let himself be bullied around by Penelope Blossom. It goes without saying that Chief Keller, like all the adults in Riverdale, is incompetent and just plain bad at his job. Without siding too much with a child rapist, it almost makes sense why Ms. Grundy dated a kid—all the adults are committing fraud, or adultery, or just plain bad decisions.

And in the last few scenes, we’re treated to concrete reasons as to why the dads on this show are as bad as the moms. While Chief Keller is busy victim-blaming innocent teenagers, Fred Andrews is manipulating timecards to provide Jughead with a false alibi and FP, that sexy serpent, is drunkenly lumbering around his (I’m assuming) trailer.

He stumbles, beer in hand, across a room littered with old bottles and unwashed plates piled high in the sink. The camera slowly pans over broken sofas and clothes strewn across the floor to an open wardrobe. And there, nestled between old Ed Hardy t-shirts and ragged flannel, is a pristine, royal-blue letterman jacket. It smells faintly of gasoline, smoke and sweat. And embroidered cleanly on the breast in golden-yellow thread is a name.

Jason.

So we might’ve found the person watching from the bushes. And with one question answered, a host of new ones crop up. How? When? And Why?

*****

Next week: “The Outsiders”

 

STRAY OBSERVATIONS:

  • Did anyone else notice the weirdly-inappropriate background music?
  • #ShagginWagon
  • “My mom sat me down on the edge of my canopy bed…”
  • ARCHIE: “Hey Mr. Southside Serpent, what did you mean when you said my dad owed you? You have a rage problem and got fired for stealing, but can I ask you this inflammatory question?”
  • Fred Andrews looks like a sad, sexy turtle
  • This interaction:                                                                                                                                                                       CHIEF KELLER: You’ve been bullied a lot.                                                                                                    JUGHEAD: Yeah, my name is Jughead.
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music, Politics, pop culture, Things Happening RN

IMPORTANT NEWS FROM AN IMPORTANT PERSON—Feminism, Politics, Music

So I went over to my friend’s college last night, we got out, I got turnt (away from the Lord) and so I’ve spent today just, like, chilling and centering myself and Zen-ing out and just writing in my dream journal and dreaming in my writing journal. But since I have to put out a blog every Monday and Thursday (and a recap on Friday and sometimes on Tuesday or Wednesday, depending upon the circumstances, you get it) to fulfill my end of a Picture of Dorian Gray-type bargain, here goes nothing.

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY

Yesterday was International Women’s Day. Some women celebrated by not working, to show how much women contribute to our society. Others wore red. The Empire State Building in New York City went red for the evening. How do I know this? I’m very rich and I live like a pigeon in the Chrysler Building and could see it.

I found some great quotes from some great feminist writers, poets and politicians and thought I would stick some below.

“Your silence will not protect you,” Audre Lorde, a queer writer, civil rights activist, and a Black woman.
“To all the little girls who are watching, never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world to pursue and achieve your own dreams,” Hillary Clinton, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, former Secretary of State and New York Senator.
“No woman should be told she can’t make decisions about her own body. When women’s rights are under attack, we fight back,” Kamala Harris, California Senator.
“I have chosen to no longer be apologetic for my femaleness and my femininity. And I want to be respected in all of my femaleness because I deserve to be,” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a Nigerian novelist, short-story writer and speaker.

And I know I make a lot of jokes and cut emotion with humor, but I want to say this unironically. Thank you, thank you, thank you, to the women in my life and in our world who inspire me and countless others, who use their strength to help others find theirs, who are selfless, unapologetic, and resplendent in their femaleness. Thank you for all you do, just by refusing to be anything but your whole self.

THE LATEST IN TRUMP NEWS

This probably won’t be the latest, because even as I do anything, Trump manages to punt another scandal into the media.

Also, sidebar, media: how about learning from your mistakes and instead of frothing over the latest scandal, try to look beyond the smoke at what Trump is distracting attention away from. Seems like it might be worth a try.

source

Source: Giphy

In addition to accusing Obama of illegally wiretapping his phones (oh yikes), Trump has threatened the GOP lawmakers with a “bloodbath” if the repeal-and-replace of the Affordable Care Act fails. GOP critics cite among the reasons for their dissent the new plan (let’s call it Trumpcare, to grind his gears) very similar to the ACA, but keeps Medicaid expansion (very expensive and draining) among other things, and leaves a lot of people without coverage. So this is drama.

MUSIC

Lorde dropped “Liability,” the second song off her new album Melodrama. It’s slower than “Green Light,” but is super dope.

 

TELEVISION 

Game of Thrones dropped its release date for the new season—mid-July. Real Housewives of New York dropped the teaser trailer for their new season. And the first 20 minutes of the newest RuPaul’s Drag Race season were leaked and the show (which is moving from Logo to VH1) looks amazing.

 

OTHER 

I met a lot of my best friend’s college friends, and kept referring to myself as “very hot.” No one, bless, corrected me and I want to thank y’all for that. It meant more than you will ever know.

*****

okay, I think we’re done. BYE.

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