Crime Blotter: Ivy League Edition
The presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and MIT, whose names are — or hopefully by the time of this publication, were — Claudine Gay, Elizabeth Magill, and Sally Kornbluth, respectively, testified before Congress that mobs of masked students and professors calling for the genocide of Jews “from the river to the sea” is definitely not a form of harassment or even a microaggression but rather a form of free speech that all Americans should be proud of. Presidents Hear No Evil, See No Evil, and Speak No Evil further testified that refusing admission to high-scoring Asian students is in no way a form of race-based discrimination; hiring professors and administrators on the basis of their race and political viewpoints is in no way discriminatory; raping people with disfavored national identities or political leanings is not rape; silencing …
Cribbage is a Family Game
Bagging the muggins with Penelope
Take that, you pig-fuckers
Old age is no country for young men
Over the past two decades, I have played thousands upon thousands of cribbage games, the overwhelming majority of them against my pops. At this point in our lives, cribbage has become the most agreeable way we can relate to each other, a 20-minute sanctuary where hard topics like politics, my life goals and aspirations, and his memory losses become comfortingly irrelevant. All that matters is pegs in a board.
My pops taught me the arcane rules of cribbage when I was around ten years old, and I have done my best to spread the gospel ever since. This task is something of an uphill battle given the popular consensus that cribbage is an “old man’s game.” At my age, at least, a good cribbage partner can be hard to find.
Most people (unless they, too, were taught by their father or mother or uncle or grandad) shy away from the laundry list of rules, the three different stages of the game, and the …
Critic's Corner
CONCERT REVIEW
Dinosaur Jr., Music Hall of Williamsburg
December 7th was the second-to-last show of Dinosaur Jr.’s eight-night “residency” at the Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, New York. Amid all the Starbucks and pricey jeans stores, the grungy venue with its marquee claiming “DINOSAUR JR. SOLD OUT,” along with a substantial line of people sporting black T-shirts, provided a stark reminder that Williamsburg was once cool. After listening to 40 minutes of slow electronic folk, stoic guitar hero J. Mascis and his giant Muppet-like counterpart, fun, hip bassist Lou Barlow, came onstage to celebrate 30 years of their album Where You Been.
In preparation for the show, I listened to the album a bunch of times and decided that it was a really good album, just not Dino’s best, which would be their …
