Bouquets and Brickbats
Brickbat
To US Senators Mike Lee of Utah and Steve Daines of Montana for adding a mandate to President Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” that would force the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management to sell off roughly 3 million acres of public land by 2030. An earlier version of the BBB included a smaller selloff proposal that would have liquidated nearly 500,000 acres of public land in Nevada and Utah. That proposal was nixed in the House by a bipartisan group of Representatives including New Mexico Democrat Gabe Vasquez and Montana Republican Ryan Zinke — who served as Interior Secretary during Trump’s first term.
The new land sale proposal was announced by Lee, as chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The plan would affect public lands in 11 states — Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, …
Best Summer Fairs To Avoid In All 50 States
Alabama — Big Dean Sausage Festival
Not connected with the Dean Sausage Company, this is strictly about Big Dean.
Alaska — The Big Thaw
Frozen solid all winter, things thaw out during the warm summer months. Bring a blanket and observe one of nature’s wonders in downtown Sitka, which was actually part of Russia until two years after the Civil War.
Arizona — Escape from Lake Havasu City
You won’t want to experience anything close to the 128-degree record temperatures that hit here on June 29th, 1994 — and no one else does, either...
Arkansas — Hog-Shaving Festival
Bring your favorite straight-edge razor and as many cans of shaving cream as you can carry, Suuu-eeeeee!
California — Five Deuce Hoover Crips Block Party Weekend
You can listen to songs about gang-bangin’ and ho’s from the …
Critic's Corner
Car Seat Headrest, The Scholars
Popular music seems to be continuously wavering between favoring longer, meandering songs (think Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin) to favoring 2-minute highly-structured poppy cuts (think ’50s and ’60s classics or pop stars like Katy Perry and Miley Cyrus). The former has always seemed a little counterintuitive to me, as somebody who grew up with Taylor Swift as a streaming standard. Pop, for my generation, has mostly been an easy-listing, hyper-engaging genre. But as my guitar teacher has noticed, the pop songs that his students are asking to learn have recently been getting longer and longer.
The popularity of emotional ballads isn’t new, but the trend of longer pop songs definitely is. People always complain about my generation’s seven-second attention span, which may be true, but radio trends …
