- You are illiterate.
- Congenital foolishness.
And that’s about it. Always read Paumgarten. (Shocker: Mountains are involved.)
Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
Tag: nick paumgarten (Page 1 of 2)
Upon a close listen, it makes sense that 11/30/80 from the Fabulous Fox Theatre in Atlanta inspired a cult. I would absolutely sign my life savings over to the sizzling-hot Stranger opener; I would move to Guyana for the Scarlet>Fire; I would buy Nikes, and slice off my nads, for the rare double-Berry closer. 11/30/80 overflows with truth, light, marathon lectures on sexual hygiene; O, it is True North in a world of broken compasses. MORE WIVES FOR 11/30/80!
Dude.
Yuh-huh?
Incoherent.
No.
Go back and read what you wrote.
…
That’s just gibberish.
Well spotted. The English language is slightly beyond your reach right now. Why don’t we share this collection of pieces from the New Yorker by FoTotD Nick Paumgarten?
That guy’s good.
And he’s seen Jeffrey Toobin’s schlong.
That guy’s great!
Now post a Dead-related picture and say good night.
What kind of picture?
Doesn’t matter.
Pick a theme.
…
Inexplicable.
Gotcha, fam.
That’s inexplicable as fuck. Well done.
I still got some heat in the fastball.
INUIT
“Snowy Joe, what do you think of Dead & Company?”
“Just Joe. Joseph Chigliak. White people Christianized us hundreds of years ago, and now we have Western naming conventions.”
“Have you ever been to David Remnick’s Passover Seder?”
“No.”
“Then I’m calling you Snowy Joe.”
“Whatever.”
“Again: what do you think?”
“I think it’s way too hot in here.”
“Would you like a popsicle?”
“Do they have any seal?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Go check. I’d like about a pound of spiced blubber and an RC Cola. Also, see if they can crank up the AC.”
UIGHUR
“Rouzi Yalkun, what do you think of Dead & Company?”
“Tempos are a bit sluggish.”
“That’s true. What about–”
CHI-COM DEATH SQUAD NOISE
“–Jeff Chimenti’s hair? Oh, shit.”
“Hide me!”
“Shit, shit, shit.”
UIGHUR BEING STUFFED INTO BILL WALTON’S PANTS NOISE
“You! Round-Eye! You see criminal Uighur?”
“Nope.”
NICK PAUMGARTEN WHISTLING CASUALLY NOISE
“Ah-choo!”
“Shit.”
“That come from giant man pants!”
CHI-COM DEATH SQUAD DRAGGING UIGHUR AWAY WHILE STOCKBROKERS MICRODOSE NOISE
“Shit.”
SHERPA
“Mr Norgay, what do you think of–”
…
“Hey! Get off the light stanchion!”
…
“Goddamn, he got up there quick.”
MOHAWK INDIAN
“Carl, what do you think of this?”
“At home, we often say that there is no such thing as white culture. But this makes me smile.”
“Home? You live on the reservation?”
“I live in Greenpoint.”
“Brooklyn?”
“Yeah. We don’t all live on reservations, man.”
“Oh.”
“You want me to put on some warpaint, dance around like a schmuck for your amusement?”
“No.”
“No?”
“A little.”
“Not gonna happen.”
“Does this mean you don’t have any peyote?”
“I don’t.”
“Oh.”
“Picked up some edibles on the way, though.”
“Sweet.”
The brilliant Nick Paumgarten writes a remembrance of Hunter in the latest New Yorker; how does it compare to mine? Let’s see:
WRITING: Wonderful, both. Tie.
ADJOINING CARTOONS: Nick’s – wry. Mine – nonexistent. Nick wins.
RICHARD BRODY’S BEARD: Nick – Most likely has had to pick nits and berries out of it, whereas I have been blocked by Mr. Brody on Twitter. I win.
HOW MUCH MASHA GESSEN? Nick – too much. Me – not enough. Push.
PAYMENT: Nick – Received some.for writing his piece. Me: Was not even reimbursed for the Retsina.
You win again, Paumgarten.
A reminder: Never wear your boots like that unless OSHA demands that you do so.
A further reminder: “Body Positivity” is a scam invented to sell products–some cheese-covered, some not–to fat people.
A farther reminder: Nick Paumgarten fucking loves mountains. Climbing ’em, sliding down ’em, getting drunk with rich fuckers at the base of ’em: the man’s a catholic slopist.
A father’s reminder: Get your hair cut and tell your mother you love her.
A farmer’s reminder: The Grange meeting is Tuesday night.
A Farnsworth reminder: I INVENTED TEEVEE, YOU UNGRATEFUL BASTARDS!
This is how the intros go:
“Frijoles went 0-3 last night, and also got arrested for beating up his wife. I gotta tell ya: I’m more upset about the oh-fer. Lotta reasons! First of all, I had to watch him bat, whereas I did not witness the alleged beating. Gotta say ‘alleged’ cuz otherwise you’re a racist or whatever. Second, I don’t know what was said in that house. There are certain things you can’t say, certain words you shouldn’t use, and sometimes women use them, knowing they won’t catch a pop in the mouth. Guy says that stuff? Pop in the mouth. Women feel like they’re above that. I don’t know what happened in that house.
“Personally, I don’t think Frijoles hit her: he couldn’t make contact with anything last night.
“You’re listening to Mel & the Vampire Squid on WRBI. We’ll take your calls after these messages from Sleepy’s.”
And then there’s three more hours of that.
Younger Enthusiasts, there was once a medium known as radio; it was brutally murdered by video; a guy named Trevor Horn wrote a delightful and short audio essay on the incident. Folks used to listen to their radios in the living room. They would smoke pipes and cross their legs and stare off into the distance as Bob Hope and Jerry Colonna cracked wise on the Turbot Laxative Fun-Time Hour. Folks were simpler back then. Don’t believe me? One of the most famous stars of radio’s Golden Age was a ventriloquist. All of your ancestors were idiots.
Enter the teevee. Now the radio is removed from its place of domestic worship and jammed into Pontiacs. What was once a god is now a mascot. Gone are the big stars and the high-faluting dramas and the serialized soaps, as the advertising money has dried up along with the ratings. There’s just barely enough cash to play records, and so that’s what radio did.
But now a new dilemma. Previously, radio stations had broadcast along the AM waves, which were thin and not well suited for dynamic music, but now the high-fidelity FM had come along and no one wanted to listen to crackly, compressed-to-shit versions of their favorite groovy tunes. (AM stands for Amplitude Modulation, and FM stands for Frequency Modulation. IM stands for Instant Message, if you’re a 90’s kid.) What could poor AM radio do?
They could learn to bray.
“Darryl Strawberry with an extra arm would be the premier outfielder in the game.”
“Dog–”
“Out of his chest, back, wherever. Wherever the third arm originates from, I don’t know, I’m not a doctor.”
“Dog–”
“Darryl would make it work. I don’t know how it would change his batting stance. Obviously, it would, but like I said: not a doctor.”
“Dog, you’re two blocks down the street when you should still be at the bus stop. You gotta tell me: does Straw have this arm from birth? Or is it a thing where he wakes up at however old he is now and he’s got a third arm all of a sudden?”
“Birth arm. Birth arm.”
“Because that affects the conversation. That affects the conversation heavy, Dog.”
That poor bastard in his work van on the Tappan Zee: he was trapped, you see, and he secretly wanted to be brayed at. He wanted a side to be picked, stuck to, used as a cudgel. And don’t talk about anything faggy, either. Sports and chicks and Ronald Reagan. Male voices, especially with local accents. Guys who tell it like it is.
Other stations switched to religious broadcasting, or went Spanish-language.
This brings us to Nick Paumgarten, whose priorities must sadly be questioned. He has written a wonderful article on Craig Carton, former co-host of WFAN’s morning drive time slot and current inmate at whatever prison the Full House lady will be going to. Carton (he is known by his last name; real men call each other by their last names) enjoyed playing blackjack like Kerry Packer; however, Kerry Packer was hilariously wealthy, and Carton was just rich. This led, naturally, to a Ponzi scheme so sad and half-assed that old Charles would want his name taken off it.
What issue can there be with the Paumeranian?
Don’t call him that.
This is, bushy-tailed Enthusiasts will note, the second spectacular article that he has written about NY-based sports talk personalities–go read this one, too, about Mike & the Mad Dog back in their salad days–and yet he has produced only ONE piece about the Grateful Dead. One fucking article. White people climbing up shit? There’s enough reportage to fill a book. But the Dead: one article. I know the New Yorker has room, Nick. If there’s space for 50,000 words on FDR’s granddaughter learning to cum, then there’s space for the Grateful goddamned Dead.
I look forward to the rectification of the oversight.
CELL PHONE NOISE
…
What the fuck?
CELL PHONE NOISE
Hello?
“Hi, this is Doris from Rego Park. I wanna talk about the Jets’ front line.”
I don’t take sports calls. How is this even possible?
“When you hear the name ‘Geno Smith,’ you don’t think it’s gonna be a black guy. But he is.”
I’m hanging up, Doris.
Go read about Wayne Kramer, brothers and sisters, as written about in brief by FoTotD Nick Paumgarten.
Go read about the greatest of all Dead suites, Help>Slip>Frank, as brought to you by 21st Century Dead.
Go read about the Fillmore West, and how the greedheads and crumb-bums in San Francisco wanna knock it down and build some more fucking condos.
Go read about dumbfucks overdosing on entheogens and talking themselves into thinking it was meaningful.
Go read about Brian May and the moon and a ViewMaster.
You clear all your tabs?
It feels so good.
…detailed longreads about white people dying on mountains.
Fall off a mountain? Your fault and I do not care. Don’t need the backstory, or lovingly-crafted descriptions of what boulders look like in the Colorado sun. Wanna read an interesting story about mountainclimbers? Here. Why is it interesting? Because it’s about Sherpas (nearly) caving in Europeans’ skulls and Nick Paumgarten wrote it. Every other piece about mountaineering can be summed up in one sentence: “When human beings no longer need to worry about food and shelter, the boredom drives them bananas and they start doing stupid shit like climbing Everest and writing novels; sometimes, it ends badly.”
…ex post facto revelations of fictional characters’ sexuality.
Lando’s gay? Great. Know how that could have been conveyed? With a scene where he’s balls-deep in Han. Maybe holding onto his vest for leverage. Know how it shouldn’t? The screenwriter tweeting it out after the movie’s been filmed. Looking at you, JK Rowling.
…your slackdaisy work ethic, my icemaker.
You give me the amount of ice I need, you son of a bitch, or I’ll jam a screwdriver in your ear. And not all clumped up, either. Get your shit together, my icemaker.
…fear of Mike Pence.
“Oh, you want Mike Pence? Cuz that’s what happens if Turnip gets impeached.” Yes, you smooth-brained used diaper, I want Mike Pence. Mike Pence is what happens when a glass of milk fucks nobody at all ever. He would enter office a fatally damaged charisma sink. He has no national political base besides the God Botherers, and they’re not enough to win an election for the Republicans. (You need the Suburban Assholes, too. People blame Trump on the rural and poor, but people are fucking stupid. Trump won because of the Suburban Asshole vote.)
…Spike Lee.
He was a dick to Brother on the Dead. May the Knicks remain owned by James Dolan forever.
…Avocados.
They’re not from here, and I don’t trust them. Avocados come to this country–completely unskilled, mostly having been on the farm their whole lives–and take jobs from domestic fruits or vegetables or gourds or whatever the fuck avocados are. I call for a complete shutdown, just until we figure out what’s going on.
…Capitalism.
It just doesn’t work. Not saying we go to socialism (and I am the furthest thing from a goddamned Commie) but maybe we should try something new. No one’s invented a new economic theory in forever it seems. Let’s get some bearded malcontents in the British Museum Library and figure out something novel. Ooh, maybe it could have blockchain in it?
…Royal Wedding haters.
I love watching fancy fuckers be all fucking fancy. Unlike the rich people in this country, the Royal Family isn’t actively working to end the world. (Any more.) Also: “Meghan Markle” sounds like a throwaway character from a Dr. Seuss story, and I enjoy that.
This is about rivers and walls and Udalls. FoTotD Nick Paumgarten wrote it, and doesn’t include any Dead references at all, even thought there’s maybe a million spots where he could have done so. I don’t know whether I’m impressed or disappointed.
Ezra Pound was a poet, and a traitor, and he pretended to know how to read Mandarin. Ezra also hated himself some Jews because, like I said, he was a poet. (All good poets are anti-Semites. Discuss.) After the war, he was too famous to execute so everyone pretended he was crazy for a decade or so, and then he was loosed to go to parties and dinners and be discussed. Tokyo Rose was convicted of treason and spent ten years in jail, but Ezra couldn’t be treated like that. The right schools and all, dontcha know.
Good gravy, it’s an article about the Grateful goshdarn Dead! They used to get the plug pulled on their shows a lot.
Don’t take anyone’s word on what’s in the James Comey memos; especially not Maggggggie Habbbbbbbberman at the lying, failing New York Times. Read ’em for yourself. (You should. They’re dry and sarcastic and, were they taking place in a country not ours, would be hilarious.)
Jennifer Finney Boylan in the New York Times comparing Basketball Head to Pepe LePew. Ms. Boylan’s pieces always disappoint me in a strange way that the Germans must have a word for: I read the Times to yell at it, not to enjoy it. When something appealing is published, it takes the fun out of it. Luckily, Ross Douthat is typing as we speak, so I’ll be back to full ire soon.
I did not know that the New Yorker‘s Nick Paumgarten was an Eagles fan when he called me a genius. I still accept his praise, and agree with it. Bonus points for living father. Generally, these pieces feature a dead dad and they’re unfuckingbearable: there is the obligatory scene at the grave; there is the required passed-down hat. No one needs any more “Thinkin’ about Dead Dad when [LONG-SUFFERING TEAM] wins” articles.
(You, Enthusiast, are in no danger of being presented with such an essay around these parts. While TotD does have the requisite dead father, we were Mets and Giants fans, and both of those teams have the courtesy to win championships every once in a while.)
Go google “ostrich + Philadelphia.”
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