The Week We Said, "Yes!"
Yes! Rob Delaney, “cringe” humorist, Vice writer, self-outed depression-sufferer and all-around entertainer, has a far more enlightening, amusing take on the St. Mark’s Bookshop flap than Choire Sicha’s.
Yes! It was a solid week for great literature and thoughtful stand-up comedians.
Yes! Star humor writer and Gawker fixture Hamilton Nolan has a point.
Yes! The red-eye from LAX to LAS to ORD doesn’t bite as hard as it once did.
Yes! We think California high school students deserve every chance to get Walt Whitman. (And not just the “confused” ones.)
Yes! We get some sports humor.
Yes! There is no "view from nowhere." You can't trust the media. But their least ingenuous moments can be some of their most hilariously inspired.
Yes! You know you’ve made it when you’re personally honored by the alien dad from Third Rock From the Sun.
Yes! We’re making progress on our “plumbing problems.”
Yes! After hundreds of slams and almost as many phoned in Lil Wayne guest spots, we still celebrate poetry’s symbiotic kinship with hip hop. We enjoyed seeing avant-rapper and published memoirist Common goof off expansively with Jon Stewart on the subject of his White House appearance, the inane controversy it inspired, and a host of other subjects. And we really enjoyed remembering Kanye West in his post-Blueprint, pre-“Gold Digger,” pre-Amber Rose days, when he still showed up for poetry readings.
Yes! We have feelings! And they acted up, hard, when we learned we’d lost No Tell Motel magazine to time’s mortar and pestile. We even shed a few tears for Borders, because it’s not getting any easier to get our Creeley fix during lunch hour. We also realized Books-a-Million still exists. That was just confusing.
Yes! Ferlinghetti takes a holiday. Yes! O.G. Shel Silverstein has still got it!
Yes!