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Why Don’t We Tip Fast-Food Workers?
I didn’t know you were supposed to tip bartenders until I was 25 years old. And then, I only learned because I was tip-shamed by a woman I was dating. She saw I didn’t leave a tip on the Long Island iced teas I’d ordered for both of us (again, I was 25) and asked,…
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Beyoncé and Jay-Z Are Going to Every Damn Mid-Atlantic and Rust Belt City Except Pittsburgh, and My Feelings Aren’t Hurt at All!
The (almost) billionaire parents of Blue Ivy will be on tour again this summer. Which I guess is good news for the people who live in the cities that this tour will stop in. Good for you for living in those cities, people who live in those cities! I am happy for you, and the…
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The Best Thing About Atlanta, the Best Show on Television
During “Sportin’ Waves,” the episode of Atlanta that aired Thursday night, Earn received a generous and unexpected payout from Darius’ puppy-related investments in season 1. Armed with this unanticipated cash, the still-homeless and aggressively underemployed Earn invests it in a gift card scheme suggested by Tracy, a recently paroled houseguest of Paperboi’s, who claims that…
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You Have to Be Perfect or Lucky (or Perfect and Lucky) to Buy a House If You’re Black
I’ve learned through age, maturity, meditation and Lisinopril to not allow myself to be bothered with certain things that might have irked me 10 or even five years ago. Basically I’m learning to give less fucks because fucklessness is a form of self-care for me. But there is (at least) one strain of conversation that…
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Experiment Proves That Conservatives Are Little Baby Snowflakes Who Act the Way They Do Because Everything Terrifies Them
The most obvious answer when attempting to find the root cause for certain Americans being so obsessed with guns is fear. These people are scared of something—irrelevance, anarchy, immigrants, black people, aliens, Black Panther Build-a-Bears—and this fear drives them to amass arsenals and fight against even the idea of any sort of restriction. They attempt…
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Betsy DeVos Is the World’s Most Useless White Woman
Of course, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is not the world’s most useless white person. That title belongs to sentient-pile-of-shredded-Monopoly-money-lining-an-albino-hamster’s-cage Jared Kushner, who has somehow managed to stay dead in the center of every Trump-related scandal despite the fact that no one knows what he does or did before whatever he’s doing now, or even what he…
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What’s on Your ‘I’m Driving While Black and This Cop Just Pulled Me Over’ Playlists?
We’ve all been there before. And by “we” I mean, “if you’re black and you’ve ever been behind the wheel of a car.” You’re driving along, minding your black-ass business, and blasting Rick Ross or some other unapologetically ignant music at obnoxious levels, and you glance into your rearview and notice a cop behind you…
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Negative Parenting Milestones They Don’t Tell You About in Baby Books
I don’t remember the first time I bumped the back of my daughter’s head on the top of the passenger-side rear door when attempting to put her in the car seat, but I remember the last time I did it—Saturday afternoon. We were on our way to Whole Foods (whose hot bar is a surprisingly…
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Confession: I Write for a Living, but I Don’t Actually Know How to Pronounce Any Words
It was 2013. I was on a panel (I don’t remember where) talking about something (I don’t remember what). To articulate the point I intended to make, I wanted to use the word “zeitgeist.” It’s a word I’d used multiple times in print, as it’s a really neat and subtly pretentious way of saying “spirit”…
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The Fish-Porn Flick That Beat Get Out and Won the Oscar for Best Picture, Explained
Not technically a fish. According to the Wikipedia page about this film, it’s a “captured humanoid-amphibian creature.” No. Not Aquaman at all. Just a fish … man. Yes. Someone fucks a fish. The Shape of Water. Other names considered include The Fish That Saved My Pussy, Aquamandingo and Moby Dick … but Like, Literally. Yes.…
