HELLO and welcome to the 108th installment of Things I Read That I Love, wherein I share with you some of the longer-form journalism/essays I’ve read recently so that you can read them too and we can all know more about job-hunting! This “column” is less feminist/queer focused than the rest of the site because when something is feminist/queer focused, I put it on the rest of the site. Here is where the other things are.
The title of this feature is inspired by the title of Emily Gould’s tumblr, Things I Ate That I Love.
Tyler Hadley’s Killer Party (December 2013), by Nathaniel Richard for Rolling Stone – HOLY SHIT THIS IS FUCKED UP. This guy killed his parents and then invited everybody over for a party, and seriously the callousness of his peers and the weird shit they have to say about it near the end of the article is maybe the most shocking elements of this story and that is saying a lot.
My Job Search (Winter 2013), by Emile Shumway for The Point Magazine – A really interesting look at the division between our personal and professional selves and the usefulness of job-hunting advice and so forth.
Taken: The Coldest Case Ever Solved (August 2013), by Ann O’Neill for CNN – A really well-done piece on the prosecution of a 55-year-old cold case in Illinois. The case was ultimately carried out without any physical evidence, but the guy they put in jail for it is obviously a misogynist predator and rapist, so fuck him. I recommend reading it on your computer because there’s lots of graphics and media involved.
Where Are The People? (Winter 2014), by Jim Hinch for The American Scholar – These Evangelicals built a really ridiculous church situation called The Crystal Cathedral and now their glory days are over because the world is changing and The Youth are not into these showy ways and are more into service and that sort of thing. Also diversity.
Ladies’ Night, by Akemi Johnson for Koyoto Journal – The author wrote this essay, about the complicated racial politics happening in the U.S. Military Base in Okinawa, where she visited as a Fullbright Scholar. It’s about nightlife, dating, sexual assault, the impact of American occupation on foreign lands and all these other things I don’t really know anything about. She’s working on a book of creative non-fiction on the borderlands outside the island’s U.S. Military Bases.
Jon Gosselin in the Wilderness (December 2013), by Simon Van Zulyen-Wood for Philadelphia Magazine – I’d almost forgotten this show ever happened (I’ve still never seen it), but this guy is weird. “One of the reasons Jon is doing damage control on the Couples Therapy gig is because what he wants out of this article is precisely the opposite of what he fears I’m going to write. “My good name is tarnished,” he told me before the VH1 gig materialized. He thinks the hacking charges have hurt his already compromised reputation, and he needs to defend himself in print. I ask how my article will redeem him. “I’m just a normal person. Let’s not use ‘normal’ anymore. Let’s use ‘ordinary,’” he says. “Ordinary is: I’m a fuckin’ tax-paying, law-abiding citizen of Pennsylvania. That just happened to be on TV for five years. You know what I mean? That’s it.”
On Leaving New York For Rehab in Minnesota (November 2013), by Emily Carter Rophie via Longreads – The author left new York for Minnesota and the only thing she misses a whole bunch is the subway system, because “What makes a city a real city? Number one, in my opinion, is a subway system.”
Why The Ideal Creative Workplace Looks A Lot Like Fraggle Rock (December 2013), by Elizabeth Stevens for The Awl – I feel like we could be like this if we had a shit-ton of money! Fuck I love Fraggle Rock so much though.
*The Elf Diaries (December 2013), by Abby Rabinowitz for Guernica – “I realized it in small increments—in little moments that, taken alone, meant nothing much at all. But it crystallized one day in the shop, when a woman said to me in the dry flat bored tones of the truly wealthy in Britain, “I’ll have another nine of those.” And as I extracted the truffles from the case, chocolate dust clinging to my white gloves, I reflected that the cost of this one box of chocolates was much as my day’s salary. I looked at the woman’s fine wool coat and thought of my own coat, which really wasn’t warm enough as it turned out, and—just like that—I was tired of it all. I wasn’t a shop girl; I was using the money I had from my grandfather to subsidize a life of service that was actually more like playacting. It was absurd.”
The ‘My Job Search’ article was super interesting, thanks Riese.
“I feel like I have been broken up with… By my life.” is the most apt description of being an unemployed twenty-something year old that I have come across. I have come across many.
This has inspired my mantra for 2014:
Dance your cares away,
Worry’s for another day.
Let the music play,
Down at Fraggle Rock.
Crystal Cathedral – Rie, your dad and I went to see it like a tourist attraction when we lived in L.A. It’s an amazing /bordering on horrifying piece of architecture. I totally missed the spiritual significance of it all.
i completely loved that Jon Gosselin piece and laughed through most of it. the journalist does such a fabulous job of letting him hang himself. the rambley paragraph of him talking about going in and out of the forest is so fucking perfect it’s basically a poem. a poem by Dante that time he starred on a reality TV show about getting therapy. the best.
That first story, about Tyler Hadley, is indeed deeply, deeply fucked up. I read it about a week or so ago, and it has really stuck in my mind since then. Fascinating, but really viscerally disturbing, too, so please be careful everybody.
Yes, I agree. I was so curious about that piece and it was really well-written, but it made me feel upset and uncomfortable in the creepiest way ever.
Question, what does the asterisk mean by some of the articles?
that it’s my favorite thing i read that week
Good to know!
I JUST MOVED BACK HOME TO MINNESOTA AND THERE’S NO SUBWAY AND IT SUCKS. It feels like a small town.