Column
This is Drew’s swan song for his GEN column. Not really a song. More of a dirge.
This is my last post as a regular columnist for GEN. This is because I am tired. Over a year ago, I came here to write exclusively about politics, which was a subject I had gravitated toward during my tenure at GQ. For the bulk of my existence, I never wanted to be a politics guy. But then I got old and a nasty case of boomerism struck, and I found myself actively giving a shit about, like, tax reform. And in 2020, it’s become virtually impossible to escape politics regardless of your age. Politics is the reason my kids…
Column
Olivia Wilde shouldn’t be directing a Marvel movie. Here’s why.
Now is not the time to tell people that a rare piece of good news is actually bad news, but allow me to be King Asshole for a moment, won’t you? Here is the good news in question: A few weeks ago, Deadline reported that Olivia Wilde was signing to direct a Marvel movie. Not just any Marvel movie, but a Spider-Woman movie. Marvel is happy. Wilde is happy. Even fanboys and fangirls, an impossibly prickly lot, are happy, or at least as happy as that strain of humanity gets. And why wouldn’t they be? Marvel makes good movies. Wilde…
Column
A lot of people don’t know this, but there are exactly 38 kinds
- Abusive parents
- Plastic surgeons who get three stars or less on Yelp
- Men livestreaming from the driver’s seat
- Evangelicals no longer interested in pretending
- Boaters operating their boats without any official license or instruction
- “Khaki dads”
- Tiger Kings
- Washed-up comedians
- Toppled statues
- Cops who learned all their best practices from watching Bad Lieutenant
- Fifteen-year-olds who kill stray dogs for fun
- Palm Beach but not West Palm Beach
- The law-abiding citizens of Rock Ridge
- Nielsen households
- Rural coke fiends
- “Let me get this straight” Twitter
- Formerly prominent actors who can no longer find work
- Suburbanites who think The Truman Show had…
College administrators are busy covering their own asses as students head back to school and set off a chain reaction of Covid-19 cases.
Column
College administrators are busy covering their own asses and blaming students instead of protecting them
You knew that America’s colleges weren’t gonna give up the gravy train that easily. The U.S. Covid-19 infection rate is dropping but is still alarmingly high, to the point where sending any child to any school is still a fraught proposition. This would have been a perfect time to kill off the entire American college racket, with its obscene costs and deteriorating classroom product. This would have been a perfect time to kill off a lot of shit: colleges, college football, New York City streets, every municipal police department, the U.S. Senate, and such and such. But 2020 has given…
Column
The Democratic National Convention is just one example of things better experienced at a remove
There’s no actual Democratic National Convention taking place this week and I couldn’t be happier. To prevent the spread of Covid-19, Democrats and (shockingly) Republicans have decided to stage the bulk of their respective conventions virtually. I promise you that, even when you include The 2020 Factor, this will be the best summer of conventions you ever have to endure. No endless clapping every time a speaker pauses to take a breath. No toothy delegates in boater hats who look like they stepped off of a dollar bill. No Republicans singing in unison… SHUDDER… to “Sweet Caroline.” …
Column
What’s worse than Trump when he’s winning? Trump when he’s not.
If you’ve ever divorced Donald Trump, you know that things don’t end well with him. The United States is already getting a horrifying idea of what that process looks like. Nearly 165,000 of us are dead, and there is copious evidence that this is because Trump was afraid a Covid-19 outbreak would make him look bad with voters. So he pretended the pandemic could never happen. Well, it happened, and thanks to this absolute fucking monster, it will remain happening in America for much longer than it has been in other, more worthwhile countries.
Drew Magary tries to undo decades of bad penmanship by following four simple rules
I am a writer who can’t write. If you ever saw my actual handwriting, the jig would be up. I’ve written books, and sometimes I inscribe them for people, and when I do, it looks like I’ve defaced my own work. One time, I made a mistake while signing a reader’s book and had to do that thing where you write a darker, thicker letter over the mistake letter to cover your tracks. My tracks were not covered. If anything, I made it worse.
I skip letters by accident. I reverse them on occasion. I can’t read notes I’ve jotted…
COLUMN
The lies we tell ourselves are such a comfy kind of bullshit
Why us? Over the past few months, I’ve been watching us fall behind practically every other country on Earth in terms of Covid-19 prevention and thinking to myself, Why America? Why are we so vulnerable to misinformation that we have both citizens AND leaders who don’t just ignore the basic truths of the virus, but mock them outright? WHY ARE WE SO FUCKING STUPID?
Given that Donald Trump, a hopeless amateur, is our current president, people like me have had a good four years now to pore over that final question. Yesterday at The Atlantic, Ed Yong published a living…
Column
As it bumbles its way toward what looks like an even shorter season than it planned, MLB itself is leading the league in errors
I think Major League Baseball saw all this coming; they just didn’t give a shit. Baseball returned last week to empty stadiums all across the country, and even before the first pitch was thrown, MLB had fucked everything up. Nationals superstar Juan Soto tested positive for the coronavirus (he has yet to purge it from his system and has reportedly been very testy about the inconvenience). But MLB let the Nats, who had practiced with Soto, play that same night anyway. And I watched it, because I’m a terrible person.
Drew Magary
Columnist at GEN. Co-founder, Defector. Author of Point B.
