Tea With Chris is a roundup of recommended links, posted every Thursday. Here are a few of our favourite things from the Internet this week:
Margaux: Great one Jimmy Carter – I love this letter he wrote about religion and women’s rights. I love his description of “The Elders” that he is a member of. Sounds bad-ass.
Chris: Blog-friend Sholem Krishtalka has begun drawing his own tarot set, one symbolic omen at a time, which oddly reminded me of Bill Sienkiewicz’s old Friendly Dictators trading cards.
The ethical dilemma of Amazon links, not one faced by B2TW thus far, where we’ve probably raised enough money to cover one dinner at a middlingly expensive restaurant (wine not included).
“The reason why the Stuff White People Like humor genre has so many holes in it is because the vast majority of the things lampooned are not white-specific, they’re creature comforts of the middle class. But the lines between race and class are getting blurrier and blurrier by the day, and there are quite a few people of color being born into comfortable financial situations who will likely never know what it’s like to be poor. Thus, memes like White Person Bingo end up portraying a common theme in popular culture: class stereotyping poorly and tastelessly masquerading as race stereotyping.” Martin Douglas, killing it, and recalling another essay about indie rock, race, and class.
Carl: I used to dream about making a book of poems in the form of crossword puzzles, where the clues and the answers would each be a poem. I soon realized that I had nowhere near the skill set to pull this off, if it was even theoretically possible. Here’s the closest thing, though: A giant of the puzzle world has announced his mortal illness to his readers in cryptic-crossword form.
It’s great that the new season of Girls has started, but they only show once a week. To fill the empty days in between, I am watching the two independent web series (Delusional Downtown Divas and Tight Shots) that Lena Dunham made years ago, clearly teaching herself how to make TV series, rationing episodes like sips of water on a lifeboat. I also really enjoyed her conversation with Miranda July. (If you are annoyed by one or both of them, you won’t, though – it is a very Lena Dunham-and-Miranda July conversation.)
This spot on the Merv Griffin Show in 1965 is the best window into Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick’s relationship, and why everyone loved her so much. (Thanks, Mike McGonigal.)
Poetry grudge matches: Michael Robbins somewhat-lovingly trashes Dylan Thomas for lines that are “the kind of thing you’d expect unicorns to write.” However, he adds, at least he’s not as bad as e.e. cummings.
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