Maybe the Future's Just a Little Bit Weird
A dispatch: Cancer scares, state propaganda, singing lessons, and enormous kidney stones
I chose to lead with anger with being inconvenienced. They say to lead with gratitude in life. I try to do that in normal circumstances, or at least lead with neutral positivity. But in this instance, I chose anger. It was either that or fear, and I believe too much in the power of manifestation at this point to go that route.
I’ll back up.
I do my usual scans to make sure that I don’t have cancer anymore, and I’ve grown accustomed to seeing that everything is fine, to the point that the scans never even phased me anymore. Now more than two years out from the end of chemo/radiation and the final surgery, I was feeling the best I had probably ever felt and confident that I had given cancer a harder kick in the ass than it had literally bestowed upon me. Usually after each good scan I’d post the “all clear” on Instagram with the “OH YEAH” part of the Menzingers’ “In Remission.” It became sort of my at-bat music for being told repeatedly that I am, in fact, still in remission
This past Monday, I got my scans, I waited until the next day for my results, and when they finally came in it said something about two lesions on my liver and one on my lung. Not ideal! After many panicked moments and more awakened trauma than I would’ve anticipated even a week ago, we found out that the radiologist who did the report hadn’t looked at my previous scans to realize that, oh yeah, those things on the liver were always there. Whoopsies!
Listen — I fuck up at my job regularly. Everyone does. Even that one person at your office who seems to have it all together in a frustratingly perfect way. But when I fuck up it doesn’t have the existential consequences of causing someone to believe that their cancer is not only back, it’s back in a whole new spot.
After a rushed PET CT on the chest, on which nothing showed up, the oncology team is pretty confident that it’s nothing to worry about. So, I choose to not worry about.
But going into that PET, I took the conscious route of leading with “I can’t believe these fuckers are making me do another test and drive all the way to fucking Princeton to get a scan just to be told that this isn’t anything” rather than driving there in quiet fear that I’ll be told that I now have lung cancer, thus setting into motion my descent in to egomaniacal meth dealership and many Emmy Awards. I do believe in manifestation to some degree, so I figured if I manifest the outcome of “Oh, it’s nothing, sorry you drove all this way and got so stressed out,” that’s what would happen, rather than manifesting the other outcome which was much more terrifying.
So, I still don’t have cancer as far as any modern imaging can tell, so let’s play the song.
Editor’s note: My favorite thing about this song, which I referenced in the title, is the fact that they have this insane chorus hook that they use exactly once and then act like it never happened. Power move.
And, with that, let’s get into some weirdness going on this week. Lower stakes weirdness, that is. Some distracting weirdness
They Have the Cooking Kid Doing State Propaganda for Turkiye
There’s an obvious joke one could make about a culinary Instagram account getting funding from Turkey (lol it’s like the food amirite?), but I will not make that joke, and I will not force you to even entertain the thought of that joke, because I think more highly of you, the reader.
If you’re not on Instagram, or your Instagram algorithm isn’t mostly dominated by cooking videos like mine, you might not know a kid named Kian who has been posting cooking videos on the platform (and maybe TikTok — I’m not over there). We’ve all watched him grow up from a squeaky voiced tween making food from all sorts of different cultural cuisines and generally kicking ass at it. Most kids can’t make a PB&J, let alone Japchae, let alone know what Japchae is.
This week, I noticed that Kian posted a picture of a Baklava made to look like the Turkish flag, in front of what appeared to be a photo Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
“Coolest looking baklava ever!” Kian wrote, with a Turkish flag emoji.
Huh.
Look, I already think it’s weird enough when young social media users get enough hype that they start collaborating with older social media folks. Don’t get me started on that Costco dad hanging out with children that are not his own. Kian has posted plenty of videos where adults are in his house cooking and fooling around with him. Just seems weird to me, and I don’t think my parents would’ve been OK with that. But we live in a different world.
I think they definitely would’ve balked at the idea of the Turkish government funding my online exploits.
The cobranding initiative went on throughout the week, too, as he posted himself cooking different Turkish cuisine, always tagging the Turkish Airlines and Go Turkiye accounts.
But, eventually every social media influencer needs to monetize. That’s the business model. They feed you the content for free until you’re hooked enough that they can charge a premium on it. It’s what Uber and Lyft did too, killing the taxi industry and getting us so dependent on our cheap rides that suddenly we didn’t have an alternative when those rides got expensive.
But for someone whose social media brand was harmless suburban kid with culinary skills beyond his years, going the route of accepting state funding from Turkiye is an interesting pivot. I would’ve guessed it would be like Hexclad or something.
It’s especially funny and weird right now as New York City Mayor Eric Adams was facing corruption charges for basically letting the Turkish government continually pay for him to take luxury flights and stay at luxury hotels.
Granted, our man Kian here is not an elected official in charge of the biggest city in the country and one of the largest in the world, so the stakes aren’t as high. But, it’s also weird that the Turkish government is looking at children’s Instagram accounts and saying “Oh yeah, that’s how we get the youth of the West to think we’re good.”
It’s an interesting reputation laundering technique, and when your kids start asking to go to Istanbul for vacation, you’ll know who to thank.
I Wrote Some Weird (In a Good Way) Stuff
Over at SPIN, I interviewed SNL cast member and premier Trump impersonator James Austin Johnson about his hilarious “Genius III” short film.
In short, it’s a tongue-in-cheek documentary about Johnson spending his time in his native Nashville between SNL seasons with his family, whom he only really respects when they provide good material, and chasing his musical dreams after dropping out of comedy all together. It’s all hyperbole and exaggeration, but rooted in some truth. He really does live in Nashville when he’s not in New York. He really does like playing music. And he really did get a kidney stone that made him rethink some things, but it wasn’t the 30 lb. boulder he shows in the video.
I spoke with Johnson both sort of in and out of this character he creates in the movie about repeatedly fluctuating between reality and exaggeration to find something truthful and funny. He was, understandably, hilarious to talk to, and joined the Zoom call under the name Bill Walton. RIP.
Here’s the link, and here’s an excerpt.
He stays grounded, though, even in the storied halls of his employer, once again through inspiration in the music he loves—“more sort of roots rock, Americana kind of thing, sort of folk, Lomax type thing, Delta blues kind of derived, down home music, kind of bluegrass kind of thing,” as he describes in one of the long-winded overwrought genre descriptors in the film. In real life, his inspiration comes in the form of a Bob Dylan book.
“This is Bob Dylan’s Philosophy of Modern Song,” he says, pulling it up on camera. “This is a book that I read a lot in my dressing room and I have to read it in Dylan’s voice. But it’s just him taking all of these singles that he likes, that he remembers from like his teenage years in the ’50s. And then just Bob Dylan-izing about that. It’s like he’s just walking you through his house.”
He breaks into a highly marketable Dylan impression. The same one he would do just days after our interview in an SNL ad with John Mulaney.
“Bon Jovi had a song called ‘Living On a Prayer,’ also there’s, ‘I Say A Little Prayer’ sung by Dionne Warwick. But those are merely pop songs. The greatest of the prayer songs is the Lord’s Prayer. None of these songs even come close.”
He snaps back into character. The real character. His character. James. Real James—I think. You can tell because he’s a little quieter, not totally unlike the mumbly creative genius he plays on screen, but not entirely like him either.
“Yeah, man. This guy rocks.”
Also over at SPIN, I took a singing lesson from the vocal coach to pop stars like Ariana Grande and Sabrina Carpenter, who also worked with Austin Butler on the Elvis movie, Timothee Chalamet on the Dylan documentary, and is working with the guy from The Bear on the Bruce Springsteen movie.
They emailed me asking if I’d be willing to take a vocal lesson from this guy for the sake of content, and while I am firmly not a singer, I jumped at the opportunity. You see, being in journalism school in the early 2010s, Vice stunt journalism was everything. I wanted nothing more than to go out in the field in my blue oxford and Clarks desert boots and write up some first-person narrative. Unfortunately, pretty much after I graduated, that all went away and the taste for that sort of thing morphed into YouTube, which I never really wanted to do.
So, to get this opportunity was very exciting, if not a bit nerve-racking because, as I said, I’m not a singer, and the interview would have to be while Michele would be in the house. She wore noise canceling headphones because she knew I would half-ass it if I was self conscious doing it. She’s a good egg.
Anyway, I had a great time with Eric, and you can read my story about how I wanted to control the whole interview and sing on my own terms, but was quickly reminded that this was not my show anymore.
Here’s the link, and here’s a fun excerpt.
Eventually, he has me practice scales, and I realize that for the length of our interview he’s been sitting at a piano. I interrupt the scales long enough to ask if he’s been at a piano the whole time.
He says yes as if it’s the dumbest question I’ve ever asked. Also, no time for that, back to your scales. We’re on to something.
I’m taking deep breaths and carefully pulling my abdominal muscles in to force the air out.
may may may MAY may may mayyyyy
mo mo mo MO mo mo moooooo
mi mi mi MI mi mi miiiii
Just like in the movies.
All of this because I asked how he prepared White for portraying Springsteen in Deliver Me From Nowhere, the upcoming biopic about the recording of Nebraska. Rather than go into the mental side of it, like watching videos of performances and finding connection points in the songs and act of singing, he teaches me a warm up he’s been doing on White that involves long hissed exhales, and then doing the same thing but with a staccato exhale.
Am I a better singer? Absolutely not. Did I have fun? You bet. Now, which one of you cowardly publications is going to send me to dancing lessons?
Today’s Snakes and Sparklers musical guest is Mk.Gee.