Episode 1105: Euphemisms

Super Bowl Boriqua! An Olympic size, er, issue! And life without Amazon!

POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW

Hi and welcome back to Pop Culture Spirit Wow, the newsletter that felt like this as it watched the Dunkin ad:

Matt Damon, you chose wisely.

It’s been a week. Let’s get into it!

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The Wownd Up

The Washington Post fired its entire arts staff this week, as well as its sports department and many in international and local reporting in a layoff that cut 30% of the Post’s employees (including an astonishing 300 journalists). One such reporter was informed she was let go in an email while in a war zone in Ukraine.

Three days later Post publisher Will Lewis also resigned. Lewis, who did not show his face on the day of the firings, wrote “After two years of transformation at the Washington Post, now is the right time for me to step aside.”

It certainly has been a time of “transformation” at the Post. After being one of the most dependable news sources and a source of hope during the first Trump Administration, owner Jeff Bezos and Lewis—who previously worked for the Murdoch press—muzzled the paper during the 2024 election, denying their editorial board the normal opportunity to endorse a candidate and generating enormous fury among their readership. More than 250,000 digital readers dropped their subscription within days of that decision.

Meanwhile, officials at the Winter Olympics are investigating claims that…well, male ski jumpers are getting injections to ahem, enlarge themselves. As reported by Melbourne paper the Age, apparently a larger, um, tackle creates the need for a larger eh, suit, which in turn creates the possibility of greater er, lift and distance in the air. (No, the jumper’s em, equipment does not function as a sort of steering device, a front-facing tiller as it were, and yes, I did have the same thought.)

This may sound like a lot of work for not a lot of results and/or a lame excuse for wanting a big, erm, unit, but in fact according to the Age, a 2-centimeter increase in the, ehh, circumference of a ski suit can increase one’s, shall we say, extension 5.8 meters. In the last winter Olympics, the difference between gold and silver in the men’s normal hill individual was just 4.2 meters.

The Age had another story about the er, issue the next day. It came with this wonderful cartoon from Simon um, Letch.

Speaking of euphemisms, the U.S. Vice President received a vigorous reception at the Winter Olympics Opening Ceremonies. The reaction was so strong and sustained, in fact, that NBC had to mute it lest it harm his delicate equipment.

Finally, Bad Bunny performed at the Super Bowl MX halftime show. Many expected he would use the opportunity to offer a screed against the U.S. government, which had said it would be sending ICE agents to the game.

But instead the singer took the opportunity to present slices of life in Puerto Rico—people working, celebrating, relaxing. And in doing so he put flesh on the lives of Puerto Ricans, who are so often ignored or misrepresented in the United States, and on the worlds of the many immigrants in the United States, Latino and otherwise, who have been terrorized and demeaned. The show was an exercise in restoring the humanity that our government has been emphatically attempting to strip away from so many people.

For me, the scene that encapsulated the whole piece was the wedding reception in the program’s center. In that moment we were given the whole gamut of family life—the young people celebrating, the little kids running around (and the one who is bored and lying on the seats), the older folks. (Has a halftime show ever featured older people, other than the performers themselves?) And you didn’t need to speak Spanish to comprehend it or know the first thing about Puerto Rico. We all understand the joy and gratitude of a wedding.

It was a wonderful show. And fun fact: the wedding was real. New York Magazine reports that the couple had invited Bad Bunny to attend their wedding (like you do). He responded by inviting them to be a part of to the halftime show.

Elmo gets the last word.

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What It’s Like to Leave Amazon

Some of you might remember that in light of Jeff Bezos’ cozying up with crazy and interfering with the Post, I decided to stop using Amazon as much as possible, other than for Kindle—which I would also not be doing if I could find another option that would enable me to migrate my digital library away from Amazon. I’m actually looking into that right now, if anyone has suggestions.)

I thought I’d give you an update on what that’s been like.

First and foremost, it’s been a lot easier than I expected. Everything is so available online, I haven’t missed using Amazon even a little bit.

It’s also been a lot cheaper to avoid Amazon than I expected. It’s true, if you’re using Prime you often get free shipping, and those savings add up. If you don’t have Prime, though, the Amazon shipping costs are often greater than those offered by other vendors. It’s a bit of a scam, actually—Amazon’s shipping is generally offered at blanket rates. This much for this size or less, that much for that size. But if you’re only ordering a couple things, what you should be paying is actually less.

In leaving Amazon, I also made some cool discoveries. Like the fact that there’s a website called Bookshop whose profits support independent book stores. You can pick an independent book store to support with your purchase, or have your purchase added to the overall pool that goes to all of them.

At Christmastime I bought a lot of gifts from independent creators at Etsy and other smaller online merchants. And supporting them was not just a way of resisting despotism. A lot of stuff on Amazon at this point is slop. It looks fine in a photo, but when you get it, it’s garbage. No physical store would ever sell stuff like this, but Amazon has no problem with it. Which says a lot.

It’s also been kind of fun discovering new places and cool gifts. Case in point: One of the many holiday gifts lists brought to my attention that you could buy this.

Yes, that’s right, it’s a planter in the shape of Danny DeVito’s head. And yes, it is the greatest Christmas gift ever.

Here’s the last thing, and I admit it’s pretty intangible. have felt better about myself buying things from people who make stuff, rather than Amazon. I didn’t expect that, but I really do. Amazon makes everything really easy for the consumer, which is great. But there’s something about it at this point that I guess just doesn’t sit right, at least for me.

Your mileage may vary. But if you’re someone looking for a Lenten fast idea or something simple you can do to help small businesses, you might try it.

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Moment of Wow

Last week saw the launch of Making Rent, a new book about the making of the musical Rent by its music director, Tim Weil. At the book launch, director Michael Greif described Weil as the “unsung hero” of the show for the work he did to honor and protect writer Jonathan Larsen’s ideas after Larsen died unexpectedly the morning of the musical’s first preview.

In the book (which is wonderful), Weil shares this hand-written page from Larsen brainstorming the show’s most-famous song “525,600 Minutes.”

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