Desert findings: Oasis, Burning Man, and the democracy mirage

What bucket hats, orgy domes, and authoritarian creep have in common. Also: Cumtown vs. AIPAC.

Oasis, Burning Man, and 47 all taught us the same lesson over the past week: Go away for a little while and people won't shut up about it when you return.

Oasis

Oasis is Taylor Swift for men who own bucket hats. But I get it: Anthems, baby. Anthems. Watch the Supersonic doc on ‘em if you wanna understand.

Now that they’re touring the US, social media is filled with clips of American guys who have a favorite Premiere League team losing it to “Champagne Supernova.” Look, it’s better than them getting into UFC.

Paul Kelly offered up this explanation for the reunion’s success:

Oasis reached its peak right before the true dawn of the digital age. It was one of the last globally big bands at its creative and popular zenith right before digital technology began to infiltrate our lives. So, while everyone has their phones up at these shows, the music and communal joy at these shows revive memories of a simpler time without social media and other apps. You lived more in the moment than in front of a screen, and I got that vibe at the Manchester show more than any I've attended in the last 25 years.

I still remember the band’s Behind the Music and how VH1 had to put subtitles under everything Liam said because he was so drunk/Mancunian. It was the first time I ever saw an English speaker get the subtitles treatment and it was hilarious. Over and over, Liam repeated, “D'ya know what I mean?” Clearly the answer was no.

Btw, true fans of bucket hats know where their musical devotion should lie…

Burning Man

An oasis is the kinda thing you find in a desert so… (How’s that for a hacky segue?)

Hate for Burning Man reached new heights this year, with a lot of schadenfreude about the powerful wind storms. Nature tip: The desert doesn’t want you there. I do hope someone had an orgasm at precisely the moment the orgy dome roof blew away though.

The playa ain’t got no wifi, though. So the convo was kinda like this…

Social media to Burning Man: “I think you're terrible.”

Burning Man to social media:

No, I’ve never been to Burning Man. “But you’d love it.” Fair. But to quote Oasis: Maybe, I don't really wanna knooooow…

Burning Man feels like the tyranny of people who can both take drugs and make plans in advance (a rare combo, admittedly). Actually, I’ve been thinking: The Edinburgh Fringe happens every August too. They should try an exchange program between the two events. I’d love to see more clowning in the art cars and more k-holes in the one man shows. D'ya know what I mean?

My annual joke about the Burn: As a Jew, I feel like my ancestors spent so long trying to get out of a desert, that it would be rude to voluntarily return to one just to take MDMA, listen to Keinemusik, and pretend art is good because it's big.

Coup’d up

I’m tired of talking about 🍊 but I can’t abide our slo mo creep into fascism in silence.

“I never saw this coming,” say those who routinely ignored our pleas they pay attention.

“How could I have known?” ask those who denigrated our warnings as derangement.

“I didn’t vote for what’s happening now,” bemoan those who consistently chose the sand as the resting place for their heads.

Those who are shocked would have more of a leg to stand on if we didn’t know about a literal playbook called Project 2025. It ain’t a sneak attack when ya put the date in the damn title. Being surprised now is like being stunned when an architect follows the blueprints they showed you. "Wait, the building looks like THAT?" Um, yes. Yes, it does.

If you’re unsure about where to focus, here’s Radley Balko, a journalist who has written about policing and criminal justice for decades, sounding the alarm on ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection as the most rogue, renegade, and pro-47 police agencies in the federal government.

What I think we are seeing right now is Trump is attempting to build his own paramilitary force. They want people whose first and ultimate loyalty in this job is going to be to the president. There aren’t very many countries in which the figurative political head of the country assembled his own personal paramilitary force that was loyal only to him where things turned out well. So that’s where I think we are right now.

A man who already attempted a coup is building his own paramilitary force right under our noses. Everyone realizes he would 100% choose to be a dictator if he could. Well, now he’s trying. So the question is who or what is going to stop him?

I understand the urge to tune it all out, but please remember: Hammering us into tacit submission is the plan. D'ya know what I mean?

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Quickies

🎯 If I’ve got writer's block for my Substack, can I call that being Substuck?

🎯 I drink English Breakfast tea. But I do it in America at 3pm. Because I’m a goddamn rebel.

🎯 Hot take: I think conductors are just hamming it up. Those violinists already know what to do without all that hysterical arm waving. That’s what the sheet music is for, maestro.

🎯 Gazpacho is just a tomato, cucumber, and onion smoothie.

🎯 Hasan Piker is a buff livestreamer who has his own clothing brand called “Ideologie” which really sounds like a character in Zoolander 3.

🎯 Things are getting out of hand with all these massage guns. Relaxation shouldn’t be delivered so violently.

🎯 Bringing a bike on the subway is the transportation version of Inception.

🎯 Say what you want about foolish consistency, but just tossing off "hobgoblin" in the middle of a phrase is pretty wackadoo too.

🎯 We don’t talk enough about what insane whiplash it is to force people on social media to toggle between photos of latté art and starving babies.

🎯 I grew up eating Hungry Man dinners. It was less farm-to-table and more lab-to-freezer.

🎯 Left vs. right is the hall monitors vs. the class clowns. And no one ever elected the hall monitor prom king.

🎯 I hate to victim blame but, honestly, what’s a canary even doing in a coal mine?

🎯 It’s cute how baseball players wear mittens now. They should drink hot cocoa and make snowmen in between innings too.

🎯 It must suck to be a scarecrow who debates politics since everything you say is a straw man argument.

🎯 “Internalized misogyny” is a helluva phrase. Like, you won’t even give women the agency to hate other women on their own accord? THAT sounds like the most patriarchal thing ever, actually.

🎯 Just ‘cuz you're on the right side of things doesn't mean you're not crazy too.

(More Quickies below!)

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Elsewhere

Recently at Working Methods:

Recently at Funny How:

Wine moms gone wild:

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Ritchie Torres’ showdown with Adam Friedland

I didn’t have Cumtown vs. AIPAC on my 2025 bingo card, but that’s what I got when I listened to Congressman Ritchie Torres’ appearance on The Adam Friedland Show.