An October ‘Shocker’
A few reminders before we jump in: 1) Hit reply with your own personal favs from your Space and 2) forward the email to friends to join in!
🗞 THE NEWSSTAND
(Hint: go Incognito to fight dem paywalls).
We are one month out from one of the most historic elections in American history and this past week has proven to be the likely finish for this year’s campaign trail.
As the world watched the first presidential debate between VP Joe Biden and the acting POTUS one could not help but wonder if this was all some practical joke and at some point, we were going to hear moderator Chris Wallace burst into ‘live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!’ But we cannot be so lucky—it was not a Tuesday night kickoff to the SNL season but, in fact, a real-world look at how truly low things can be at the top.
Some quotes from the evening:
“There's nothing smart about you.”
“Every time you see him, he's got a mask.”
"He wouldn't know a suburb unless he took a wrong turn. I know suburbs."
"You would have lost far more people.”
“Will you shut up, man.”
“This isn’t serving the country well.”
I’ll leave the reader to guess where the quotes came from but quite possibly the most disturbing quote from the evening was when Fox News moderator Chris Wallace asked the president to denounce white supremacists in this country as seen in Kenosha and Portland. This to which 45 responded with “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by."The reference to a far-right self-proclaimed ‘Western-chauvinist’ militia group, which the group immediately celebrated across social media.
The debate did not leave anyone except for 45 himself feeling very good for the prospects of our country.
Then came the bombshell news of the week that somehow did not feel all that much of an October surprise when 45 tweeted to his followers that he and his wife Melania had tested positive for COVID-19. This as Chris Wallace reported the first family showed up to Cleveland Clinic before the debate refusing to follow protocols.
With last week’s story break by NY Times on the president’s years of business failure and only paying $750 on his recent tax returns, the election had already been thrown into a whirlwind but this seems to have taken over the headlines for the coming weeks.
And yet in another world, the leaked audiotapes recorded by Melanie’s ex-best friend might have been the most damning and worrisome headlines in the final weeks of an election year. The recordings catch the president’s wife saying‘give me a fucking break’ in response to criticism she received when she opted to wear a jacket with the words ‘I REALLY DON’T CARE, DO U? after her husband’s administration separated children from their families at the border. But as they say, timing is everything in the news cycle.
Also in a normal election year, the jobs report might be the most important press related to an incumbent president, but this year’s gloomy jobs report found itself at the bottom of the headlines (exemplified in this very periodical). Still, there are 3.9 million fewer jobs than when the president took office and 3.4 million of recently lost jobs are permanently gone. Just this week over 30,000 airline employees were furloughed.
In other news, Saturday Night Live is returning this weekend with Jim Carrey debuting his Joe Biden character.
🌍Around the Globe
Friday, the U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that the world lives in a ‘shadow of nuclear catastrophe’ as growing distrust and tension rises between nuclear powers like the US and China.
You heard it one way now have it the other way. Sign up for The Flipside for a bipartisan view of daily events as they unfold.
🎧 WEEKLY MIXTAPE
London electronic duo Snakehips brings us their newest track to dance in place on their “Lie for You.”
While Aloe Blacc has been absent from the airwaves the past couple of years he returns with a soulful and feel-good album featuring the track “All Love Everything.”
Rapper 21 Savage and Drake link up and on their newest track Mr. Right Now and it is an absolute banger.
YG releases his newest album My Life 4Hunnid including the track “Blood Walk” featuring Lil Wayne.
Country-western artist Brent Cobb brings us a slow-melody feel-good jam on “Keep Em’ On They Toes.”
LA-rock band Dawes release their seventh studio album onGood Luck With Whatever featuring the single “Still Feel Like A Kid.”
🛋️ THE COUCH
Arthur Jones and Giorgio Angelini bring us the highly-acclaimed documentary Feels Good Man, a film that tells the incredible story of how comic Matt Furie’s innocent character Pepe the Frog became a viral internet meme when the character leaped off the pages and on to the Anti-Defamation League’s list of hate symbols as a mascot for white supremacists on the alt-right.
Halloween season is upon us and with it my favorite genre of films—horror. So, cozy up with a pumpkin spice beer and flick on the couch with these thrillers all month long.
The oscar-winning film by Daniel Kaluyya Get Out tells the story of a black man’s terrifying weekend visit to meet his white girlfriend’s parents out in the suburbs. Let’s just say the film does not go light on the horror while brilliantly tying in subtle reminders of racial injustice and the experience for black men in a post ‘Obama was our president’ society.
Teenagers cope with the reality of the dangers that come with losing one’s virginity in the symbolic thriller It Follows.
Veronica has been hailed as one of the scariest films in recent years that has coasted under the radar. This is one foreign film that is certainly worth the subtitles.
The setting and storyline of the movie Hush in itself are enough to terrify you. A deaf woman retired to the woods to live in solitude is suddenly harassed when a masked man appears outside of her window one evening.
The Witch is a supernatural horror brought to you by a critically-acclaimed director Robert Eggers set in the 1600s. As paranoia sweeps across New England townspeople become terrified as young girls come up missing, leading folks to believe their disappearance is a result of witchcraft. Eggers also directed the 2019 psychothriller The Lighthouse starring Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe.
The Swallow was one of those unfortunately timed films competing for viewers with cable new networks at the onset of the pandemic. This psychothriller tells the story of a young housewife living a perfect life when she develops a habit of eating inedible objects.
In the cinematic masterpiece The Shining we witness actor Jack Nicholson portrays a writer experiencing writer's block and opting to take his family to an offseason hotel in the mountains for the winter to finish his book.
It would not be Halloween without 1978 classic that introduced the world to Michael Meyers. Halloween is credited with giving way to the slasher horror genre that persisted through the next several decades. Today it still stands as one of the scariest Halloween flicks of all time.
Netflix frightening original series returns with a second season on The Haunting of Bly Manor. It is perfect for those looking for a new show to binge with a slight fetish for the haunted season.
On October 23 comes the supernatural thrillerHaunting of the Mary Celestestarring actress Emily Swallow who plays a researcher investigating the unsolved mystery of the abandoned ship Mary Celeste that washed ashore in 1872.
🥃 THE CABINET
Apple Cider Bourbon
October normally means apple cider and pumpkin spices. But this October we think a stiffer concoction might be needed to get through the next four weeks. So, pour yourself up a drink and settle in for a thriller.
Ingredients
1 1/2 oz bourbon
1 oz fresh apple juice
1/4 oz fresh lemon juice
1/2 oz cinnamon syrup
1 dash aromatic bitters
Garnish with an apple slice
Directions
Add all the ingredients into a shaker with ice and shake until well-chilled.
Strain into a chilled coupe glass.
Garnish with an apple slice.
🎙FIRESIDE CHAT
If these past four years have taught us anything, they have shown us that what you say when you’re at the top will be forgiven so long as it is reduced to a phrase, be it ‘mudslinging’ or ‘locker room talk.’
So, what is mudslinging? Oxford Dictionary refers to the term as ‘the use of insults and accusations, especially unjust ones, with the aim of damaging the reputation of an opponent.’
That seems like a fairly accurate account of the quotes and headlines that occupy our daily news cycle and social media feeds.
‘Nasty woman.’ (in reference to Hillary Rodham Clinton)
“Go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came.” (in reference to Congresswomen of color, all who are US citizens)
‘Send her back’ (crowd chanting at MAGA rally referencing Representative Ilhan Omar)
‘You don't cure a child molester’ (45 comparing his opponent Ben Carson’s ‘pathological’ temper to child molestation)
When did this nasty, childish version of political vitriol and falsehoods become cultural norm amongst our nation’s highest elected officials?
Well, as it turns out it's quite ingrained into our political history.
In 1800, the Federalist falsely claimed that the Republican candidate Thomas Jefferson was dead (he was alive and breathing).
In 1844, then prominent political party the Whigs ‘proved’ that Democratic opponent James K. Polk was racist by quoting a fake excerpt from a book. That same year opponents of Polk’s very own party made claims that the candidate had slept with prostitutes but failed to divulge evidence claiming the details to be “too disgusting” for print.
In 2000, senior advisor Karl Rove engineered robocalls to help George W. Bush win the Republican nomination by asking primary voters if they would be “more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain if you knew that he fathered an illegitimate black child?”
The most despicable of these historical accounts of political bullying though seems to be in 1828, and not for the content but on the notion that the claim itself was something to be despised. John Quincy Adams' campaign accused opponent Andrew Jackson of being born out of ‘miscegenation’ (on the assumption that interracial intercourse was morally unjust).
So, taking into account that our nation’s leaders and those running for the highest office have been making baseless and despicable attacks (in their content and rationale) for 200 some odd years is it any wonder that in the age of Twitter thumbs and TMZ videos that public bullying has become a cultural norm?
“You’re the worst president America has ever had”
—Joe Biden
We're in this together
#StayAtHome #HabituateInSpace