C. T. May
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Past articles by C.:
Me and My Social Conscience
Plus, Desi and his arc. → Read More
Jennifer Lawrence Cry-Snarls
Adam McKay stages a dim but bright apocalypse. || C.T. May → Read More
My Dumb Accountant
My Dumb Accountant Hey, great communication. I always live the wrong life. I get this uncertain, wobbly version. Short, sharp shocks bust in on me, but everything else comes off muffled and indeterminate. I never know what’s up and I can’t do what’s right. My accountant emails me: “Yikes.” That’s the first line, the word all by itself. “Yikes.” I read on: “SEVERE penalties,” he says. Not that… → Read More
Hype Sondheim, He Deserves It
Appreciating the Sondheim of tick tick… BOOM! || C.T. May → Read More
Snow Rapture
I didn’t want her dead. I was against it. Maria von Trapp, killed along a ski trail at the Trapp Family Lodge. A bullet exploded the spine of the 53-year-old former singer, and Operation Snow Rapture (Betrieb: Schneerausch) was accomplished. Black Vermont sky, blood doing a wide-legged dance step across the snow, the crunch of dark boots retreating to the trees and then a car. Her spine would… → Read More
Race, Writing, and What a Mess
There’s disturbing news this week. The New Yorker, in writing up the Sonya Larson–Dawn Dorland imbroglio, referred to the fatal story as “The Kindness.” All right, it was just once and anybody can make a mistake. But that magazine’s freedom from this sort of mistake used to be a given; it meant the universe still held. Now we’ve got one more crack in the dam. No, two more, because I wrote a… → Read More
The Sopranos Movie Isn’t So Great
Sometimes you feel like you’re at the end of something. The Many Saints of Newark, a movie about the old days, comes very late in the game. It’s a prequel, but it doesn’t get back to original energies. The same cards are played again. There are ripe displays of fan service—Young Paulie preening his crest of hair, Young Silvio lugging his even bigger hair as he duck-waddles toward a waiting door.… → Read More
Bad Dating Tweets About Men
I’ve seen too much live-action commentary about dates headed south. Most often it’s tweeted by somebody in the next booth, with the focus being the man and how awful he is. The trend started with fellows caught gassing at helpless women—mansplaining. But later tweets show the man doing nothing all that rude. The latest: “dude on a first date just told the bartender ‘will do, prosciutto’ and i… → Read More
Again, Wodehouse and the Pool of Coffee
Wodehouse doesn’t have to tell us that’s a really big pool of coffee and someone’s taking their time cleaning it up. || C. T. May → Read More
Back in Time With Sweet Connie
The best thing about this quote is its all-time classic final attribution. Next best is that there’s a word missing—ah, the 1970s, when everything but computers and recording gear was steadily turning to shit. Third best… oh boy. Here we go: “‘Would you like to some lotion on my boobs or should I,’ she teased. ‘Well, I hate to get my hands all greasy. I might drop my margarita,’ I teased back.”… → Read More
My Goddamn Wrong Vaccine Address
The government said go to the Pharmaprix at 677 Sainte-Catherine Street West and get vaccinated. But at that address there’s no Pharmaprix; instead there’s a Jean-Coutu, which is a different chain. I found this out via Google, after which I decided to check things out up close. The scoop: upon arrival at Sainte-Catherine Street, one finds nothing marked 677; that door doesn’t exist. You must… → Read More
Very Briefly, Why P. G. Wodehouse Matters
Neil Gaiman once singled out a Wodehouse gem, one of many: “We were wedged in at a table, on the brink of a silent pool of coffee left there by an early luncher.” Gaiman was right. This passage is brilliant, and not in the journalist sense but in the true sense. I don’t mean the word choice is clever or well taken. I mean here we find P. G. Wodehouse expertly throwing levers located at the back… → Read More
Led Zeppelin Was Goyish
Druids, Big Macs, and Robert Plant’s dick. || C.T. May → Read More
Things I Don’t Like as Much as I Should About the Rolling Stones
Their background as devoted blues purists. The thing about cover songs by the Stones is that the originals are always better, without fail, and the early covers make you feel like the real songs couldn’t have been any good at all. It was years before I heard the Marvin Gaye "Hitch Hike" and realized it was fun. I hadn’t known it was supposed to be fun. Their big comeback 40 years ago. I mean… → Read More
Sometimes I Get Worked Up About Prince Rupert Loewenstein’s Name
Here’s a rock bio gaffe: The Rolling Stones’ long-time manager, now deceased, is described as belonging to Vienna’s Jewish nobility. Prince Rupert Loewenstein was under the conviction that his family and title came from Bavaria, that he and his forebears were Catholic (except for the branch that had gone Protestant), and that his name wasn’t spelled Lowenstein, the first syllable having that… → Read More
Me and the Historian’s Foolish Nephew
Me and the Historian’s Foolish Nephew Intellectual life on the Internet. This guy went splat on me. I posted a tweet and he told me I was all wrong. Getting large in his manner, he pointed me to a book that I ought to read (this was via link to Amazon, with the book’s cover and title big on the screen). A bit after this he called me a douchebag, following up with a crusher of a point, the… → Read More
Why Bipartisanship Is a Mistake
When the copy machine is jammed, people may notice that the little red light is flashing. But what really gets their attention is the lack of pages coming out of the machine. Congressional malfunction’s a bit different, most notably because the little red light takes the form of weeks and months of headlines and news broadcasts about the parties grinding at each other. So when pollsters ask… → Read More
Shame of the World
What a scene, and all the Democrats did was win an election. || C.T. May → Read More
Donald Trump is Still King of the Republicans
For those who like breezy assurances, I present the thoughts of two long-standing liberal bloggers on Donald Trump and his allegedly impending political demise. “Within a few months of January 20, Donald Trump will be forgotten like a bad nightmare,” writes Kevin Drum. “Virtually everybody has an incentive to ignore him, especially after the wholly deranged behavior of his final two months.”… → Read More
Political Self-Talk During the Trump Disorder
The air has grown frantic with people reassuring themselves. “We will show massive and unprecedented fraud!” Donald Trump says, or tweets, brooding on his election showing. But will the soon-to-be ex-president campaign in Georgia’s Senate runoffs? “He’s got a vested interest in making sure we keep the majority,” a hopeful John Cornyn tells Politico. The Republican doesn’t argue that his party’s… → Read More