Every day, aging rockstars do great things that help them maintain their status as icons and prolong their eventual, inevitable fading away. Today, one of those people was Neil Young, who is hooking up with Daryl Hannah. Really! It’s sad, sure, that his marriage of 36 years ended and he’s already shacking up with somebody else. But it’s also sort of undeniably great that he’s canoodling with a mermaid.
Another aging rock star in the news today is Michael Stipe, who wrote a beautiful and important 9/11 essay. In it, he briefly describes his own experience of the day of the attacks, but the focuses of the piece are the aftermath, the reactions, the boycotting of everything French and the governmental abuse of our fear of further terrorist attacks. It’s not the usual patriotism-tinged rhetoric served to us on one of America’s shittiest anniversaries, but that’s a good thing. We’ve had enough of that. You know what we can never have enough of? Michael Stipe.
Something else we can’t get enough of? Sleazy dudes getting their comeuppance. If you hadn’t heard, Nev Schulman – the guy behind MTV’s Catfish – wrote a book. In that book, he talks about defensively punching a woman – whom he didn’t realize was a woman – in the face. This all sounds pretty terrible so far, and that’s because it’s a terrible situation, but where it gets less terrible is that Nev’s unnamed victim, as well as several other witnesses to the incident, have come out in defense of the woman on the receiving end of Nev’s super-sensitive fist. What’s more is that Nev, sensitive soul that he is, tweeted an elevator selfie with the caption, “Real men show strength through patience and honor. This elevator is abuse free.” Oh, the irony. I wonder why he’s since removed the tweet?
And this last thing, well, it doesn’t fit in with much of anything else, but it’s still important. Alex Smith over at Rolling Stone wrote about the rise in LGBT homeless youth — they make up 40 percent of that population, but only five percent of the general population. The story, which focuses on a woman, Jackie, basically brings to light (and proves with statistical evidence) what most of us have long assumed: ultra-religious parents are responsible for an overwhelming amount of LGBT homelessness.