The success of the Internet has been dependent upon the fact that we all read the Internet to pretend that we know more about all the things that we actually know nothing about. It’s the same as skimming the Times for headlines or, I don’t know, looking at your 2002-era RSS feed for 175 words about something that you don’t care about but that you know will be talked about around the water cooler, or the stapler, or Stacey’s birthday cake that nobody wants to eat while other people are in the room.
And so, sometimes we authors of the Internet will just get right down to it and write a thing tailored toward you, the person who doesn’t really want to know all about something but wants to know enough about something, such as the Whitney Museum, which is new and will certainly be crowded as hell for the next few weeks, months, years, or decades. New York Magazine‘s Jerry Saltz wrote a whole bunch of words about the Whitney prior to its opening, and now the magazine has published a primer so that you don’t even have to go to the museum to pretend that you know about art.
Another route to learning about something is to, you know, actually experience it, which is what AMC Theaters are planning to do, by screening all of the previous Star Wars films prior to the screening of Star Wars: Episode VII — The Force Awakens. There’s no news yet as to when or where this will take place, but The Force Awakens opens on December 18 of this year, so maybe the day before or the day before that, just make sure your kids are in daycare and you’ve got a diaper on.
While your kids are at daycare or your mom’s or even just the lobby of a really nice hotel, you could leave them with an iPad loaded up with this video featuring Bill Nye, the Science Guy talking about sex. Please, save them from you and your bumbling birds-and-the-bees talk, especially because your child, who is alone in a hotel lobby with an iPad, has probably never seen a bird or a bee. I mean, where was Bill Nye and his sex talk while I was growing up? All I remember Bill Nye for was talking about planets and also wearing bowties. Which I guess is how he knows so much about sex.
Now seems like a fitting time to point out this supercut of Mad Men protagonist and all-around dickhead Don Draper saying “What?” to a bunch of less-attractive idiots. That’s basically my life, too, but instead I say it into a mirror. This is partially because, unlike Kendrick Lamar, I don’t see my possible superhero self as one whose power is, as he says, “love,” but instead one who successfully integrates into a society that is systematically predatory and unforgiving. But, the world can change! Just look at the state of advertising.