Author: Dunstan McGill
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Which “Please Come Home for Christmas” is For You?
The Eagles, 1978 I don’t know what it’s like to date models. I don’t know what it’s like to live in California in the 1970s and play in a rock band. In other words, I don’t know what a pain it is to be Don Henley. But now I get it. I GET IT because…
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Chumbawamba: Where Are They Now?
Boff Whalley—vocals, guitar, ukulele and clarinet. Forming the anarchist pop act Chumbawamba from his former band Chimp Eats Banana, Whalley went on to marry an American photographer and has been prominent in “fell running” (i.e., white people in fancy cross-trainers running across mountains), proving quite literally that a man can get back up again even…
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I Attended a Hot Mess Oktoberfest
Last night, I attended a rural, Midwestern Oktoberfest being headlined by that rose-wielding Saxon, Bret Michaels. Old men accosted our “hot,” blonde, dirndl-attired admissions counselor for iPhone photos they’d tag on Facebook in some Wild-Hogs-inspired renaissance. Methane-addicted cooks in Nikes and backwards caps lugged boiled sausages out of a vat. We chanted vowels that sounded offensively…
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Questions to Ask Yourself Before Fucking Your Friend’s Ex
1. How serious was it? Did they share a Facebook profile pic? Had a pet been purchased as a mutual child? Did he cry when you revealed she’d texted you first? If “yes” to all of them, then refrain. If “yes” to one, keep up the affair, but hide. If “yes” to none, then by…
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No One Ruins a Party Like a Steampunk Ruins a Party
I’ve been where you are. Enjoying the night. Letting the smoothness of the jam band on stage sink into you. The bouncing bass. The silver-tight guitar hits. The competent drumming. You’re doing what you can to forget about the week. When all of a sudden some motherfucking steampunks show up. Steampunks are essentially dressing up…
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Signs She’s Not Cheating on You, Just Relax
She Reads You Her Text Message History. All girls are protective of their iPhones. It’s a gender thing, not a her thing. So she slams down the knife when she’s chopping onions and runs in from the kitchen when her phone buzzes near you. Listen, that might sound scary BUT, she reads you her text messages…
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What the Hell Has Happened to Inaugural Poetry?
The worst possible thing that could happen to poetry has just happened again: a presidential inauguration. Poetic rabble-rousers such as those housed in M.F.A. programs, high school literature teacher conventions in beige-y hotel conference rooms, and a few suburban Caribou Coffee open mic nights were probably as dismayed as I was Monday. If you were…
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God, Death, and Why “Ghost Adventures” May Be the Most Important Thing Ever…Or at Least on Television
When my Grandma died last month my relatives—the ones who had gathered by her bedside—said they saw a ghost. “It was more like a bright window opened for an instant, and then disappeared.” When my Grandma opened her eyes for a couple hours the night she passed away, she didn’t say anything—as though her soul…
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The Six Most Epic Christmas One-Hit Wonders
Trans-Siberian Orchestra If being frozen in time as the auteurs of a dangerously-bland style of heavy metal in the mid- to late 1980s is your idea of self-imposed dungeon of pop culture Gehenna, let me introduce you to that—plus the 1990s and only-Christmas music. No one ever accused Christmas of being adrenaline-starved, but one year…
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I Lived in a Church for Two Years and All I Got Was This Blog Post
It started when I tried hooking up with some hot babes on a missionary trip. I wanted to go and help the indigent in Chicago, but when that was all dudes, I joined with the group going to a group home in Iowa. Turned out the babes weren’t much to write home about, but I…
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What I Learned Overnight in the County Jail
We still strip people naked and strap them to chairs. Okay, so maybe the royal “we” here is too loosely applied. By “we” I mean police officers and specifically Dakota County parole officers on Memorial Day Weekend 2012. This isn’t for everyone though. Just for women who try to use boxcutters to puncture their husbands’…
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Look Who’s Coming to Dinner: Text Messages (and Some Annotations) of the Night My Brother Got Frosties with Bon Iver
My brother’s text message reached me just before 6 p.m. on Labor Day. (5:59) “Bon Iver might be coming over to my house for dinner tonight.” Okay, so this wasn’t normal. Some cats in Minneapolis/St. Paul pride themselves on playing twice-a-month bocce ball with Justin Vernon or something. I don’t know. Not us. We’re “off…