This is your 48-hour warning: Rent a party bus, grab your wife, grab your coworkers, grab your friends and go vote. I don’t care who you vote for, just vote. Oh, and pro tip for next time: Vote by mail.
Until then, here’s all the stuff that didn’t make it into our daily editions of In Case You Missed It:
For tears: Pour one out with Miles Klee for the bumbling incompetence that is the fringe right, who had themselves a week. Or, shed real tears with guys who cry during commercials.
For lols: Yuk it up reading about toilets with threatening auras. And check out this incredible shitpost about dads and threatening bats.
For help: Want to know the best way to confront your elected official? Here’s how. Think you’re too broke to invest like the pros? Not true. Afraid of heights? We’ve got just the thing for that.
But if all else fails, here’s the best of the rest…
Must Reads
“A Queer Baseball Geek Programmed a Brilliant Donation System That Targets MLB Homophobia”
Back in 2015, when Jenn Rubenstein — a speech pathologist who identifies as queer/nonbinary, and a lifelong baseball nerd — found out that a player on their favorite team made the news for saying something homophobic, they were angry. But instead of not rooting for that team, they devised an ingenious solution even baseball’s Moneyball contingent would be proud of: A donation system that gives money to LGBTQ causes tied to the on-field performance of homophobic players. Cue Queer #FancyStats. READ MORE
“Women on What It Would Take to Forgive in the Age of #MeToo”
Since the beginning of the #MeToo era a year ago, detractors have claimed that the movement’s aim is to publicly shame and destroy alleged abusers. But talk to victims and they’ll tell you: The goal isn’t retribution, it’s contrition. That said, making true amends for crimes that often devastate the lives of the abused takes a lot more than saying, “I’m sorry.” READ MORE
“We Still Haven’t Made a Better Horror Movie Than ‘Night of the Living Dead’”
George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead is a 96-minute masterpiece that managed to reshape the horror genre while also gifting it its most timeless villains: Zombies. And 50 years after it thoroughly traumatized its young audience, the country is riven with the same conflicts the movie leverages for narrative. You need only replace “zombies” with “migrants,” a similar “teeming horde” “invading” the countryside. Romero always meant Living Dead to be an allegory — he just didn’t mean for it have the same resonance half a century later. READ MORE
“The Men Who Survived ‘Locktober’ Are About to Finally Take Off Their Chastity Belts”
There’s forgoing masturbation for No Nut November, and then there’s this: Locking your penis in a chastity cage with an “anti-pullout” device as part of the “Locktober challenge.” There are myriad reasons why some men are going to this extreme: From those who enjoy the dom/sub play with their “keyholders,” to guys with low libidos to those who simply enjoy the camaraderie within the Locktober community. Now, though, with October over, they’re excited for whatever challenge comes next. READ MORE
Five Things We Learned This Week
- Your TV remote is filthy. Like, barf. Bacteria, including strains of Staph and E. coli, fecal matter and — shudder — semen all call your remote home. Thankfully, there are a few easy ways to clean its many cum-y nooks and poop-filled crevices.
- Your fucking game will take a hit if said fucking takes place on a memory foam mattress. Leesa, Casper, they’re all the same. Here’s why people aren’t having the sex of their dreams on anything other than a spring mattress.
- Contrary to popular belief, men get baby fever, too. A recent Reddit thread had men explaining what gets their Dad Motor running, and how they’re preparing — notebooks full of dad jokes and white New Balances, natch — for the pitter-patter of little feet.
- You can be a bare-minimum parent and still not raise a monster. That, in essence, is the spirit of a new book from comedian and dad blogger James Breakwell. We spoke to Breakwell about exactly how minimal an effort you need to put in as a parent and still raise a generally okay citizen of the universe.
- It may seem like that when bad shit happens to you, it happens en masse, but that’s only how your brain perceives it. A psychotherapist explains exactly what’s happening in your noggin that can turn a happy-go-lucky guy like rapper Post Malone into a nervous wreck.
god must hate me lol
— Beerbongs & Bentleys (@PostMalone) September 7, 2018
The Week in Quotes
Tim Grierson loved Suspiria, the remake of Dario Argento’s 1977 Italian supernatural horror film that was released this week to spellbound audiences. He just didn’t understand what the fuck he had watched. And while there’s a huge chance you won’t like it, he thinks you should see it anyways.
Awkward, embarrassing sex stories are fun. They’re even more fun when the storyteller is a complete stranger, free to recount the unvarnished truth. That’s how you get anecdotes filled with snot showers, anal-sex-inspired moans loud enough to wake the neighbors and vomit. Lots and lots of vomit.
For Halloween this week, we talked to guys who have sworn off scary movies altogether about why they’ll never return to horror and what they distinctly remember about the first time they shit their pants in fear.
The Weekend Binge
This weekend Jonah Hill went back to the 1990s with his debut directorial feature Mid90s. It’s gonna make Gen Xers and Xennials feel older than they already do, but we’ve reach that point — where we’re not making movies about the 1990s cause, you know, we’re in the 1990s, but because it is now a bygone era that classifies as an oldie. What’s more, it’s hardly the first movie to do so over the last decade. And so, for this episode of The Weekend Binge, we feasted on all the other recent films that are about the 1990s — from The To Do List to Straight Outta Compton to The Wolf of Wall Street.
Jeff Gross
Jeff Gross is MEL’s senior editor for social media and content marketing. His daily ICYMI column, which chronicles all things meta on the site, is the quickest way to catch up on MEL, and the funniest thing you’ll read all day. Follow him on Twitter.
