Some of the best items in my wardrobe have come from clothing swaps. Comfy denim shorts I wear almost daily during the summer and glittery crop tops only appropriate for birthdays are just a couple of the hot-ticket items I’ve picked up at the low, low price of zero dollars. It makes me sad, then, that men have not yet caught on to the cheap joy of the clothing swap. Not only do you get cool free shit, but there’s also that special mix of pride and delight you feel when one of your friends picks out one of your old shirts and loves it. So get together with your guy friends, bring the clothes you don’t need anymore and bond over your fresh new wardrobe. I promise that old, new T-shirt will look great on you.
Must Read
“The Racial Dynamics of ‘Smelly’ Food”
Microwaving anything pungently “ethnic” in the office will almost certainly earn you a passive-aggressive rejoinder in the company-wide Slack channel. It’s an act, though, that carries a lot of racial undertones with it. So much so that for immigrant families whose comfort food include tastes and scents unknown to the Western palate, dining around one’s peers can be an alienating experience. READ MORE
Pay-to-Play, Prison Edition
Since the world is a deeply unjust place, it makes perfect sense that, if you want to improve the quality of your prison stay, all you really need is a little cash. Not only does money allow you to buy all the creature comforts of home via the commissary — e.g., radios, book lights, Doritos and ramen noodles — you can now pay a per-night fee to make your stay behind bars feel more like a few weeks at a bad Holiday Inn.
A Pig at Heart
Twenty people die each day waiting for replacement organs. Given this shortage of spare human parts, scientists have been looking elsewhere for help — namely, pigs. The organs of our porcine friends are comparable enough with those of humans that, with a little modification, they could soon be ready for human transplantation.
Basic Car Stuff
Pop quiz, hot shot — your car’s gas light just went on. Should you:
(A) Pull over immediately, call AAA in a panic and have them schlep you five gallons?
(B) Put your reserve tank through its paces and cruise for another 30 or more miles?
(C) Quickly make your way to your favorite gas station, because otherwise, you’ll fuck up your fuel pump?
If you guessed “C,” you’d be correct. Jeff Gross explains why, even if you’ve got enough gas to make it to work and back, you’ll definitely be screwing up your car in the process.
Pour One Out for TV’s ‘Dumb Dad’ Trope
After decades of lighthearted TV centering around a competent mother/wife and a complete doofus of a father/husband — see The Simpsons, Family Guy, South Park and King of Queens, to name a few — things appear to finally be turning around for the poor old TV dad. That is, recently, a fresh wave of TV father figures in shows like PEN15 and Big Mouth portray a smarter, more rounded and supportive parent. So is the trope of the “dumb dad” finally dead?
Mother!
You don’t just have to be a murderous drug queenpin to qualify as a “bad mom.” Ultra-controlling moms like Mary Bell Washington, mother to our country’s first president, easy qualifies as one, too. If she wasn’t constantly embarrassing and undermining him, she was demanding his fullest attention even as he tried to, ya know, fight wars and run a country. She was also kind of a badass, though.
On Endings and ‘Avengers: Endgame’
If you still haven’t seen Endgame and aren’t ready for spoilers, skip this one. But if you’re up for it, Jessica Ritchey’s touching essay on endings, death and why watching the latest Avengers movie was so difficult after the loss of her father will give you all the feels.
Con Men
In The Hustle, Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson play two con ladies who join forces to scam witless men out of their money. If that sounds eerily like the bizarro plot of 1988 comedy Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, you’d be right — The Hustle is a remake of the Michael Caine/Steve Martin classic, except with the genders inverted. While you’re probably guessing that that movie’s plot might not have aged very well, Tim Grierson thinks the movie is actually smarter than we give it credit for.
Beg for Your Life in High Valyrian
Duolingo, the popular language-learning app (and very good meme), has, naturally, jumped on the Game of Thrones bandwagon and begun offering lessons in High Valyrian, one of the show’s fictional languages. So what’s it like to learn how to speak like a freeman of Essos? We asked some GoT superfans who actually did it.
Magdalene Taylor
Magdalene Taylor is a staff writer at MEL. She covers internet culture, sex and the online adult industry. She lives in Brooklyn but is from God's Country, Western Massachusetts.
