(barely) surviving the US election

by Monica Schrager

It was humor that helped get me through election week, notably Slate’s “Goodbye!” series bidding farewell to Ivanka, Jared, and so many others in the administration that contributed to it being a catastrophe. Well written and very much on point, they provide an occasional exasperated chuckle and many head shakes. After reading them though, I’m so glad that administration is coming to an end.

We want to bid farewell to the Trump officials and family members who have made the past four years so difficult for so many people. Bye-bye! https://t.co/db3XggphCG

— Slate (@Slate) November 7, 2020

On the podcast I mentioned one of my favorite posts shortly after the election said “make sure to wear shoes ladies, there is glass everywhere” to represent Kamala Harris breaking the glass ceiling to become the first women of Black and South Asian heritage Vice President elect.

pic.twitter.com/l9B0pQlzU2

— Christa (@Copista5) November 8, 2020

I’ve seen a lot of posts by people that their little girls of color see Kamala and know they can do anything.

There were a lot of other great posts and memes such as dancing while waiting for two and a half hours to vote in Philadelphia:

There was also a lot of fun being had with electoral maps.

an electoral map if Biden wins every state containing area codes where Ludacris claimed to have hoes pic.twitter.com/WGLVYN4ufq

— Tyrese Raytheon (@toriimacdaddy) November 3, 2020

the electoral map if people voted their jean color pic.twitter.com/2jgELGVxZb

— Derek Guy (@dieworkwear) November 3, 2020

Biden gets 230 electoral votes if he wins every state in which I've seen the popular rock band Phish. pic.twitter.com/nVFd5WEQd0

— Slade (@Slade) November 3, 2020

Gotta say, I'm feeling pretty good about my electoral map#Roadto270#ElectionDay pic.twitter.com/J57TpkWUCm

— Ryan Sloane (@RyanFSloane) November 2, 2020

Those truly did make me smile and helped cut through the tension. I’m so glad for the outcome and am keeping my fingers crossed for Georgia’s Senatorial runoff in January! 

send us your theme suggestion

The theme for episode 6 of the highfalutin podcast, Connections, was suggested to us by a listener who reached out via email. Is there a topic you’d like to hear us discuss? Let us know in the comments section (below), on social media, or via email at highfalutin.matt@gmail.com.

protest songs

Curated by our highfalutin podcast hosts, Monica, Ryan, and Matt.

Music lifts us up, brings us together, and helps us get through the tough times. These songs are calls to action but many are also encouraging and comforting. You’re not alone and better days are ahead if we stick together and will it to be so.

Down with the patriarchy, Black lives matter, rock hard, and stay funky.

highfalutin whatnow?

By Matt McCarthy

Confusion. Unease. Suspicion. People reach out, their voices strained with worry and judgement, their text messages clipped and devoid of exclamation points.

“What IS highfalutin anyway? What does that even mean?”

Consternation around our name has reached critical mass so I thought it wise to address it, here, now, in this forum.

high·​fa·​lu·​tin | \ ˌhī-fə-ˈlü-tᵊn \

Definition of highfalutin

1: PRETENTIOUS, FANCY / / highfalutin people

2: expressed in or marked by the use of language that is elaborated or heightened by artificial or empty means : POMPOUS / / giving a highfalutin speech

Obviously, this is not who we are. We do not aspire to fanciness. Pretension and pomposity are dumb.

Including highfalutin in our name is done with tongue firmly in cheek. It’s a joke.

We’re a ragtag band of DIY gen-Xers who barely know what we’re doing but we’re doing it. We’ve got one hand/eye on the wheel/road and the other doing god knows what and we’re just trying to keep it pointed straight over here. We aren’t trying to impress you or to screw you. We only want to do our thing and communicate. At our best, aspirationally, we’d like to entertain and delight and maybe get you to think about things a little differently, or even just to think about things at all. That’s about it.

Calling what we do highfalutin is a joke. We’re poking fun at ourselves a little bit and at people who take this kind of thing too seriously. We’re also reminding ourselves not to take it too seriously.

I know, the best jokes are the ones you have to explain, right?

Finding the Silver Lining

By Monica Schrager

Thanks to everyone who has tuned in so far to hear our first three highfalutin podcast episodes on the themes of Reboot, It Is What It Is, and Silver Linings. Find all episodes here, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. 

This podcast was Matt’s brainchild and I (and I’m sure Ryan) are really excited he asked us to take part. It allows us three friends who met in college way back when the chance to catch up more frequently than we were before and to talk about what’s on our mind around a common theme, focused on news, arts, sports, and a poem. I’m thankful for the opportunity to focus on something somewhat creative in these crazy times, think about my point of views, and discuss with friends I trust and whose company I enjoy. 

We’re just getting started and learning as we go, so welcome constructive feedback on our Facebook page or website for each episode. 

There’s only so much time per episode and so I wanted to expand in this blog post on a few topics I mentioned.

A Moment for Women and People of Color

We talked about the Democratic National Convention and particularly that spectacular roll call (I’ll never think of Rhode Island again without conjuring up images of calamari), though I was excited to see in the New York times breakdown of convention speaking times “women amassed more air time than men” and “speakers of color collectively got about half of the speaking time.” I love seeing this and find it really promising, despite the continued uproad battle ahead to regain the Presidency, Senate, and House. You gotta have hope. 

I also realized I missed mention of a key point in the third wave of feminism when listing the four waves of feminism. The third wave in the 1990s does trace to the riot grrrl feminist punk subculture in Olympia, Washington as I mentioned, though also to Anita Hill’s televised testimony to an all male and all white Senate Judiciary Committee about Clarence Thomas’s sexual harassment of her as part of his Supreme Court confirmation hearing. That inspired the largest wave of Women entering Congress in 1992 as part of what became known as the “Year of the Women.”  

Some Great Organizations and Products

I mentioned My Block, My Hood, My City in the episode and how I’m going on a youth-led tour of the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago and bought one of their sweatshirts, in French, as shown below. They are doing a lot of great work like organizing senior wellness calls, small business cleanups after looting, and exposing youth inside these under-resourced communities  to what the world has to offer, as well as exposing those unfamiliar with these under-resourced communities to those communities. 

notes from quarantine, no. 1

by Matt McCarthy

Days blend one into another and lines blur. Is this a weekday? I think there used to be a time when I changed clothes every day but that seems crazy now. General hygiene has taken a hit.

I’ve forgotten how to behave. I talk to my cats like they’re people now and plead for answers but they only look away and continue their cool aloofness. They’re plotting against me and my wife may be in cahoots. In fact, she’s the ringleader. I can see it in her eyes, that look of disgust and violence that she’s stopped trying to hide; the way she unloads the dishwasher with blatant disregard for the dish organization system I so meticulously put into place. It’s naked aggression. And I’m fairly certain she’s hidden my iPhone charger.

Sweet Jesus, how she must loathe me.

I find cocktail hour begins a little earlier each day, but then again time is a construct that holds little meaning now. I pay the computer and someone delivers drinks to my door. I wear mask and gloves when I receive my boozy packages and cannot look the delivery person in the eye. I tip too much.

I break down my cardboard before I recycle it and it enrages me when others do not. The whole garbage scene is a hotbed of triggers and anxiety for me. You can’t recycle that. Put your garbage in the garbage not next to the garbage. We’re living in a society here, people, and if you can’t even get your garbage right then, seriously, what hope is there?

Some days taking out the garbage is the only time I leave the house.

I miss people. I mean, not people in general, because they’re the worst, but I miss a few, specific people (you know who you are). It would be nice to see them again in person without sitting six feet away in a mask. They help keep me calibrated as a human and I love them.

I’d like to hug my mom.

Looking at how others have been impacted by this I can’t help but feel fortunate. No one in my immediate family has gotten sick and no one in my extended family or friend group has died from this. So many people have died. Plus, my wife and I still have our jobs. We both work from home, so we’re together a lot (she’s a lucky lady). When you work from home you’re never really one hundred percent at work and you’re never really one hundred percent at home, which is great. So many people have lost their jobs. And I fear there will be a wave of evictions soon in which many will lose their homes. So it’s tough to complain, though I do anyway. I work a lot.

I know that I’m one of the lucky ones. Healthy and employed.

But it’s hard not to feel angry sometimes. Because we had this thing beat back in June. We were doing it. Personally, I had stayed in my apartment, tormenting my wife with my declining hygiene and maniacal rants about recycling, from St. Patrick’s Day through Memorial Day. The curve was flattening. Our sacrifices were paying off.

Then the MAGA idiots started to get their way with their reopen talk. Florida, Texas. California. Georgia, for the love of god. And all those sweaty millennials going to the beaches and the bars and rubbing their germs all over each other … you just couldn’t keep your germs to yourselves, could you?

For those of us who have been doing it right all along, it feels like we’re now being held hostage by a collection of selfish morons who refuse to listen to science or reason, who have no empathy for their fellow citizens, and who are the laughing stocks of the whole world. They’ve put us all at unnecessary risk and prolonged this whole horrible affair with their selfishness and stubborn obstinance.

I do a lot of pushups and situps but it doesn’t help. I think this is just how it’s going to be until January, provided the election unfolds the way we hope.

a highfalutin new world

by Matt McCarthy

highfalutin media is an idea that’s been sort of floating around our friend group, a ragtag band of well-intended Gen-X creatives in need of an outlet, for probably twenty years now (god we’re old). It took its first official fledgling steps forward in 2013 with the publication of Livestock!, a rock ‘n’ roll novel I wrote and in which no reputable publisher had any interest. Undaunted, I pulled it together and put it out myself under the old highfalutin media name, sold literally dozens of books, and thus our highfalutin media juggernaut was born.

Today we start a new chapter in highfalutin media’s storied history. We’re putting the band back together and branching out, taking on new challenges, and heading off in some new directions. We’re going to embrace some highfalutin new technologies (podcasts, what?!?) and see where it takes us. It’ll probably be a great big beautiful disaster and there will likely be a period of time after where some of us who were involved won’t speak to each other as a result. That’s fine. We’ll get over it. We always do. But the important thing is to do it. I think if we do these kinds of things, takes these kinds of leaps, we’ll find ourselves in a more interesting, better place as a result. At least I hope so.

So, as the world goes crazy with pandemic, racism, sexism, wealth inequality, climate change, and that evil orange idiot in the white house, we’re going to be right here doing our thing. It’s going to help us cope with all of this and we hope in some small way it helps you too.