LOS ANGELES — Lucy Dacus, Phoebe Bridgers, and Julien Baker announced boygenius will be taking a hiatus after they realized that they can no longer sustain their streak of iconic photoshoots, band reps reported.
“We knew ‘the album’ and the tour was a watershed moment in indie music, while we were prepared for a lot of press, we didn’t think it would lead to an endless string of culturally momentous photoshoots. I mean, yeah, they all came out amazing, but now we’re being hounded by renowned photographers with U-Haul trailers full of props day and night,” said Phoebe Bridgers. “The publicity and critical reception was nice, but we’re not sure how much we have left in the tank. We’re sitting on multiple EP’s worth of material in addition to requests from fashion houses. It’s not easy being this photogenic and we’re fucking tired.”
Legendary photographer Annie Liebovitz has been pitching ideas to the band for weeks.
“Generational talent like boygenius needs to be documented, and it’s my duty as a photographer to capture this moment in time. That being said, I wish they’d answer my emails in a more timely fashion because I have dozens of ideas and Patti Smith is too busy,” said Liebovitz. “It’s hard to top the Nirvana tribute and the Alternative Press cowboy shoot, so I have to think out of the box. Maybe something with pirates or motorcycles? I hope they will reconsider this hiatus because I’m cooking up something badass like with combat boots and machetes.”
Longtime talent manager Jimmy Polaski has seen many artists and bands crushed under the weight of looking effortlessly cool.
“I’ve been around for a long time, and I’ve seen bands that survive the drugs and creative burnout to become emblematic of their genre eventually disappear after too many ethereal photoshoots. Why do you think Siouxsie Sioux has only put out one album in the last 20 years?” said Polaski while sulkily chain-smoking. “Should boygenius reach iconoclast status, they could be just one or two life-affirming photo essays from calling it quits.”
As of press time, the boys sent the internet into a frenzy after a candid polaroid of them eating fast food ended up on the cover of Bazaar.
We tried making small talk by asking Uncle Hewlit about his boat. His reply: “When you’re out there in that hell hole and you run afoul of those Tremont Orphans, just make yourself big and scare ’em off. They’re hungry, but those motherfuckers are green.” So, not only was his nonsequitur response advice on how to handle a fictitious ’70s street gang, but he also seems to have confused them with bears? This man is not well.
An old man complaining about city punks is nothing out of the ordinary. Still, we asked a few follow-up questions, and sure enough, Uncle Hewlit was referring to The Punks street gang from the film “The Warriors” specifically. They do control The Bowery, but the similarities sort of end there. According to him, this nefarious gang’s only weakness is the fact that they wear impractical roller skates all the time and can easily be pushed over, but that’s a pretty big weakness in a street situation so his fear of them is minimal.
Cool logo and jackets notwithstanding, Uncle Hewlit isn’t shook by The Moonrunners. According to him, they aren’t even the most dangerous group to watch out for in the Pelham trainyard area. He went on to describe a nameless, far better-organized group of international thieves known for hijacking trains. We suspected he was confusing reality with the movie “The Taking of Pelham123” So we showed him a picture of Robert Shaw and sure enough, he said, “That’s the guy!”
Uncle Hewlit has more respect and admiration than fear for The Hurricanes of Spanish Harlem on the grounds that “At least they’re family,” and they rock some “sharp” fedoras, a look he’s tried to pull off countless times to no success.
While we disagree with Uncle Hewlit on New York City being a dangerous hellscape and on the events from the 1979 film “The Warriors” having actually happened, we found common ground in agreeing that any street gang who actually pays subway fair instead of hopping the turnstile can’t be all that dangerous. We hop that thing all the time truth be told.
“Typical SoHo, even the street gangs go for some artsy-fartsy pretentious mime schtick.” The man may be confusing a 1979 Walter Hill exploitation movie for current-day real life, but he has a point.
Uncle Hewlit gives The Satan’s Mothers a pass because “At least they ride.” He’s never actually been on a motorcycle, but he’s had his eye on a Harley for like 40 years.
We tried multiple times to change the subject as it became frighteningly clear that Uncle Hewlit believed the film “The Warriors” to be a recent documentary of some kind accurately portraying modern-day New York City. When we asked him who he liked for the Super Bowl this year he cut us off with a warning about The Jones Street Boys. “Don’t sleep on those cats, they may not be big time but they’re hungry to make a name for themselves.” Then he asked what kind of gun we carry. Not if we carry a gun, what kind.
Uncle Hewlit told us that the reason the Van Cortlandt Rangers wear stripes is so that when they go to prison they don’t have to change! Then he laughed really loud at his own joke for like a minute and a half straight, and followed with “Cool hats though, loyalty.”
He’s always warning us not to get on the wrong bus “less you wanna wind up turning tricks for those Turnbull ACs you got in the city!” Not only does he believe them to be real, but he thinks we might honestly mistake their bus for an MTA bus. Thanks, Uncle Hewlit, but the graffiti, general decrepitness, and the fact that it is packed to the rafters with gang members are all dead giveaways. Also, you’re once again mistaking reality with the 1979 Walter Hill cult classic “The Warriors.”
When Uncle Hewlit learned we were living in Astoria Queens, he immediately grilled us on whether or not we knew how to handle ourselves if we ever ran into those Boyle Avenue Runners, and showed us how to use a set of car keys as a jabbing weapon, he ended up hurting his shoulder during the demonstration. In reality, the most dangerous element in our neighborhood is open mic comedians, so we actually paid attention and took notes on the jabbing demo.
This gang was actually only featured in The Warriors video game, and considering Uncle Hewlit thinks Pac-Man promotes devil worship and contains hidden globalist messages, we’re really not sure how he’s even heard about them. Anyway, he recommends we carry a roll of quarters in our pocket if we ever find ourselves in the Coney Island area, lest we wander into the middle of a turf battle between The Destroyer and The Warriors. He went on about pressure points for a while before nodding off.
At a certain point, we straight-up confronted Uncle Hewlit with the fact that he was confusing a ’70s exploitation movie with real life. He said, “If that’s true, then why did I see a YouTube of The Saracens causing a ruckus downtown just this morning?” He played us the video, and it was a dance troupe.
We struggled with where to place The Lizzies on this list because Uncle Hewlit seemed to simultaneously think they were hopelessly incompetent and extremely threatening at the same time. He had a similar reaction to the 2016 “Ghostbusters” reboot. It’s unclear if he thinks “Ghostbusters” is also real or not, frankly we don’t even want to unpack that.
“I don’t know how the hell you kids hack it in a warzone like New York City. Aren’t you afraid of those jack-booted Panzers? The guys wear military fatigues for Christ’s sake!” When we pointed out that Uncle Hewlit himself was wearing a camo jacket at the time, he gave us an earful about how the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a… well you know the rest.
Apparently the Riffs, “The scourge of The Gramercy” as our uncle calls them while shaking his fist contemptuously, are a big part of the reason he’s never left the small town of Haverhill, Massachusetts. To be fair, they are the largest and most powerful gang in the fictional universe of “The Warriors,” and if they choose to amass their forces against you, you’ll have nowhere to run to, baby. The operative words there however are “fictional universe.” Uncle Hewlit has warned us to steer clear of these “bad customers” numerous times, especially if they are wearing black because that means their leader was recently assassinated and they are out for blood.
Combining Uncle Hewlit’s two greatest fears in life, stylized fictional inner city street gangs and labor unions, The Electric Eliminators are “not to be fucked with.”
We find The Savage Huns to be the most problematic gang in the film “The Warriors,” and in what appeared to be a rare moment of acknowledging both racial stereotyping and reality, Uncle Hewlit said he agreed with us. It was short-lived, as he clarified the “problem” as he saw it was that these guys are so good at karate, that we would never make it out of Chinatown alive.
Despite murdering Cyrus, a man Uncle Hewlit seems to think is a real political figure of some kind and despises, he condemns The Rogues above most street gangs because “They have no loyalty.” Then he waxed poetic about the importance of loyalty for like 40 minutes.
We really don’t want to repeat what our white conservative sundowning Uncle had to say about the Boppers, we’ll just leave it at he thinks they are real and he thinks they are very, VERY scary.
The old man is more afraid of The Baseball Furies than MS-13 and ANTIFA combined, and when we tried to tell him only one of those is real he just cracked another Yuengling and put his “Let me learn you something” face on. “You walk down the wrong Riverside street and you hear those jackals laughing and dragging those clubs around, you’re in trouble. But if you don’t hear anything, that means you’re in more trouble, Jack. The furies are silent when they wear their warpaint.”
So, who’s the toughest gang in all of ole’ New York? According to Uncle Hewlit, none other than The Warriors, who are of course the titular street gang from Walter Hill’s film “The Warriors.” He regaled us with a legend he had heard of a time The Warriors successfully made it from the north end of the Bronx to their home turf on Coney Island with every rival gang in the city after them, beat for beat the events from the film “The Warriors.” As “his” tale progressed, his fear seemed to turn toward respect, even admiration for the gang. We said, “Wow, those Warriors sound damn good.” He stared at the neck of his Yuengling and nodded for a while before responding “The best.” He really needs to see a doctor.
This one had so much promise in terms of bumming the reader the fuck out. It’s the tale of a fictional, insanely skilled artist, Rabo Karabekian, who got swept up by the abstract movement and achieved fame by putting simple stripes of colored tape on canvases, work that in his heart he knows is bullshit. What’s more, it turns out the tape he used wasn’t very good, and all of his priceless masterpieces are falling apart. Everything is sailing smoothly toward bummersville until a spirited young woman enters his life and teaches him to abandon his closed-off hermit ways, open himself up, and reveal his secret masterpiece to the world. That’s right, this guy starts in a bad place, learns, and changes for the better. You might as well read a book by anyone else. This is simply not what we come to Vonnegut for.
This is the story of how mankind evolves into sea lion-like creatures that pretty much are just sea lions who laugh at farts. It is told from the perspective of Kilgore Trout’s son, or rather his ghost, who refuses to cross over into the afterlife for a million years. There’s good depression here what with the world’s economy tanking and a virus rendering all humans infertile except the survivors of a shipwreck on one of the Galapagos islands, and the book’s central argument that humans are only unhappy because of our large brains sure looks how you feel right now. At the end of the day, however, it’s just too zany to fully bolster your seasonal depression. This is Vonnegut telling us “Hey, I’m a crazy old man now, look at me!” and honestly it’s pretty fun.
Vonnegut’s fictionalized meditation on his own loneliness and the tragic loss of his sister is certainly a labor of sad, but truth be told it seems like it was way more depressing to write than it is to read, and let’s be honest, “Hi ho” is no “So it goes.” And while the novel is set in a world where a large portion of the population has been killed and Western Civilization has virtually collapsed (a trademark setting for Vonnegut) his protagonist’s plan to cure loneliness by randomly dividing the population into 20 new extended families does sort of work, and is sort of uplifting. Save this one for summertime, you’ve got abysss’ to stare into!
Now we’re starting to cook, depression-wise. “Jailbird” is the autobiography of Walter F. Starbuck, an ineffective bureaucrat who winds up going to prison over the Watergate scandal. The book opens on the day of his release and ends with him going back to prison, which is a bummer, but the real tragedy is to be found with side character Mary Kathleen O’looney, who lives as a bag lady in NYC despite secretly being CEO of one of the largest corporations in the world. A lifelong communist, Mary is hiding from corporate spies who wish to see her dead as she ponders the best way to use her considerable wealth to help the world. She never figures it out, dies, and her company is dismantled and reabsorbed into traditional capitalist channels. The world doesn’t end in “Jailbird,” The tragedy is just everything going back to business as usual, but that’s its own sort of bummer, and if you’re not convinced of this book’s bum-out power here’s a sample line: “The human condition in an exploding universe would not have been altered on iota if, rather than live as I have, I had done nothing but carry a rubber ice-cream cone from closet to closet for 60 years.” It’s FULL of shit like that.
With this 1997 book, Vonnegut showed the world that just because he was a crazy old man at that point he still had the power to make you hold a newborn baby, look it in the eye, and think “This means nothing.” In “Timequake” there is, well, a time quake. Basically, time reverses and everyone in the present of 2001 goes back to the year 1991, but the thing is everyone is stuck doing whatever it is they were doing in 1991 because of course free will is an illusion. If you, say, accidentally ran over a kid on his bike in 1995, you just have to watch yourself do it again, and said kid has to just watch himself get hit again! By the time the world catches back up to 2001, everyone is so depressed and complacent that they simply stop moving. The only man unaffected (Kilgor Trout of course) has to shake everyone one by one and remind them that they are still alive. Holy fuck. Apparently, Vonnegut wasn’t satisfied with the depressing powers of the initial draft so he went ahead and peppered in sad anecdotes from his own life throughout the text and even threw in a bunch of last words from dead famous people for good measure because fuck you.
Don’t let the fun drawings of assholes and the fact that Vonnegut tells you the size of every character’s dick fool you, this book is gut-wrenching. Everything from racism to the cruelty of capitalism to the idea that free will is an illusion is gloriously explored here. In it a man reads a science fiction novel addressed to the reader, telling them that they are the only person in the universe and that everyone else is a robot. The unhinged man takes it to heart due to a chemical imbalance in his brain and goes on a rampage. Thanks a lot, Kilgor Trout! Meanwhile, you’re reading THIS book and having thoughts like “If I put tinfoil on all the windows I won’t notice the dishes as much.”
This one will kick the last of your dopamine out of bed faster than you can say chrono synclastic infundibulum! Almost all of Vonnegut’s work has elements of science fiction, but this one is the most science fiction-y. Don’t worry about all the fun space hijinks cheering you up! There is SO MUCH to get bummed out about here. Highlights include an orchestrated war between Earth and Mars, the rise of The Church of God The Utterly Indifferent, and the word “Greetings.” Seriously, he takes the word “Greetings” and uses it in such a way that it is the most devastating, gut-punching word you have ever read in your life. Tear through “The Sirens of Titan” and no one will ever challenge your status as king sad ever again.
Since this novel (*spoiler*) ends in a doomsday forever-winter it’s arguably the most on theme for this, the season of brooding. Vonnegut turns his satirical lens to issues of religion, technology gone mad, and war, themes as relevant today as they were in 1963. I’m sad already! Thrill as everyman narrator John endeavors to write a book about the bombing of Hiroshima only to discover the bomb’s co-creator made an even deadlier weapon, a substance that can cause all water to freeze at room temperature by the name of ice-nine! Become oddly aroused by the small island religion of Bokonon in which practitioners have sex by touching the soles of their feet together! Experience crippling dread as the last survivors of the ice-nine apocalypse commit ritualistic suicide by eating the doomsday substance, and it really really works! Every sun-lamp in the world burning right in your face at the same time can’t save you from the crushing wit of “Cat’s Cradle!”
If you think being stuck in bed is bad, try being unstuck in time. That’s what happens to Billy Pilgrim, a prisoner of war who witnessed the bombing of Dresden. Upon witnessing the bombings Billy becomes non-linear, and spends the rest of the novel traveling to and fro various points of his past and his future, which include a brief stint as an exhibit at an alien zoo on the planet Tralfamadore. It’s basically a big crazy metaphor for PTSD and disassociation. If you’re looking to reach the type of depression where you go to the McDonald’s drive-thru and, when asked what you would like to order respond “What’s the point?” “Slaughterhouse-Five is your golden ticket!
This one just, I mean, Jesus fucking Christ, you know what I gotta go lay down. I’m going to shut off my phone, don’t text, don’t call.