Resurrection

What are you giving up for Lent, he said

Pretending, she said

Tweets and treats at @jenngidman.

The Every Day

Part I: Trickle

Gravity and fate

Plot to desecrate, create

a chance sanguine mess.

Part II: Gush

Gleaning meaning from

the crimson Rorschach I left

on the diner stool.

Part III: Hemorrhage

The day confiscates

and clots my vitality,

So: I wait for night.

Tweets and treats at @jenngidman.

Seven Deadly Sign-ons: The Definitive Guide to Giving Up Social Media for Lent

Pony up in the name of penitence, people. The Lenten season is upon us, which means if you’re a practicing Christian (or simply jumping on the atonement bandwagon for self-help’s sake), you’re about to sacrifice something important for the next six weeks.

Consider forsaking social media. It may not be easy to quit, but there are reported benefits if you do and frightening potential consequences if you don’t. Total online abstinence is probably unrealistic; preaching moderation or offering an unfocused list of sins both venial and mortal to conquer may not do the trick.

Just go big and take on one of the Seven Deadlies. If you’re like me and suffer from all seven, it can be hard to narrow it down. To guide you in your moral resurrection, I’ve tied each of the capital vices to its corresponding social media platform. Renounce with confidence. Peace and offline serenity be with you all.

Pride -----> LinkedIn

No one goes on this professional networking website to altruistically share job-hunting tips or congratulate a former classmate on her overnight ascension to VP. LinkedIn is a cunning manifestation of the most deadly of the Abrahamic violations: a socially sanctioned way to humble-brag and erect your own personal Tower of Babel through hordes of first-degree “connections,” career accomplishments, and inflated SlideShare portfolios.

Pride also involves contempt for your neighbors and a failure to acknowledge their achievements. Do you wait for a connection to write you a recommendation before you reciprocate? How many times have you ignored the Endorsements feature, an innocuous algorithmic pop-up that would take you exactly three seconds to click through to help an out-of-work connection look palatable to potential employers? You’re terrible (and so occasionally am I). Get your neck slab at the door before you log off.

Sloth -----> Reddit

Poet Isaac Watts could excavate idleness and mischief galore in this virtual vortex of conspiracy theories, memes, and GIFs. I would never, ever chastise anyone for physical laziness (as someone who once cauterized her own neck folds while ironing a shirt while she was wearing it) — but reckless squandering of time and talent is fair game. Subredditors could be applying their genius to discover cancer cures or new forms of renewable energy; instead they’re spinning their wheels solving True Detective or generating questions for the Lil Jon AMA.

There are other issues of indolence. Sometimes sloppy Redditors don’t perform due diligence before exposing criminals. Or they exhibit extreme apathy by upvoting or downvoting instead of adding insight to a thread. All this wasted brilliance late into the night can only lead to one thing: sleeping past noon the next day.

Gluttony -----> Instagram

Yes, I’ve shared pictures of pommes frites in a paper cone. And Inkwell-manipulated images of partially filled wineglasses. And sunsets (c’mon, some of them are so good you just want to EAT them!!!). I’ve probably even fulfilled each and every one of Thomas Aquinas’ various types of gluttony (well, maybe not “eat[ing] too daintily”).

But our collective addiction to whoring out the elaborate preparation and presentation of our meals—in both complete and half-devoured states—is out of control. Instagram gives us too much leeway to exercise our caloric free will and share it with the world. Do you think Daguerre thumbtacked Sheffield plates of his ratatouille to the studio door?

I try to be a good Samaritan in practice, even if I’m just a lapsed Byzantine in reality, so here’s unsolicited advice: There is no filter in the world that mitigates our disgusting overconsumption. Just stop it.

Greed -----> Pinterest

Excessive scavenging and amassing isn’t just the realm of TLC shows. Pinterest, which began as a “visual discovery tool” people could use to collect, bookmark, and share articles, has morphed into an online jumble of compulsively gathered “pins” that some may find useful, but most will not. Except probably you. And even you can’t possibly have time to sift through all your myriad boards, or those of any of your Pinterest pals, and so instead you keep on adding, aggregating, accumulating NEW BOARDS AND NEW PINS. What began as a list of slow-cooker recipes is now a Winchester Mystery House of Someecards jokes, home décor fantasies, and bucket-list vacation sites.

The sin of greed is described as “an inordinate desire to acquire or possess more than one needs.” We don’t need more mental clutter, even if it comes in such a clickable online package. Still not convinced? “Board” rhymes with “hoard.” My work here is done.

Envy -----> Foursquare

While your friends are checking into The Best Nightclub in Ibiza, you’ve just assumed mayoral duties at the laundromat or in the ladies’ room at Applebee’s. They’re collecting Socialite, JetSetter, and Player Please! badges while you rack up Locals and Benders (four-plus nights in a row!) at Chuck E. Cheese and the gas station. Your insatiable desire to be anywhere but where you actually are dominates your soul, because according to Foursquare, everyone else in the world is always having a better time than you, in a more exciting place, with all of the awesome people.

You can try to mitigate your covetousness with DIY self-deprecatory check-ins like “[Your Name Here] is now Mayor of the Bathroom,” but you’re not fooling anyone. The GPS doesn’t lie: It is everything you are/were/will become. Sew your eyes shut with wire or remove Foursquare from your phone once and for all.

Lust (desire) -----> Twitter

Twitter is lust personified, a meandering odyssey for fame, power, and glory via retweets and favorites. Your need for 140-character notoriety leads to an unhealthy obsession with trending topics, following-to-follower ratios, and crafting the wittiest reply to the @midnight hashtag.

Don’t bother trying to get verified. You’re not Patton Oswalt (or even Patricia Arquette), and you never will be.

Wrath -----> Facebook

There are at least nine types of Facebook users that neatly correspond to the number of circles in Dante’s hierarchy of suffering. There are enough political rants, inspirational bromides, and ill-advised selfies to incite uncontrollable hatred and fury that will last for all eternity.

Of course there are variations on that list, and I won’t hesitate to add Writers (Writhers?) Who Ask You to Read and Share Their Articles. But the real sin is this: You’re still friends with them. And maybe me. Get that final Poke in and get the hell out of there—at least for the next 40 days.

Tweets and treats at @jenngidman.

'True Detective,' You Just Keep On True Detective-ing (Subtitle: I Think I Know What Happens to Rust Cohle and ZOMG You Might Not Want to Know)

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Time for sleep, but some more quickly penned evidence to back up my previous theory that Martin Hart will be revealed as the Yellow King:

—During one of the interrogation scenes in the early part of "Haunted Houses," Papania says, "Nobody's looking at [Hart], because nobody wants to."

—"Marty's single biggest problem is he never knew himself." —Maggie to Papania and Gilbough

—Marty Hart downing spaghetti while watching TV with Maggie and the girls, much like the family did in the first episode of the series when Rust came to dinner, leading us back to the spaghetti-Chtulu man discussed earlier on in the series:

As for the green ears: Maybe the green is Marty's jealousy, the undeniable rage that Maggie knew she could use as a pawn to finally escape her marriage by banging Rust.

—We also saw some more unmasking tonight by Brother Cohle, most notably in the scene where he extracted a confession out of the Munchausen by proxy mom.

—Yahoo's Maggie Furlong, who agrees with the Martin Hart theory, made the great observation that the name of the show is True Detective (singular). The bar Marty ended up in with Beth is called The Fox and The Hound; Rust is hot on Marty's trail. The whole Tuttle storyline is a huge red herring to throw us off Hart's stank.

OK, ready? Combined with the Martin-Hart-as-Yellow-King theory, I think we're going to see the end of both Rust Cohle and Martin Hart by the end of the series. There have been suicide references since the beginning of the show: Rust telling the Munchausen by proxy mother that she should kill herself; the PCP addict killing himself in prison shortly after being interrogated by Marty and receiving a phone call from his "lawyer"; Rust telling Marty in the first episode that "mankind should walk hand-in-hand to extinction, one last midnight, brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal" (then saying he didn't have the temperament to commit suicide himself). 

Tonight in "Haunted Houses," Rust also warned Marty that "Without me, there is no you." Somehow Rust is the remedy to stopping the Yellow King. He's going to stop Marty by getting rid of himself. Rust has gotten a raw deal this whole time — his colleagues and superiors loathe him, his daughter died, his marriage disintegrated, he quit his job because he was (in his mind) unfairly suspended. Don't be surprised if he's about to opt out after all and take Martin with him. Just doing his job.

P.S. Did I mention it's now March 5 and I'm completely wrong about everything and it's probably going to just be this or something similar to "this"? Still — fun ride! Still — maybe Maggie has something to do with it, I have theories, but I'm done with this blah blah etc. whatnot.

Tweets and treats at @jenngidman.

I KNOW WHO THE YELLOW KING IS ON 'TRUE DETECTIVE' (Subtitle: What I Think About While the Kids Are Running Around at Lazerland on Presidents' Day)

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I'm surprised that no one's really floating this theory yet, but I'm 99.99 90 percent* sure that Martin Hart (Woody Harrelson) is, was, or will be the Yellow King**. Even though it might not matter that he is/was/will be (as I'll explain in a bit). And that Nic Pizzolatto/Cary Joji Fukunaga are modern-day Kubricks/M. Night Shyamalans (Sixth Sense MNS, not Signs or The Village MNS), brilliantly dropping in seemingly innocuous details and masterfully maneuvering their cinematic smoke-and-mirrors to psychologically toy with us.

Viewers who initially approached True Detective as a standard police procedural were quickly disabused of this notion when io9 and other devotees of late-19th-century literature revealed that the show's storyline appears to be based on The King in Yellow, a bizarre collection of short stories by Robert W. Chambers. But while Rust Cohle's nihilistic banter is worthy of close attention (mainly because they're amazingly fun to listen to), these over-the-top diatribes may be a distraction, an illusion used by the creators to exploit our basic human assumptions and make us look one way while the truth runs past us down the opposite road.

Remember at the end of The Sixth Sense when we discovered Bruce Willis was dead? Suddenly, all the previous scenes shown in flashback made perfect sense, and we kicked ourselves for not picking up on the "obvious" clues. To wit: While we're hyperfocusing on Rust Cohle, Martin Hart may be running amok (or about to). Like Hart says here, the solution may be right under our noses, but we're paying attention to the wrong clues. Or not asking the right fucking questions, as Cohle more eloquently puts it.

There are the more explicit Easter eggs: Hart's daughter and her stick figure drawings/doll sex scenes; Hart examining his receding CROWN OF YELLOW HAIR in the mirror***. It's definitely fun to look for all the implanted yellow crowns, like the one Patton Oswalt spotted, or Audrey throwing Macie's tiara up into the tree, or the antlers on Dora Lange's head, or a not-so-random blinking Seagram's crown or Corona poster in a bar:

But it's more what we don't see that intrigues me. It's the varying POV that Pizzolatto and Fukunaga expertly and consistently employ that leads me to think that Hart is our man—even if he doesn't realize it himself. We don't really know much about Rust Cohle, but he knows himself. As we watch Martin Hart spiral out of control, it's obvious he doesn't know himself; what he does know he justifies with ridiculous statements about ridiculous behaviors being for the "good of the family."

When it comes to examining the Dora Lange case, we don't ever really see things from Hart's point of view. I have to go back through the previous four episodes more closely, but in last night's "The Secret Fate of All Life," we see Hart through the lens, head-on, the camera trained squarely on him and at him—we don't see things through his eyes the same way we do with Cohle, at least not when it comes to the case.

When Hart enters Reggie Ledoux's shed and finds the children, we witness what looks like horror in his eyes, but we don't see what he sees. We assume that Hart saw what Cohle sees when he (Cohle) enters the shed himself a few minutes later, but that's just an assumption on our part. We assume when Hart comes out of that shed and blows Ledoux's head off that he was overcome with emotion at what he saw in there, but we don't know that for sure. We, like Cohle, give Hart a pass because we assume he has witnessed depravity on an epic level and reacted accordingly. 

Our judgment on this, however, may be clouded: As Hart points out in "The Long Bright Dark," "if you attach an assumption to a piece of evidence, you start to bend the narrative to support it." We don't consider other reasons for Hart coming out of the shed and offing Ledoux before Cohle gets in there, because we're concentrating on the distraction of Reggie Ledoux waxing Satanic about black stars with Cohle. We don't question why Hart doesn't go for help when Cohle tells him to,  because we just watched an insane 6-minute single take the week before in which he stuck by his man Cohle and rescued him from a crazy situation into which the crazy Cohle willingly and voluntarily inserted himself because, as you know, Cohle is crazy. Our radar goes into overdrive when Cohle refuses to let Gilbough and Papania into his storage locker, but we don't have more than a passing curiosity about what Hart's keeping in his own office locker (which they show him opening more than once in the first five episodes). We don't put as much stock in anything Martin Hart says as we do that of the creepily mesmerizing Rust Cohle.

So there's that. OK. But who's Rust Cohle, then, and what is his purpose? Maybe his long-winded philosophizing isn't merely distraction. Based on the supposed influences on The King in Yellow (Poe, Oscar Wilde, Marcel Schwob), Cohle is likely The Stranger, a prophet "come out of Texas, nobody knew him," sent to remove everyone's mask and expose them to the darkness they can't or are unwilling to see. Cohle's famous interrogation technique could be seen as removing the inmates' "masks" to break them. Gilbough and Papania keep trying to unmask Cohle, but as Cohle says himself, it's not good for people to be around him: "I wear them down. They get unhappy." They remove their masks to try to remove his and end up exposing themselves to whatever "plague" he's burdened with.

It's entirely possible that Hart himself doesn't remember the things he's done—or maybe he just hasn't done them yet. Cohle talks in circles about people destined to repeat their lives, over and over, without remembering. He tells Gilbough and Papania that he's somewhat relieved that his own daughter has died, because he's spared the "sins of being a father," a fate that Hart has not escaped. Something horrible has apparently happened or will happen to Hart's oldest daughter Audrey (a blonde like Dora Lange, the missing Marie Fontenot, and the Lake Charles victim). Hart mentions in "The Long Bright Dark" how a "father's burden is too much for some men" and how "past a certain age, a man without a family can be a bad thing." 

Hart could be talking about Cohle, or he could be talking about himself. He's a man on the cusp of losing his family due to infidelity and "inattention"; even if he's not the Yellow King who killed Dora Lange, perhaps he's the next Yellow King. Maybe Cohle knows so much about this because his own father (mentioned cryptically early on) was the first one (Hart says you can't pick your partner or your parents), followed by Reggie Ledoux (King the Second), and now Hart. 

Cohle is the seer who knows that there will always be a Yellow King, and who, somewhere between Dora Lange and the 2012 killing, eventually recognizes Hart as such, yet he doesn't have the constitution to break his programming and commit suicide to escape his destiny, as he mentions in the first episode. Instead, Cohle travels from place to place, a nomadic portent of doom sent to figure out and expose the next one in the royal lineage. Maybe this is why Maggie is drawn to him, because she intuits that Cohle will protect her from what Hart is about to become.

Maybe it doesn't matter who the Yellow King is, because there will always be a Yellow King. Many Yellow Kings, in fact, as evidenced by Cohle's quote from Corinthians in "Seeing Things": "The body is not a one member but many. Now are they many but of one body." It might ultimately be futile to identify and ID him—or, as Maggie's mother says, beat up on things we can't control. 

But it's critical that there always be a Rust Cohle, the oracle tasked with exposing the king and stopping him, then moving on to stop the next incarnation. The solution's right under our noses. We're paying attention to the wrong clues; we're not asking the right fucking questions. Or maybe I'm just bending the narrative.

++Click HERE to see the continuation of this theory with more backup from the 2/23 airing of "Haunted Houses." Kind-of-spoiler alert: I speculate on Rust Cohle's ultimate fate.

* Percentage subject to change.

** You know I could be totally wrong about this, right?

*** Alternate Conspiracy Theory: Woody Harrelson as Martin Hart checks his hair in the mirror. Woody Harrelson as Mickey Knox in Natural Born Killers SHAVES his hair in the mirror. Ha ha.

**** Rereading now and realizing this would all sound completely insane to someone who doesn't watch the show (and even to someone who does). Welcome to Carcosa! 

(2/17 post amended on 2/18 to add "Cohle as prophet" addendum.)

Tweets and treats at @jenngidman.

The Great and Powerful Amazon Will Now Read Your Mind and Send You Shit It Knows You Want Before You Order It

Don't be surprised to see this guy show up unannounced soon.

Sort of. Here's my take for Minyanville.

Tweets and treats at @jenngidman.

Blurbin' Street

Anyone worth their tequila salt has an embarrassing hooch story to share. Mine involves Maker's Mark, Sparks Steak House, and a condescending waiter. I'll tell it to you sometime if we ever do a bar crawl. But only if you remind me to tell it, because I won't have any idea who has read this and randomly remember to tell it next time I'm out and about on Watering Hole Mile. Which is a place I just made up, but it sounds terrific, right? And I'll fill you in only if you know when to use "whisky" and when to use "whiskey," because I always totally mix them up and should know better by now. 

In the meantime, here's an article I penned for Minyanville about Japan's Suntory scooping up Beam Inc. (which owns the Jim Beam and Maker's Mark brands). 

Bottom's up!

Tweets and treats at @jenngidman.