Midnight Snack
Midnight Snack is a column that’s obsessed with our obsessions–our sugared, caffeinated, late-night journeys of the mind, wherein one tab on our web browser leads to another, and then another. Every first Friday of the month at midnight, a new Midnight Snack piece will trace an old fixation spiraling anew, or something familiar suddenly defamiliarized. In the age of access, what do these journeys reveal about our past, our times, and who we are? Lunch Ticket‘s newest column will try to answer those questions every first Friday of the month.
An Elegy for Megan Fox’s Thumb (Misogyny as Female Subdivision, or What You Will)
/in Midnight Snack / Regan HumphreyThe wormhole started with Machine Gun Kelly, a big-hearted, rebellious, scandal-magnet. I came to him (two years late) for a throwback-injection of loud, careless 90s pop punk. His 2019 album Tickets to My Downfall (produced by Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker) was a feast of angst and raw, flawed emotionality, the likes of which have been gone from the mainstream since the grunge of the 90s. . .
Debunking My Televised Beliefs, One Youtube Spiral at a Time
/in Midnight Snack / Lizzy YoungMy parents were anti-television, so the only time my sisters and I had free rein to watch TV was at my grandma’s every Friday afternoon. We still couldn’t watch kids’ stuff like Disney Channel or Nickelodeon, because they showed children being disrespectful. Instead, we watched what my grandma called the oldies but goodies: Green Acres, The Andy Griffith Show, I Love Lucy, The Beverly Hillbillies . . .
A Resounding Yeehaw for Cowboy Kermit
/in Midnight Snack / Ben Lewellyn TaylorI have a running list of favorite memes that live rent-free in my mind. There’s the blinking white guy, the international symbol for disbelief. There’s the beloved Arthur character DW holding the fence, standing in for all of us standing on the outside of some cultural moment. There’s Spongebob Squarepants (who has a meme for every occasion) voicing his need to exit an uncomfortable situation. . .
Donna Noble: How to Be Shameless and Take Up Space (In Space!)
/in Midnight Snack / Kat McClainIt’s a Saturday night in 2010 and I’m sandwiched between two fellow “nerds” on an overstuffed couch at a friend’s house. Their mom is making a family sized pan of nachos in the kitchen, while they queue up Doctor Who on the TV. I’m fifteen, bad at math, overexcited by new interests, and louder than I mean to be. . .
Runaway Regression
/in Midnight Snack / Ahsan ButtIt suddenly comes back to you late one night as you struggle with a story about a haunted house. You’re writing in that way where you’re fixated on the next line, but nothing feels right, because deep down you’re expecting that next line to fix everything that’s wrong. You’re in your apartment bedroom, lit by your laptop…