Nation, farewell.January: Pharrell’s Grammy hatApril: Emma Stone’s lip-sync contest
Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show is a wealth of viral segments, some good, some bad, but the peak was definitely Emma Stone’s incredible lip-sync battle, which got over 38-million views and cemented her status — okay, tied with J-Law — as America’s talk-show sweetheart.September: Taylor Swift’s ‘No it’s Becky’ shirt
Swift has been extremely viral this year, but perhaps our favorite T-Swift-meets-the-internet moment was when she was spotted wearing a “No, It’s Becky” shirt this september. For the uninitiate, “No It’s Becky,” was a big T-Swift tumblr meme, and Swift’s canny referencing of it is just another example of why she is winning the internet this year.
Pharrell’s ridiculously outsize hat from the Grammy’s was such a hit that it got its own twitter account, became a meme, and even ended up in a museum. A big year for Pharrell, sure, but an even bigger year for Pharrell’s headgear.The house offered two broad terraces, one opening from the second floor, the other on the roof, and the next day the former was covered in a great blue tent which stretched out over the back yard and streamed across the driveway, shrouding all the windows and creating a perpetual night indoors, so we sat now in gloomy, lightless rooms and moved about like great-eyed tunnel dwellers through the halls.
The Groom’s father was Uncle Sits-On-Bed in my private lexicon for he did exactly that, all day long, cross-legged and in pajamas with a phone at his elbow, in the center of his continent-wide bed where he took his tea and meals. It was from here that he ran his medical practice, constantly receiving messengers and sending out lackeys, complaining of his own poor health, and finding himself, at all hours, on the receiving end of abuse and bitterness from his much-aggrieved wife, Sad-Eyed Aunt. An uneasy truce reigned between the couple, and the house was divided: he held the bedroom like a fortress, while Sad-Eyed Aunt laid siege throughout the halls with ever futile gestures, spreading tales about him to her children and the servants.
Every day brought new arrivals who had to be found sleeping mats for and a corner on the floor and fed and given tea. Ceremonies were held, often in the afternoons, lasting hours, for everyone had to be photographed performing the same ritual with the groom, feeding him, bowing to him, standing with idiotic grins behind him, while the rest waited and watched, and throughout the house, despite all this seeming activity, a debilitating lethargy took hold.
California Uncle arrived with his family in tow and a different Armani suit for every occasion and helped shatter the indolence. It was him, Mom told me, who had originally pushed Uncle Sits-On-Bed to pressure The Groom to get married, placed advertisements in Indian newspapers across the States looking for a suitable match, and sorted through the replies and sent along the likely prospects. He brought that same zeal to the moribund house, for on his first night here we were bundled into cars and off we zipped, plunging into noisy streets and alleys, all horns ablast, on a pilgrimage to the Golden Temple, the holiest shrine of the Sikhs.
California Uncle marched us headlong, from shrine to shrine, with barely time to rush forward and drop to our knees and matha tek, a lowering of the head in supplication, all the while offering a rambling commentary on the saints and heroes these shrines were dedicated to. We scurried onward, in a shallow and vapid circuit, dropping to our knees, rising up, rushing forward, checking off the boxes on our pilgrim’s checklist, before one rapid-fire loop through the temple itself, and then hurry, hurry, back to the waiting cars.
I’d begun to look on the wedding similarly, as an onrush of empty gestures and eye-glazing ceremonies, with no one caring one way or the other. We were repeating dead gestures, it felt to me, uselessly elaborated and echoing mechanically from an ill-remembered past.
The Groom’s boyish charm had been oddly growing on me when one evening he decided to take an outsize interest in my having worked recently for a Jewish nonprofit in New York. He believed I must be privy to secret knowledge about how the world worked, having spent years in such close proximity to real Jews. An undigested anti-Semitism quickly poured out of him. The Jews were the cause of this, they did that, they controlled so-and-so, and of course, not one Jew died in the World Trade towers. Who else could pull off such a stunt but the Jews?
Nation, farewell.January: Pharrell’s Grammy hatApril: Emma Stone’s lip-sync contestJimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show is a wealth of viral segments, some good, some bad, but the peak was definitely Emma Stone’s incredible lip-sync battle, which got over 38-million views and cemented her status — okay, tied with J-Law — as America’s talk-show sweetheart.September: Taylor Swift’s ‘No it’s Becky’ shirtSwift has been extremely viral this year, but perhaps our favorite T-Swift-meets-the-internet moment was when she was spotted wearing a “No, It’s Becky” shirt this september. For the uninitiate, “No It’s Becky,” was a big T-Swift tumblr meme, and Swift’s canny referencing of it is just another example of why she is winning the internet this year.Pharrell’s ridiculously outsize hat from the Grammy’s was such a hit that it got its own twitter account, became a meme, and even ended up in a museum. A big year for Pharrell, sure, but an even bigger year for Pharrell’s headgear.The house offered two broad terraces, one opening from the second floor, the other on the roof, and the next day the former was covered in a great blue tent which stretched out over the back yard and streamed across the driveway, shrouding all the windows and creating a perpetual night indoors, so we sat now in gloomy, lightless rooms and moved about like great-eyed tunnel dwellers through the halls.The Groom’s father was Uncle Sits-On-Bed in my private lexicon for he did exactly that, all day long, cross-legged and in pajamas with a phone at his elbow, in the center of his continent-wide bed where he took his tea and meals. It was from here that he ran his medical practice, constantly receiving messengers and sending out lackeys, complaining of his own poor health, and finding himself, at all hours, on the receiving end of abuse and bitterness from his much-aggrieved wife, Sad-Eyed Aunt. An uneasy truce reigned between the couple, and the house was divided: he held the bedroom like a fortress, while Sad-Eyed Aunt laid siege throughout the halls with ever futile gestures, spreading tales about him to her children and the servants.Every day brought new arrivals who had to be found sleeping mats for and a corner on the floor and fed and given tea. Ceremonies were held, often in the afternoons, lasting hours, for everyone had to be photographed performing the same ritual with the groom, feeding him, bowing to him, standing with idiotic grins behind him, while the rest waited and watched, and throughout the house, despite all this seeming activity, a debilitating lethargy took hold.California Uncle arrived with his family in tow and a different Armani suit for every occasion and helped shatter the indolence. It was him, Mom told me, who had originally pushed Uncle Sits-On-Bed to pressure The Groom to get married, placed advertisements in Indian newspapers across the States looking for a suitable match, and sorted through the replies and sent along the likely prospects. He brought that same zeal to the moribund house, for on his first night here we were bundled into cars and off we zipped, plunging into noisy streets and alleys, all horns ablast, on a pilgrimage to the Golden Temple, the holiest shrine of the Sikhs.California Uncle marched us headlong, from shrine to shrine, with barely time to rush forward and drop to our knees and matha tek, a lowering of the head in supplication, all the while offering a rambling commentary on the saints and heroes these shrines were dedicated to. We scurried onward, in a shallow and vapid circuit, dropping to our knees, rising up, rushing forward, checking off the boxes on our pilgrim’s checklist, before one rapid-fire loop through the temple itself, and then hurry, hurry, back to the waiting cars.I’d begun to look on the wedding similarly, as an onrush of empty gestures and eye-glazing ceremonies, with no one caring one way or the other. We were repeating dead gestures, it felt to me, uselessly elaborated and echoing mechanically from an ill-remembered past.The Groom’s boyish charm had been oddly growing on me when one evening he decided to take an outsize interest in my having worked recently for a Jewish nonprofit in New York. He believed I must be privy to secret knowledge about how the world worked, having spent years in such close proximity to real Jews. An undigested anti-Semitism quickly poured out of him. The Jews were the cause of this, they did that, they controlled so-and-so, and of course, not one Jew died in the World Trade towers. Who else could pull off such a stunt but the Jews?
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