Dingus of the Week: Stepson Brian

Also, a little ditty about the Slush of Diane

Like so many humans on this swiftly burning planet, I am enthralled by the story of the lost submersible. If you don’t know what I mean, or if you are a reader in the future, who has somehow, stumbled upon the Lost Library of the Internet, and you need some context, let me explain.

On Sunday, the Titan, a small submarine called a submersible, but is really like if you put a Honda Odyssey in the water, lost contact with the surface. And all week, people have desperately been looking for it. Why? Great question. Well, the Titan, is a little vessel that goes deep beneath the ocean to show rich people the wreckage of the Titanic. People pay a lot of money to hop into what is essentially, a tuna can run by a $30 controller, and peer through a small window at the ruins of the hubris of humankind. That’s right. The extremely wealthy hop into a suspect vessel to take a doomed voyage, believing that they alone are immune from the ocean's whims.

Irony? Never heard of her.

The story is gripping. CNN and The New York Times are providing minute-by-minute updates on the search. Internet meme accounts, TikTokers, cave-dwellers on Twitter, are all breathlessly providing commentary. And the Greek chorus of onlookers are wringing their hands over the ethics of making jokes about the possible deaths of 5 people (fair!). They are also pointing out that the submersible was unsafe, poorly constructed, and just in general a Bad Idea™️. So this week has been a whiplash of commentary and memes, but with the overwhelming dread that for every smile you crack, you will go to hell. This is probably what being a Catholic feels like.

I do not wish to make commentary on the submersible. As I write this, the news is breaking that everyone on board died.

So, like the Iowa Supreme Court evaluating a challenge to abortion rights, I will evade the issue and talk about legal technicalities and in this situation, the technicalities are a stepson named Brian.

One of the people on the submersible is a British billionaire Hamish Harding, who has a stepson Brian Szaz, a 37-year-old man. Stepson Brian caught the world’s attention when he posted to Facebook a picture of himself outside a Blink 182 concert with the caption, “It might be distasteful being here but my family would want me to be at the blink-182 show as it’s my favorite band and music helps me in difficult times.” Stepson Brian also posted that he was single and then replied to a picture of an OnlyFans model on Twitter saying that he’d love to sit on her face. And sure, yeah, okay, Brian, life is hard and weird and complicated. And there are no right ways through it.

But there is a wrong way through it, and that’s the stepson Brian way. Into every tragedy a stepson Brian must fall.

Like imagine Captain Ahab’s stepson being like, “While my stepfather is lost at sea, I am going to to this Franz Liszt concert as Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2. is my favorite way of coping. Also, hello to those ladies and their stockingless ankles!!”

This man also was detained on charges of stalking and harassing female DJs. And, he topped his week off by getting into a feud with Cardi B. And in doing so, stepson Brian violated one of the immutable rules of the internet. The first of which is never get into a land war with BTS fans. The second rule is never feud with Cardi B.

“The point was the whole world is praying for these people in the submarine and this man son is online shaking d–ks for girls off onlyfans and going to Blink 182 concerts. You was looking for clout all along, nobody knew who you were until you said that was ya stepdad!!! This is why people hate you spoiled brat billionaires yall soo desensitize,” Cardi B wrote on Twitter.

Stepson Brian has cleaned up his Tweets and deleted his Facebook posts because his mom told him to. Stepson Brian is one of those media moments that prove we all need to go on vacation. But maybe not to the sea.

But more broadly, I think we cannot look away from this story because it is a tale of the sea, its depths and breadth. The unknowable darkness. Oceans cover almost three-quarters of the earth’s surface but remain a mystery: a watery stranger that lives beside us. We see it often and we know so little of it of what it actually holds. So, into the water we project our hopes and horrors, our nightmares and deepest wonder.

The story of the submersible is a story that sits at the nexus of class dynamics and empathy, irony, consumption, loss, and the very heart of our humanity. As Alex Shepard noted in The New Republic, all of this is happening as a boat of 800 migrants sank off the coast of Greece, and that tragedy has received far less attention.

That the deaths of hundreds of migrants hasn’t reached the level of a missing submersible packed with rich tourists showcases a number of American media deficiencies. The Titanic submersible is a “new” news event—it is, after all, not every day that a few fabulously wealthy people go missing at the bottom of the ocean in an underwater vehicle that looks like a septic tank. It is, as noted above, also an ongoing news event with a compelling mystery: As of this writing (Tuesday afternoon) its ending is still unknown. It has a bit of the feel of the Malaysia Airlines flight 370 story from a few years ago—a tragedy and a mystery woven together—just with far fewer (and far richer) passengers. 

I do not believe that our little meat sack valves of beating hearts can only contain more than one truth at a time. We can be crushed by the devastating realities of migrants on the seas and the irony of the billionaires below them. That we can both grieve and wonder at a world that provides such opportunities for one class of humanity and so few for another.

Perhaps the incongruity of these news events that makes us stare unable to tear ourselves away is the sight of the high being brought low, and the low being brought even lower. And that inescapable reality — that in every one of our lives, we are all just one moment away from disaster.

And Now For Something Good:

• A petition to put the “Cop City” initiative in Atlanta on the ballot is moving forward.

• This former dumping ground in Cleveland became a food ecosystem.

• Oh wow, oh no, Marjorie Taylor Green and Lauren Bobert are fighting. But it’s weirdly not about who gets to be dingus of the year.

• One of the Central Park Five, Yusef Salaam, is running for city council in Harlem.

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We are halfway through the year!

This means you are halfway through another year of reading this newsletter. So far this year, this newsletter community has raised over $10,000 for trans rights in Iowa. I’ve written about LGBTQ Iowans losing their rights, interviewed Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz before she was elected to that role, told the story of one man’s efforts to save his town’s fire department, and the story of a woman’s efforts to have the board of medicine revoke the medical license of the man she says attacked her. I’ve written about the ways the state uses marriage as a social safety net, about how public schools are being kneecapped in the name of choice, and about the death of my very complicated grandmother.

This newsletter created a community that worked together to run 339 miles across the state of Iowa for trans rights. And every week, for the past three years, we’ve laughed and cried at dinguses and mix ourselves a little drink.

This newsletter is an independent endeavor by a journalist (me) in a state where media is being systemically decimated. There are no media outlets in Iowa that run stories about personhood and politics with humor, heart, integrity, and voice. If you believe in the mission of this newsletter, become a paid subscriber. The main Wednesday newsletter will always be free. But paying subscribers have access to the archives, discussion posts, Sunday links, and a Discord server. You also help me run this newsletter as my full-time job, pay for an editor, and contributors. Thank you!

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What I Am Drinking:

This week, someone posted in the Discord a recipe from a church cookbook for a drink called “Slush of Diane.”

And I decided that I would make “Slush of Diane.”

On the surface “Slush of Diane” created by Diane Nelson at NAS Production Research seems like a straightforward recipe, orange juice concentrate, lemonade concentrate, some simple syrup, and five cups of water with two cups of vodka. But in practice, the drink is baffling. Why more sugar with already sugary frozen juice concentrates? Why is it basically 9 parts water to 1 part booze?

Diane was developing this recipe in a different time, a more hopeful time — before the 2020 shutdowns, before the Dobbs decision. Diane was developing this recipe back when America seemed on track to close the gender pay gap. Diane had hope in her heart that one day a woman would be president. Diane did not believe that we needed vodka. Diane believed in a world where people would be fine with a sugary slush drink made with sugared-up petroleum byproducts and only casually interested in booze. In sum, Diane was a chump. Grow up, Diane. It’s a different world. Why even bother with a slushie if it only has trace amounts of vodka in it? Women need booze, Diane.

This was my thought process as I stirred what amounted to three different kinds of sugar water together. I had initially been Team Diane, but now, I’d turned against her. This was not the recipe for the modern era.

Or so I thought.

This is the kind of drink you mix in bucket. I greatly misjudged the amount it made and had to keep pouring it into larger and larger bowls. I also ended up having to eat my body weight in chicken nuggets just to clear room in my freezer. And it took a very long time to freeze. I mixed the drink together on a Wednesday and it took 24 hours for the Sugar Water of Diane to turn into the Slush of Diane. So, yesterday at 12 pm, knowing I needed to test this before I sent out the newsletter, I scooped some into a cup and topped it off with 7 Up, I thought I’d give the Diane Way a try first. It was sweet and shockingly refreshing. But not nearly boozy enough. So, I tried again, this time topping it off with a little bit of mezcal. That’s when I realized that the Slush of Diane is dangerous. It’s so sweet it hides all the booze taste. You could conceivably fill this drink up with rum and all manner of alcohol and never taste it. Perhaps Diane's proportions hadn’t been naive but a warning?

Never underestimate a woman who names a slushie after herself. That’s the lesson I learned on Thursday.

It took about 30 mins before I realized, perhaps drinking two Slush of Dianes before 1 pm had been a huge mistake. I am unaccustomed to day drinking. And despite the cliches about writers (thanks a lot Hemingway), I have never been able to write and drink. Which was how I found myself taking a nap at 1:15 pm on a Thursday.

Touche, Diane. Touche.

This drink is pretty delicious.