Reasons You Should Read Tinsel

First in a continuing series of nuggets from Hank Stuever’s book Tinsel, which you should get, if you know what’s good for you. If there are typos, they’re mine. Page 67:

People sometimes go to the mall twice a day. On weekday mornings and afternoons it is the “Strollerbriar” of its nickname, filled with bored moms who visit over and over again, eddying out by the play area, and watch carefully as their children maniacally romp on toys in the shapes of a giant, smiling plastic cell phone and a computer terminal. On Friday nights Stonebriar Centre fills with packs of teenagers, who seem to have stepped right out of television shows about teenagers, who screech joyfully at one another between checking their phones. Emo rocker teens with pink-tinged shag haircuts and Joey Ramone drainpipe jeans gather at tables by Sbarro pizza. On Saturday nights there are married couples, MILFs with their DILFS, who’ve hired babysitters so they can have dinner at Cheesecake Factory or California Pizza Kitchen and now wander around Barnes & Noble, browsing together and then drifting apart, until it is time to ride the escalator together up to the AMC 24 for a 9:20 showing of a comedy starring Will Ferrell or Will Smith or Will Anybody. On Sundays, Stonebriar fills with football widows who paw lackadaisically through the sales racks at Macy’s and Nordstrom. On weeknights, near closing, lonely employees stare abjectly from the Brookstone and Hot Topic and T-Mobile. I like it all, in spite of myself.

I like it all, in spite of myself.