Ocean Vuong finds beauty in a fast food shift
Long before he became a bestselling writer, Ocean Vuong sold rotisserie chickens at Boston Market. In his latest novel, The Emperor of Gladness, he explores the meaning that can be found in the daily grind of a fast food restaurant. The book follows a young addict named Hai as he unexpectedly becomes caretaker to an elderly woman and makes unlikely connections at the fast-food restaurant where he works. Ocean tells Mattea Roach about challenging the American Dream, how being raised by women shaped him and why this novel is his most self indulgent yet. If you enjoyed this conversation, check out these episodes:Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's triumphant return to fiction [https://link.mgln.ai/x3AvNn ]Teresa Wong: Illustrating her family's past — in all its ordinary and epic moments [https://link.mgln.ai/zTrajS ]
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
National Post
an hour ago
- National Post
Joey Chestnut in talks for return to July 4 hot dog eating contest
The greatest competitive eater of all time has an appetite for more. Article content Article content According to TMZ Sports, Chestnut and Major League Eating actively are negotiating towards seeing the 16-time champion of the event return after a year on the sidelines due to a contractual beef. Article content The outlet also says that both sides are eager to get a deal in place for the event which is less than a month away. Article content Chestnut wasn't allowed by MLE to compete in last year's edition of the marquee eating contest due to his sponsorship deal with Impossible Foods — which TMZ reports is no longer a factor in discussions. Article content While Chestnut claimed that he was banned from the contest for signing with 'a rival brand,' MLE said that it was Chestnut's own choice to not compete this year in the contest that he had won 16 of the previous 17 years. Article content 'Joey was not banned. Joey chose not to compete in the contest the moment he chose to make an endorsement deal with one of Nathan's competitors,' an MLE rep told the New York Post at the time. Article content Patrick Bertoletti, who won the 2024 contest, admitted his victory had an asterisk due to the long-reigning champion's absence. Article content Chestnut did take part in a hot dog eating competition last summer, going head-to-head with long-time rival Takeru Kobayashi in a showdown streamed live on Netflix. Article content
National Post
2 hours ago
- National Post
Brian Wilson, Beach Boys fragile but visionary leader, dead at 82
Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys' visionary and fragile leader whose genius for melody, arrangements and wide-eyed self-expression inspired 'Good Vibrations,' 'California Girls' and other summertime anthems and made him one of the world's most influential recording artists, has died at 82. Article content Wilson's family posted news of his death to his website and social media accounts Wednesday. Further details weren't immediately available. Since May 2024, Wilson had been under a court conservatorship to oversee his personal and medical affairs, with Wilson's longtime representatives, publicist Jean Sievers and manager LeeAnn Hard, in charge. Article content Article content The eldest and last surviving of three musical brothers — Brian played bass, Carl lead guitar and Dennis drums — he and his fellow Beach Boys rose in the 1960s from local California band to national hitmakers to international ambassadors of surf and sun. Wilson himself was celebrated for his gifts and pitied for his demons. He was one of rock's great Romantics, a tormented man who in his peak years embarked on an ever-steeper path to aural perfection, the one true sound. Article content The Beach Boys rank among the most popular groups of the rock era, with more than 30 singles in the Top 40 and worldwide sales of more than 100 million. The 1966 album 'Pet Sounds' was voted No. 2 in a 2003 Rolling Stone list of the best 500 albums, losing out, as Wilson had done before, to the Beatles' 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.' The Beach Boys, who also featured Wilson cousin Mike Love and childhood friend Al Jardine, were voted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988. Article content Wilson feuded with Love over songwriting credits, but peers otherwise adored him beyond envy, from Elton John and Bruce Springsteen to Katy Perry and Carole King. The Who's drummer, Keith Moon, fantasized about joining the Beach Boys. Paul McCartney cited 'Pet Sounds' as a direct inspiration on the Beatles and the ballad 'God Only Knows' as among his favorite songs, often bringing him to tears. Article content Wilson moved and fascinated fans and musicians long after he stopped having hits. In his later years, Wilson and a devoted entourage of younger musicians performed 'Pet Sounds' and his restored opus, 'Smile,' before worshipful crowds in concert halls. Meanwhile, The Go-Go's, Lindsey Buckingham, Animal Collective and Janelle Monae were among a wide range of artists who emulated him, whether as a master of crafting pop music or as a pioneer of pulling it apart. Article content Article content The Beach Boys' music was like an ongoing party, with Wilson as host and wallflower. He was a tall, shy man, partially deaf (allegedly because of beatings by his father, Murry Wilson), with a sweet, crooked grin, and he rarely touched a surfboard unless a photographer was around. But out of the lifestyle that he observed and such musical influences as Chuck Berry and the Four Freshmen, he conjured a golden soundscape — sweet melodies, shining harmonies, vignettes of beaches, cars and girls — that resonated across time and climates.
CBC
2 hours ago
- CBC
How the Edmonton Oilers fandom became a kind of religion
Social Sharing For the second year in a row, the Edmonton Oilers are facing off against the Florida Panthers in the Stanley Cup Finals — and the culture of the Oilers fanbase has reached a new kind of fever pitch. Today on Commotion, CBC Edmonton reporter Min Dhariwal and professor Judith Ellen Brunton discuss how the intensity of Oilers fandom in Edmonton transcends mere hometown boosterism to resemble something more like a religion. We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player. WATCH | Today's episode on YouTube: Elamin: Min, I'll start by maybe offering my condolences over game three. I hope things get a little bit better. But we're not here to talk about what is happening on the ice…. Give me a sense of the vibe, of what happens when the Oilers are in the finals. Min: Yeah, well, after a game like game three, the vibe kind of gets knocked down a couple of notches. But I mean, this run has been as good if not better than last year's, and the city is just alive, right? It doesn't matter if you go into a store, you jump into a cab, the driver might be wearing an Oilers jersey, or might have a flag on the car. You go downtown, you see flags and Oilers paraphernalia in the windows, up in the towers. On game days, the downtown just becomes a zoo … and people are wearing their jerseys all day long. So it has certainly made spring and summertime in Edmonton the last couple of years very different from how it used to be for many, many years. Elamin: Judith, the premise of this conversation is, it's not just that a city gets excited when their team is in the finals. It's that there is something different about this fandom. You're a professor of religious studies. Your particular area is Alberta and the way that religious ideology intertwines with the province's culture of oil, oil production, prosperity and also hockey. You recently wrote about this for The Conversation, about how the history kind of amplifies the intensity of this fandom. Can you unpack that idea of where this fandom maybe meets religion? Judith: For sure. I mean, you said it: when there's something weird going on, that's a good moment for a scholar of religion to appear, so here I am. I think that whenever we talk about shared values or zeal, or identity or commitment, that's a good moment to think about religion, because one way to describe religion is just kind of a technology of shared values, or a way people organize their values together. And scholars of religion and sport, which include my co-author for that piece, Cody Musselman, have studied a lot about how team sports act really religionally…. They have lots of rituals. They have prayers and superstitions. Folks wear special clothing, they have certain ideas of how to preserve purity. So a lot of that is already going on with sports. And then of course we can add oil to this, because Oilers evoke another aspect of Canadian society that I think for some people has almost religious importance, which is resource extraction. And in Canadian culture, oil has always been kind of entangled with religion — both religion as we would recognize it institutionally, but also kind of this idea that it's a blessing from God, or it's tied up in ideas of what a good life is and how to live it. So for lots of people in resource extraction communities like Alberta, the possibility of success and the good life that that promises really gets valued over and above other possible risks, including environmental. And the Edmonton Oilers showcase this worldview for sure, in which there's this idea of triumph and luck and rugged work pays off. This is a belief that functions on the ice and in the oil field. So luck is really central to both oil worldviews and hockey worldviews. Historically, this is essential for perseverance within fossil fuel extraction. Striking it rich in the oil fields is really entangled with the idea of divine providence. And sports, similarly, is thrilling, right? You can put all this work in, you can have all the great plans, you have all the right players, but it really takes luck to strike it rich. So oil culture is definitely, in the case of the Oilers, pairing this idea of divine favour with an insistence on rough-and-tumble endurance, which is definitely what's happening on the ice.
