I was going to write this whole bit about the Genius Awards from the perspective of a Costco sheet cake, but then fucking Dolly Parton died, so fuck jokes. She was 80 years old. Older than old enough to die, yet I’m somehow shocked and devastated. The great, especially the great who are good, remain forever too young to die.
“Genius” is a complicated word, both because we as a society can’t define genius and because it introduces a troubling concept for anyone who has so much as had a creative idea: People have “it” or they do not. If genius is a rare and supernatural quality woven like a golden thread into the double helix of our DNA, we mere mortals with threads of tin, copper, silver, and plain string are doomed, because our potential is limited.
Or is there hope? Does “genius” crawl up the arm of one’s life like a radioactive spider and transform us from ordinary to extraordinary with a single bite? Is it hidden somewhere in the stack of books a person has read, or the music they have listened to, or the art they’ve seen? Is it Mommy and Daddy’s money? The sweat from our brow? Is it the closest thing on Earth to magic, or the only alchemy humans can perform without the assistance of a Large Hadron Collider?
I say “all of the above,” but if I had to make a comparison—and this is writing, so I should—I’d compare it to chemistry. A chemistry of thoughts, experiences, and art exploding from the beaker of one lucky soul for the benefit of many even luckier souls. (Money? Money helps.)
Only chemistry could explain Dolly Parton. But defining her genius, or scribbling down the formula? Impossible. Still, our country—divided over the difficult question of whether to have a horrible country or a plain bad one—somehow came to the consensus that this woman was a genius. Probably because she had a spooky power to make us feel, but I don’t recall us taking a vote on her “genius.”
Uncomfortable with ambiguous questions of human potential, we at The Stranger have simplified matters. We decide whom the geniuses are, or at least, who we are willing to crown as a Genius and lay $10,000 at their feet. Not that selecting these bold few was easy. The best we can do is guess at genius. The Genius Committee, of which I was not a part (too stupid), spent months deliberating on who deserved the kudos and cash and why they deserved it. They hit on something great—in these times, a true genius uses their talent to bring people living in our disconnected, lonely world together to remember what is easy to forget: that community is what makes life worth living.
—Vivian McCall,
Interim Editor in Chief
This Issue Brought to You By…
Merriam-webbdawg
VH1 Divas Live 1998
The all-new Hyundai Elantra
Dreaming of Luigi during open enrollment
Late in life Virgos
Your drama, not my drama
My circus, my monkeys
Flying first class once and being ruined forever
Saiga antelope and their big dick noses
Amtrak Special Operations Command
Eight 12” x 16″ cakes weighing 9.5 pounds each
Getting rear-ended with a cake in your car
Emergency cake surgery
Eclectic fingertips
Quoting Albus Dumbledore in your Substack about how you’re not transphobic
Hating the game, loving the player
Gushers, Lemonheads, Twizzlers, to name a few candies that should sponsor us
Subterfuge
Press-ons
Big congrats to Dave Caplan on his retirement. THANK YOU for everything you’ve helped us with (and for putting up with all those late nights). We’ll miss you!
COVER ARTIST
Ashley Longshore
