Taylor Swift’s Wedding Was Insane . . .

What happens when you throw a pop star, a football player, 1,000 celebrity guests, and a 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle into Madison Square Garden during a heat wave and shake it all up? Evidently, the wedding of the decade.

Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce were married in Midtown last weekend, and while most of the details have been kept under wraps—guests were made to sign ironclad NDAs preventing them from spilling any beans—what has slipped out is rather odd. To me, the whole affair sounds like a hot mess, and a bit like The Hunger Games.

For starters, comedian Adam Sandler officiated the ceremony. George Stephanopoulos and celebrity chef Jamie Oliver made the guest list. There was a ticketed raffle to win a Chanel handbag, watches, and the same model of convertible that Taylor and Travis rode around in on their first date. The dinner was buffet-style, and included sushi, pasta, chicken, and “a mix of Chinese, Italian, and American favorites,” according to TMZ. And that’s before the fact that all of this took place above New York City’s Penn Station.

I think weddings have gotten completely out of hand; they’re often three-day-long mini festivals in exotic locations. I’ll go on record advocating that bachelorette parties be abolished. But you can’t begrudge a regular girl for wanting to feel like the most important person in the room for a day (or a weekend). But Kelce and Swift have been applauded more often than any two humans on Earth during their mega-successful careers. Why would they turn their wedding into a three-ring circus for celebrities?

I’m sure the method to Taylor’s madness will be revealed—the bride wore custom Dior, and apparently had videographers everywhere—in the form of a documentary, or music video to coincide with her next album. And to be fair: The couple donated $26 million to various charitable causes in the lead-up to the nuptials. That’s a classy move, and earns them license to be as tacky as they want. But the whole thing has surfaced the eternal debate: When does a wedding tip from luxe to Looney Tunes, and is there even such a thing as the perfectly elegant wedding?

Dan Ahdoot, my Second Thought co-host, and I got into all of the wedding scuttlebutt in this week’s podcast episode. We also talked about a new South Korean company that makes holograms of your dead relatives, and Paris Hilton’s win against a notorious Utah boarding school where she said she was abused. Watch Second Thought for our takes on popular—and unpopular—culture:

A Toast to the Jackasses

The specter of the Jackass haunted my adolescence. First as an MTV series in the early aughts, then as a movie franchise—and then in real life, because in 2005, boys loved nothing more than imitating the ridiculous and dangerous stunts performed by the Jackass cast. At the time, the crew of Jackass was derided as bad influences. They were harmful—physically, to themselves, and spiritually, to everyone else. Steve-O, a mainstay of the crew, whose signature thing was being on drugs and lighting himself on fire, proudly declared that he wanted to “make the world a dumber place.”

The new, final Jackass movie came out last month, and half the footage in it is a look back on their most notorious stunts. In hindsight (I wrote in my piece this week), you can see the value of their chaos. The Jackass guys weren’t efficient, or healthy, or effective; unless you count the effectiveness of relentlessly hitting each other in the groin, causing trauma to their testicles, but they were committed to their craft. They took being extremely stupid very seriously, and they were, unlike so many young men today, having fun in the real world with each other.

Man vs. Machine

Joe Allen is a Trump-supporting anti-tech activist, the “transhumanism editor” for Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, and a former concert rigger. When we met for a few glasses of red wine at an Italian restaurant in Manhattan, to talk about what AI is going to do to us all, he was wearing a hoodie from a Rihanna tour he worked on. He’s a little disappointed that the president is cozying up to tech bros, but as a true conservative, he doesn’t think it’s entirely the government’s job to protect us from the robots; he’s all about personal responsibility.

“If people aren’t really careful and really intentional, then they’re just going to become slavish vessels for corporate algorithms,” Allen told me.

We talked about aliens, growing up Southern Baptist, where Lady Gaga went wrong, and why Allen thinks the Satanic Panic was “directionally right.” Read all about it:

Here’s What Else I’m Thinking About:

There’s been a lot of buzz about how Americans aren’t reading anymore. But one New Yorker named ​​Mendel Uminer is trying to make up for everyone else. After collecting about 10,000 books in his studio apartment—“Every book I own, I need,” he told The New York Times—his landlord deemed the volume of books a hazard. Read the full story of his righteous biblio-battle here.

Liquor stocks are taking a massive hit, and are on pace for a crash that resembles the reckoning with Big Tobacco. I’m all for drinking responsibly—but the country’s about to get a whole lot less fun if no one’s drinking at all. Readers, for the Republic, share your favorite cocktail recipe in the comments below.

Many American women, including Nicole Kidman, are training to become “death doulas”—that is, they’re sitting by strangers’ deathbeds to support them into the beyond. Kat Rosenfield reported on the macabre trend this week, but the story runs far deeper than a wacky career, and asks whether we should be rethinking how we treat death—and who we should be inviting into the room for the most momentous, and sacred, last days of our life.

I’m not one for sporting events, but sports documentaries? I am in. I just started the new Netflix series on the tennis great Rafael Nadal, and it’s beautifully done. It’s almost enough to inspire me to sign up for tennis lessons—I’ve only ever embarrassed myself on a court, whether grass or clay—but only almost.

Why must women always invent a new way to torture themselves? I’ve been seeing way too many videos of women working out in weighted vests, for vague reasons related to bone health, or maybe weight loss. I say: Stop shouldering weight that is not your own. Take off the vest this summer, and be free.

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