were, like, ‘This is just another fad.’”
“What were the other fads?” Daniel
asked. “Rasslin’?”
“I can’t think of any other fad things.”
The balls had got cluttered up in a way
that made almost any shot impossible.
Daniel did the thing where you sit on the
edge of the table and shoot behind your
back. Eventually, Eno sank the eight ball.
Across the room, some musicians were
setting up. Guitar, organ, drums. The or
gan, a B3, lives at the Cellar Dog. Eno
and Daniel hung around for a number,
then went back to their hotel, to rest.
The next day, they were en route with
the rest of Spoon in a van to “The Late
Show” when a producer called to inform
them that Eno and a bandmate had tested
positive for Covid. They turned around
and isolated at their hotel. The gig was
cancelled. The next three concerts were
postponed. Not much of a birthday for
Daniel. A week later, during their first
show back, in Chicago, he lost his voice—
not Covid, the swab said—and they had
to reschedule again.
“It’s turned into a very strange tour
that may not end up being profitable,”
Daniel said. (The Hammerstein date was
moved to May 6th.) “You add a week’s
worth of salaries, hotels, bus costs, gas.
It’s a bit of a mess.”
Eno said, “The idea that it would bring
everything to a crashing halt is still hard
for me to deal with. And I’ve had a lot
of time to think about it.”
—Nick Paumgarten
busted, for the second time, for carry
ing a loaded pistol at an airport (possi
ble misdemeanor); he was implicated in
a potential insidertrading scheme in
volving a meme cryptocurrency (possi
ble felony); and, as Politico reported last
month, he once wore “women’s lingerie
in a public setting.” (Cawthorn tweeted
that he’d done this during “a game on a
cruise” before his election, and he in
vited followers to “share your most em
barrassing vacay pics in the replies.”)
Weeks earlier, a former Cawthorn staffer
had remarked, on a secretly recorded
phone call, that one of the congressman’s
district offices has “more liquor bottles
than they do water bottles,” and that
staff members there drink “like crazy.”
A few weeks before that, on a You
Tube episode of “Warrior Poet Society,”
Cawthorn volunteered that colleagues
whom he’d “looked up to through my
life” had invited him to “a sexual get
together” and done “a key bump” of co
caine in his presence. He was respond
ing to a question about whether Congress
is really like the TV show “House of
Cards.” (He called it “wild.”) He was
not specific about the identities of the
G.O.P.’s orgy inviters and cokeheads.
Corruption in Congress, Cawthorn
gravely explained, “has to do with the
fallen nature of man.”
Mark Meadows, who represented
Cawthorn’s district before becoming
Donald Trump’s chief of staff, is the rare
North Carolina Republican who has not
publicly scolded Cawthorn lately. As a
gesture of appreciation, perhaps, Caw
thorn has not dragged Meadows for
turning over text messages to the Jan
uary 6th House Committee, nor has he
accused Meadows of voter fraud—which
he appears to have committed, in 2020,
by writing the address of someone else’s
mobile home on his voterregistration
form. As it happens, the two conserva
tives from North Carolina have some
thing in common beyond their indiffer
ence to rules: a need for speed.
On June 28, 2016, a highway patrol
ler clocked Meadows, who was then in
Congress, doing seventytwo in a fifty
fivem.p.h. zone: excessive speeding. If
convicted, he faced a possible suspen
sion of his license. The patroller noted
the congressman’s confession in the ci
tation’s notes: “DEF SAID HE WAS SORRY
DOING A SPEECH THIS MORNING JUST1
NORTHCAROLINAPOSTCARD
SPEEDDEMONS
M
adison Cawthorn, the twentysix
yearold Republican congressman
from western North Carolina, has been
racking up traffic tickets. In March, a
cop pulled him over for crossing the
centerline, in Cleveland County. As the
officer discovered, Cawthorn was driv
ing with a revoked license. Two months
earlier, he’d been clocked going eighty
seven in a seventymilesperhour zone,
in Polk County. A few months before
that, he’d been stopped for doing eighty
nine, in Buncombe County. Cawthorn
didn’t have his license on him during
that joyride, but a trooper let him take
a mulligan for the possible misdemeanor.
“Do your best to make sure you have
your driver’s license on you,” the trooper
said, as he wrote up a speeding ticket.
“Is this something I can just go in
and pay?” Cawthorn asked. The trooper
told him that it was not quite that sim
ple. Cawthorn faces a court date in early
May, followed, a fortnight later, by a Re
publican primary against seven chal
lengers, who have more than tickets to
talk about on the campaign trail.
For instance: Cawthorn was recently“He’s so annoying. If you know you have rabies, just call in sick!”