... funny and moving.

... here comes Rax King, in her ebullient book Tacky: Love Letters to the Worst Culture We Have to Offer, to make the late aughts seem like the most vivid, concrete and ecstatic moment to burst into adolescence since time out of mind.

These pieces are smart and crass and unapologetic and wildly entertaining.

Most writers are boring people. King, though, seems different: Bettie Page meets Carrie Bradshaw, if Bradshaw supported Bernie Sanders for president and sometimes wore an Old Bay-patterned bikini.

What ultimately matters, for King, is not (just) the garbage itself, but the person who loves them.

Dishy, memoirish.

King’s prose is murderously fizzy, like movie-theater soda pop that dances a little bit in your nostrils right after you’ve taken a sip. At her best, she’s kind of like the Eve Babitz of the Y2K-era shopping mall.

Rax King has paid so much attention to the formative cultural artifacts of her youth that she is able to make me feel as if I have my own memories of experiences we absolutely do not share.

Charming.

Vibrant.