To amplify Trump? Or not to amplify? There’s actually a good answer. by Dan Froomkin The dilemma that the news media has been ineffectually wrestling with is how to address the increasingly incendiary, deceptive, and grotesquely cruel rhetoric spewed by … Continue reading Outside Reading — Desperate Despot edition
I could rap out a whole bunch of words about how the new Sleater-Kinney track is a hefty punch right to the solar plexus. After all, that’s more or less the assignment I gave myself for this weekly feature. Instead, … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Sleater-Kinney, “Hell”
These past few years, it’s seemed like Mitski could disappear at any time. Given that her breakthrough album, Puberty 2, established her creative voice as enthralling but elusive, almost otherworldly in its abstract intensity, the vague danger that she might … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf — The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We
Independent People by Halldór Laxness (translated from the Icelandic by J.A. Thompson) Fiction, 1934 and 1935 There are few things that fill the soul of man with greater disappointment than to wake up when everyone else is asleep, especially if it … Continue reading Book Report — Independent People; Ten Steps to Nanette
MARGARET GLASPY Echo the Diamond (ATO) — Echo the Diamond is Margaret Glaspy’s third album, but it feels like the proper follow-up to her sterling 2016 full-length debut, Emotions and Math. Between those two outings, Glaspy released Devotion, which held … Continue reading Medium Rotation — Echo the Diamond; Haunted Mountain
Sometimes comedy illuminates hard truths with a pointed urgency that other means can’t quite achieve. Sometimes comedy is just funny. This series of posts is mostly about the former instances, but the latter is valuable, too. Lorne Michaels has long … Continue reading Laughing Matters — The Ben Stiller Show, “U2: The Early Years”
12. Pink Floyd, The Wall (1979) The week that Pink Floyd’s The Wall debuted on the Billboard Top 200, the band’s earlier album The Dark Side of the Moon was in its two hundred and eighty-ninth week on the same … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #12
Biden’s UAW Rally Exposes the Bankruptcy of Trump’s Populism by Eric Levitz This column is a welcome corrective to the ongoing delusion of media outlets that take the GOP’s feints toward supporting working-class citizens and parrot them as sincere. To … Continue reading Outside Reading — You’ve Earned a Hell of a Lot More than You’re Getting Paid Now edition
“Infinity Worm,” the new single from ME REX, is reportedly inspired by any number of science fiction tales where imposing creatures descend to Earth after traversing the vastness of outer space. The chorus assurance of “But I promise, promise, promise/ … Continue reading This Week’s Model — ME REX, “Infinity Worm”
Since great television comedy always begins with the script, this series of posts considers the individual episodes that have claimed the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series over the years. The members of the Television Academy … Continue reading Golden Words — Taxi, “Tony’s Sister and Jim”
Coffee for Two 