15 Reactions I Had to Neko Case’s Hell-On
Is that a thumb piano playing the opening notes of this song? (“Hell-On”) I will be humming the “nothing quite so poison as a promise” break from “Hell-On” to myself until I can’t stand...
Category: Arts & Literature
Kelly Marie Tran: It’s not just ‘a few bad fans’
To the disappointment of many fans, Star Wars actress Kelly Marie Tran (Rose Tico) has deleted her Instagram posts and gone dark on the platform. Fans are speculating that the blackout was caused by...
Can Killing Eve transform bisexual representation?
You know when a Big Name critic declares a scene dead and shyly kicks dust over it? That kind of talk comes from the mouths of the dominant class—usually white, usually male—after they’ve...
We can do better on depictions of adoption in pop culture
In December of 2017, I had an opportunity to review Welcome Home, a collection of short stories centered on adoption edited by Eric Smith. The stories collected here represent such a wide spectrum of...
No Roots? No LP? No problem for Alice Merton
Alice Merton is the kind of artist who offers hope to countless others. After label after label failed to see any hit potential in her music, she and her manager started their own label in late 2016...
HalfNoise’s Flowerss is hypnotic, quixotic, and crisp
Less than twelve months ago, the fortunes of Zac Farro, the multi-instrumentalist mastermind behind HalfNoise, became fruitful and multiplied. First, his injection of pop sensibilities, distilled...
Robot roll call: HBO’s Westworld returns, with a higher body count
Note: This review contains spoilers for the episode “Journey Into Night,” as well as the first season of Westworld. The first season of HBO’s futuristic, violent Westworld was a success with...
What went wrong with Universal FanCon?
The infamous Universal FanCon is in the books, but the event is not going down in history as the co-founders had hoped. As can be gleamed from the hashtags and social media chatter, the event...
Asians, We’re Just Like You…Or Not At All: Roseanne, The Simpsons, and AAPIs on TV
I was recently approached to work on a script. At first I was pretty excited about it. It was the brainchild of someone I’d worked with before, someone I liked and had worked well with on previous...
Genre, Gender, and Class Tumble in Jack White’s Sonic Blender
“You need to know why you're doing it” was the insight Jack White offered in a recent interview with KCRW when asked about his philosophy and attitude toward recording. After hearing his third...