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I’m not about to go into a full-blown review of Daft Punk’s latest album because I don’t have the time to and I also don’t want to be stoned to death like Soraya M., but I will say this one little infant-sized bit about why this album lowkey blows a little bit.

What made (and still makes) Daft Punk such an incredible band is that they identified and isolated one of the central tenants of dance music (namely, the idea of repetition) and made it into the nucleus of their entire catalogue. Every song circled back on itself within the first twenty-seconds, with minimal lyrics and it’s simultaneously minimal and maximal instrumentals. In this way, their robotic aesthetic became a tangible extrapolation of the very sound they were pioneering, and gave the whole Daft Punk construct a fully-rounded and fully-formed identity. There was a visual and sonic cohesion between having dance songs that looped in on themselves again and again and again, and having the songs be lead literally by two robots.

Random Access Memories should be lauded for its immaculate production quality, its insane attention to detail, and for fully embodying a retro-concept album but never once getting boggled down in nostalgia over whatever is left to even get nostalgic about. But while having live instrumentals, and a calmer, more quiet approach to dance music at the height of EDM (?) is respectable, it’s not worthy of implementing that same attention to repetition. The two don’t jive in the same way. RAM becomes boring to listen to and disappointing post-hype because by building buzz over the return of Daft Punk, the event becomes Daft Punk, and Daft Punk’s DNA in an album like this is the problem. Okay that’s it, bb luv u.  

— My review of Tyler, The Creator’s newest, “Wolf”, for Rappers & Models

Tig Notaro Live at the Largo is rougher around the edges than the hype would have you believe, but my god if it doesn’t cut to the core of what makes stand up comedy a tragic art form in its own right. The way the set builds on the vulnerability already so intrinsic to stand-up is magnificent. If only “Raw” wasn’t already taken.

» "Putting together Madonna’s roughly 300-year career actually proves difficult, because Madonna was really the first pop star to be born simply as a series of images and ideas more than any singular catalogue of songs, or music videos, or film endeavors, or even high-profile relationships. Her most enduring elements are narrowed down to choice photographs taken by Richard Avedon and the like, while she was made up like Marilyn, dressed in Jean Paul Gautier, shot often in black-and-white—and with a similar sense of minimalism applied to her own mythology: girl from Detroit runs off to New York at the height of the city’s fusion of art, music, fashion and energy, and girl exploits punk and pop to culture-dominating effect."

Revisiting the Queen of Pop’s thirty-plus year career, and just what Madonna means in today’s culture. 

Also, she’s over 300 years old. Did you guys know that? Is this something you knew?

The title makes it sound like this post is going to be a critical theory of culture essay, when in reality it’s just a space for me to make mention of the fact that Robyn has taken on a more emotionally significant role in my playlists that she never has before.

The essay would probably propose a thesis as to why this is; this post, sadly, will not, ending instead with nothing more than a request to re-listen to “With Every Heartbeat” in a dark room, with a candle flickering, like your older sibling may have suggested you do with Zeppelin.

Today marks the eleventh anniversary of 9/11, which is slightly less significant than than the tenth anniversary, but still significant in a “holy-shit-it’s-been-thismany-years” kind of way—which is often the only way I really grapple with 9/11 as an event. It’s so clear to me just how much of my youth, my life, my political consciousness, has been shaped by September 11: it often seems that every shade of culture I choose to color my life with has either been radically reformed by or is a direct response to that singular event. 

As a longform junkie, it should come as no surprise that I think it’s narrative non-ficiton that has best captured the meaning and weight of that day. And although so much of the current political landscape has been largely defined by 9/11, the most haunting, all-consuming bits exist on a far smaller scale. Crumbled pieces of paper; emotionally distant husbands; the nameless star of a photograph. Those stories are the ones worth telling; the ethics worth questioning. Those stories are the ones worth grappling with. 

One of the most recent pieces circulating involves a note dropped from the 84th floor of the second tower, and the way it alters a family’s entire narrative when it finally reaches them ten years later. Another highlights the intersection of 9/11 and money, and who exactly is profiting most from the disaster.

Scott Raab has been chronicling the rebuilding process of the World Trade Center since plans went underway in 2005, all of which are worth reading. But it’s his seventh piece, published on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, that really captures the tangible metaphor of the noise, the second-starts and the grief that comes with the opening of the memorial.

Possibly my favorite of the bunch is the New York Times Sunday Magazine feature that untangles the complex affairs of two 9/11 widows: one whose husband was lost in the towers, and the other whose husband might as well have been.

And perhaps the most famous and fascinating of any 9/11 piece published anywhere: Tom Junod’s feature for Esquire, “The Falling Man,” which dissects and discusses the subjective and contextual limitiations of what’s been called “perhaps the most powerful image of despair at the beginning of the twenty-first century.”

Also: for more of Jason E. Powell’s briliant 9/11 remembrance photography (above), click here.

Life begins to get difficult around the time our parents begin to become people.

My week is largely/entirely/solely defined by whether my MacBook charger is plugged in by my desk or by my bed.

I don’t know who it is I’m supposed to be or what it is I’m supposed to do, but I do know that when I figure it out it’s going to matter to a lot of people.

because I often catch myself feeling a melancholy and angst that movies say are reserved for High School.

Stephanie + I are livetexting “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane” on TCM. Commercial-free, y’all! I don’t regret a damn thing! 

Such a hilariously ambivalent day. I woke up at 8:30am for no reason other than to have done just that, and found myself comically proud for having slept early and woken up earlier by myself. I took a shower, and then sent some emails while sitting around in my towel for longer than I had actually been in the shower. 

I had no urge to write today, because I had written for the last two days, and really, really written all day yesterday, yet I still felt and urge to fake productivity. I went to the Marin County Superior Court offices (Room C10; the ‘C’ is for the Criminal floor, which seems so much more daunting than it need be), and was so uncomfortable. Such a heinous ambiance there, standing in line and over hearing the minor and major troubles of strangers. I gave them a check for $529.00 and made a date for a hearing to contest the ticket I was paying, which, if ruled in my favor, would result in my check being refunded. They do not wait to see if it is ruled in my favor; they cash the check first.

For the last few days, I’d worked in the Mill Valley Library, partly because I adore the high ceilings, the natural light, the large widows and the bevy of redwoods, but also because Moonrise Kingdom was playing at the Sequoia and I liked the idea of treating myself to a movie after a day of writing. Over the course of the last two days, I kept writing through showtimes, saying I’d go to the next one, and then resolving that I’ll do it another day. Yesterday, I was aimless for a portion of the morning and a majority of the late evening, but I was not at the Mill Valley Library, and thus not walking distance to the Sequoia, and though the film was playing elsewhere, was playing closer-by, the form of the viewing—the idea of the reward—was paramount. 

To the point where today, after leaving room  C10, I went to the Mill Valley Library with a tote bag packed with my laptop, charger, headphones and a book, with everything I needed except for an actual intention to write. It became obvious rather quickly when I arrived (it had become obvious that morning in the shower but was true now) that I had only come here to fulfill the image of walking from the Mill Valley Public Library to the Sequoia to see Moonrise Kingdom and for no reason other than that. 

I’m sitting in the theatre, having not written, but having woken up early, having not had my check refunded, but having showered. I am rewarding myself for nothing, but I have fulfilled the plan, the reward itself, and that should strangely maybe somehow count for something. 

“The major industry around here seems to be valet parking” may be the funniest line ever written about Los Angeles.

Second place goes to when Fran Lebowitz referred to an LA resident as “audibly tan.”