Peter Relic and I were rivals. Unbeknownst to him, for decades, we were arch rivals. Coming out of high school and coming out of undergrad, I wanted to be working in magazines. My heroes — Andy Jenkins, Mark Lewman, and Spike Jonze — all worked in magazines — the coolest magazines. When I was in… Continue reading Peter Relic: Bust a Move
To overstate the influence of punk culture on my little life is not possible. Through BMX and skateboarding I absorbed the do-it-yourself, damn-the-man attitude of punk rock. I got to the music a little late, but Minor Threat, 7Seconds, Naked Raygun, and others made me think about things differently. Way differently. It’s the music, to… Continue reading Poetry, Punk, and Reporting
During my undergraduate days, my friends and I used to play a silly game. Whenever a situation or topic came up and they pointed to me, I would attempt to recite a relevant rap lyric. Sometimes it was a stretch to get Ice-T or the Beastie Boys to fit a late-night Waffle House run, but… Continue reading Intertextual Orientation: The Pop Palimpsest
William Melvin Kelley’s debut novel, A Different Drummer (Doubleday, 1962), imagines a different America, one where a slave revolt reconfigured the civil war and the nation thereafter. Three weeks before its release, Kelley flipped the term “woke” into its current common parlance in a New York Times Op-Ed piece. His central point was that the… Continue reading The Alterity of Cool
As it always does, my to-read stack has already doubled just from compiling and editing this year’s Summer Reading List. Get ready to add to yours, because there’s plenty below that you’re going to have to check out. There are so many books to read and so many ways to read them, you have no excuse… Continue reading Summer Reading List, 2017
