Weekend Rumpus Roundup
First, Brandon Hicks criticizes parental hypocrisy in “Colorful Language.” Meanwhile, in the Saturday Review, Joe Sacksteder offers a detailed portrait of the film 99 Homes, by director Ramin Bahrani. The 2008…
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Max Gray
260 posts
Read more of Max Gray at Big City Sasquatch or follow him on Twitter @City_Sasquatch. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Encounters, Mount Hope, Conte, tNY.press, and English Kills Review. He co-hosts the etymology podcast Words For Dinner and is a graduate of the Rutgers-Newark MFA program.
Song of the Day: “California”
In a recent interview with the Guardian, Claire Boucher describes her song “California” as “kind of shitty.” Via her stage name, Grimes, Boucher has released an eclectic and not-at-all-“shitty” catalogue of hybrid dance…
Weekend Rumpus Roundup
First, in the Saturday Essay, Katie Anderson Howell reflects on a fond and revealing appreciation for the wacky cartoon satire Futurama. The antics of its irreverent protagonists, the time traveling Fry and…
Song of the Day: “So What?”
Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue is one of the most influential albums of all time, not just within the genre of jazz, but within the entirety of modern music. Perhaps the…
Weekend Rumpus Roundup
First, Brandon Hicks personifies a crucial part of all stories in “The End: A Biography.” Then, in the Saturday Essay, Lisa Ellison recalls the comforting presence of Molly Ringwald on…
Song of the Day: “Cold Sweat”
James Brown is known for creating a thing called funk, but it was the song “Cold Sweat,” co-written with his bandleader Pee Wee Ellis and released in 1967, that truly…
Weekend Rumpus Roundup
First, in the Saturday Review of The Martian, Louise Fabiani exposes strengths and weaknesses of Ridley Scott’s film. It is “exquisite” in a visual sense, but the protagonist, played by Matt Damon,…
Song of the Day: “Poison Cup”
Guitarist and producer M. Ward, otherwise known as the mild-mannered Matthew Stephen Ward, might be more famous for being the second half of the glittery indie duo She & Him—the “She” being…
Weekend Rumpus Roundup
First, Brandon Hicks’s most recent comic provides a guidepost for the maturing male artist. Then, in a cutting Saturday Essay, Eileen G’Sell exposes the forward-looking and regressive trends in advertising. Though Progressive’s fully-clothed…
Song of the Day: “Saint Louis Blues”
One of the most enduring individual legacies from the Jazz Age is that of the towering figure of Louis Armstrong. The super-influential artist grew up in New Orleans’s Storyville district during…
Weekend Rumpus Roundup
In a focused and engaging Saturday Interview, Arielle Bernstein talks to essayist Karrie Higgins—the author of a 2015 Best American Essay titled “Strange Flowers”—about the generative quality of chaos within the creative…
Song of the Day: “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes”
The heady freedom of the 1960s touched almost every aspect of society, from civil rights activism to gender equity to mass media. The ambitious “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” by Crosby, Stills,…