Before I was diagnosed with two hips' worth of advanced arthritis, I just thought I had fat-dude back trouble. It was COVID lockdown, and I bought this useless item called The Scoop. It promised to loosen up my tight core, or tighten up my weak core. One of those.
Hell0, I have a cold. Taking a little break. I'll write when my Nyquil hangover subsides. Send a wellness influencer to my door so I can cough on them.
I was very nervous. It was late summer, 2004. She had re-recorded "Every Man Has a Woman Who Loves Him," a song she wrote and sang on the Double Fantasy album with her husband John Lennon. The new version was called "Everyman... Everywoman" and it was
See that wonderful old building? It's a Taco Bell Cantina. It came up in 1917 on Hollywood Boulevard, the facade in the Churrigueresque style, and it once was the Pickwick Book Shop. Marlene Dietrich shopped there. That no one decided to demolish it entirely or simply obscure the
This is a note to the dude with the sign. Your sign said, "LET ME EAT THAT ASS." You were standing outside the Mobil station on Santa Monica Boulevard. It was about 5pm on Wednesday afternoon. The sign was cardboard. About 12 inches tall and 15 inches wide.
I am aware that the demented, racist President said even more demented, racist things last night, and that he wants to make banks freeze accounts of people who can't show their papers. I am aware that Pete Hegseth wants unrestrained AI to drop nuclear bombs on anyone, anywhere,
I remember almost nothing except for isolated moments of a Vincente Minnelli film called The Cobweb about the battle over the design of some draperies in a psychiatric hospital, and a 2am Tupperware promotional short from 1965 featuring Anita Bryant before she lost her mind with hate for gays. (Fun
My mother did not want any arthouse shit. "La Belle Noiseuse," I said. "It's French." "Subtitles? Ehhhhhhh." "It's also four hours." "No." This was the early 90s, by the way. And this was not a simple
Paul told Margy, who told me and Alonso. When she said what it was, we said, "We will try this and probably like it." I had never heard of it, which is weird because if it's processed and against the law in Europe, I've
It begins with a very horny public execution. Don't remember that from the book? It's fine, that's why Emerald Fennell's film adaptation of Emily Brontë's novel Wuthering Heights is called "Wuthering Heights." Swaddled in quotation marks, it does
2006, I worked for a website that was owned by Disney, later by NBC/Universal, someone else in the middle of all that, I forget who. It started out fine and by the time I quit it was no longer fine. (I know, hilarious, that anyone would quit a journalism
There are spoilers ahead. Stop reading if that sort of thing matters to you. The Moment, a punchy, successful, anxiety-fantasy starring Charli XCX, features a thematically relevant amount of cocaine use. Ms. XCX references the drug in song lyrics, of course, with a casual approach that reminds me of the
The waffle is not about anything. It's just a picture I took of a waffle I made. It was very good. I had no other photos that would sum up my scattered thoughts. According to the nurse at Kaiser this morning, my blood pressure is slightly better than
You wake up every morning to more horrific news. You think, "How do I write about culture when all this shit is happening?" Then you watch the trailer for Brett Ratner's new documentary, Melania. And by "you," of course, I don't mean
I opened my email this morning to a message from a tea company I've ordered from before. They wanted to remind me to buy some more matcha. I appreciate these little reminders. I am indeed about to run out of matcha, after all. The title of this post
"Tell Dave White the next time he makes you dinner: 'Make me the Ina Garten roast chicken, you bow-legged bitch.'" Love it when my friends talk about me. The directive came from a friend in New York, instructing local friend and neighbor Gary Cotti as to
Former employers used to pay me to make year-end film lists. I disliked it. I enjoy reading other critics' year-end lists. I just don't want to make my own. It's a lot of needless pressure and people end up internet-yelling at you. Worse than that,
The candle-as-gift stigma applies only when one buys it at CVS, that should be made clear. SNL sketches aside, if you're out in the world getting something that's, like, Le Labo or Byredo, then you've shown your friends you're willing to drop
I read the recent New Yorker article about "performative reading," (behind a paywall? maybe) and if you haven't heard that term yet, it's because you're not on the poison internet unless you have to be. It is, in the estimation of too
I was not out to anyone but myself. I spent the 80s on the sidelines in West Texas, afraid of everything. By 1990 I knew what was happening with me, but the best I could manage in a public-facing way was to be a "not gay" ally. I
I did, in fact review it. 2008. Beverly Hills Chihuahua. Starring Piper Perabo and Jamie Lee Curtis, with the voices of Drew Barrymore, Andy Garcia, George Lopez, Cheech Marin, Paul Rodriguez, Placido Domingo, Edward James Olmos, Loretta Devine, Luiz Guzman The format of this review is from a period of
Hello, I have a cold, a fairly unpleasant one. I'm not up to writing anything right now. Until I am, I'll be posting archive stuff. This is from the mid-to-late 2000s, and if my memory serves it ran in the LA WEEKLY back when that was
We have stacks of magazines that we've written for over the years. All print, nothing internet. I'll be bringing pieces I wrote for them over here from time to time. Context: The Advocate, 2005 Twenty years ago you could earn a roof-over-your-head-food-on-the-table living writing mostly inconsequential
Today I'm writing out of market ambition. I want you to buy Alonso's new book, the revised and expanded edition of Have Yourself a Movie Little Christmas, in which he writes about a film from 2024, Christmas Eve in Miller's Point, one that didn&