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My published work dating back to early 2022: interviews, essays, reviews, and features covering everything from TV retrospectives to political commentary, album reviews to art shows. To see coverage of a specific beat (i.e., music or film), use the "search by tags" feature to narrow down the results!

Paste Magazine •

If I Come Back, You’ll Still Be Here: Car Seat Headrest’s How to Leave Town a Decade Later

2014 Will Toledo remains alive within and because of a record like this: still frozen in the midst of his cross-country, post-graduation road trip, stuck in an eternal limbo between Virginia and Seattle, college and adult life, a relationship and its end, his Bandcamp days and the onset of mainstream success. Car Seat Headrest's 'How to Leave Town' is a calcification of the split-second between Schrodinger reaching the box and him opening it, stretched out like taffy into something resembling an eternity, and then finding meaning even in that seemingly helpless moment anyways.
Paste Magazine •

Time Capsule: Silver Jews, 'Starlite Walker'

“Songs build little rooms in time,” drawls David Berman on the album he released less than a month before he took his own life in the summer of 2019. “And housed within the song’s design / Is the ghost the host has left behind / To greet and sweep the guest inside / Stoke the fire and sing his lines.” This mentality is jarringly reminiscent of the lines that began Berman's entire career under the Silver Jews moniker -- the very first song on their very first album, "Starlite Walker," is much the same...
Paste Magazine •

25 Songs About Cities Ranked By How Much I Think You Should Avoid Visiting That City

Cities are great! Who doesn’t love a good ole city? But, then again, there are so many cities in our big, wide world. How can anyone possibly decide which to prioritize visiting, and more importantly, which to avoid like the plague? At Paste, we are, somewhat notoriously, big fans of music. As such, we couldn’t think of a better way to answer the age-old question of “Which city sucks the hardest?” than by examining every single song that has ever been written about a city then compiling a list t...
Paste Magazine •

Xiu Xiu’s 13” Is Another Gut-Punch of an Album From the World’s Most Visceral Band

There is no band quite as adept at actualizing the ineffable as Xiu Xiu. Over the course of their whopping 17-album discography, Xiu Xiu have managed to consistently put words and sound to feelings that I didn’t realize I felt, or even could feel at all. It’s not that other music isn’t evocative, but that Xiu Xiu’s music doesn’t evoke a feeling so much as it embodies it. Perhaps the best way to describe the distinction is via a cover: Tracy Chapman’s original “Fast Car” is phenomenal and heart-w...
Paste Magazine •

10 Years In, Critical Role is Still Just Getting Started

On December 19, 2012, voice actors Liam O’Brien (Gaara in Naruto) and Sam Riegel (Donatello in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) discussed their upcoming one-time foray into the world of tabletop roleplaying games on their podcast All Work No Play: O’Brien, who last played Dungeons & Dragons when he was a sophomore in high school, explains that, normally, D&D is experienced in the form of campaigns, which are “ongoing…serial dramas,” à la “Charles Dickens,” requiring players to “get together regular...
Paste Magazine •

The Front Room Weaponizes Incontinence for Its Crappy Horror-Comedy

Max and Sam Eggers’ debut, the hagsploitation flick The Front Room, had me at a loss for words at least a dozen times. That is not necessarily a compliment. Despite being billed as a horror-comedy, the primary emotion The Front Room elicits is one of sheer disbelief. The Front Room is, quite literally, a shit show. But that is less an insult than a fact of the movie’s runtime: the majority of the film depicts an elderly woman soiling herself to dunk on her step-son’s wife. (That being said, it f...
Paste Magazine •

Despite Its Colorful Reimagining, Kaos Has Frustratingly Little to Say About the Mythology Its Adapting

It’s not his fault, but Rick Riordan ruined Greek mythology modernizations for the rest of us, the same way that J.K. Rowling (as much as I may dislike her) ruined the concept of wizarding schools. Their stories have become so ubiquitous with their central conceits that any new takes on those genres need to be almost impossibly unique. I love Greek mythology as much as the next girl who spent second grade wholeheartedly believing she was the daughter of Athena and her parents were merely adopted...
Paste Magazine •

English Teacher Is the Second Coming of Caleb Gallo, and It Was Worth the Wait

English Teacher is a very big deal for a very select subset of people: those of us who, for one reason or another, were active on Tumblr in 2016. In other words: those familiar with The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo. (If you had a Tumblr eight years ago, you almost definitely stumbled across the webseries once or twice, even if only in the form of the oft-memed screencap of Jason Greene’s magnificent Freckle dramatically intoning that “Sometimes… things that are expensive… are worse.”) Th...
Paste Magazine •

Spirit of the Beehive, 'YOU'LL HAVE TO LOSE SOMETHING' Review

...YOU’LL HAVE TO LOSE SOMETHING is strongest in these moments: the breaths between one loss and the next, the small mundanities of life after loss, distance made intimate and intimacy made distant. There are times, however, where the album reaches for grandiosity—reaches for catharsis (like the rap-rock portion of “THE DISRUPTION”), for transcendence (like the broad orchestral sweeps resonating on “EARTH KIT,” the record’s closing track). And while they don’t fail, per se, they fall short of reaching whatever grandiosity is aimed for, and instead feel a little out of place in an album so focused on immanence. But I can’t fault SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE for attempting to actualize that burning yearn echoed throughout the record; it’s only natural. That’s the raw truth the album hits on, the open sore it can’t stop pressing: Hunger makes a menace of us all.
Paste Magazine •

Peacock's Mr. Throwback Dunks On Impossible Odds to Deliver Comedy Gold

In Mr. Throwback, Kimberly Gregg, a fictionalized version of Stephen Curry’s COO Tiffany Williams (played by Ego Nwodim), puts together an all-time-best birthday party for a dying 12-year-old in 24 hours. That feat might seem impressive to us low-life normal citizens, but within the “Stephiverse” (as Kimberly once calls the metaphorical solar system revolving around Curry’s sun), that is, quite literally, child’s play. Perhaps that explains the behind-the-scenes lore of the show itself: as write...
Jezebel •

The World Is Grim, But Lizz Winstead Insists Abortion Rights Activism Doesn't Have to Be

Often sobering but never sober, No One Asked You—which is titled after a particularly cathartic chant Winstead, Hancock, and co throw back at anti-abortion extremists—spans six years in time, with the bulk of it filmed prior to the 2022 court decision heard ‘round the world. While Winstead, the AAF, and her 2017 multi-comedian roving abortion-stand-up extravaganza (playfully named the Vagical Mystery Tour) serve as the documentary’s core, Leitman spends a lot of the runtime giving a much-needed human face to abortion providers and clinics across the nation—including Mississippi’s Jackson Women’s Health Organization, lovingly known as “Pink House,” which was rocketed to the forefront of the abortion debate as the plaintiff in the notorious Dobbs case...
Paste Magazine •

A Long Talk With clipping. About 'CLPPNG'

clipping. has terrorized my family for about a decade now. When I was in high school, I discovered “Get Up,” a track propelled forward by the constant, grating beeps of an alarm clock—the entire beat is, essentially, an inexplicably successful (yet still immensely annoying) version of Nathan Fielder’s attempt to make the “Blues Smoke Detector” a thing. Naturally, I made the song my personal alarm the second I heard it, and let it be known that I am a heavy sleeper. In other words: As a result of...
Paste Magazine •

Hear Me Out: The Wrong Guy

The 1997 black comedy The Wrong Guy, served up by a veritable smorgasbord of Canadian comedic masterminds (from director David Steinberg to star Dave Foley of Kids in the Hall fame to even a cameo from the Barenaked Ladies as singing doo-wop policemen), is just about the definition of underground these days. Due to a series of unfortunate events mid-production, the film never even got a theatrical release in America, and was instead relegated to wasting away in the straight-to-DVD ether for all...
Paste Magazine •

How Apple TV+ Crafted an Unpredictable Presumed Innocent

After seven long weeks and dozens upon dozens of fan theories piling up online, the first season of Apple TV+’s Presumed Innocent has finally come to a close, and its climactic twist left many viewers reeling. Despite being an adaptation of Scott Turow’s beloved 1987 novel of the same name (and Alan J. Pakula’s similarly beloved 1990 film), David E. Kelley’s new series wasn’t afraid to take risks with the source material—not only was the original story updated to fall more in line with 2024 sens...
Paste Magazine •

Netflix's The Decameron Gorges Itself on Its Own Gleefully Irreverent Feast

A Netflix retelling of Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron was not necessarily on my 2024 bingo card—but in hindsight, it probably should have been. Showrunner Kathleen Jordan’s medieval romp is perfectly of our era, despite taking place in the 14th century. After all, it’s held up by none other than the four horsemen of the current media zeitgeist: the anachronistic historical dramedy (see: Dickinson, My Lady Jane, Bridgerton), the “eat the rich” canon (see: White Lotus, The Menu, Triangle of Sa...
Paste Magazine •

Apple TV+’s Melodramatic Lady in the Lake Sinks Under the Weight of Its Own Heavy-Handedness

On paper, Lady in the Lake sounds like everything you (or, at least, I) could want in a female-centered murder mystery: complicated women with complicated dynamics, political commentary (on gender, race, religion, class, and more), a dollop of surrealism and some experimentation with form, and a story less about the mystery itself and more about how the obsession with it affects those involved. Perhaps that’s why, once the credits for the first episode of the Apple TV+ series began to roll, I fo...
Paste Magazine •

TV Rewind: Bojack Horseman Remains the Best Depiction of Depression in Media Thanks to Diane Nguyen

...Diane Nguyen is not a perfect character: after all, she is a Vietnamese-American woman played by a white actress (which the show has very much gone on record as regretting), and whose ethnicity wasn’t meaningfully addressed until the show’s fifth season. But as precarious as that aspect of her characterization is, Diane herself is crucial to Bojack Horseman’s central project. She’s much more than a friend, love interest, or even foil to Bojack himself; she’s a delayed mirror, a reflection with a lag. We watch Bojack struggle through his long-standing awareness of his own misery at the same time as we watch Diane struggle to acknowledge her own—it’s the same journey, but Bojack embarked on it prior to the show’s start, while Diane gradually falls backward into it as the show progresses. The same journey, but not the same manifestations of it, nor the same destinations...
Paste Magazine •

The Witch Is Back in First Agatha All Along Teaser Trailer

After a long wait and multiple title changes (that were revealed to be, like many things, Agatha’s doing all along), WandaVision fans finally get a taste of the Marvel series’ much-anticipated follow-up, the fittingly-titled Agatha All Along. The spinoff sees Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn, reprising her role in the original show) at the center of her own story after a season spent oh-so-subtly antagonizing WandaVision’s titular couple. In the series finale, Wanda Maximoff (played by Elizabeth Ol...
Paste Magazine •

25 Songs About Horses Ranked By How Much I Think You Should Play Them For Your Horse

Horses are difficult animals. Their teeth are big and they often smell bad. They’re prone to depressive episodes and struggle with self-destructive tendencies, typically hurting everyone around them in the process (as the Netflix documentary series BoJack Horseman made all too apparent). But every horse owner wants one thing, and it’s a love reciprocated by said horse(s). However, they also want another thing, and that’s to share the joy of human music with their equine pals—and more often than...
Paste Magazine •

It Still Stings: Trump-Era Veep’s Bizarre Obsession with Humiliating Amy Brookheimer

...The dynamic nature of Veep’s characters allowed each uppercut to sink into flesh and leave a tangible bruise in its wake. By allowing its characters nuance and humanity—by turning them into far more than one-dimensional punching bags—Veep strategically provided itself with a seemingly bottomless wellspring of flaws to jeer at before ever coming up dry and needing to resort to cracks about something base (like gender) for lack of anything better. That is, at least, until David Mandel and his American team took over the reins from Veep’s British creators after Season 4...
Paste Magazine •

Hear Me Out: National Treasure

Camp is a sensibility that is notoriously hard to put into words—just look at the vast array of outfits worn at the 2019 camp-themed Met Gala, or (more helpfully) “Notes on ‘Camp,'” Susan Sontag’s listicle-style essay that requires more than 50 entries to lay down the bare foundation for what may or may not be considered camp. What makes something camp? Its seriousness, its sincerity, its lack thereof? Difficult to say. As a result, the campiness of any given object, person or media is often sub...
Paste Magazine •

The MVP: Bob Odenkirk Did the Impossible in Better Call Saul, and Years of Ridiculous Snubs Can't Change That

There are award show snubs, and then there is whatever the hell happened to Better Call Saul. Despite being widely considered one of the best shows in recent memory, the Breaking Bad prequel ended its six-season run without a single Emmy to its name. The show racked up a whopping 53 nominations over the years, with this past January’s 75th Emmy Awards marking the show’s very last chance to break their inexplicable curse. But when the dust settled, Better Call Saul officially walked away with nothing to show for their 63 phenomenal episodes but the world’s worst consolation prize: the new record for most Emmy losses in television history. As many (myself included) have already opined, it’s hard to sleep at night knowing Rhea Seehorn will never receive the recognition she deserves for the incomparable depth she brought to Kim Wexler. But even that crime against humanity pales in comparison (and believe me, that is saying something) to the fact that Bob Odenkirk’s turn as Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman did not receive a single award...
Paste Magazine •

Apple TV+ Teases New Shows, New Seasons, and Gives Us Our First Look at Severance's Return After That Two-Year Hiatus

“Welcome back,” Severance actor Tramell Tillman says through floor manager Milchick’s signature tight grin, at once warmly disarming and vaguely ominous. “Been a minute.”That it has. It’s been over two years since Apple TV+’s Severance last hit the small screen, and fans and critics alike (myself very much included) have been impatiently waiting for news of the strike-delayed second season. Thankfully, it does not seem we’ll have to wait too much longer; we finally received our first new glimpse...
Columbia Political Review •

Israel-Loving, Jew-Hating: How the Zionist Far Right is Redefining Antisemitism — Columbia Political Review

Support for Israel does not an anti-antisemite make—but as the conflation between antisemitism and anti-Zionism veers more and more into the realm of accepted truisms, legitimate indicators of anti-Jew vitriol are increasingly ignored in favor of blindly trusting anyone who poses in front of the Israeli flag. There is a more dangerous threat at hand than even the false equivalence between antisemitism and anti-Zionism: the threat that the definition of the latter will entirely supplant that of the former. Considering Jewish Zionists’ widespread turn towards Republican organizations after feeling spurned by the anti-Israel sentiment of the progressive left, this grim future may already be upon us—and there’s nothing the American Right wants more than to see it through...
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