Haven’t updated the site in a while, and since I decided to consolidate my two websites into one, I’m going to start posting more blog posts here.
To wrap up 2017, I wanted to highlight some of my favorite writing I did this year. In particular, I did a fair amount of pop-culture writing under my online pseudonym, and I’m pretty proud of how it turned out.
First, under my real name: I’ve been writing a weekly New Orleans Saints column for Louisiana journalism startup the Bayou Brief this season. You can find the complete archive of those columns by clicking here.
I want to highlight my two favorite columns of the year, which I wrote back-to-back. The first was a look at the team, after their victory over the Buffalo Bills, in which I waxed philosophical about the team’s success: A dominant road win proves the Saints have something special
The second comes from the week after, where I attended a Saints game in person and watched a comeback for the ages, a really incredible experience: Drew Brees finds his old magic just when the Saints need it most
In my alternate life– which consists of a lot of writing about pop culture, especially television, and occasionally left-wing political rants– I got to write a few series of columns I was really happy about, particularly in television discussion.
I reviewed and recapped a few shows for AV Club community spinoff The Avocado; my favorite ongoing series of reviews were for two of my favorite series this season; Detroiters and Vice Principals. I found most of the recaps on the latter largely insufficient, and nobody was writing about the former. Of all those individual reviews, my single favorite to write was the review of the Vice Principals finale, “The Reunion of the Wizard and the Warrior.”
For The Solute, a community site spun off The Dissolve (and which contained some overlap in membership, as The Dissolve was staffed with a number of former AV Club film writers), I wrote a four-part, 9,000 word list of my 30 favorite TV shows of the year. I primarily watch comedy, so unlike most lists, this one is dominated by it; that said, there’s been a lot of good television comedy made in the last year, so if you want a primer on it, you could do worse. Here, in order: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.
One of those top 30 shows, F Is For Family, was an unheralded gem when it first was released in December 2015; as part of a season 2 preview, I wrote a long review of season 1 and discussion of some of the themes of the show (and of Bill Burr’s broader work) for the same site. Come And Get Your Love: F IS FOR FAMILY and the value of empathy
As part of a monthly series looking back at various years in pop culture, for November’s theme of 1978 I decided to write about one of my favorite albums and one of my favorite misunderstood musicians, Van Halen’s self-titled debut and David Lee Roth’s importance to the band. Year of the Month: Van Halen, VAN HALEN, Or: Stupid Rock Done Smart
Anyhow, these were very much labors of love and inspiration, and that’s what makes them my favorite pieces I wrote this year.