Bram E. Gieben, the host of the Strange Exiles podcast and newsletter and author of The Darkest Timeline (Revol Press, 2024), and I had an hour-long discussion that covers most of my writing, from zines and magazines to blogs and books, and many of my influences along the way. Here’s a bit from Bram’s introduction:…
I wrote a piece about skateboarding for the Summer/Fall 2024 issue of the Henry Ford Magazine. “Mining Affordances” explores the way that riding a skateboard reshapes one’s relationship with the world, the environment, and oneself. Many thanks to Kristen Gallerneaux for inviting me to do this piece, as well as Jennifer LaForce, Julie Friedman, and…
Chase Griffin recently did an interview with me for Metapsychosis, a journal of consciousness, literature, and art. Chase is the author of What’s on the Menu? (Long Day Press, 2020), the forthcoming Peter Zoidoid & the Commonplace (Corona\Samizdat), as well as co-author (with Christina Quay) of How to Play a Necromancer’s Theremin (Maudlin House, 2023), about the latter of which I wrote, “How do you like…
I recently got an email celebrating the 21st anniversary of my long-abandoned LiveJournal account. I looked back at my six entries from 2002 and found the seeds of a book: my earliest research in media theory, a note on Brian Eno’s edge culture, the claustrophobia I felt from working on computer screens. That was supposed to…
In November 1993, a few months after I first moved to Seattle, I went to see Washington, DC’s Tsunami at the late, legendary RKCNDY. It was a magical time in a magical place, and I was marveling as the names on record sleeves and magazine pages emerged in the flesh. At the merch table, I met Fontaine…
I’ve been riding bicycles—what the pataphysician, playwright, and avid cyclist Alfred Jarry called “That Which Rolls”—almost as long as I’ve been walking. I haven’t had a car since 1998, so bicycles have been my primary mode of transportation as an adult. Just after I built a new Big-Boy Bike a few years ago, a young friend asked…
Skateboard and BMX zines defined my formative years. Those handmade, photocopied publications were our network of news, stories, interviews, events, art, and pictures. It’s very difficult to describe how an outmoded phenomena like that worked once such epochal technological change, one that uproots and supplants its cultural practices (i.e., the internet), has occurred. FREESTYLIN’ Magazine’s…
After looking back at the unified election map from 1984 and griping about advertising again, I arrived this week on their intersection: Apple’s 1984 Super Bowl commercial introducing the Macintosh. It launched not only the home-computer revolution but also the Super Bowl advertising frenzy and phenomenon. The commercial burned itself right into my brain and everyone else’s who…
Growing up watching cartoons and slapstick comedies made it seem like rare one-off events like getting stuck in quicksand, slipping on banana peels, and anvils falling from the sky were persistent problems in the world. Not only that, but primetime dramas made it seem like adults could get arrested for anything, and they might never…
A new year typically brings renewal and hope. I will admit to struggling to find it in these first couple of weeks of 2024. There are too many things we need to get out from under first. Satisficing, the resigning oneself to the first workable option as sufficient (the word itself a workable but unwieldy portmanteau…
