January 2026

I like to think I’ve shaped my FOMO into a generally healthy force for good over the years, at least as regards my commitment to the arts, but it really let me down on this occasion, when it took me more than two months to accidentally discover this new album from an old favorite. Still, I’ll cut myself some slack on this one, as it was easy to lose track of Jesse Sykes in the … See more →

Jason Santa Maria’s new independent design practice has a great name and a great logo, befitting the quality and character of his work. And the site, an appropriately simple introduction, sports a fresh, fun, procedurally-generated color scheme every time it loads. Don’t miss his blog post with the backstory!

That the majority of the soulless thugs prowling the streets in this film are in their 30s and 40s initially took me out of it a bit, but that notable embellishment (along with at least one insanely cold-blooded murder) ultimately puts it far enough over the top to qualify as pure pulp bliss, as opposed to the ickier right-wing fever dream of Death Wish.

Left to its own devices, capitalism decides if people deserve what they need, and a fundamental American disagreement is whether that’s a bug or a feature.

Donald James Parker has written no fewer than 18 evangelical Christian feature films since 2013, and he starred in most of them as well, including Gramps Goes to College. They say you should write about what you know, and Parker’s main character in this film—a retired computer programmer who played tennis as an undergrad and moves from South Dakota to Tennessee—is pulled directly from Parker’s own bio. Conspicuously fictional is the part where he goes… See more →

Before vector art, high-DPI raster image processing, and retina screens took over the world, if someone wanted to draw very fine and precise lines, they relied upon steady hands, cork-backed metal rulers, French curves, and a set of expensive technical pens. The Rapidograph pens I used in college could be a headache to maintain—don’t let that ink dry in the nib!—but the results were worth it: pull one of those pens across a fresh sheet… See more →

I got a speeding ticket the other day, my first in probably more than 25 years. After a decade and a half of not owning a car, L and I reluctantly accepted a hand-me-down Hyundai Tucson a couple years ago so we could be more nimble for the sake of our aging parents. Not coincidentally, I’ve been driving it a lot lately, making regular visits to the memory-care residence my mom now calls home, or… See more →