SCRAPS!

There is no need to build up to this statement. Kendrick Lamar is one of the most celebrated hip-hop artists of his generation, and I share that general enthusiasm. That doesn’t necessarily mean I listen to him the most or devoutly await every release. It’s just, having lived through the 2010s, I saw the power of rap music to stand for something greater… and a large reason was him. The candid artistry was beautiful, and I think it only continues to grow in ways that propel the genre forward and promise something even more interesting on the horizon. In an era where music is at risk of disposability, picking up a Lamar album is being reminded of what a full front-to-back experience can give you. The reason I am writing this stems from my own contradictions surrounding his music that, in fact, don’t have that much to do with him in the first place. To provide a parallel circumstance, people often resent Zack Snyder films because of the audience he attracts, who tend to target those who d...

With the ball now firmly dropped into 2026, it’s time to get things up and running. Despite the infrequency of this column, I still feel the need to provide regular updates where I can. To put it simply, New Year’s Eve turned out to be a pretty good day overall. Along with having Chinese food, I got to watch Duck Soup for the umpteenth time as well as celebrate the countdown from various cities throughout the U.S.A. Most of them had big, elaborate shows, but then you’d get to places like Phoenix, Arizona, and you began to understand the constraints of living in a less populated region of the country. It probably looked great to people in the area, but it was also isolated, mostly taking place over the desert, which is far from the pageantry everyone else had. I also got to hear a variety of (mostly) classic rock bands play. I wouldn’t say I was terribly into most of them, though the presence of Cheap Trick reminded me how consistent their work is. My parents used to play the greatest h...

For the last time in 2025, I thought that I would hop on here and give a quick update on where life has been. In general, December has been a chaotic month where it’s been difficult to sit down and do this type of writing justice. Part of it is scheduling conflicts, but it’s also that I’ve dedicated a lot of free time to backlogging my annual entries for my Snapshot series. What I’ve found is that I’m generally overzealous and may write more than I should in those essays, but I need to get them out. There must be some way to convey my feelings on the year that will be there for research purposes further down the line. Will they be my best writing? I hope so, but I’m nervous about a handful of entries. However, they capture where I was at in 2025, and that’s what I feel is more important.  To start breaking down what’s been going down since I last updated, I will say that this has been both a hectic month but also a fun one. I got to see Ben Platt at his residency at The Ahmanson Th...

Over the past few nights, my attention has turned to one news story. Among the endless array of controversies and disasters, something which has caused me to question the direction America is going in regards a university essay that went viral for receiving a 0%.  From afar, the situation sounds like the familiar half-hearted attempt to get credit. In my lifetime, there have been papers from classes I’ve been in that reek of last-minute attempts to cheat the system. I have written some of those papers, and, when I have, willingly accepted the ‘F’ despite initial animosity towards the teacher and the belief that the whole system was out of order. There is nothing like being a frustrating student, though that’s also something you tend to feel when you’re in middle school and not at the university level. By that point, you’re there for personal reasons taking classes that appeal to some larger interests in your life. I get some are probably forced to take courses they don’t want for t...

Once again, the updates feel few and far between in this column. While I recognize that I came out of the gate swinging initially, the past few months have been met with more of mixed results. I apologize and cannot guarantee that this will change anytime soon. However, I do think there’s still some part of me that’s self-conscious about publishing any significant writing when there isn’t much to say. For whatever reason, I’ve felt that way about November and, whatever fodder I had lined up for different essays on here, I lumped into How I Live Now over on The Memory Tourist. It’s the unfortunate irony of feeling like it’s the final encapsulation of ideas that I haven’t covered elsewhere. Something to consider at the moment is that I am working on my final entries for 2025, specifically what I have designated, “The Snapshot Series.” For the past few years, I’ve chosen different topics to explore at length by mixing personal anecdotes with what I felt they symbolically represented to me...

For five years now, there hasn’t been a film that’s loomed over my head quite like Pieces of a Woman . Please don’t read that statement as endorsement or condemnation. What it means to me is something more sinister, more a reflection of failure on my behalf to achieve the most basic of utilities. Again, don’t look too deep into the film, because that’s not where the answer is. You won’t find the puzzle piece that makes everything to follow make sense. All you have to know for now is that Pieces of a Woman is single-handedly responsible for ending my career as a film critic. Let me back up for a minute. This isn’t a story of being blacklisted by anybody. Everything that happened was by my own hand in the privacy of my own house. However, it’s still painful to think of early 2021 and see Pieces of a Woman continually face me down during awards season, one that I felt shouldn’t have existed at all, and let me know that everyone else could assemble a couple hundred words stating whether ...