Derek Kompare

This jibes. I’ve often thought that boomers’ greatest fear is to be ignored, Xers’ is to not be “cool,” and millennials’ is to be wrong. Variations on the same general fear of insignificance, but important variations.

Momoko, by Momoko Gill 11 track album

Picked up a few shiny new 2026 bangers on this month’s Bandcamp Friday, but this solo debut from Momoko Gill is the standout. Looking forward to the rest of the tracks when they drop next Friday.

momokogill.bandcamp.com/album/momoko

Bryan Cranston, though only if he does a musical number.

Happy antepenultimate #gally1 eve, and all the libation and joy that entails, to all assembling at the LAX Marriott tonight. You've all earned it.

Hope to see y'all in 2028. 🥂

It's not as much the obsequiousness and excuses of the power-adjacent to the crimes of the powerful that shocks and disappoints. It's our jaded acceptance of our cultural and social paralysis that prevents us from demanding and expecting consequences. Nothing will change until that changes.

Those alt-weekly metro reporters (and similar muckraking bloggers) are still the beating heart of local journalism, if you're lucky enough to have 'em.

The techlords' grand enshittification project continues apace, I see.

How the 600-Channel Strategy is Killing FAST Profitability For the last three years, the FAST playbook has been defined by a single metric: Volume. A strategic rethink is in order.

Great analysis on the limits of ad revenue and the long tail on FASTs, as virtually unwatched "zombie channels" drag platforms down. Bad news for the "everything will stream" thesis.
fastmaster.substack.com/p/how-the-60...

It'll all flow downstream from whomever the next Disney CEO is, I would imagine. Almost certainly not Kimmel, though.

Once real spring arrives, locals should do a pop-up outdoor gallery next to the massage place, and invite the actors.

Seems to me like a great opportunity to contextualize the history of attention in all forms (including entertainment, education, and subject formation).

“There was this guy this morning … but it turns out he’s a criminal.”

👏👏👏

A critical lesson every media exec (and fan) should have learned over the past decade is that not every beloved IP generates an endless gravy train of $. Sometimes there's a real ceiling, and it's not actually bigger on the inside.

Tell me your pet’s name with a gif.

A great piece linking together the threads of 2020s dissent that propel these shows and these characters.

Yeah. I guess they'll roll out a lifetime achievement award for him circa 2040?

Adding it to the top of the annual list of Best Films That Got Shut Out of the Oscars.

Did No Other Choice not hit the theaters in LA? 🤔

The film is also a top 5 pick for the cinema of 21st century capitalism.

Adding No Other Choice to my hypothetical cinema of extractions syllabus.

Bonus!: it also features an actual non-metaphorical (and tbf also metaphorical) “extraction.”

Aww… 🥰

The entirety of American broadcast news has apparently been a slow pivot all the way back to Camel News Caravan.

As long as it's not all closed when my wife and I visit at the end of February! Our last Disneyland trip was in 2015, when the Galaxy's Edge construction was just getting started.

Sure! Sounds intriguing, and up my alley. DM me for my email address.

Cancelling my Evernote account due to their hard (and not cheap) push into AI puffery. 👋

But I found out if you start cancelling, it will offer you 40% off an annual renewal. Capitalism, man. 🤷‍♂️

Anyway. Still cancelling. 👋

In between other, more enjoyable things on my birthday, I'm migrating a dozen years of notes from Evernote to the much-leaner (and more conscientious, and much, much cheaper) Joplin.

If I'm quiet here lately, it's because I'm quiet EVERYWHERE. I haven't been on FB since 2017, never done the Gram or the Tok, and quit the Old Place in 2022. I'm OK; just decided to take a few more steps away from The Scroll.

So: very sporadic posting, and no reposting.

See you when I see you! 👋

Pretty sure I won't be on here later tonight, so happy 2026 to all (including those of us still in 2025)! Whatever "it" is for you, I hope it happens this year.

Spending a couple days finally cataloguing DVDs, Blu-Rays, and 4Ks. We forget how the 2000s were the peak for media packaging and bonus features. A lovely and baroque era which we'll never see again, except on the esoteric margins. One of the biggest aesthetic losses of our surrender to streaming.

SMU Jones Film The G. William Jones Film & Video Collection, part of the SMU Libraries at Southern Methodist University, est. 1970. Curators Jeremy Spracklen & Scott Martin

Jeremy and Scott are fantastic and super-cool archivists and projectionists. They also run a YouTube channel to surface rights-approved highlights from the collection.

youtube.com/@smujonesfil...