relevant to @marchxness.bsky.social
No rest for the dismal! Round 2 games are tipped off! We have Celine vs REM, Gill vs Loeb, Belle vs Hersh, and Sade vs No Doubt on today's slate. Read, listen, vote by 9am AZ time 3/12 at marchxness.com (and get in your votes on today's games in the next 83')
The Literary World's Prestigious Taco Bell Quarterly has surpassed 24,000 followers in the sky. I can't even use the Paris Review over here as my villain because I'm crushing them. We are about to surpass Lit Hub. Taco Bell is your Literary Hub now.
&: "If you want to make art, then you are interested in the human spirit, not just your own, but other people’s... Doing a review or a podcast or a TikTok video about a book you want to talk about is not cynical, but a natural offshoot of your affection for literature and the humans who create it."
Spoiled getting two @kathleenmrooney.bsky.social essays back-to-back--yesterday's Patty (not)Loveless @marchxness.bsky.social essay and today's on sincere, meaningful, Carnegie-energy critique: "As I tell my students, art is the transmission of the human spirit. Literature is made by human beings."
Dang. I have now read all 64 essays for this year's @marchxness.bsky.social tournament for the saddest song of the 90s & I am sad & impressed in the most excellent way & grateful that this annual event gives us some of the best writing, reading, & community available on this godforsaken internet.
MARCH SADNESS 90S EDITION DAY 8 HALFTIME SCORES
Soul Asylum 80, Patty Loveless 70
Blink-182 88, Nick Cave 67
GnR 111, Kershaw 54
Mariah 52, Crash Test Dummies 43
Last day of the first round games finishes up at 9am AZ time 3/11 at marchxness.com
"anything where you can hear the artist breathe is sad. Like Glenn Gould, I said. Nora said, Glenn was a mumbler..."
Extremely neat how @lateration.bsky.social's @marchxness.bsky.social essay on Nick Cave's "Nobody's Baby Now" is only very glancingly about that song:
marchxness.com#/1stround-bl...
My essay on all of the SERIOUS sadness bound up in Mariah Carey’s “Without You,” now live! Vote vote!
Special thanks to the #lambs who put together a truly impressive magazine archive (covers included w. essay!)
😂
Come for the Patty Loveless, stay for the Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Larry Brown!
Read my @marchxness.bsky.social essay on "You Don't Even Know Who I Am" and then vote for it (if you agree with me that it really is the saddest):
marchxness.com#/1stround-so...
Oh, this essay from @emryal91.bsky.social: "If I’m too messy to die, then I have to clean, and if I’ve got it in me to clean, I don’t want to die anymore. If I think about it for too long I start to feel like a Roomba who sometimes sits at the charging deck for an inappropriate amount of time."
the AIM away message was where humans could be the most honest
"Dang. The problem is not what we presumed."
having grown up on Patty Loveless, I knew I was going to be here for @kathleenmrooney.bsky.social's @marchxness.bsky.social essay (though I didn't expect it to be quite so relatable!)
marchxness.com/1stround-sou...
Me, reading about the impact of the Soul Asylum video in an innocent sad song contest
Didn’t expect a Shakespearean take on Guns ‘n’ Roses, but that’s @marchxness.bsky.social for you.
“Hamlet a tortured rock star, Axl a prince wrestling with his demons. Both of them making their problems everyone’s.”
@erinkeane.bsky.social
marchxness.com#/1stround-gn...
Never apologize for writing about hamlet (somehow this relates to chalamet firing at opera and ballet) and never apologize for writing anything at all! This is so good
If you harbor dark suspicions about the Child & the Family as overloaded symbols exerting malign coercive force, have I got a couple of @marchxness.bsky.social essays for YOU!
lol Martin this caption!!!
need it
Ryan Murphy fatigue should be recognized by WHO
My son’s essay about why he doesn’t want to be on a farm.
I’m doing one in July!!! So excited. Also hi Aaron! Good to “see” you here
I think accidentally unfollowed you last night when I was trying to figure out how to tag you in a post on Bluesky 😂🫠 I LOVED your essay
Hootie Nelly mashup now
Right? It’s astonishing
I agree! Moving there seems like the most appealing death wish. I cried when I left lol
My hand was over my mouth during that entire segment with the geography teacher and her silver blue spectacles. I feel like she’d totally get what you meant
I got to visit LA for the first time last year and was transfixed by the gritty-glam. I felt like… this is real American history. Your portrait of the West Hollywood girls girls girls club and the death of the Marlboro Man is aesthetic malaise!
