MalonE-Mail No. 19: Standing on the Sun (Help)
Hello, it's so good to type at you all again! Since we last spoke, it has become October, then November — namely "fall," or what used to be my favorite season before global warming hit Los Angeles. Still, I had the good fortune of visiting New York last month (on assignment, hoo boy!), and we've had a couple of 55-degree nights in the past week, so at the very least, I've been able to drink a couple hot cups of coffee without sweating all over everything. I think Oscar appreciates the chill too – it means he gets to have actual fur and not a barely-there lambswool coating.
What I wrote:
Okay, so...there's been a lot. Like, I think I have no choice but to up the frequency of MalonE-Mail after this, because this month's body count is just bananas. Sorry in advance.
Most importantly/nervewrackingly, I wrote this dystopian short story for Motherboard. The stellar illustrator behind the artwork (above) is Koren Shadmi.
Relatedly, I yelled about utopianism and the newly announced Star Trek series and explored the history & present of NASA's budget issues for Vice. Hung out in a graveyard (okay, fine, Hollywood Forever Cemetery) with Savages and asked a bunch of experts about the worst Hollywood tech myths for Vulture. (I'm also still recapping Heroes Reborn, which is super silly, and Minority Report, which is super doomed, for Vulture as well.) I profiled 20-year-old YouTube star and soon-to-be-mega-popstar Troye Sivan for Out magazine. And I wrote up a quick post about the jobs with the best work-life balance (according to Glassdoor, that is) for Mashable. Also this tweet, pretty proud of that one.
What I read:
Tauriq Moosa on Mad Max and disability. There's a murder house in Los Feliz. The decay of Twitter and the dubious ethics of mining it for stories. FINALLY, we've been given a history of the Space Jam website, may it never die. Toward a Theory of Fall Fuckability is one of the wisest pieces of internet I've ever read. Magical genius Alana Massey on the ethics of sending people to Mars. Jozen Cummings on the puzzling choice to have white people write about blackness. His Dark Materials author Philip Pullman badmouthing J.R.R. Tolkein. My friend Graeme McMillan interviewed Marjorie Liu, the creator of a brand-new, gorgeous comic series that explores race and feminism and trauma through the tale of a monster girl (!). Guess what? Scientists can now predict intelligence based on brain activity. THE FUTURE IS NOW. AND TERRIFYING.
What I listened to:
The new Majical Cloudz record Are You Alone? is glorious, as is Grimes' eclectic, longggg-awaited new one, Art Angels. The video for "Flesh Without Blood," its first single, is...well, very Grimes:
What I watched:
The two best new shows on TV right now are Quantico and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. You may think I've lost my mind, considering that the former is a totally batshit Shonda Rhimes knockoff about impossibly attractive FBI trainees and the latter is a musical TV show with a really unfortunate(ly misogynistic) title. But I swear to you: try 'em. I cannot get enough.
Relatedly, You're the Worst on FXX is a very good show, but maybe hold off if you're going through a thing right now. Especially if you're a white girl living in Silverlake with depression who goes to Stories Books and Cafe and Fix Coffee a lot. Let's just say things start hitting a little too close to home.
P.S. (Parting Shot):
I started donating to Patreons, which feels like putting my money where my mouth is, in a good way. Several are friends – Jay Rachel Edidin's amazing X-Men podcast (which I've recommended in this newsletter before) and Susie Cagle's super-smart updates on freelance journalism and #thestateofmedia – but one is a dude who writes the dorkiest (and my favorite) Twitter trifecta, which you should be following on Twitter right now: @RikerGoogling, @WorfEmail & @PicardTips. I mean, this is worth $1 a month, right?