MALONEMAIL NO. 5: New Year, New Hustles

In the time since we last newslettered together, another season of Sherlock came and went! This is unacceptable on multiple levels!

Wow, so very sorry about the lateness on this most recent of MalonE-Mails! In my defense, January is the worst. I have been spending roughly 50-75% of my time nesting: buying fleece blankets, memory-foam mattress pads, and an ungodly number of long-sleeved T-shirts and circle-scarves; binge-watching Scandal and New Girl (which was not as annoying as I thought it was going to be!); and just generally staving off what is the coldest, most annoying time of year. The other 25-50% of the time, though, I've been working!

Here's what I've been writing:

I wrote this obnoxiously long feature about the closing of Brooklyn DIY venue 285 Kent for Pitchfork. My first longreads thing for the 'fork; very excited about it!

For the Village Voice's annual Pazz & Jop issue (where music critics vote on the best music of the year), I was excited to write an essay about Beyoncé and the concept of celebrity truth.

For WIRED, I wrote about how motion graphics artists find the fake coding they put in movies like The Social Network and Iron Man, and how one programmer on Tumblr has been calling out the laziest designers in the game.

Also for WIRED, we as a team chose the 15 most essential Parks and Recreation episodes in honor of the show's 100th episode.

For FastCoExist, Fast Company's innovations site, I wrote about the San Francisco's sewers department and its poop-joke-heavy public awareness campaign. (I call this "travel writing," since the story came out of my trip to the Bay area in November.)

Here's what I've been reading:

If you haven't gotten around to it yet, do not give up: Amanda Hess' piece about the online harassment of women for Pacific Standard is absolutely required reading.

Same goes for Cord Jefferson's piece at Gawker about 2013, the "year of racial amnesia."

Luke O'Neil's Pazz and Jop essay about the emo revival (or "revival"?) is a really nuanced, intelligent piece about a subject near and dear to my heart. I love that it exists.

I was kind of fascinated by this essay in today's Times Sunday Review about wealth addiction.

Molly Lambert's piece at Grantland about Her is some stunning work. A friend told me that even though it's his favorite movie of the year, he still was awed by this piece of superb criticism.

This Times thing about how we all will get cancer eventually was a cheerful read.

Here's the stuff I've been listening to:

Still on that Beyoncé kick. I wonder when people are going to start telling me to shut up about this album.

Also really enjoying forthcoming releases (LOOK HOW COOL I AM) by the Coathangers, Against Me!, St. Vincent, and Ava Luna.

And Perfume Genius' Put Your Back N 2 It and the All Dogs 7" continue to give me life.

That's all for this week, kids! I'll be back sooner than you could possibly imagine. Exciting, isn't it?

xoxo

Devon

P.S. (Parting Shot):

I recently made my podcast debut! Of course, it was on none other than Awesomed by Comics, the comics podcast by the inimitable duo Evie Nagy and Aaron McQuade. I contribute the voice of their kid May...which is funny because I've been pretending to be their kid for like three years anyway.