You'd have to stop the world just to stop the feeling

At least half of Midwest Princess is solidly terrific; "Good Luck, Babe!" is the single of the year and catchiest Kate Bush song since Hounds of Love; the new album probably will be really fucking good; her non-endorsement is total bullshit, in the first place because non-politician celebrities shouldn't be expected or compelled to issue formal electoral endorsements but more noxiously because it came bundled in a both-sides-ist false equivalency that in 2024 means normalizing The Purge and state persecution of, inter alias, the non-heteronormative communities of which she's ostensibly a part and unequivocally a deeply indebted beneficiary; angsty and ambivalent about fame is fine, and of its own venerable tradition; mental health is serious and important; conceding that actually you don't really know all that much about politics (even in your own country and still less on the other damn side of the world) because you're just so busy right now with so many different things is perfectly fair and valid; vaguely lumping together a normal, competent progressive candidate and an amoral felon who incited an insurrection is indefensible; (Kate Bush: also much better at music than at saying stuff about politics, viz. not-saying-stuff-but-still-ultimately-saying-stuff-by-way-of-awkwardly-opting-out); Chappell Roan is the Chappell Roan 2024 deserves; Bowen Yang as Moo Deng the cranky baby hippopotamus is the Chappell Roan Chappell Roan deserves. 

Hiding in doubt 'til you brought me out of my chrysalis 

One of the best shows I've seen in years –– a generational-talent-level singer-songwriter and phenomenal live performer (virtues that don't necessarily or automatically align) at the peak of her powers. 

I only wish she had played "Heaven Is" and, admittedly more improbably, "I Remember Everything," which she elevated to an all-time-great downer duet. But an amazing concert, in any case, with covers of SZA and Chappell Roan aptly reflective of a genuinely ecumenical ethos that has deepened and expanded outwards from her early days singing about "when the straight and narrow gets a little too straight" at the Grand Ole Opry. Yet where approximate coeval Taylor Swift has mostly outgrown her early Nashville aesthetic, with many fans who can't even directly remember their pop heroine's country-starlet origins, Musgraves has grown within while willfully redefining the formal as well as cultural parameters of country music. They're two of our very best, following their respective arrows wherever they happen to point. 

 *sigh*

...Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

(I'm normally not one to post or invoke biblical quotations, but this is a really useful adage, no theologizing necessary. Really good movie too, if you've got the stomach for it and can stand Vincent Gallo...)

Always on the Run 

Blink Twice, Twice 

Fly Me to the Moon Delightfully uncynical and good-natured, and more than superficially "retro": a breezy escape hatch from a coarsened culture painfully contorted in on itself. In its peppy hopefulness and timely skewering of conspiracy-thinking FMTTM isn't just a glossy, fast-relief antidote to These Days. It's also an invitation to a still-viable alternative to extremist acrimony and cultural Ouroboroism that's not that far back in America's rearview mirror. (Heck, they should've screened it at the DNC!)

Blink Twice Pitched somewhere between a season-highlight Black Mirror episode and a solid conceptual/philosophical sequel to Get Out, it's over-stuffed both with stylistic flourishes and plot devices––some of which really work, some of which kinda-sorta work, some of which appear (while watching or else reflected back on) basically pointless. Having a career-year, Channing Tatum's performance is a radically counter-type possible career-best. Decidedly not so for Haley Joel Osment... Between this and Hit Man, Adria Arjorna is the revelation of the year, full stop.

Longlegs Evidently Donald Trump isn't the only one who has been thinking of late about Hannibal Lecter.

Strange Darling Some very nifty and clever parts, if finally less than the sum of them.