Ahead on Differential

This is the Ahead on Differential Daily Dispatch, issue #4.

I.

I’m on an 11-game losing skid at Bagel Club, an informal get-together of Scrabble players held at a bagel shop downtown. I started this event in part because my new job keeps me from attending the city’s flagship Scrabble club, and I’m in sore need of over-the-board practice. This losing streak is really testing my faith in my abilities. It doesn’t matter that I see and play JANITORS or JAUNDICE or NICENESS. It doesn’t matter that if I were to play those 11 games over again there’s no way I’d go 0-11. All that matters is that this sample size, however small, is my reality. The game too often feels like it’s something that’s happening to me and not something that I have any control over, even though I have control over some of it. I hope the streak comes to and end, but it’s the hope that kills you.

II.

The Mount Rushmore of Pittsburgh is as follows: George Romero, Roberto Clemente, Girl Talk, Fred Rogers (also shout out to my friend and honorary Yinzer Chris Mello, go Knicks). I can’t think of another person in the history of television with a higher approval rating than Fred Rogers. A titan of children’s programming, a champion of public broadcasting, a Peabody Award winner, and a beacon of hope and calm when the world feels like it’s perpetually on fire. So it seems fitting that now, amid a sea of AI slop and prank videos and whatever atrocity MrBeast is up to at the moment, that Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood finally launches its official YouTube channel. Turn on, slow down, and chill out to one of these proto-How It’s Made segments.

III.

Let’s try some diarism:

Two hydrophobic blankets and a jug of enzyme neutralizer. Soak the rug, the fitted sheets, all of it, with the stuff. My girl can’t stand it. She has had enough of worrying if something smells like piss or not. It’s everywhere. Who lives like this? I spend a hundred bucks on Feliway, some supplements to chase the nerves away. I might not get these cats to best friends, just as long as this pissing contest ends.

IV.

You know how it is sometimes: you’re reading about the Clash’s 1985 busking tour of the UK, entertaining delusions that you and your poetry buddies could still pile into a rented Toyota RAV4 and rock the coffeehouses and used book stores of the Windsor–Québec corridor. You notice that the Clash’s original drummer Terry Chimes, played on the first album from 1977, returned to the fold in the early 80s, only to leave again for drug reasons before the busking tour. You keep reading Chimes’ Wikipedia page and learn he went straight from the Clash to Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers, which must’ve done wonders for his drug problems. You then think, “I’ve definitely heard of Johnny Thunders, I wonder what this album of theirs sounds like.” You read a little further and learn that the first pressing of their 1977 debut album—their only album, in fact—had such a shitty mix that there’s been a cottage industry of remix attempts over the last five decades. The world simply needs to know how good these guys were. You pull up the cleanest, crispest version of L.A.M.F. by the Heartbreakers that you can find, hit play, and conclude that it fucking rocks. It’s sleazy and glammy and catchy as shit; it sounds way more like prime Stones than the Sex Pistols. You now have a new contender for your favourite album of 1977, which is already chock full of classics. What a wonderful problem to have.

#dd

This is the Ahead on Differential Daily Dispatch, issue #3.

I.

I love going to the mall. Any mall. Even shitty ones. There’s a dying mall a short walk from my home. Passing through its doors is like stepping into a portal back to 1994. You can buy Turkish rugs in bulk there if you so desire. If deadstock Levi’s and dollar store candy is more your speed, brother, you’re in luck. There’s a maze of corridors in the rear or the building that houses various offices, clinics, and practices. Each hallway has a street name, but the address numbers ascend and descend willy-nilly, so they’re not much help in terms of navigation. Imagine the Backrooms with nurses and lawyers instead of monsters and apparitions and you’re getting close. There’s a bar on the premises but I shudder to think who drinks there.

II.

Here’s my dirty little secret: everything I write on this blog can, in some way, shape, or form, be traced back to two people: Jason Kottke and Austin Kleon. I’m not saying that I jack material wholesale from these fellas; that would be uncool. What I am trying to jack is their spirit of curiosity and curation. Most of the cool shit I bump into is through those two guys, and this blog is my small way of returning the favour. Kleon talks about a sending a “daily dispatch” in his book Show Your Work. This very series, this flurry of activity, was spurred by an anecdote from David Bayles and Ted Orland’s Art & Fear, which Kleon included in his new book, Don’t Call It Art. The story contrasts two groups of ceramics students, one graded on the quantity of their output, and the other on the quality. This series is just me trying to generate a bunch of pots.

III.

I had a snippet of a Pheobe Bridgers tune stuck in my head wile taking a shower. That’s all it takes to start writing: some image or some cluster of words will stay lodged in your brain, and you develop more images and clusters of words from there. It’s very nonlinear in that you rarely ever start at the beginning or the end; the first thing that comes to you is the middle. Anyways, the working title for this thing is “An Interactive 3D Hologram of Sandra Hüller:”

Computer, wake up and listen to me: run sandrah.exe

I’ve had this dream before I’m at the movies being lulled to sleep by screen after screen of logos for European production companies

then Sandra Hüller, illuminated by the key light of the gods, says  “I can’t help you  ‘cause I don’t know you  and anything I say  is something you’re already thinking anyway”

IV.

Part of the magic of browsing used CDs is that you can’t set off with a plan. Since the stock is always changing, you never know what’s going to be available for purchase (except for that stack of like 14 copies of Achtung Baby that never seems to shrink). As you’re making your way through the stacks, you’ll find albums you recognize, sure, maybe even a couple you put in your mental “maybe” pile. But every now and again, you’ll run into an album that stuns you to a stop, like you’ve rediscovered an old friend’s photograph you thought long lost. The best three bucks I spent this week was on a used copy of Now Here Is Nowhere, the debut album of Dallas space-rock band Secret Machines. I read about this album in Blender magazine in 2004 and have loved it ever since despite never owning a copy. Now I do. I fucking love this album. Of course I do, it’s a sci-fi concept album. It sounds huge. Josh Garza is on some John Bonham shit here. Brandon Curtis is patient zero for my love of the fuzzy, mid-neck, high-in-the-mix bass attack. RIP to the one, the only Benjamin Curtis on various guitar-shaped noises.

#dd

This is the Ahead on Differential Daily Dispatch, issue #2

I.

I thought I'd make it at least one week before hitting the wall. But no, here I am, on issue number two, scrambling to get something down. As I'm writing this, I'm on the subway to the poetry open mic I co-host. Last I heard, both of tonight's features have cancelled. While Oops! All Open Mic Readers nights can be fun, the quality of the material readers bring to the stage can vary wildly. Coarse, absurdist story-poems get sandwiched between clumsy-but-earnest declarations of principle and unvarnished accounts of childhood trauma. You want to make extra sure the ice in your drink doesn't clink during one of those. The most awkward aspect of co-hosting an open mic is alerting the poet in the middle of pouring their guts out that they have 15 seconds to wrap up their reading. These are the pitfalls.

II.

I miss attending the local Scrabble Club for many reasons, but one of the unsung ones is the anagram puzzle that everyone gets. Solve the anagram, enter a draw to win your entry fee back. This puzzle was once the responsibility of the late, great Bernard Gotleib, the Dean of Montréal Scrabble, and is now in the hands of Connor, one of my Scrabble homies and the smartest Sooner I know. In that spirit, here's a puzzle for you to decipher, a common eight-letter word hidden in RIPER GOD. Once again, let me know if you've found it, and once again, no cheating.

III.

Mondo Tomorrow, my chapbook of speculative and speculative-adjacent poetry, is coming out in December. Right now, I'm in the middle of culling the weaker poems in the manuscript and implementing structural suggestions from my editor. One of her suggestions was to include an ars poetica, a mission statement of sorts. Here's a chunk of what I have so far:

You feel small? Friend, we're all small. We're huddled out here by the trash bin fire of a star just far enough from us not to fry us alive, trying to make a go of it, poking and prodding the edge of this and all other universes. It's big and mostly empty and contains everything that ever was, is, and will be.

It's in those gaps of space, of matter, of knowledge, where science meets fitcion, where imagination spins unencumbered by gravity and friction. Inside these possible futures are museums of the present.

IV.

No one me asks me for my opinions about current music anymore, partly because I'm washed, partly because I'll just tell them to Steely Dan or something. But I try and keep up, and while I'm not on the bleeding edge, I do find new-to-me records that become home stereo stalwarts. One of these record is last year's Clams Casino, the fifth album from Brooklyn singer-songwriter Brian Dunne. This dude has a preternatural gift for writing hooky, wordy pop-rock gems that sound like they could have been released at any point between 1977 and 1997. There's a heavy heartland rock influence, a little Dylan, a little Tom Petty, a little Billy Joel. All these songs feel worn in like an old catchers's mitt, even on first listen.

#dd

This is the Ahead on Differential Daily Dispatch, issue #1.

I.

I’ve never been to Asia; the furthest east I’ve been from home is Czechia, and that was just for a layover in Prague. Tangent: I might be the only person to ever listen to the Denis Leary stand-up comedy album No Cure for Cancer in the skies between Prague and Paris. I have no excuse for my choice of in-flight entertainment other than I was 15 and deep into stand-up at the time. I bring up Asia because Josh, my Scrabble tutor, is back home from commentating the 2026 Causeway Challenge in Bangkok, and I told him before our session today that I should get into the broadcast producer’s ear about helping out at the next event in Kuala Lumpur in 2028. I’m not good enough to play in the tourney proper, but surely I’m good enough to run network cables and print scoresheets.

II.

There’s been a microtrend of “perfect season” games cropping up, where you pick players from a random decade of a random franchise’s existence in the hopes of assembling a team that has a perfect season. The catch is you can only fill out one position at a time, so if you roll the 80s Edmonton Oilers but already have a center, tough shit, no Wayne Gretzky for you (thankfully, if this is the case, you’ll have a great consolation prize like Jari Kurri or Grant Fuhr assuming those slots are open). There’s one for basketball, hockey, football, another one for football, but my favourite one is for pro wrestling, and this other one for pro wrestling. My best card, and only S+ “show of the year”-tier card I got on the first game I tried involves not one, but two Hangman Adam Page matches, and one of them is a tag match. This game also just makes me want to queue up these classic matches on YouTube.

III.

when I see a steel albatross full of jet fuel and upholstery streak cross the skyline and miraculously not collide with anything in the foreground, double in size while descending, land without disaster or collateral damage, and roll to a standstill like a golf cart I can only point like a guileless child and say “holy shit, man, that’s crazy”

I guess I have transportation on the brain.

IV.

A good chunk of the new music I encounter in the wild is through the various subreddits I follow. This is how I got hip to A Taste of Cherry, the debut album by the Creem, the new project from Nick Thorburn, best know for his work with Islands and the Unicorns, and Mike Stroud, late of Ratatat. I was a budding music snob in 2003, reading Pitchfork and alienating my friends, so this particular team-up is a big deal for me. I was jamming “I Was Born (A Unicorn)” and “Seventeen Years” then, and I’m still jamming them now. It took me a second to figure out what all this reminded me of, what with the late 60s/early 70s touches and Stroud’s needly, hyper-processed guitar tone. Then it hit me: 10cc. This feels like a 10cc album, especially in the back half. The title track feels like it’s trying to emulate “Rubber Bullets.” Good job, fellas.

#dd

I.

For the last few years, I haven’t been able to rid myself of the idea of a deconstructed late-night talk show. It would be stripped back and minimal, paring down the format to its smallest constituent parts. I’ve got it down to four parts: a monologue, some kind of variety-show miscellany (usually a game or a sketch or five minutes of standup), an interview with the main character of the moment, and a musical performance. My gimmick would be firing a shrink ray at the format and making the whole thing ten minutes long. I never landed on a medium for this hypothetical show; maybe a podcast, maybe good ol’ video. I never thought to give text a try. And here you are, reading my first go at it. Monologue, check.

II.

My hottest Scrabble take is that the dictionary we use for play should be updated every three months, as if it were software. By the time the dictionary committee decides it’s update time, tons of new and strange words fall through the cracks (no doubt the window to include CHEUGY* has closed). There are dictionary gaps in the hard sciences; I know this is the case because I recently got OXYTOSIS* challenged off the board during a recent casual game. Adding buzzy words more frequently would draw attention to the game. If I had my way, a word like THROUPLES* would be acceptable by now, which I only bring up because I recently realized it has a current Scrabble-legal anagram. Send me an email or otherwise get in touch if you figure out what the anagram is. No cheating.

III.

Well, I don’t have an interview lined up, and I sure as shit have not done anything newsworthy lately. I think the last time I had my name in the papers is when I caught a clutch fly ball during a children’s softball game when I was in 4th grade. I didn’t even have to use whatever meager arm cannon I had that day; it was a third out. In any case, what I can do in lieu of an interview is share some work in progress. These snippets are not in their final form and will likely not amount to anything. Hell, they probably won’t even have titles. But writing is more than about images and feelings; it’s about tonnage. Reps. Here, have some grist:

The Décarie Expressway is empty, and I don’t mean there’s the odd crossover SUV or rust-riddled jalopy carving the night, it is empty, no cops, no construction, no lights, a tranquil concrete clearing that hasn’t lost an ounce of menace. It is empty, but I’ll still get run over somehow; it is empty, but I still hope the urban wildlife doesn’t wonder too hard about why this river of exhaust fumes and bent metal is now as placid as a lake on a fall night.

IV.

The last album I listened to was D’Angelo’s 1995 debut effort Brown Sugar. Somehow, this record is the D’Angelo project I was the least familiar with, despite it being a pillar of neo-soul and a continuation of the smooth, sophisticated R&B sounds of the 80s that I have a soft spot for. Here’s what I wrote on my Record Club account: “This album is full of great sounds, the musty mutedness of the drum samples, the unobtrusive funk guitar, organs and horns galore, but the best sound on the album is that voice, D'Angelo's voice, when it's multitracked into tight falsetto harmonies. This is Groove City, baby, and D'Angelo is Mayor for Life.“ I really like the cover of “Cruisin’,” originated by Smokey Robinson. I wonder what that dude is up to. You know what? On second thought, I’d rather not know. What I do know is that Brown Sugar is a great album, and that means all of D’Angelo’s albums are great, a perfect three for three.

#dd

What’s a random song that makes you cry?

I’m not talking about a minor-key tearjerker written to elicit that reaction (see also: soaring power ballads) or even something you have a deep personal connection to. I’m talking about a song that makes you cry that makes no one else you known cry. I’m talking about the ones where you have to explain the tears, if you’re even able to. I’ve got a couple of them, but among the weirdest is “Rainbow Road.” Yeah, from Mario Kart. No, I don’t know why.

I want to get this out of the way: I will not be talking about any of the Mario Kart tracks named Rainbow Road. I have historically been and continue to be, at best, a casual gamer. So casual, in fact, that I have barely played the console-casual greatest hits, Mario Kart included. The first edition of Mario Kart I ever owned was the edition that came bundled with my first Nintendo Switch. I’m not even that great at Mario Kart. But boy do I love the songs, and I love “Rainbow Road” most of all.

I want to get this out of the way too: I’m not even going to be talking most versions of “Rainbow Road.” I’m going to be talking about what I consider to be the canonical version of “Rainbow Road,” which is the version from Mario Kart 64, released in 1996, composed by the great Kenta Nagata. This is the version of the song that, for reasons I have yet to identify, makes me cry. If a friend were to ever cast me in a movie, and my character had to cry, I would think think of one of three things to achieve the effect. One is “Europe Endless” by Kraftwerk (don’t ask, I do not know why, all I know is that it does). One is Colorado Avalanche captain Joe Sakic passing the Stanley Cup to teammate Ray Bourque in 2001 (this one I know why: I think achieving the ultimate goal in your vocation during your last try is very moving). And one is “Rainbow Road.” Fuck the Method, I have Mario Kart. 

I do want to give the other versions of “Rainbow Road” a bit of shine. So with that, we move on to the…

BONUS RANKING: ARANGEMENTS OF “RAINBOW ROAD,” RANKED

9. Mario Kart: Super Circuit (Game Boy Advance, 2001)

The arrangements bringing up the rear are victims of hardware limitations. There’s a killer Jaco-y bass line on this one, but arranging for the GBA means you are sacrificing tons of melodic and harmonic depth. Credit where credit is due: this version starts with a nice interpolation of…

8. Super Mario Kart (SNES, 1992)

I can’t disrespect the OG by putting it last, but again, hardware limitations. This version is a jittery electropop tune with an awesome, cheesy synth brass pad leading the melody. It deserves the electo-funk or Italo-disco treatment in a future Mario Kart game.

7. Mario Kart DS (Nintendo DS, 2003)

This arrangement begins a run of dancier theme for our favourite spectral racetrack. It’s busy but not all that hooky, but I love how filthy that synth bass sounds. 

6. Mario Kart Wii (Wii, 2008)

The Wii version splits the difference between the MIDI sounds of yesteryear and the minimal-techno “Rainbow Road” arrangements of the 2000s. It has a Y2K utopian feel, tubular bells, and a cool key change. If the nine themes were a boy band, this would the cute one.

5. Mario Kart World (Switch 2, 2025)

This one being this high might betray by preference for fuller, studio-quality arrangements. Honestly, I just like that they wrote a 17-minute suite for this version: jazz fusion into progressive folk-rock into 90s-style arena techno and back. This is a very maximalist arrangement, and I am to understand that this reflects the winding, Easter egg-filled version of the track in this game.

4. Mario Kart: Double Dash (GameCube, 2003)

I really like the warm organ in the rhythm section. I fucking love the interpolation of the N64 version.

3. Mario Kart 8 (Wii U, 2014)

Orchestral techno, filthy bass, sick electric guitar leads, Price Is Right synthesizers. Great stuff, Nintendo house band.

2. Mario Kart 7 (Nintendo 3DS, 2011)

This version has the best feel of the bunch. Those synth leads are perfect. It's almost a shame that it interpolates the N64 version because up until then, this is the version of the song that best emulated the '96 version without directly referencing it (save perhaps those bass triplets).

1. Mario Kart 64 (Nintendo 64, 1996)

Of all the versions of “Rainbow Road,” the Mario Kart 64 version has my favourite arrangement. The melody, the galloping-triplet bass line, the to-the-heavens guitar on the second go-round. I can pinpoint where I start crying to the bar. It's bar 24 into bar 25. There's just something happening on a harmonic or melodic level that reduces me to mush. Maybe someone who knows a thing or three about music theory can enlighten me. But until that time, I will be moved to tears and baffled by those same tears every time I hear those telltale MIDI pan flutes.

So.

There are three versions of this version of “Rainbow Road,” which is surprising because if I wrote the “Stairway to Heaven” of video game themes, I would stick it in every nook and cranny of every game I’m involved in. Here’s how they stack up against each other.

THE MAIN EVENT: N64 RAINBOW ROADS, RANKED

3. Mario Kart World

This is the arena-sized fusion version of the theme, with the lead melody being jazzed up and carried by what sounds like a Lyricon (if you’ve heard “Home at Last” by Steely Dan, you’ve heard a Lyricon). This version sounds gigantic.

2. Mario Kart 64

The original recipe always tastes good. If I were to nitpick, I’d say that that I can’t hear MIDI electric guitar leads without thinking of “Brodyquest,” but that’s my problem.

1. Mario Kart 8

Heresy? Perhaps. If the MK64 version is tasty 16mm, this version is IMAX. The main melody is established by that most tearjerking of instruments, a solo trumpet, before being joined in my more brass and an electric guitar. The only way that melody could be any more stirring is if it were played on a pedal steel guitar. This version of the theme is what happens when you get a bunch of jazz fusion studio aces to gussy up something that was composed on a MIDI sequencer in the 90s. Dig that slapping on the bass triplets, too.

Well shit. I’ve written all theses words and I’m no closer to elucidating why “Rainbow Road” N64 Edition makes me cry. Maybe it’s a form of aspiration: crossing Europe by train, as immortalized by Kraftwerk, is as unattainable to me as crossing the galaxy by go-kart. Maybe my brain has flattened tautology into fact: it makes me cry because it makes me cry. Maybe trying to explain it isn’t the way to go about this. I should just keep feeling it.

#music

Like most of the world, I first encountered math-rock duo Angine de Poitrine (French for angina pectoris) in my YouTube subscription feed. On February 5th, the venerable Seattle radio station KEXP premiered a four-song, 28-minute set by the band, recorded two months prior as part of the Trans Musicales festival in Rennes, France. The performance has since gone turbo-viral (8.8 million views at time of writing) in a way videos of rock bands don’t usually go. There’s a you-gotta-see-this novelty to the group that’s evident even before they start playing: the costumes, the polka dots, the voice filters, the double-neck guitar, the wordmark set in the Twin Peaks font, the conspiracy theorist-baiting triangle imagery. We haven’t even gotten into the band’s kayfabe lore yet. What kind of wackadoo art project am I about to listen to?

Then the Poitrine brothers, Khn on guitar and Klek on drums (the duo wishes to remain anonymous, Residents-style), kick into “Sarniezz,” the third track on their then-upcoming second record. Don’t even try to buy a physical copy of it now, it’s perpetually out of print, that’s how turbo-viral these guys have gone (but by all means cop the digital version). Once the rhythmic scaffolding of “Sarniezz” is built, Khn loops and layers microtonal guitar licks until the song morphs from a woozy post-punk shuffle into a double-time pit opener. That’s part of the Angine de Poitrine magic: their sound—microtonal guitar and bass, drums, loop station—is as versatile as it is minimal. They establish a melodic baseline, iterate on it for a while, take a dynamic left turn somewhere along the way, then fold the streams into each other. What impresses me most when I see these guys perform is Khn’s live editing of the song currently being played: which loops are recorded when, when to mute them and bring them back in, and when to override them, all done while playing two guitars that have twice as many frets as usual, usually in uncommon time. It’s a feat of rare mental, physical, and musical dexterity.

But all the technical proficiency and visual gimmickry in the world wouldn’t matter if the songs weren’t any good. Friends, these songs are good. Listening to this band is fun as hell. “Mata Zyklek,” another Vol. II track featured in the band’s KEXP set, is a “Rock Lobster”-esque surf-punk number fit for a monster movie. Vol. II’s standout may well be “Utzp,” the first song on the album not performed in the KEXP set. What begins as a jaunty country polka slowly mutates into a thrash-metal face-melter worthy of Headbangers Ball. Elsewhere on the album, I hear their brothers in microtonality King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Brain-era Primus, Pitchfork Hall of Famers Battles (remember 2007?), 80s King Crimson, fellow Saguenay space cases Voivod, and any number of bands that put records out on Touch and Go in the 90s. Imagine a happy Shellac. Imagine Polvo having a crack at a dancefloor classic. Imagine Don Caballero scoring a sci-fi spaghetti western.

In the weeks since becoming the most viral band on the planet, Angine de Poitrine have been booked and busy: their first shows in English Canada and the United States are slated for the summer, followed by a European tour and a smattering of shows at home, including a tour-ending two-night stand at Montréal’s legendary Club Soda in November. They’re on the bill at Fuji Rock and King Gizz’s Field of Vision festival. This success is to be celebrated. Angine de Poitrine is an algorithmic aberration. They are a pop of colour contrasting the usual griege mush the feed prefers, which is ironic considering their colour scheme. I love this band, long may they run! But fellas, please, I need you to press some CDs for the old heads out there.

#UR

The beseechings of the coolest cinephile you know and the biggest comedy dork you know (who may well be the same person, honestly) are fully warranted: Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, the cinematic offshoot of Matt Johnson and Jay McCarroll’s gonzo metafictional mockumentary Viceland series, is the comedy event of the year, possibly of the century, certainly north of the 49th parallel. You needn’t have seen any prior iteration of the project to get it; the stakes, such as they are, are secondary to the shenanigans they generate (and rest assured, shenanigans are generated). You needn’t have seen any of Johnson’s prior directorial efforts, including BlackBerry, which I described to friends as “The Social Network’s dorky Canadian cousin” (Glenn Howerton’s bald cap is maybe the ninth-funniest thing in that movie; this is a compliment). You needn’t have seen or heard Johnson charming his way though every movie and/or comedy podcast worth listening to, bantering with great candor and enthusiasm, talking shop and future projects with the endearing sugar-rush intensity of a birthday boy buzzing in his seat post-cake, pre-presents.

What you do need to know, because the premise of these little blurblets is that I’m trying to sell you on things, is that Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie is a synapse-frying stew of Mike Schur comedies, guerilla filmmaking, social engineering, post-production wizardry, guileless improv, flagrant copyright trolling, inspired stupidity, and a dollop of edgelord shock to taste, all in the service of what Back the the Future would look like if it were sweded by a couple of ding-dongs on the streets of Toronto over the course of nearly 20 years. It’s as if someone took all that un-white balanced mini-DV camera footage you shot with your friends, where every interior looks like it has smoker’s cough and every exterior is blown out by the Sun, and stitched it into a video installation about those very friendships. It’s as if… man, it’s a miracle this film’s budget wasn’t spent primarily on paying fines, that’s what we’re dealing with here.

#UR

2026-02-28

They pay me to field the incoming calls, but Saturdays are slow. I can just sprawl out, rearrange the contents of my bag, relax. It’s so dead I dipped out to snag a couple books next door. I acquired a rhyming dictionary and Pale Fire; not a terrible way to kill some clock. I read while listening to Laughing Stock and jammed out to Explosions in the Sky. Ate subpar leftovers; sometimes you try a fancy-looking recipe (Roma tomatoes, Spanish onions, some feta, all baked, combined with your pasta of choice) that falls short of gastronomical joys a chef has provided before. I still ate it; if I can clean my plate, I will. There was a crowd around the exit door, all looking at their phones. One of them wore Ash Ketchum’s trademark hat; I guessed it meant Pokémon Go was holding an event.

2026-03-01

Okay, one dropout, I can understand. Two is a bummer, but the show we planned can still work. But all three? That’s zero features that showed up? Just the die-hards in the bleachers? I get it, it was Nuit Blanche, but now your hangovers stick to you a little more than they once did, like heavy meals or long walks. 8:45; time to get this gong show on the road. But it ended up being a fun, if short, event. It was worth seeing if just for Robin, who cut off our spiel to end the night with a timid appeal to read “Waiting for the Barbarians.” Hoots! Hollers! The stuff of librarians’ nightmares. A perfect button. Our esteemed barman-slash-DJ-slash-sound guy then streamed a block of early Daniel Bélanger: “Opium,” “Les deux printemps,” “Ensorcelée.”

#poetry

I’m not sure where I was first tipped to the existence of Samuel, Émilie Tronche’s cute, charming series of slice-of-life shorts featuring a mopey French tween. Who am I kidding, it was likely in an industry rag that ran the announcement that Netflix had bought the American distribution rights and translated to English; there was maybe a time in my life where I would have been hip enough to have caught this on Arte, the Franco-German state TV channel where the shorts were first aired, but that’s not me now. I’m just a guy mooching off his mom’s Netflix account.

Tronche’s art style reminds of a lot of the work of Jeffrey Brown, the Chicago-via-Michigan cartoonist best known for his cycle of melancholy diary-comic memoirs from 2002-2005 (further Derek Lore: I was a big autobiographical graphic novel guy in college: Brown, Craig Thompson, Lucy Knisley, et al.). There’s more than a little Bryan Lee O’Malley in there as well, what with the big eyes and manga-like flourishes. It’s all pretty scratchy and spare, but Samuel, his friends, and their shenanigans are so well-written that it doesn’t register as twee affect. That’s the power of strong characters and a good story.

It’s also very well animated: there’s a tag scene early on that as dynamic a visual sequence I’ve seen in a recent cartoon. Even though the show is strongest in moments of stillness, where little more than a character’s eyes move, there are some bravura sequences across the 21 episodes. There are multiple show-stopping dance numbers, which are very fun as rendered in this style, and made that much cool if you know that Tronche is a former dancer.

Samuel also includes the best use of the thoroughly memory-holed Top 20 hit “Fuck It (I Don’t Want You Back)” by Eamon. Remember Eamon? I wonder what’s he’s up to these days. There’s lots of actually good music used/referenced in the show, too; dig this fan-curated playlist.

If you, like me, speak French, I implore you to seek out the original French-French dub; bust out the VPN if you have to. If you’ll settle for a Québecois dub, Télé-Quebec has you covered. If English is your only course of action, give your mom a call and ask her for the Netflix password.

#UR