Contributors and staff offer up their picks for the best albums of 2015.
“I’m alive,” sang my heart and my bones. “I’m alive,” sang my sinews. “Maybe that wasn’t such a great idea,” sang my sense of self preservation.
“At this point in my life, I’m far more interested in exploring what my vices have to teach me than in eradicating them. Procrastination is most often my body’s cue that I need rest and spaciousness. Craving chocolate ice cream tells me it’s time to celebrate. Biting my nails lets me know I’m stressed and need to take some down time for myself. And staying up late means my inner rebel seeks freedom. Indulging it makes life more fun.” Cyndi Briggs wants you to embrace your bad habits.
“As we sat down to our scrambled eggs, we heard a great crash and a scream. Our family rushed into the living room to find my Grandma Dalton lying in a heap amid the ruins of the Death Star. My brother and I rushed past her to the shattered remains of our precious play set.” Corey Michael Dalton reflects.
“Sorry to piss in the midi-chlorians, but Star Wars is cosmically overrated. More overrated than The Beatles. More overrated than Ronald Reagan, the Olympics, sarcasm, bike lanes, and living past 75.” Matt Gonzales taunts The Force.
“I guess we’d try to start some kind of economy based on shells and lava rocks, but it wouldn’t take long to realize we had no survival skills. Like, there’s only so many times I can buy three conch shells for a lava rock or vice versa before I realize I’m starving to death and eat a web designer.” Alex Mattingly contemplates life on a desert isle.
When Anthony Kiedis hires you to clean out his turtle tank, you know it won’t be any ordinary day–but maybe not an extraordinary one. Robin Beery shares this and six other celebrity experiences that just didn’t make the cut.
“There are no snowflake ovals. / No static black lines / drawn still around / the nuclei like a veil / over the face of a bride.”
New poetry from Jordan Legg.
“Uncle Brian tried to bowl, but he couldn’t stop laughing. The ball skipped over into another lane. People stared. He was shouting at someone on the other side of the alley when Grandma went to call security.” New fiction from Daniel Enjay Wong.
“At first glance this seems nothing more than the hyperbole you say to your lover in the first throes of togetherness—indeed, it’s ludicrous to imagine expressing such a sentiment after twenty years of married white noise. But upon closer examination, this is concentration run amok.” Ben Allmon puts more lyrics to the test.