Hundreds of days later (17 hundred and one to be exact), we have come to the 100th edition of Ponytail Picks! We figured that deserves some commemoration.

So, for PP #100, we’re counting down our top 100 picks from the past four and a half-plus years (whether that be a specific work or just a favourite artist), according to a complex and top-secret set of criteria that includes but is not limited to Pick Frequency, Pick Potency, Ponytail Potential, and V i b e s.

Note that many of the picks include multiple links indicating all the different editions they were a part of, so happy clicking!

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Here’s 100-21:

100. “Almost Cut My Hair” — Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Where it all began: two like-minded, long-haired millennials keeping each other accountable with their internet-writing productivity, wanting to keep their freak-flags flying.

99. “Western Wind” — Carly Rae Jepsen. Need a breeze to keep these manes flowing.

98. Close Encounters of the Third Kind - Steven Spielberg. Can’t leave out the source of our Ponytail Press motto.

97. Hail to the Thief — Radiohead. The awkward little brother of OK Computer and Kid A, but worthy of just as much love as its siblings.

96. Nardwaur the Human Serviette. A fellow citizen after our own heart. Keep on rockin’ in the free world, and doot doo la doot doot…!

95. The Golden Spruce — John Vaillant. A modern myth for our home province.

94. The playlist from “Anarchy” week. A soundtrack for putting your body upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers of the Capital-M Machine.

93. House of Leaves — Mark Z. Danielewski. Breaks down the walls of how a book should work.

92. “Housefly” — Jordan Klassen. Anthropomorphizes the least of these.

91. Empire of AI — Karen Hao. Calls out the new Evil Empire for what it’s become.

    

90. “Halloween” — Phoebe Bridgers. Morbid and imaginative, finding freedom in the day of the dead: “We can be anything.”

89. Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie — Matt Johnson, Jay McCarrol. Part love letter, part roast. We laughed, we cried, we shook our heads.

88. Inception — Christopher Nolan. For the dreamers.

87. Infinite Jest — David Foster Wallace. If you haven’t broken this spine, the joke’s on you.

86. Schitt’s Creek — Dan Levy, Eugene Levy. Cute, quirky, Canadian, just like us ;)

85. We’re New Here — Jamie xx & Gil Scott Heron. Black with white, EDM with jazz, an American with a Brit—this remix album shows what’s possible when we erase the borders and let it all collide.

84. Leave No Trace — Debra Granik. A provoking meditation on parenting and the PNW.

83. Widow’s Bay — Katie Dippold. Horror. Comedy. Family drama. Satire. “There’s something in the fog!”

82. “Cleanin’ Out My Closet” — Eminem. Vicious yet vulnerable—Eminem at his best.

81. The Satanic Verses — Salman Rushdie. Writing with abandon, in freefall, with no concern for the consequences. And damn, were there consequences.

    

80. “Wakin on a Pretty Day” — Kurt Vile. For chill mornings—our favourite.

79. The Haunting of Hill House — Mike Flanagan. The scariest exploration of family trauma to reach the small screen.

78. “Hair” — Lady Gaga. Duh.

77. “Them Changes” — Thundercat. Just try to stay still while listening to this heartbreaker of a song.

76. Good Time - Benny Safdie, Josh Safdie. A very good (real)time thriller. Lots of both grit and heart, just how we like it.

75. The Bell Jar — Sylvia Plath. Smart girls have it hard.

74. “Grieving” — Leith Ross. Wisdom and beauty and love. I cry now.

73. Andor: Season 1 — Tony Gilroy. More inspiration to fight the Empire.

72. Gilead — Marilynne Robinson. Pastoral in a few senses of the word.

71. The Godfather — Francis Ford Coppola. Somehow, we haven’t suggested Part II over the last four years. Brando takes the cake here.

    

70. Stranger Things — Matt Duffer, Ross Duffer. Intricate yet expansive. Heart and horror.

69. Lincoln in the Bardo — George Saunders. Fathers, sons, ghosts—what’s not to love?

68. The Dressmaker — Jocelyn Moorhouse. Fast-acting fashion. Bloody good.

67. The discography of Yo La Tengo. The platonic ideal of American music.

66. Vertigo — Alfred Hitchcock. You’ll never fully regain your balance after watching this one.

65. This Much I Know Is True — Derek Cianfrance. Two of the best performances ever put on the small screen, and they’re both Mark Ruffalo.

64. Never Rarely Sometimes Always — Eliza Hittman. A devastating look at the everyday evils of the patriarchy.

63. True Grit — Ethan Coen, Joel Coen. A perfect adaptation of a uniquely enjoyable western. A young Hailee Steinfeld shines as the charming lead.

62. Knives Don’t Have Your Back — Emily Haines & the Soft Skeleton. Still one of the coolest albums ever, especially around Halloween.

61. “They Want My Soul” — Spoon. Card sharks. Street preachers. The sellers and palm readers. Post sermon socialites. Park enchanters and skin tights. Educated folk singers. Jonathon Fisk. I got nothing I want to say to ‘em. They got nothing left that I want. All they want’s my soul. Yes, I know.

What’s your favourite pick from over the years?

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60. Trout Fishing in America, The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster & In Watermelon Sugar — Richard Brautigan. Mayonnaise.

59. The Banshees of Inisherin — Martin McDonagh. Friendship or solitude? It never seemed so difficult to choose until after you watched these two.

58. Parasite - Bong Joon Ho. A modern masterpiece that’s still haunting our psyches.

57. Ex Machina — Alex Garland. A fascinating examination of what it means to be human, and what it means to have a heart (not necessarily correlative).

56. Green Grass, Running Water — Thomas King. Feels a little strange to still recommend this ingenious tale of Indigenous storytelling from a man who recently revealed that he is not, in fact, Indigenous, as he had believed for all of his life. But the news makes one of Joel’s favourite quotes from the book all the more interesting: “There is no truth… Only stories.”

55. You’re Dead! — Flying Lotus. A sonic journey to the Underworld you won’t soon forget.

54. “Right Back To It” — Waxahatchee. It’s just such a damn good song. Ramblin’ cowboy vibe, gorgeous harmonies—love it.

53. Monty Python & the Holy Grail — Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones. How can something so stupid be so smart at the same time? The most ridiculous of miracles.

52. Bojack Horseman — Raphael Bob-Waksberg. Colourful and quirky, yet dark and heartfelt, with plenty of layered and experimental storytelling to analyze.

51. End of the World & Hard-boiled Wonderland — Haruki Murakami. A Carrol-referencing title for a truly original novel.

    

50. Little Miss Sunshine — Valerie Faris, Jonathan Dayton. Indie road movie perfection.

49. “Tomorrow Never Knows” — The Beatles. There’s no going back to “yesterday” after listening to this one.

48. This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories that Make Us — Cole Arthur Riley. What if we actually listened to our bodies instead of disassociating from them?

47. Reservation Dogs — Sterlin Harjo, Taika Waititi. An earnest and hilarious portrait of modern Indigenous life. Worth every minute.

46. “Summer Girl” — HAIM. One of these days we’ll have the same sort of cool confidence that these strutting summer sisters have.

45. Care of the Soul — Thomas Moore. Reshape the way you read.

44. Adaptation — Spike Jonze. Cage and Kaufman break free from the fiction/reality dichotomy.

43. “Dance Yrself Clean” — LCD Soundsystem. New to this killer of a tune? Sit in your car, turn up the volume, and wait.

42. Booksmart — Olivia Wilde. Be moviesmart and go watch this one—coming-of-age done right.

41. Atlanta — Donald Glover. Donald Glover’s magnum opus. And it isn’t even his music!

    

40. Zodiac — David Fincher. Will the search ever end?

39. Slaughterhouse Five — Kurt Vonnegut. Probably Andrew’s all-time favourite novel. So it goes.

38. Minari — Lee Isaac Chung. Picked in #46 — Old, #53 — Rural, and #74 — Home. I think that sums up its vibe quite nicely. Wonderfully made and acted.

37. Derry Girls — Lisa McGee. The best depiction of female friendship we’ve ever seen on either size of screen.

36. The writing of Gareth Brandt. Couldn’t leave off this fellow ponytailer, even if he wasn’t one of our dads. Thoughtful reflections spiked with cheeky humour.

35. Getting Killed — Geese. A band playing with abandon, with the richest set of lyrics on a rock and roll album released this side of 2020 (maybe 2010?). Haters can get killed.

34. Little Women — Greta Gerwig. For when we want to get cozy and let our hair down.

33. The Red Hand Files — Nick Cave. Wisdom shared on the regular from a man who knows how to live free.

32. Music & Memory — Matthew Joel Vanderkwaak. A friend’s fascinating reflections on artistic practice and philosophy.

31. O Brother, Where Art Thou? — Joel Coen, Ethan Coen. If you don’t like it, where art thy soul?

    

30. The stories of Andy Shauf. We love a good singer-storyteller here at Ponytail Press.

29. In the Aeroplane Over the Sea — Neutral Milk Hotel. It’ll weasel its way into your generationally shared subconscious.

28. The stories of Flannery O’Connor. Scathing light on dark times.

27. The Tree of Life — Terrance Malick. The meaning of life, made into a movie.

26. “The Wind” — Yusuf / Cat Stevens. Another breezy song to yearn to.

25. The Odyssey — Homer. One of the taproots of story—all story.

24. The Truman Show — Peter Wier. “And if I don’t see ya…”

23. Fear of Music — Talking Heads. The best argument for facing your fears put to tape.

22. The music of Bruce Cockburn. The singer/songwriter of our first ever Ponytail Pick, and a frequent one after that. Political. Poetic. Ponytail Press-approved.

21. The Bear: Seasons 1 & 2 — Christopher Storer. Work and family never looked so stressful.

    ---

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Coming next week:

Our Top 20 picks, plus some fun stats to go along with a comprehensive database of every pick we’ve ever made! (It’s a lot).

One look at the world this week, and we’re looking for a way out. Here are a few arts-and-culture options we found.

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Exit music

I love doing keyword searches in my music library and seeing what comes up. Here’s “exit”. Songs for leaving, presumably:

Radiohead - “Exit Music (For A Film)”

I didn’t know until I just Googled this song that it was actually originally written for the film Romeo + Juliet (1993). Makes sense!

Today, we escape, we escape
Pack and get dressed
Before your father hears us
Before all hell breaks loose
…
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you
Now we are one in everlasting peace

David Francey - “Exit”

In a motel room the darkened night
And the years went down in the fading light
And thе streetlight shines on a empty road
None madе to carry such a heavy load

Underoath - “Reinventing Your Exit”

Fun fact: A few friends and I played a cover of this song at a local youth group talent show probably over 20 years ago. I played drums and I distinctly remember accidentally dropping my sticks at a key moment. Needless to say, I was really feeling this stanza:

We all want to be, want to be somebody
Right now, we’re just looking for the exit

Gentleman Reg - “How We Exit”

When you don’t trust what’s what in your gut, 20/20 vision
Acting is it, I will never quit
Time to hit the trail, make or break, that’s how we exit

mewithoutYou - “My Exit, Unfair”

Jonah, where’s that boat going... your ship set with eager sails?
…
now I spend my days in ever-increasingly complicated ways,
Convincing myself of the rightness of each word I say.
My exit, unfair if unobserved!

-JB

All’s fair in love and Ponytail Picks. Before you go, let us know what you think:

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Concept v. execution in Exit 8

Genki Kawamura’s 2025 film Exit 8 has a lot going for it. He and his team nail the production. The colours, the cinematography, hell, even the credits are beautiful. The concept—being trapped in an infinity-symbol-shaped Escher drawing of a subway station—feels relatable to anyone who’s used public transit to travel in an unfamiliar city, and using that premise as a karmic metaphor for the human condition seems like a guaranteed win. What could go wrong? Well…

There are a lot of square pegs being jammed into round holes here, starting with genres being smashed together. The deeper concept—an intentional, bordering on preachy metaphor for Buddhist philosophy—feels especially out of joint with the horror tropes being used at the same time. Long-held gasps of terror conflict with the motivation to escape ASAP that’s supposed to be pushing the story forward.

The most glaring problem, though, might be one of gender. So much of this movie would be fixed if Kawamura developed, like, one female character. Instead, he half-develops three males, and all three get stunted by the lack of complexity coming from the women in the story. Leaving the girlfriend/expectant mother and “temptress” characters locked in their unquestioned types ends up being a disservice to everyone involved—the viewer included.

This was a tough one for me, because when the end-credits began to roll, my first reaction was that I liked it. It really is a beautifully made movie. I’ll also say that I went in not knowing that it’s an adaptation of a videogame. It makes perfect sense after watching, and it succeeds at bringing the viewer into the “game” of the story; introducing the “rules” prompts you to play along, thereby transmitting the anxiety felt by the characters. But the longer you think about—and you’re supposed to think about it—the more it starts to break down in your mind.

-AK

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The poetic genius of For Whom the Bell Tolls

I read somewhere that of all the books he wrote, For Whom the Bell Tolls was the one Hemingway signed and gave to his friends. If it were me, I’d do the same. Of all the books I’ve read, this one remains among my favourites, and wins the “best title” category, hands down.

I’m not going to say much more than that. I don’t want to give anything away. Suffice to say, if you’re at all curious about the author and haven’t given him a shot, you can’t go wrong here. It’s damn near close to perfect.

-AK

We’ll see ourselves out. Bring your party hats next time cuz we’ll be celebrating Ponytail Picks #

100!

Join us for the next hundred:

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Mom and Dad have dropped us off for the weekend. Put something ironically gaudy on, and let’s have a little fun.

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A few songs to sing around the campfire

Big Thief - “Spud Infinity”

Had to choose at least one of the songs off this Big Thief folk extravaganza featuring a sketch of animals singing around a campfire on the cover. This one’s an especially fun one, featuring a fiddle and mouth harp, and lyrics equal parts earthy (“Spud”) and cosmic (“Infinity”):

From way up there it looks so small
From way down here it looks so small
One peculiar organism aren’t we all together?
Everybody steps on ants
Everybody eats the plants
Everybody knows to dance even with just one finger

mewithoutYou - “Allah, Allah, Allah”

Very much a classic Christian summer camp campfire feel with the basic acoustic guitar riff, repeated lines, and simple spirituality (though I’m sure more than a few conservative Christian camps from back in the day would’ve had a fit over using “Allah” as a name for God). More profound than “Pharaoh, Pharaoh” though, are these sharp lyrics:

If your old man did you wrong
Well maybe his old man did him wrong
If you care to sing forgiveness songs
Come down and join our band
We'll cut you like a sword
And sing forgiveness songs

Mountain Man - “Rang Tang Ring Toon”

Nothing like a tongue-twisting collection of one-syllable words to give a song a fun singalong vibe. The effortlessly angelic voices of Mountain Man lift these silly sparks up to the stars.

Beans boil in the pot
I’m dancin’ from room to room
The food is gone but the night is not
Rang tang ring toon

Bonfire burnin’ blue
The water’s full of naked bodies swimming

-JB

What lyrics burn in your heart when you sit around the fire?

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WATCH

Camp gets messy on screen

Growing up is hard. It’s a pretty universally acknowledged fact, and one that a lot of stories about kids between the ages 11-18 end up boiling down to. These two set the hot mess of adolescence in the perfect microcosm of all that hormonal chaos—summer camp. In the process, they both reveal how little the adults in the room have changed since they were their age.

Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

Forget Royal Tenenbaums. Forget The Grand Budapest. This is Wes Anderson’s best. His obsessively hand-made, “arts and crafts” style suits the child-centric story (and necessary child actors) perfectly. And like most of Anderson’s films, the thing that cuts through the artifice is the sadness shared by all the characters, regardless of age.

“You’re a traitor to our family.”

“Good. I want to be.”

Sterling Point (2026)

A lot of shows follow extremely privileged people who seem blind to what they have. This recent one set in Canada at least attempts to address that privilege.

Annie, the central “rich kid” character from NYC, meets some peers at Lake Muskoka, ON with less1 and is quickly confronted about her romanticization of that less-ness. The show explores the class-contrast further through each adult’s reaction to the main plot-point2, a foiling that sharply presents the double-edged sword of wealth, especially for a teen drama like this.

-AK

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The quirky camp antics in Gordan Korman’s I Want To Go Home

Nobody hates camp more than Rudy Miller does!

Another delightful 80s middle school yarn by one of my longtime favourite authors, Gordon Korman. The romp here includes an eternally bored and dryly witty kid who keeps trying to escape summer camp, much to the chagrin of his tightly-wound counselor. He also happens to be a generational athlete who hates playing sports, again, to the hear-tearing frustration of his counselor who also happens to be the coach of the camp’s sports teams. These two things come together in one delightful scene where Rudy dribbles through the entire opposing team in a soccer match, scores a goal, and without breaking stride just keeps on running away into the woods. I won’t spoil any more. Check your local thrift stores for this camp classic!

-JB

We’re homesick. Time to pack up and locate the

exits!

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We’re giving a CN-Tower-eyed view of Canada’s biggest city today. Come check out what T.O.’s all aboot, eh.

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My favourite pieces of Broken Social Scene

Toronto’s musical collective Broken Social Scene and its various affiliated acts have produced countless albums over the last 25+ years. Here are four of my favourites:

Broken Social Scene - You Forgot It In People (2002)

Let’s start with the big band itself and their sprawling collection of early oughts indie rock, featuring everything from “Late Nineties Bedroom Rock For… Missionaries” to “Anthems For… Seventeen-Year-Old Girl[s]”, all equally compelling for this once-20-now-36-year-old male homebody.

Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton - Knives Don’t Have Your Back (2006)

A breathtakingly beautiful and moody offering of low-key piano tunes from silky-throated Emily Haines. “Our Hell” was one of my profile songs on MySpace back in the day. I’d still put it up there if I could.

Metric - Fantasies (2009)

Emily Haines’ longtime indie-rock-dance band that she co-founded with another Broken Social Scene member James Shaw has churned out many albums over the years but the one that receives the most play in my music library is the dark and pulsing Fantasies.

Feist - Metals (2011)

It was The Reminder that catapulted Leslie Feist into the mainstream eye but it was her darker and more elaborate follow-up album Metals that has stuck with me the most since the indie boom of the late 2000s and early 2010s.

-JB

What are your favourite songs of The 6?

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An ode to Toronto: Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie

When Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol started their web series Nirvanna the Band the Show in 2007, their hometown played a role out of necessity. Still pinching loonies in university, filming in exotic locales like New York, L.A. or Vancouver were not financially viable options. So they used their real apartment as the home of their fictional selves and chose the venue down the street as their characters’ “Holy Grail” gig.

Jump just over seven years to the release of Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie in March of last year, and both of these high school buddies have the kind of accolades anyone would casually bring up at a reunion to impress an old fling or knock an aging jock down a few notches. Johnson managed to win two Canadian Screen Awards for writing and directing the 2023 biopic Blackberry, and besides McCarrol’s work with him on the same film, he also geared his talents toward scoring other projects to national acclaim1.

Suffice to say that if they wanted, they could’ve expanded the project’s geographic scope when they added The Movie to the expanding Nirvanna universe. But, as tends to happen when IP development is left to the original creators (I’m looking at you, Star Wars; I’m looking at you, MCU), Matt and Jay knew where the heart of their inside-joke-turned-national-treasure lived. It lived on the corner of Queen St. W and Spadina.

You don’t have to like Toronto to enjoy this decision. Watching them lovingly prank their hometown will make you nostalgic for your own and jealous that no one’s managed to love it like this.

It made me want to be the one to do it for Langley.

-AK

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Barclay tries his best to decentralize Canada’s indie rock explosion in Hearts on Fire

is from Toronto, and it shows. Of all the Tragically Hip lyrics to name a Substack after, he chose the one that namedrops Canada’s biggest city. His journalism focuses primarily on the music from the city, or the surrounding area deemed the G.T.O. when it suits the city’s agenda. The only other part of the country that gets any real coverage is Montreal, as if, every now and then, he’s reminded that the rest of the country (for Torontonians, that means Montreal) exists.

At a glance, you’d expect his book, Hearts on Fire: Six Years that Changed Canadian Music, 2000-2005, to be more of the same, but actually, that isn’t quite right. Sure, Barclay commits some of the crimes that make Canadians from outside the region say we hate the place. The importance of certain friends and acquaintances (the Be Good Tanyas, Royal City) gets inflated while others (You Say Party, Gob) get left out. Of the nearly 600 pages of meticulously researched indie rock history, about half of them focus on events that took place on Canada’s forearm. No stone from Hogtown’s 00’s-era rock scene gets left unturned.

But a closer look will teach even well-versed fans of Canadian music a thing or two about corners of the country you might not expect. Barclay spills plenty of ink on the scene in Victoria and reserves a whole chapter to artists who broke out from Vancouver Island (with a special focus on the nearly-forgotten-by-me Unicorns). He also tells the story of the New Pornographers and all adjacent projects in impressive detail. The underground side of country and rap each get their own chapter as well.

Even my cursory glance through the book has deepened my knowledge of music from the era and sent me down a few Qobuz rabbit-holes over the last few weeks. But the real success of Barclay’s book is the nostalgia it gives you for your own heyday peeling the soles of your Chuck Taylors from beer-stained basement floors and hoping your local heroes will find a way to make it big in T.O. And let’s face it, whether you grew up in Abbotsford, Lethbridge, Regina, or Moncton, your best chance at making a go of it has always meant moving to the Home of the Leafs.

Just don’t forget where you’re from.

-AK

Our trip to Toronto (how do you pronounce it? This is a test) has come to a close but our journey isn’t over. In three weeks’ time (we’re taking a tiny bit of a summer vacation), join us at our next destination:

Camp.

Pitch a tent and come join us around the fire:

This week’s picks will and won’t wet your whistle.

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LCD Soundsystem is making me thirsty.

Since they tumbled into the height of the indie/hipster music scene of the mid-aughts with their self-titled album, James Murphy & Co. have kept things vermouthlessly dry. Their dusty analog synth tones and bone-dead percussion, paired with Murphy’s post-party, espresso-fueled vocal delivery, provide a perfect vehicle for their smart-assed songs that often deliver self-deprecation and scene-ridicule in the same breath.

“Daft Punk Is Playing at My House,” the album’s opener, is a perfect example of what I mean. While every drummer from Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham to Limp Bizkit’s John Otto had their kits EQ’ed like they were playing in a stairwell1, Pat Mahoney joined the likes of fellow New York-based percussionists of the era like Fabrizio Moretti (The Strokes) and Ron Albertson (Liars) who rejected the wash of reverb for a blanket-stopped, deadpan approach.

On top of the Mahoney’s beat, Tyler Pope’s bass lick, and Nancy Whang’s synthesizers, Murphy famously adds a Walken-approved cowbell part and uses his dehydrated speak-sing voice to set the scene for every teenaged scenester’s dream: he’s booked the kings of French house for a house show, and he’s putting you in charge of the PA. A week from turning 35, Murphy was already an underground music veteran when he opened the band’s self-titled album with this song, so it’s fitting that he puts himself in the position of mentor here.

Opening Side C with “Losing My Edge” is poetic genius. Murphy assumes the role of elder statesman of the scene again, but this time he’s waffling between fearing the footsteps of the young and listing his credentials to prove he’s still cool. And if, by the middle of the song, you’re not sure if he’s being serious or taking the piss, he says:

“But I'm losing my edge
To better-looking people
With better ideas and more talent
And they're actually really, really nice”

These are the two main singles from the record, but they really are the tips of a groove-laced iceberg of ironic, indie-sleaze excellence.

-AK

What’s been keeping your earbuds dry lately?

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Dryly witty Characters (with a capital C)

Yes, weirdly enough, as I was compiling this list I realized that all the characters’ names started with C in one way or another:

Mrs. Castorini in Moonstruck (1987)

Do you love him, Loretta?

Ma, I love him awful.

Oh, God, that’s too bad.

Carol in Captain Marvel (2019)

Does, uh, announcing your identity on clothing help with the covert part of your job?

Clyde in Logan Lucky (2017)

I saw you wrote some sort of robbery to-do list?

Cornelia in The Bat (1959)

His specialty seems to be killing women; my goodness, two of them in one night; all his victims died the same way, like their throats had been ripped open with steel claws.

That’s charming, I’ll have to try it some time.

…

In a book.

Corner Gas in Corner Gas: The Movie (2014)

Open the till! Put the money in a bag--Now!

OK. Did you bring your own bag? Or I’ll have to charge you a nickel.

-JB

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Inspiration for going tech-dry

Issue 13 of Geez, my favourite paper magazine (RIP), centered on the idea of “experiment[ing] our way to a healthier world and more truthful ways of living.” Some of the experiments had to do with our use of computers and other related technology—a going “dry” of sorts but instead of giving up the drink, giving up the equally addicting and numbing liquid of limitless tech.

With the issue coming out in 2009, the references are obviously dated and the overall tone at times feels eye-rollingly boomer-y (“Once upon a time, children played outside” is an actual line from the second article) but one might also say that that just makes them even more jarring and convicting in our artificial internet age: If they were doing these experiments 16 years ago, how much more radical would they be now?

Only the first of the articles is available to read online (which I guess is fitting) but I’ll do my best to give a little summary of each one. If they pique your interest, let me know and I’ll mail you my physical copy of the magazine (seriously).

“Slightly re-sensitized: A month of under-stimulation,” by Will Braun

A self-professed “complicated and mundane” experiment seeking to curb an addiction to the constant stimulation provided by our “information saturation age.” And again, this was 16 years ago! We’re so saturated now I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to get completely dry before the Mad Max-esque apocalypse hits and does it for us.

An admittedly “intermediary” experiment inspired by this next one, from the same issue:

“The inefficiency of God,” by Chico Fajardo-Heflin

I guess we can always get more efficient—first computers and the internet, now artificial intelligence. Where do we draw the line? Is more efficient always better? Fajardo-Heflin says no, at least according to his biblical worldview, and in this experiment he “pull[s] the plug on the world wide web,” and according to an editor’s note at the end, he gave up computer use altogether only five months after he stopped using the internet and thus submitted his article in hand-written form.

Of course, he still draws his own line in how far back he takes himself on the spectrum of technological progress—he talks of biking to the library, for example, when he could’ve been even more inefficient and walked—but as much as I cringed at some of his holier-than-thou pontification (“I’d cringe inside when invited to a wedding over email,” he says at one point), I resonated with his idea of an inefficient God and a Sabbath that is an “affront to the program of efficiency” and its “economy of violence.” And my soul longed for the slower pace that he says is the most notable change in his life since the experiment began.

“Forty letters,” by Jonathan Hiskes

In which a man attempts to write a letter to someone every day for 40 days during the season of Lent. Sounds fun, but I don’t know if I know enough peoples’ addresses to do the same. Does it taint the experiment at all if I have to text someone to ask them their mailing address first?

-JB

It’s time to shake the dust off and go for a soak. Next time, we’re heading east to the centre of our nation’s universe:

Toronto.

Find out what all the fuss is aboot.

According to our calculations, it’s time for some new picks for all you ponies out there.

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Mind-altering ways to compose music using pre-existing data

Datasets aren’t always a bad thing. Hand them over to an artist, and they can become something worth saving to the hard drive. Here are just three techniques musicians have used to turned bits and strips into beauty.

ambient expression

Depending on how much you know about electronic music, it might surprise you to learn that it first invaded the more academic, “classical” side of music than the commercial arena it has now overtaken. Brian Eno was among the first to bridge that gap using midi instruments, and he continues to create in both worlds. His 1978 album Music for Airports is his most popular ambient release, but Mixing Colours, his 2020 collaboration with his brother Roger1 shows that all that work with hitmakers like U2 and Coldplay hasn’t watered down his taste.

OTHER EXAMPLES:

• The Expanding Universe by Laurie Spiegel

• Autobahn by Kraftwerk

• Glacier by Teen Daze

dubbed substructure

This is how midi started democratizing music, making it easier for people to create regardless of their socio-economic status. The innovation started in Jamaica, when producers like Lee “Scratch” Perry began remixing previous tracks, often removing the vocals and splicing rhythm sections together, leading Perry and others to create original works with the same technique, using the soundsystem as an instrument. His work with reggae group The Upsetters on the 1972 album Super Ape epitomizes the resulting vibe which quickly evolved into the “beats” still providing the backbone of hip hop.

OTHER EXAMPLES:

• Madvillainy by Madlib & MF DOOM

• Endtroducing..... by DJ Shadow

• The Way of Ging by Frank Dukes

sample collage

DJ Shadow’s ‘95 opus listed above serves as a bridge to this genre defying composition method that spans the last 60 years of pop music history. “Revolution 9,” The Beatles’ flirtation with musique concrète from side two of their self-titled “white album” might be the first thing that springs to mind, but artists have since crafted whole albums by splicing tape together from various sources.

EXAMPLES:

• Since I Left You by The Avalanches

• Thought For Food by The Books

• Tranquilizer by Oneohtrix Point Never

-AK

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WATCH

Dream data

When the most important pieces of information are in our heads…

Elysium (2013)

The data is intact, yes?

Data looks intact. We can still pull the data out of him... which will kill him.

Inception (2010)

What is the most resilient parasite? Bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm? An idea. Resilient... highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it’s almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully formed - fully understood - that sticks; right in there somewhere.

The Matrix Resurrections (2021)

That’s what the Matrix does. It weaponizes every idea. Every dream. Everything that’s important to us.

Minority Report (2002)

Does it still count as data if it’s about something that hasn’t actually happened yet?

Paprika (2006)

It’s hard to build a case against a dream.

-JB

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Karen Hao says OpenAI wants to colonize our minds

I’m currently working through Empire of AI, Karen Hao’s book covering the rise of Sam Altman and OpenAI, and the farther I get into it, the more strongly I believe everyone needs to watch Severance.

Hao began covering the large-language model builder in 2019, back when they were still purporting to be designed to “ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits humanity.”2 Her book lays out the history of Altman and his company in surprising detail, and with the tension and pace of a thriller. So far, the key lesson I’ve gleaned makes it a perfect companion to Apple’s Ben Stiller-helmed dystopian satire: our adoption of new tech is not inevitable, and we need to be very suspicious of the super-rich wizards behind the curtain.

-AK

Our hard drives are full. Time to upload to the cloud and pray for rain, cuz in two weeks’ time our picks will be

dry.

We’re lobbing these picks across the digital field to you. Go long!

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Two long song LPs

I always get a little giddy when I find a full length album that has only like, 6 songs, because you just know there’s not going to be any filler tracks, only big sprawling jams. Here are two such albums that I’ve really enjoyed in recent months (both being albums that I first listened to on vinyl, interestingly enough, so I’m going to include vinyl recordings for you to listen to here, especially since Spotify only includes expanded versions of the original albums!):

Van Morrison - Common One (1980)

Jazzy and gorgeous and fluttering from flower to flower, typical of the Van Morrison I was first introduced to on the energetic and improvisational Astral Weeks. This one clocks in at a lengthy 55 minutes while only being 6 tracks! There are two tracks over 15 minutes long. Wild, uncommon stuff. Love it.

George Benson - Breezin’ (1976)

This record was a thrift store find and it did not disappoint like so many others of its ilk do. Silky guitars, peppy horns, groovy bass all come together for some excellent funk flavour right off the hop, with six jams that don’t ride for quite as long as Mr. Morrison’s but still clock in at an average of over six minutes a track.

-JB

Any long song/short tracklist albums come to mind for you?

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WATCH

Leads longing for more

I maybe don’t have quite as many existential crises as I did when I was an angsty twenty-something but I still yearn and dream and navel-gaze with the best of them, which is why these longing leads with movies named after them remain just as loveable for me now as they were or would have been 15 years ago.

Jeff in Jeff, Who Lives at Home (2011)

You ever feel like you’re waiting forever to figure out what your destiny is, and then when you do it’s not really that exciting?

Frances in Frances Ha (2012)

It’s that thing when you’re with someone, and you love them and they know it, and they love you and you know it... but it’s a party... and you’re both talking to other people, and you’re laughing and shining... and you look across the room and catch each other’s eyes... but - but not because you’re possessive, or it’s precisely sexual... but because... that is your person in this life. And it’s funny and sad, but only because this life will end, and it’s this secret world that exists right there in public, unnoticed, that no one else knows about. It’s sort of like how they say that other dimensions exist all around us, but we don’t have the ability to perceive them. That’s - That’s what I want out of a relationship. Or just life, I guess.

Kiki in Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989)

Without even thinking about it, I used to be able to fly. Now I’m trying to look inside myself and find out how I did it.

Truman in The Truman Show (1998)

I figure we can scrape together $8,000… We can bum around the world for a year on that!

And then what, Truman? We’d be where we were five years ago. You’re talking like a teenager.

Well, maybe I feel like a teenager.

We have mortgage payments, Truman… We have car payments. What, we’re going to just walk away from our financial obligations?

It would be an adventure!

I thought we were gonna try for a baby. Isn’t that enough of an adventure?

That can wait. I want to get away, see some of the world! Explore!

Margaret in Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. (2023)

I’ve been looking for you, God. I looked for you in Temple. I looked for you in Church. I didn’t feel you at all. Why? Why, God? Why do I only feel you when I’m alone?

-JB

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“Is this doorstopper worth my time?”

First off, any time spent reading is time well spent. But to be more specific, here’s how I rate the 600+ pagers that I’ve managed to claw my way through.

9. Portrait of a Lady

I read Henry James’ 1881 novel in an American lit class and didn’t like it—too obsessed with everyone’s inner world, warring between options, neurotically mulling over moral dilemma after moral dilemma. But I couldn’t get it out of my head, so I tried it again last year. Still didn’t like it, but for new reasons—too obsessed with struggles of being rich, too much will-she-won’t-she.

8. Don Quixote

Just finished this. If you enjoyed Monty Python and the Holy Grail, you will understand this. I wouldn’t go as far as enjoy, but understand with possibility of mild, occasional enjoyment. I will admit it gets better closer to the end. It’s just that 900-1,000 pages is a lot of medieval slapstick to get through.

7. The Divine Comedy

I’ll preface this by saying I’m highly interested in this one. But you have to come in with preconceived reasons for being there to get much out of it. A lot of obscure, 11th Century papal history and Italian politics going over your head. So yeah, not for everyone.

6. Metamorphoses

Ovid’s first-year Roman mythology course put to verse lands in a similar vein as the above “comedy,” but, surprisingly, you’ve probably done more of the required prep to follow it, and it therefore provides more context to your everyday life than Dante’s tome. Keep a Greek-to-Roman pantheon chart handy, and you’ll be alright.

5. David Copperfield

We’re getting into the legitimately entertaining portion of the list now. The average modern reader can be expected to get some actual pleasure from reading Dickens, and in this case, length is no hinderance. That said, you can’t expect to choose Copperfield as your first of his, and if you’ve read anything else, you already know what to expect.

4. House of Leaves

Things get really interesting with Danielewski’s form-defying fictional universe that is HoL. Like the upcoming D.F.W. classic, half the fun is the challenge of following along. I only rate it lower because you catch the point of the exercise relatively quickly and it doesn’t stray much from your mid-read understanding, leaving the point of getting to the last page a little more ambiguous than the following three.

3. The Idiot

Like James in Portrait of a Lady (and most things published before WWI), it’s clear from the get-go that Dostoevsky is trying to make a point with The Idiot. Unlike James, he reveals his point through action rather than thought. Yes, keeping the Russian names organized in your brain is a challenge, but it’s worth it in the end, trust me.

2. Infinite Jest

It will take you longer to read than anything else on this list, but it will also be the most fun. You will build a relationship with it; you will mourn its ending. You will never look at tennis the same way again.

1. Moby Dick

The GOAT. Forget what anyone tells you about needing to skip chunks to get to the story. Once you dunk your head in, the bits about boats and whaling are the best parts. It’s maximalism at its best: Melville doesn’t hold anything back. And after all the genre shifting and grasps at objective truth, he leaves you out in the open ocean, alone with your questions.

-AK

We’ve finally reached the end of this winding road. Next time, we’re deciding whether or not to accept the terms and conditions of our culture’s take on

data.

If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a thousand times—check out this week’s papa-centred picks.

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My dad’s favourite album

In honour of Father’s Day I thought it would be fun to pass the Ponytail Picks baton onto my own dad, Gareth Brandt, who just so happens to be ponytailed himself, and is a frequent reader and commenter here at Ponytail Press.

The Listen section, I think, is an especially appropriate one to pass on to my pop considering the influence he’s had on my musical tastes! He’s the one who introduced me to my favourite artist, Bruce Cockburn, among many more, and I even recorded a small collection of covers of his some of his favourite songs for Father’s Day 15 years ago!

I asked my dad to do a write up on his favourite song(s) or album(s) and so without further ado, you’ll find his pick below.

-JB

The first album that popped into my head is Real Men Cry by Lost Dogs [2001], an Americana supergroup made up of the leaders of four Christian alternative bands: Terry Taylor of Daniel Amos, Derri Dougherty of The Choir, Mike Roe of the Seventy Sevens, and [the late] Gene Eugene of Adam Again. On this album they were literally crying because they had just lost Gene Eugene and a song on the album, “Three Legged Dog” is dedicated to him.

It is not a concept album, but it is tinged with emotion, nostalgia, and musings about the afterlife. The album contains some of my favourite sounds and songs of all time. It is real music: jangly guitars, tight harmonies, and driving rhythms reminiscent of the Byrds and the Beatles. Through the hard times of life they sing about being centered by “A Certain Love” that is grounding and sure. “Wild Ride” is a love-song reflecting on the good and bad times of a long-term relationship. And of course, the title song is about how men think they should be quiet and strong and then find out that it’s okay to admit weakness and fear—and to cry. More than fifteen years ago I wrote a book about men’s spirituality questioning the prevailing models that were out there that called men to be “Iron John” and “Wild at Heart” that too often devolved into toxic masculinity. It is still rearing its ugly head today! My book is out of print by now, so no need to self-promote!

-GB

What’s your dad’s favourite album?

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WATCH

Parental priorities in Widow’s Bay

It’s been a slow year for television, but the best new series I’ve found so far is this horror-comedy from Apple TV. The show pivots unprecedently fast from legitimately scary to room-interruptingly funny. And underneath all that entertainment lies powerful depictions of the crossroads connecting history, place, family, and community.

The story mostly revolves around Tom Loftis (played by the always great Matthew Rhys), the ambitious new mayor of Widow’s Bay who wants to turn the kooky, coastal, storm magnet of a town into the next Martha’s Vineyard. Unfortunately for him, many of its long-time residents aren’t on board with the idea, given their belief in the town’s cursed history.

But as those inconvenient myths of demon possession and murder prove to be his undeniable reality, Tom has to shift his priorities from his own success to the well-being of his teenage son Evan and the community he’s been elected to serve. What results is a hilarious and poignant illustration of what it means to lead.

-AK

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A very nonprescriptive fatherhood reading list

Dads find their way into a lot of our stories, so this week we’re primarily returning to previously picked picks to look closer at their fathers. In every case, the point is to read them as examples to understand the archetype… not necessarily examples to follow.

The Odyssey (8th century B.C.E.)

Homer’s absent-father epic really is the starting point of a lot of what’s offered in Western lit canon, daddy issues included. and I are nearing the end of our two-person book-club reading (yes, just in time for the movie), and a little detail from a recent chapter (Book 14) helps illustrate what I mean about how to read The Odyssey and everything else on this list:

When Odysseus finally reaches Ithaca, he first stops at his trusty pig herder Eamaeus’ place to prepare for cleaning house before he returns to his own home. It’s the only time in the whole story that the narrator refers to someone in the second person, starting every paragraph of the character’s dialogue with “And you, Eumaeus, the swineherd, said in reply…” That puts you—the reader—directly in the faithful servant’s shoes, not the hero’s. You’re meant to observe Odysseus, not be him.

Kafka on the Shore (2006)

Speaking of Greek influences, for all its “kawaii” elements1 (talking cats, romantic rainy days spent slow-brewing coffee and reading books in quiet libraries, etc.), Murakami’s 2006 novel gets uncomfortably Oedipal2. This one definitely lands more in the “what not to do” category, but we all need reminders of that now and again. At the very least, it’ll let you say, “well at least I didn’t have it that bad.”

“The Geranium” (1946)

The only new READ pick this week, Flannery O’Connor’s short story “The Geranium” gives a stark look at fatherhood near the end of life, when the tables of duty turn from the parent to the parented, and the way our world is changing becomes clearer with every conversation. Mind the old, offensive language. It’s worth the discomfort within the context.

Martyr! (2024)

On (nearly) the flipside, we have Ali, the chicken-plant immigrant father in Kaveh Akbar’s debut novel. As a single parent raising his son in an unknown world, Ali is the agent of change in his son’s life, but he’s also the type who avoids uncomfortable topics. The result produces a different kind of distance. Just goes to show, there’s no way to be a perfect parent.

-AK

Our discourse on dads is done. Ponytail Picks will be back in two weeks’ time to talk at length about all things

long.

We hope you packed appropriately for this week’s picks.

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Vacation songs

Undo one or two buttons of that shirt, kick off your shoes, and kick back to these easy living jams:

Jonas Brothers, “Vacation Eyes”

A Rachel & Joel honeymoon classic—you just can’t beat that bassline and those throwback s-s-s-summer time vibes.

House of the Future, “Vacation”

A lush electronic track from two friends of mine.

I need a vacation
From everything
And I want you to come with me

Vampire Weekend, “Holiday”

Holiday, oh, a holiday
And the best one of the year
Dozing off underneath my sheets
While I cover both my ears

Sounds nice.

Monster Rally, “Until The Sun Goes Down (feat. TOLEDO)”

Rallying up the troops for a vacation? Don’t forget to pack some Monster Rally.

Hayden, “On a Beach (feat. Feist)”

Another one of Rachel and I’s official songs. Best enjoyed with drink in hand under sunny skies after filing your tax return.

We’re on a beach, oh yeah we’re on a beach
We’re drinking income taxes and there’s sand at our feet

-JB

What are your desert island vacation records?

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WATCH

Friendship & privilege in Four Seasons

Netflix’s Four Seasons delivers the goods. I mean, you can’t expect anything less with that cast. Tina Fey, Will Forte, Coleman Domingo, and Steve Carell (in and out) are the heavy-hitters here, but the new and lesser-known names (comedy and voice acting genius Kerri Kenney, Italian newcomer Marco Calvani, and Girls5eva member Erika Henningsen) effortlessly hold their own in the sharply written, perfectly paced two-season comedy series.

So my critiques here aren’t so much about the show as they are about the TV landscape in general. The show just happens to be a good example: its depictions of friendship and privilege are absurdly divorced from reality.

The friendship thing is more or less harmless. Yes, no one on earth travels or spends this much time with their friends. But we can say that about any TV friend group (Friends, anyone?). It’s a necessary fantasy for the show to work. And let’s face it: it’s nice. But in this show, it ends up highlighting the real problem I have—the money problem.

This one truly gets on my nerves. Especially right now, as the super rich intentionally widen the gap between them and us—not just making more money, but making sure we make less—the way this show takes everyone’s have-ness for granted feels exceptionally tone-deaf. The only key character resembling anything close to a have-not is Henningsen’s character Ginny (the young one), and her slightly lower placement on the class-scale is for the most part kept out of frame.

This, I think, is what you get when rich and famous people are the only ones with the resources to tell stories. It doesn’t stop the show from being funny or even moving at times. We can relate on an emotional level. It’s all the other stuff that keeps us off the resort grounds, looking in.

-AK

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Take a vacation into the kind future of A Psalm for the Wild-Built

Ok, I’m doing it again where I’m recommending a book when I’ve only just started reading it, but this one had me right from author Becky Chambers’ opening dedication:

For anybody who could use a break.

Yes, please! The opening chapters do not disappoint either, offering a cozy look at a wonderful near-future world that feels so achingly within reach, yet frustratingly not here yet. It’s a world where humans have limited their domain to only 50% of the planet (still not a fair ratio, Chambers notes, considering the thousands of species that are left to the other half, but a limit all the same), and this increased respect for nature is paired with a healthier approach to technology that focuses on its longevity and usefulness as a tool for the flourishing of society (there’s one appreciably cheeky little dig at our current tech consumerist culture where the main character Dex is describing their “pocket computer” as “a reliable device built to last a lifetime, as all computers were” [30]).

And if this book’s exploration of a thriving new world isn’t enough of a vacation for you as you inhabit this often hellish one, the main character of the book is themself also wanting to escape. Dex is a monk who hears the call of the crickets in the open spaces outside the main city:

The intense feeling of containment within the City became intolerable. Dex wanted to inhabit a place that spread not up but out (7).

We readers join them as they leave the city to pursue their new vocation of serving tea and comforts to folks in need of a friend in rural villages around the countryside. It’s not all sunshine and rose hips, but I’m enjoying the vacation into this new world so far and it’s inspiring me to re-think my work in this old one.

-JB

Our bags are packed, and we’re boarding our flight home. Next time, we’re doing our best Telemachus impressions to go searching for our culture’s

fathers.

I’m reviving this segment because it’s May in post-secondary education, and I’m bored. Also, the uproar over Geese and Angine de Poitrine is telling me that the type of music I like is having a bit of a moment, so why not ride that wave, baby?!

Hop on this cat’s board. Let’s see if we can reach the shore.

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playlist also available on

Qobuz

Yebba, “Aggressive”

This is going to work as a kind of catch-up exercise for 2026, so don’t mind the few tracks like this one that date back a few months. I promise they earn their place.

Yebba is criminally underappreciated by music journalists. Jean, her sophomore full-length that dropped in early March, takes a few tracks to really get going, but the wait is well worth it. “Aggressive” lands right in the centre of its sudden burst of energy, adding a no-fucks-given vocal push that will make you want to “enable repeat one” as Spotify puts it.

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Apple Music | Quboz | Spotify | Tidal

My New Band Believe, “Opposite Teacher”

This record got a lot of hype when it arrived in April. And then… crickets. I nearly forgot to listen to it. Boy am I glad I did. “Opposite Teacher” just barely stands out among the other seven tracks that comprise the self-titled debut from former black midi member Cameron Picton. Another project that harkens back to the ‘00s, this one taps the chamber pop tree that sprouted legends like Grizzly Bear and Of Montreal. Absolutely love it.

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Apple Music | Bandcamp | Quboz | Spotify | Tidal

Bennet Mitchell, “rearranging”

Closer to home, I discovered Bennett Mitchell back in January thanks to CKUA, and this song, the title track of his album from early this year so far. If it were up to me, Mitchell’s heartfelt croon would get him on a bill will present-day songwriting legends like Bill Callahan or Cass McCombs.

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Apple Music | Quboz | Spotify | Tidal

What’s your pick for best song of 2026 so far?

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villagerrr, “Virginia”

In a similar vein sonically, villagerrr shared this fiddle and pedal-steel flourished single from their upcoming album Carousel earlier this month. While the band will also add some shoegaze crunch to a song or two, this one sticks to more of a mid ‘10s emo, Pinegrove-adjacent vibe that I can always get behind. Looking forward to the full album coming out on Friday.

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Apple Music | Bandcamp | Quboz | Spotify | Tidal

Cadence Weapon, “Alpenflage”

Since I’ve been reading Rollie Pemberton’s (aka ) Substack, the Edmontonian now living in Toronto published two books and released two albums, 2024’s ROLLERCOASTER and, from this April, Forager. Busy guy!

“Alpenflage” has him in full swagger-mode, but it’s hard to outshine the instrumentation on this track. That bass line—oof! Yowza!

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Apple Music | Quboz | Spotify | Tidal

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We’re hittin’ the road with a tank full of new picks we cooked up for ya.

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Folk songs to fuel your next road trip

After the initial “Life is a Highway” high of embarking on a new adventure has worn off, settle in and look inward with these mellow and melancholy numbers. Why are you really leaving, and where are you really hoping to go?

Bruce Cockburn, “Going Down the Road”

I know it must get better
If far enough I go

Mark Knopfler & Emmylou Harris, “Rollin’ On”

We’re rollin’ on, rollin’ on
Feeling better than we did last night
Rollin’ on, rollin’ on
It’s hard sometimes, pretty much it’s alright

Adrianne Lenker, “Gone”

To know something’s near
Not the change in the seasons that scares me, dear
It’s the sound in the distance I start to hear

Cat Stevens, “The Wind”

I listen to the wind, to the wind of my soul
Where I’ll end up? Well, I think only God really knows

Matthew Joel, “The Grey Line”

It seems time has tried her best
To take that old grey line and put her to rest,
But she’ll always be home in the ramblin’ one’s breast.

Zachary Lucky, “Town to Town”

Oh, how this soul aches for the open road
Townes van Zandt sings another one
Light another cigarette, and son, you’ll burn those regrets
Soon you’re coming back home, back home

-JB

WATCH

Great films that cook surprisingly fast

Most of the films considered classics can lose the average viewer’s attention because they take so damn long. You might not expect it, but these five masterpieces are among the exceptions.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

The Holy Grail is perfect because of its imperfections. It takes an odd number of scenes to set up its premise and then does very little to pursue that premise. It follows an unrealistic number of characters toward that unclear end. It interrupts action with weird, animated asides and a narrating professor. And somehow, all that culminates into one of the greatest comedies of all time in 91 minutes. A blessing! A blessing from the Lord! God be praised!

Stand By Me (1986)

Clocking in at an hour and 29 minutes, this coming-of-age flick directed by the late, great Rob Reiner is a classic ‘80s example of saying it (“it” being adolescence) like it is. It’s a movie you will remember watching, especially if you first watched while you were the age the characters are becoming.

Elephant (2003)

This movie envelopes you in a series of moments we’d all rather didn’t exist—a school shooting and the events that lead up to it. It was one of the first examples of “quiet cinema” that I watched as a teen, so it came as a surprise to learn that it ends in 81 minutes.

Old Joy (2006)

Speaking of quiet cinema, the queen of the subgenre, Kelly Reichardt, served this incredible ode to aging and male friendship, paired with a brilliantly understated soundtrack by Yo La Tengo, in under 75 minutes. One of my all-time favourites.

Once (2007)

You remember enjoying this one. You remember the songs. But do you remember how short it is? Only one hour and 26 minutes. That’s a lot of punch packed in each frame.

-AK

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The fuels for life in Martyr!

Given all the “Hormuz nuz you can uz” dominating our attention lately, I decided to read something Iran-related over the last few weeks and picked up Kaveh Akbar’s 2024 novel, Martyr! But the connection to this week’s theme was not what I expected.

Akbar’s book weaves a number of themes together: displacement, immigration, empire, and addiction just to name a few. But one question works as the hem holding it all together: when our reasons for living start to fall away one by one, what keeps us going?

The closest the story gets to an answer arrives near the end, through the voice of a Vietnamese art gallerist named Sang Linh. In her conversation with Cyrus (the protagonist) she, in an off-hand way, references the need for emotional fuel to move forward in life. The first fuel she mentions is fear:

“Fear made me work hard, get better. It’s a dirty fuel, but it works. And anger? Anger helped me to leave him. To get my boys away from him as soon as I could. To come thrive in this country that didn’t even believe we were people. To prove it wrong. You can put a saddle on anger.”1

Later in the conversation, when Cyrus lists the fuels that haven’t worked for him—God, alcohol, drugs, writing—she suggests an alternative: love. “It’s a cleaner fuel than getting high, she says. “Cleaner than art too, mostly.”2

The way she frames her advice removes the moralism usually assigned to these “fuels” while reaching the same conclusions drawn by traditional sources of wisdom. But besides that, the metaphor offers a different angle from which to look at the search for meaning in life. I’m left thinking, what am I putting in my gas tank?

What are you?

-AK

Time for a pit stop. Hitch a ride with us in two weeks as we head out on

vacation.

Last name Press, first name Ponytail, checking in for the night with another suitcase full of picks.

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Music’s many rooms

We have beds booked across the musical spectrum this week, from Rocky’s Gideon Bible-bedecked suite, to the infamous inn that turned away our Lord and Saviour. And no, we won’t be staying at the California. The actual hotel looks nice, but the song desperately needs a renovation.

Also available on

Qobuz!

-AK

WATCH

Horror hotels

The Shining (1980)

Dad?

Yes?

Do you like this hotel?

Yes, I do. I love it. Don’t you?

I guess so.

Good. I want you to like it here. I wish we could stay here forever... and ever... and ever.

Barton Fink (1991)

Oh boy, here we go, after The Shining we have yet another “tourist with a typewriter” holing up in a hotel with writer’s block. What’s the worst that could happen?

I gotta tell you, the life of the mind... There’s no roadmap for that territory... And exploring it can be painful.

The Lobster (2015)

Hotels—the perfect place to find exciting new love. Or else.

Psycho (1960)

Do you have any vacancies?

Oh, we have 12 vacancies. 12 cabins, 12 vacancies.

So no one else around to hear you scream…

Hotel Transylvania (2012)

This place is packed with countless more monsters than all of the aforementioned horror hotels combined!

-JB

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The motel life in The Motel Life and No Country for Old Men

I gave a little shout-out to Willy Vlautin’s The Motel Life way back in our 2022 Round-Up but its gritty Americana world continues to stick with me over three years later. Its methodical, matter-of-fact narrative is very reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy’s chilling thriller from just a year earlier, which I just read for the first time this spring, and which has its own generous helping of southern country sleaze.

It’s the transient motel life at the center of both novels that beguiles me the most, though. On the one hand, it’s a little offensive to romanticize such a life marked by a poverty and instability that many real life people experience. On the other hand, I’m such a sucker for a good road trip (I just prefer to have mine without unhinged hitmen on my tail).

-JB

We’ve paid our bill, and handed in our keys for the week. Bring your aprons next time, when we cook this newsletter with

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Don’t let Geese suffer this injustice

Apple Music | Bandcamp | Quboz | Spotify | Tidal

I don’t know how much of the Ponytail Press audience I’m talking to here, but I don’t know where else to get this off my chest.

There’s been a lot of so-called “discourse” this last week or so about the band Geese, and their apparent hiring of the marketing agency Chaotic Good to “create virality” as fellow musician put it in her now infamous Substack essay “Fake Fans.” But while McLamb took aim at the guys running the agency and the words they used during an interview with Billboard to describe what they do, the so-called “professionals” (read: dicks) at Wired saw the opportunity for attention and co-opted the trending post to point their barrels at the client.

Now because I’m not on TikTok and I avoid social media feeds like the plague, I can give a pretty clear account of my experience with Geese and its members over the last year or so. My story starts with Nick Cave, actually. I had heard of the band but hadn’t given them much notice until last April, when Cave mentioned lead singer Cameron Winter’s solo album from late 2024 in his Red Hand Files. Not long after, Pitchfork added Heavy Metal to their quarterly updated “best music of 2025 so far” list, even though it came out in December of the previous year. I remember thinking that was a little weird, but when I listened to it, I thought, I’ll take the recommendation anyway. Because it was good.

Then, last summer, Geese dropped “Trinidad” as a pre-release single for their forthcoming new album. “Trinidad” blew my mind. Now that we have the whole of Getting Killed, I can safely say it’s one of the most challenging, abrasive tracks on the album—not a shoe-in choice for a single by any stretch of the imagination.

That made me happy, not just because the song was fantastic, but because the choice to lead with it was a risk—it’s a daring decision to make with a daring song.

My son is in bed,
my daughters are dead,
my wife’s in the shed,
my husband’s burning lead,
the rest are force-fed or else baked into bread,
and nothing’s been said for four-and-a-half days.
When that light turns red I’m driiiiiiiiving away—

THERE’S A BOMB IN MY CAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Getting Killed was my favourite release from last year. It’s vying to by my favourite album of the past 10 years, if I’m being honest. That doesn’t mean you’ll like it. If you don’t like the Velvet Underground or Radiohead or the Strokes’ first two albums, you probably won’t like it1. But to say that those of us who do are victims of a psyop is horseshit.

The most insane thing about all this is that Chaotic Good’s tactics are par for the course. Musicians have been told they have to do all this bullshit (flooding the algorithm with “content” to get anyone to pay attention to them) for at least 15 years. All the qualms I’ve read so far about this practice are just descriptions of marketing as a whole in 2026. Is Wired writing hit-pieces about Wegovy? Is the new season of Euphoria a psyop? Going down this road even one step further than their article (or, let’s face it, their headline) completely dismantles their entire business model as… a Condé Nast-owned online/print magazine.

Oh, and by the way, if you are one of the tiny, select few who actually read the whole Wired article, you know that it ends with what amounts to an admission of this, albeit, again, at the expense of an artist. Here’s the full final paragraph for your reading displeasure:

For her part, McLamb says that these sorts of new, extremely online marketing campaigns are “no more or less nefarious than anything else that's been going on in the music business since the dawn of time.” Asked if she would ever consent to these sorts of trend-simulating marketing tactics promoting her own music, McLamb is unequivocal: “I would absolutely take part in a narrative or UGC campaign.”

Like seriously, what the fuck are we even doing anymore?

-AK

WATCH

Legal thrillers for your risk-free viewing

Illegal thrillers not recommended.

Dark Waters (2019)

A perfectly paced legal procedural with a horror aura, as striking cinematography sweeps across bleak and poisoned corporate and natural landscapes, and with each new shocking discovery and small success we see more of the central monster.

Erin Brockovich (2000)

Speaking of poisoned landscapes—badass Brockovich has her own to deal with.

The Social Network (2010)

Speaking of poisoned landscapes—the internet, amirite? There’s a lot that happens outside the courtroom in this film but the whole story is told from one, giving it a strong dramatic core.

JFK (1991)

A mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma—is justice to be found somewhere in its dizzying depths and layers upon layers?

The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020)

A dialogue-heavy courtroom drama with all the humour, high-stakes intensity, and fiery one-liners of an action film.

“What’s your price?”

“My life.”

-JB

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Justice is the first domino to drop in Lord of the Flies

Have you read this since high school? A retired employee from the college library where I work chose it for our book club this month. My take? Like a lot of what we’re told to read in our teens, more adults should read this book.

For one thing, it’s just good. It’s beautifully written. Golding and his editor, Charles Monteith, show themselves to be a well-oiled team, keeping the plot clipping along while leaving room for description. And what’s especially interesting is who’s doing the describing.

The first thing I noticed this time around was the relationship between truth, fairness, and beauty. The characters who care about the truth—Ralph (our protagonist), Simon, and Piggy—are the same characters who recognize the wonder of nature and/or try to work toward a sense of order that treats everyone fairly. They’re also the last characters to choose violence.

The main character, Ralph, isn’t perfect though. In fact, he’s responsible for tipping the first domino toward the hell these boys find themselves in by the end. That impulse to laugh at Piggy and keep calling him Piggy is the original sin of the island. It introduces hate to the community and leads to the dehumanization we see later on, serving as a reminder to take the taunts of people in power seriously.

Right now, we’re seeing the consequences of letting the Jacks of the world take over. Clearly Pete Hegseth wasn’t paying attention in English class. Could reading books like this now that we’re older tip the scales back toward justice? It couldn’t hurt.

-AK

Our gavels are down for the week. Check in two Fridays from now, when your two favourite culture concierges explore the many rooms within the theme of

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Double albums worth a double-take

The double album has lost a bit of its meaning in the digital era. Even vinyl collectors know that two records in a sleeve don’t necessarily mean more music for your ears. But these lengthy long-plays earn the extra PVC needed to get them in your hands.

The Glow, Pt. 2 (2001) by The Microphones

Before was the quasi-famous founder of genre-fluid, experimental black-folk project Mount Eerie, he was the cult-followed founder of the genre-fluid, experimental black-folk project The Microphones. The Glow, Pt. 2 is the latter project’s pinnacle—20 tracks of lo-fi internal landscape conjured by timid vocals, heavy-metal crunch, nylon strings, and the occasional use of steel drums.

Sounds like: You’ve caught a radio signal from another dimension. You’re afraid of what you hear, but you’ll do anything not to lose it. No one will believe you if you lose it.

Apple Music | Quboz | Tidal

-AK

The Alchemy Index, Vols. 1 & 2: Fire & Water and Vols. 3 & 4: Air & Earth (2007-2008) by Thrice

A quadruple-EP released in two sets of two makes for a double album, of sorts, right? I have fond memories of playing through the two CDs of Vols. III & IV a ton in the Toyota Yaris I drove while delivering auto parts and paint around Winnipeg over 15 years ago (yikes), but I’ve enjoyed Vols. I & II more recently too. The whole thing is a concept album, obviously, with the four parts each based on a different element: Fire, Water, Earth, and Air, with music to match, and even a recurring melody they use on the concluding track to each EP, which is pretty cool.

I like how they were paired: the first album containing Volume I - Fire and Volume II - Water, takes you deep into the metal depths of hell before plunging you into the cold and electronic waters of the “Digital Sea”. It feels like relief at first and then you realize it’s just as heavy.

Volume III and IV, Air and Earth, seem to overlap a bit more as the sky falls to dusty earth and rises back up across moving mountain ranges. Soaring electric guitars and earthy acoustic ones each make for lighter tones overall in this pairing.

Apple Music | Quboz | Tidal

-JB

WATCH

Double roles that double down

Twins pop up all over film history, but these twins aren’t played by twins. They’re played by a single actor going for broke.

Nicolas Cage as Charlie & Donald Kaufman in Adaptation. (2002)

The real Charlie wrote the imagined Charlie and the invented Donald into the film you are watching—which happens to be about writing the film you are watching. Try keeping that one straight! -AK

Lindsay Lohan as Hallie Parker & Annie James in The Parent Trap (1998)

When I was a kid I just assumed these two characters were played by actual twins—that’s how good Lindsay Lohan’s performances (not to mention the seamless editing) are. -JB

Mark Ruffalo as Dominick & Thomas Birdsey in I Know This Much Is True (2020)

makes an argument for being the best actor of his generation in this brutally honest, unforgetable miniseries adapted from the novel of the same name by Wally Lamb. -AK

Michael B. Jordan as Smoke & Stack in Sinners (2025)

“Finally they cast Michael A Jordan in something.”1 Coolest pair of character names in this list, for sure, with a cool dual performance to match. -JB

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Double-authored books worth reading twice

Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman

I know, I know—Neil turned out to be a creep. But I’m deciding not to hold Terry responsible. Their comedy about the birth of the antichrist is the best writer collab I’ve ever read. Come to think of it—it’s the only one I’ve read! Plus, it happens to be about an unlikely duo, so I couldn’t pass it up. -AK

Jesus for President: Politics for Ordinary Radicals by Shane Claiborne & Chris Haw

Well, speaking of the antichrist, our American friends to the south may or may not have one on their hands. Seems like a good time to remind any “Christian” followers of He Who Must Not Be Named that the Christ they take their name from was a “Prince of Peace… born as a refugee in the middle of a genocide,” whose idea of power was symbolized by a slaughtered lamb.

The book was written in 2008 but remains chillingly prophetic today. Works well as a recommended read for any Christian nationalists in your life that you can’t talk politics with anymore, or as a source of thought-provoking inspiration for any “ordinary radicals” searching for active hope in this bleak world, Jesus-followers or not. -JB

Join us in a week times two time as these two long-haired radicals seek

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Songs to hand-dance to

Bruce Cockburn - “Hand-Dancing”

Song swaying in the air
I’m hand dancing in your hair
You’re hand dancing in my soul

Dashboard Confessional - “Hands Down”

Song for getting handsy.

Tom Waits - “Clap Hands”

From Dashboard’s simple ode to young love to Tom Waits’ ode to… something. A lot of things.

Roar, roar, the thunder and the roar
Son of a bitch is never comin’ back here no more
Moon in the window and a bird on the pole
Always find a millionaire to shovel all the coal

Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross - “Hand Covers Bruise”

An instantly iconic theme that does well to capture the The Social Network’s propulsive plot with a sinister undercurrent, and the touches of emotion dripped on top like delicate piano notes.

Big Thief - “Two Hands”

The letting down and the picking up, the push and the pull. The two hands.

-JB

WATCH

Hands in the movies

Don’t Look Up (2021)

Try and count (on your fingers, perhaps?) how many times hands are featured prominently in this delicate and emotional climactic scene of an otherwise brazen satire. Hands raised in desperation, hands wrung in anxiety, hands held to bring comfort at the end of all things.

Evil Dead II (1987)

The title of the video pretty much says it all. A perfect encapsulation of the wacky horror on display throughout this movie.

Deadpool & Wolverine (2024)

This ending with a couple of bros holding hands and saving the world(s) with the power of friendship and glistening abs had me on my knees in adoration.

The Holdovers (2023)

You don’t actually see the handshake here but you can hear it and you sure can feel it.

The Shape of Water (2017)

One of the most satisfying “fuck you”s I’ve ever seen.

CODA (2021)

Hands for speaking but also for hearing.

-JB

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An odyssey/us handed down through the ages

I’m doing something stupid. It didn’t start out that way. A few months ago, my pal and I started reading Homer’s Odyssey together in preparation for Mr. Nolan’s forthcoming film adaptation. But then last week I stupidly started Joyce’s nearly impenetrable Ulysses on my own. (That’s too much reading, Andrew.) So to help me keep it all straight, I’m laying out the history of the double-monikered, myth-lit figure. Bare with me.

The roots

There are no villains, only heroes in Homer’s Iliad (750–700 BC). And while Odysseus plays a major role in the saga, he doesn’t reach the same word count as, say, Hector or Achilles. His ideas (the strategy of the Trojan Horse, his justification for why he deserves the dead Achilles’ shield) and their implementation play more of a role than he does. Nothing to see here but valour, Homer implies.

Maybe that didn’t sit right with the writer though, because sometime later he names the sequel (The Odyssey, 750-650 BC) after the guy, centring the whole epic around his struggle to get back to his wife and kid and exact brutal revenge on the bastards at home trying to steal his life.

Jump a few hundred years, though, and it’s Odysseus that comes off as the bastard. In Euripedes’ Hecuba (424 BC), he’s collecting a virgin for sacrifice from her own mother, who just so happens to have saved his life during his sacking of Troy. Virgil perpetuates that opinion 400 years later in his Ilium-inclined Aeneid (29-19 BC), using Odysseus (going by the Romanized Ulysses here) as the foul foil to Aeneas, the poem’s leading man. Among the classical depictions, only Ovid brings ambiguity back to the character, highlighting OdysseUlysses’ way with words in the always language-exalting Metamorphoses (8 AD).

The references

Ulysses (at this point, the most common name adopted for him) continues to pop in the works of literature’s greats, and always as an asshole. Out of the nine circles of Hell in Dante’s Divine Comedy (1321), he’s assigned to the eighth (reserved for fraudsters), where we learn his motivation for being such a sneak: his unquenchable need to know the unknown. Like Narnia’s Jadis, he gets caught trying to enter paradise through a backdoor and suffers a fiery eternity as a consequence.

Shakespeare also patches Ulysses into a play to fill the role of scoundrel. In his tragicomedy Trolius and Cressida (1602), we’re back in the Trojan War, where our favourite reprobate forces the young captor Cressida to kiss all his fellow Greek commanders while simultaneously using the warrior Ajax as a pawn to lure Achilles back into the fight. So yeah, not the kind of guy you’d want to bring home to meet the folks.

The modern re-imaginings

Here’s where things get really interesting. Because while some modern interpretations like Madeline Miller’s Circe (2018) and Louise Gluck’s Meadowlands (1996) retell the legend in a similar way to the examples already covered here, James Joyce starts a new trend with Ulysses (1922), applying the elements of the tale more subtly and/or ironically. No one shares the story’s name in Joyce’s novel, but the narrative itself is composed of telling contrasts to the O.G. Odyssey.

Three of the greatest practitioners of the 20th Century’s favourite medium take Joyce’s new idea and run with it in their own way as well. Arthur Clarke & Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: a Space Odyssey (1968) steals only the name and a few warnings from the original, while the Coen Brothers get a little more Joyce-y with O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), sharing the main character’s name and a few plot points and leaving the rest, to hilarious effect.

-AK

If you think we handled this week’s theme well, wait and see in two weeks’ time how the two of us tackle the trouble of all things

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The presence of absence in Coldplay’s Ghost Stories

I was looking in my music library for songs or albums about ghosts to talk about this week and after remembering Coldplay’s wonderfully moody Ghost Stories (my favourite release of theirs), I was struck anew by the idea that a ghost is like the presence of absence: the tangible sensing of something that in reality is no longer there (like the aptly titled phantom limb syndrome). And so what better concept is there for a break-up album—the mourning of a relationship and a person once there and now gone but still felt so strongly? Ghost Stories provided the soundtrack to my own painful experience of heartbreak many years ago, but I never really thought about how appropriate the title was until now. The idea of “the presence of absence” is made especially clear (ghost pun) on the chilling “Another’s Arms,” which contrasts the physical sensations of a relationship with the vague empty ache of heartbreak:

Late night watching TV
Used to be you here beside me
Used to be your arms around me
Your body on my body…

Got to pull you close into me
Another’s arms, another’s arms
Pull yourself right through me
Another’s arms, another’s arms

The intangible and ethereal remains the focus on the album’s closer, “O,” which looks to the skies for some semblance of hope, as wispy as it may be:

Flock of birds
Hovering above
Into smoke I’m turned and rise, following them up…

Pray before the dawn
Cause they fly away
One minute they arrive
Next you know they’re gone…

Fly on, ride through
Maybe one day I’ll fly next to you

-JB

WATCH

Past pain does the haunting in The Haunting of Hill House

I’m having trouble finding the right words to describe this show.

Released on Netflix in 2018, the mini series was the first of five horror-adjacent programs created by Mike Flanagan and a revolving cast of actors ranging from established legends like Timothy Sutton, Henry Thomas, and Carla Gugino to lesser known but no less talented performers like Kate Siegel and Samantha Sloyan.

The results have been mixed1, but none have managed to surpass this adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel of the same name. Nearly eight years later and I have yet to be frightened so meaningfully by a television show. Its depiction of each character’s effort to not talk about their shared pain presents family trauma as accurately as I think I’ve seen on screen. If this rendering stays true to the text, it’s no wonder Jackson’s book is considered a classic.

-AK

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The ghosts still argue in George Saunder’s Vigil

Every established version of the afterlife I’ve come across promises some form of post-mortem clarity. “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face,” and all that. But ’ Buddhist-Catholic hybrid in his new novel, Vigil, presents a more “humous” take on posthumous existence.

Jill “Doll” Blaine, our main ghost and voice through this apparitional story, thinks she’s got it figured out. The moment her soul leaves her body, she sees her untimely demise—and the man responsible—as “inevitable occurrence[s], upon which, therefore, it would be impossible, even ludicrous, to pass judgment.” Convinced that “all else is futility,” our narrator commits herself to comforting those on the cusp of crossing over to her current spectral state.

But thanks to the outraged rebuttals of a fellow phantom (presumably a fictionalized Étienne Lenoir, inventor of the internal-combustion engine) helped along by an especially obstinate oil tycoon knocking on hereafter’s door, Jill quickly learns that some “occurrences” might be more “inevitable” than others, and that the damage humans inflict on the life and lives around them maybe shouldn’t be shrugged off so easily. The resulting tale forces us to confront our own assumptions about this life and the next.

-AK

We’ve been busted, and we’re pretty mad about it. Catch us in two weeks as we look to throw

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We’re all trapped in the same house as Jordan Klassen’s “Housefly.”

“Housefly” is the definition of a deep cut. Maybe I’m biased because he’s an old pal, but Jordan Klassen doesn’t get the credit he deserves as a songwriter. Then, even amongst fans, his 2017 album Big Intruder is a bit of an outlier, relying more heavily on the man’s quirky sense of humour than any other release in his 15-year catalogue. And finally, to find “Housefly” you have to wait until Track 7, long after the singles “Yer Cure” and “Dominika” play through.

But the wait is well worth it. Channeling the spirit of Scottish bard Robbie Burns, Klassen chooses his own modern “tim’rous beastie” to anthropomorphize, recognizing himself (and let’s face it, us all) in the S.O.S. signal being tapped out against his window by the desperate and insatiable insect.

And then that marriage of antennae-buzzing synthesizer and six-string texture with Klassen’s haunted falsetto wraps those lyrics in a perfect package as we’re left wondering whether the singer will rescue the bug from his domestic prison or put the little guy out of his misery. Gives me shivers every time.

-AK

WATCH

Reel rescues

Parents, princesses, pirates, and play pals: the rescuer and the rescuee are not always who you might expect in these reel exciting turn-of-the-milennium romps:

Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius (2001)

It’s up to the kids to save their parents (after they’re done partying and peeing in the shower, of course) in this wacky alien-abduction animated adventure.

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)

Ms. Swan’s the first person in need of rescuing, but the wooden tables will turn a few times before this twisty pirate plot is over.

Shrek (2001)

The prince defeats the dragon and rescues the princess and they kiss and live happily ever after, or so the story goes. But that fairy tale gets flushed down the toilet pretty early on this one:

Spy Kids (2001)

More parents in need of rescue! It’s a good thing these kids have plenty of cool gadgets at their disposal, even if they don’t always know how to use them:

Toy Story 2 (1999)

The best of the the Toy Stories, in my opinion, featuring a wonderfully clever and fun small-toys-in-a-big-world rescue mission at its core.

-JB

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The chilling chains of The Silver Chair

Spoilers ahead!

If I’m being honest, it’s been a while since I’ve read C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia. But this sixth entry (or fourth, depending on your preferred reading order) is the one that sticks out the most in my memory, thanks to the loveably pessimistic pond-dweller Puddleglum, the tantalizing investigative journey marked by mysterious signs, and the chilling discovery: a prince in need of rescue not only from the chains that bind him to the titular chair but from an enchantment placed upon him by a shrewd green queen.

-JB

We’ve been set free! Join us next week as bust through corners of our culture haunted by

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Garden songs

Phoebe Bridgers - “Garden Song”

Phoebe singing sweetly gets a little creepy:

Someday, I’m gonna live
In your house up on the hill
And when your skinhead neighbor goes missing
I’ll plant a garden in the yard then…

I don’t know how, but I’m taller
It must be something in the water
Everything’s growing in our garden
You don’t have to know that it’s haunted

Aidan Knight - “Julia in the Garden”

The beauty of the mundane. It’s in the simple brown dirt that the flowers of love grow:

julia in the garden
passing by the window, i’m
washing as the light goes down
watch the water swirl the drain…

cut forget me nots
a handful at a time
take a picture and
remind me to remind you
i will love you

Teen Daze - “Valley of Gardens”

Spring is on the horizon. My anticipation builds along with the instrumentation…

I went down, to see what the pond had collected,
A valley of gardens, muted the sound of the hills.
The rain had ended, I can smell the leaving of winter,
Green and blue, now, I feel them in every sentence.

Diana Krall - “Garden in the Rain”

An ode to love, that “touch of colour beneath skies of gray.”

The Tallest Man on Earth - “The Gardener”

A chilling companion piece to Bridgers’ eerie tune, about a “spy,” a “runner,” a “leak,” now “buried by the lilies” and “fertiliz[ing] the roses”:

So now we’re dancing through the garden
And what a garden I have made
And now that death will grow my jasmine
I find it soothing I’m afraid

-JB

WATCH

Monsters in the garden

Not to get all Judeo-Christian on you, but growing up, it seemed like gardens were supposed to represent Precious Moments™ type themes like innocence, virtue, and perfect harmony with Capital-C Creation. These five films take a decidedly different approach, warning us to inspect every supposed paradise for the inevitable snake in the grass.

The Godfather (1972)

This scene darkens the garden on so many levels. Don Corleone, the aging patriarch, with his orange-peel teeth, plays “monster” to spook his grandson, but Death hides in the tomato plants, waiting to defang him and steal the boy’s innocence. Few film scenes will put a lump in your throat like this one.

The Shining (1980)

The snowy ending is the part that probably comes to mind when thinking about the grounds around the Overlook Hotel, but that labyrinth is representing Jack’s troubled mind throughout the story.

Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003)

I’ll be honest, it took a search through the world wide web for this one. It’s been a minute since I watched either of the Kill Bills, but I couldn’t resist including the garden behind the House of Blue Leaves where O-Ren Shii (played by Lucy Liu) meets her brain-exposed end. One down, five more to go.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)

The whole series of Harry Potter films needs no introduction (or remake, for that matter) but this film, and specifically this scene, is where things really shift into gear. Harry and his schoolmates have encountered monsters before, but he and Cedric are about to face a shade new of darkness. Time to grow up, boys (or die trying).

Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)

There’s something about labyrinths, man. Something we don’t understand as children but we get as adults. We could get lost. We could cross paths with creatures we’d rather not meet. We could discover aspects of ourselves we’d rather stay hidden. This film explores every fear listed, and we’re guided through it by a brave (if naive) little girl just trying to right by her family. Watch this movie—but please, put your children to bed first.

-AK

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The best Narnia Chronicle has green thumb

!Hot Take Alert! The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe doesn’t hold a candle to its prequel, The Magician’s Nephew. I would trade one-for-one Gospel allegory for dark-pool dimension travel any day, and no image from C.S. Lewis’ book series stuck to my young mind more strongly than Jadis, the future White Witch, climbing the wall surrounding the Garden of Youth.

Lewis had a certain style that didn’t exactly rely on subtlety, but I will forever be grateful for how this book cracked open my imagination as a kid. I hope to God that Greta Gerwig gets to this one in the upcoming film adaptations.

-AK

We’ve planted, we’ve watered, and now we wait two weeks to see what grows. If you don’t hear from us by then, we’ll need you to come to our

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Four Favourite Track 4s

Joni Mitchell - “Carey”

From the 1971 album Blue.

The hand drums and bass groove here is impeccable and Joni’s in a good mood as she flutters about giving toasts to her temporary tourist town home and the “bright red devil” she met there who makes it hard to leave.

Bruce Cockburn - “Burden of the Angel/Beast”

From the 1994 album Dart to the Heart.

Dart to the Heart might’ve been the first of many Bruce Cockburn albums from my dad’s collection that I grew to love thanks to its array of beautiful folk rock musings like this one.

Eminem - “Cleanin’ Out My Closet”

From the 2002 album The Eminem Show.

A deep, brooding dive into Eminem’s tumultuous and traumatic family history that is probably my favourite track on the album—coming in surprisingly early for such a moody track on a lengthy album at #4.

Waxahatchee - “Right Back to It”

From the 2024 album Tigers Blood.

Just gorgeous—the yearning lyrics, the perfect voices, the tickling banjo, the steady folk groove. What a quietly and slowly stunning video too. This track 4 is number 1 in my heart.

-JB

WATCH

Four Favourite Four-Character TV shows

It only seems right to do another Letterboxd-style Four Favourites here, except I’m going to go with TV instead and up the thematic ante by focusing on shows that have four characters at their core.

All Creatures Great and Small

My wife introduced me to this show a while ago and we’re still only on Season 2 but I already hold great affection for the core four of upstanding James, crotchety Siegfried, cheeky Tristan, and all-knowing Mrs. Hall who holds them all together. My favourite moments are those ones usually at the end of an episode when they’re all just sitting around the fire or at the dinner table together, enjoying each other’s company. Dream life!

Schitt’s Creek

The four Roses aren’t really the type of people to have slow and cozy family time together like the charming All Creatures Great and Small crew, but they end up being just as loveable over the course of the show’s six seasons.

Stranger Things

By Season 5 (I’m still only halfway through so no spoilers please!) the amount of main characters has grown exponentially but the whole thing starts with just four middle school boys playing D&D in a basement, and this sort of collaborative and adventurous spirit remains even as more and more people join the tight-knit real-life-monster-fighting crew.

Seinfeld

30 years later and there are more than a few jokes and plotlines that haven’t aged well, and in my current rewatch I’ve just started skipping Jerry’s mostly unfunny stand up bits at the start and end of each episode, but one thing that can’t be denied is the strength of its core four characters. The whole show is basically just these four people that externalize their extreme insecurities and incessantly complain about all their weird little pet peeves and in doing so alienate themselves from pretty much everyone else in New York City (and that’s a lot of people)—but they always have each other: they call each other on the phone, they “pop in” to each other’s houses (well, mostly Jerry’s), they go shopping together, they carpool, they scheme, they meet for coffee and meals on a regular basis. They’re in contact with each other pretty much on the daily and I can’t help but envy that sort of consistent and committed friendship.

-JB

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My four most anticipated reads this year

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk (2009)

I chose this one for my office book club, and my copy is still on its way in the mail.

Here’s why:

• Tokarzcuk won the Nobel Prize in literature in 2018.

• A story about a reclusive woman who’s obsessed with William Blake sounds right up my alley.

• It’s short enough that I felt OK asking my coworkers to read it, even if it seemed a little too weird for their taste.

Vigil by George Saunders (2026)

Vigil was officially released this past Tuesday. You don’t get much newer than that! writes one of my favourite newsletters, he was the first living author I became a true fan of, and his first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, was spectacular, so there’s very little chance I won’t love this book. Hoping to pick up my copy at The Next Page this weekend.

Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (1973)

This is one of those books that anyone who’s serious about 20th Century lit is supposed to read. A lot people who like the same types of books as me list this one as a favourite, so I’m expecting good things.

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez (1967)

This is probably the most suggested book in my life that I have yet to read. Friends, colleagues, the New York Times, basically every area of influence in my life besides my family has told me to read it. Better get on it then, I guess!

-AK

The conductor’s putting down his hands. Next time, we’re getting our hands dirty as we dig up our culture’s take on

gardens.

The wait is over! Another batch of picks has arrived on your digital doorstep.

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6 upcoming albums worth the wait

Julianna Barwick & Mary Lattimore - Tragic Magic

January 14

I’m cheating a little with this one because I’ve been anticipating it since I heard it was on its way late last year. Both of these artists cover their own unique corners in contemporary music—Barwick with her vocal soundscapes, Lattimore with her compositions for harp—but their similar beauty has me excited to hear what they come up with together.

Apple Music | Qobuz | Spotify | Tidal

Bennett Mitchell - Rearranging

January 23

Beloved Alberta radio station CKUA has successfully hooked me on Bennett’s latest singles. For all the attention alt-country’s been getting these last few years, we haven’t heard nearly enough of it from Canada, so I was glad to discover a new compatriot venturing into that territory.

Apple Music | Qobuz | Spotify | Tidal

Daphni - Butterfly

February 6

Dan Snaith hasn’t released a full-length album through his lesser known,1 dancefloor-focused project Daphni since 2022, but singles for the forthcoming Butterfly have been dropping since last June. Tighten your shoelaces and get ready to sweat along with this one.

Apple Music | Qobuz | Spotify | Tidal

Bill Callahan - My Days of 58

February 27

You don’t have to hear anything from Maryland-born troubadour Bill Callahan to help build anticipation for an upcoming release. You just have to know it’s coming. Anyone craving some baritone-led folk music will should mark their calendars for this album.

Apple Music | Qobuz | Spotify | Tidal

Buck Meek - The Mirror

February 27

We’ve only heard the first track of the album from Big Thief’s Buck Meek arriving at the end of February, but for any fans of the man or the band, it’s more than enough to get excited for what’s in store.

Apple Music | Qobuz | Spotify | Tidal

Robyn - Sexistential

March 27

Robyn takes her time to release full-length albums, but the three singles released from Sexistential have prepped fans of 2018’s Honey and 2010’s Body Talk perfectly. Expect this one to be on year-end lists come December.

Apple Music | Qobuz | Spotify | Tidal

-AK

WATCH

The weight of the wait

Women Talking (2022)

No quick, impulsive actions to be found here—these women take the time to wait and wade through the murky waters of decision making together with hands on shoulders, songs in the air, and everyone from young to old with a voice.

Private Life (2018)

This is an aching wait, a painful one, marked by equal parts cautious optimism, frustrating desperation, and crushing disappointment. It’s nine months and then some more.

The Breakfast Club (1985)

High school detention—waiting within waiting. Waiting to just get outta there and see the world. From punching the academic clock to punching the sky. What will happen when all this angst and yearning, expressed in five very different teens, is all bottled up and shaken one Saturday afternoon?

The Thing (1982)

Great ambiguous ending.

“Why don’t we just wait here for a little while, see what happens?”

Anomalisa (2015)

The beauty of the mundane moments of waiting—a cab ride, a trip up the elevator, a walk to the ice machine—in a movie where the main character wants nothing more than to get away from it.

-JB

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Love waits in Murakami’s Norwegian Wood

Waiting is another recurring theme in Murakami’s work. In the adventure novels like A Wild Sheep Chase and End of the World & Hard-Boiled Wonderland, the protagonists are left in the dark, forced to wait for instructions from their superiors, a literary move that helps to establish the power dynamic at play.

But in Norwegian Wood, the challenge to wait comes from inside. Toru struggles to know how to move forward because of the bonds made by friendship and romance. Murakami goes out of his way to surround his main character with friends and lovers that are happy to give him whatever level of freedom he wants.

And yet, Toru’s decisions don’t steer the story’s outcome nearly as much as you’d expect. The more it moves along, the more his decisions—and the decisions of others—subtley begin to feel inevitable. The resulting undertone is one you’d be hard-pressed to find anywhere else in contemporary literature.

-AK

The waiters are giving us the evil eye. In 2 weeks, the 2 of us will be back to account for our culture’s depictions of

four.