Friends of the blog weigh in on another chaotic year.
KIERAN: I like listmaking as much as the next guy but this year, they’ve got me exhausted. List after list after list. I started dreaming in lists, little bullet points and rank-charts floating in my mind. Yet I still looked forward to the List of Lists because it’s not really a list, just an anarchic sprawl of brain-dumps. After a year of writing and thinking, music-making and performing, what do our favorite critics and artists want to riff about that they haven’t had the chance to? That’s the vibe. Unfiltered theories and babble. The list equivalent of glossolalia. There’s dentist appointments, Yu-Gi-Oh cards, fried IG Reels, insider intel about industry deals. Prepare yourself.
umru’s favorite releases on various non-streaming formats that he manually added as files to his apple music library this year (no specific order)
NAÇÃOREBOLATION69 – dj lukinhas & the dream police (Soundcloud)
Victauria – Moonlight (released on A. G. Cook’s Wandcamp platform)
⋯BIVALVE31 – CO.DATA_B00TLEG (ExoPortal Exclusive)
Trance Party – English Heritage (CD & Youtube)
MikeQ & Sinjin Hawke – Thunderscan (Dj Kitkats Bootleg) (released on Fractal Fantasy’s Club Simulator virtual club website)
Grind Mode – Ecstasy (DJH Edit) (released on the b2battlepass USB drive given out at my birthday party in April, archived here on Youtube)
Earl Sweatshirt – Unreleased (prod. evilgiane & JonBoyIce) (NTS Radio)
xaviersobased – 90 down the block (dj rennessy exclusive)
gyrofield – Digitoxin (released on KAVARI’s CULT TAPE 001 – SELECTED NOISE WORKS)
454 – CASTS OF A DREAMER (Cassette/Soundcloud)
bloody shield – allofasudden (500 edit) (Soundcloud)
DJ Nate – Wat U Wont 2 Do (djsn3s version) (Soundcloud)
blaccmass – young nudy x charli xcx – loaded baked 360 (Soundcloud)
emotegi – first car (freewrite) prod. glxy, bino, sneky (Soundcloud)
warpstr – Waste No Time (Soundcloud)
Dj Frisco954 – Nick León & Erika de Casier – Bikini (Fast) (Soundcloud)
GIRL TOOL – Circadian Rhythm (Soundcloud, Bandcamp)
LUCY (Cooper B. Handy) – FRIDAY (Soundcloud)
B Hamp – DO THE RICKY BOBBY (ESTOC HARD HOUSE REMIX) (Soundcloud)
Tinashe – Nasty (Akasha & Ledef Remix) (Soundcloud, premiered on NTS)
underscores – Turmoil, originally by Sonny (Soundcloud)
@rrodney_ – i need love ( +wolfrum, tame, chozn, chillz) #jerseyclub (Soundcloud)
DJ QPR & DJ JM <-> @cbssportsgolazo (Soundcloud)
MIKE + Niontay – 2K24 Tour (gum.mp3’s Speed Edit) (Soundcloud)
Charli XCX – Club Classics (Petal Supply’s Dance All Night Mix) (Bandcamp)
Avril23 – piano (released as a download on FUNDRAISER COMPILATION FOR PALESTINE)
Hattie Lindert’s Top 5 Slogans She Saw on T-shirts at the 2024 Addison County Fair & Field Days in Vergennes, VT
5. “I support single moms”
4. “Buckle up buttercup, you just flipped my bitch switch”
3. “I don’t have an attitude, I have a personality you can’t handle”
2. “If it wasn’t for Demo Derby and Boobs, life would SUCK”
1. “Oh, I pissed you off? Suck it up buttercup. I’m a bitch, it’s what I do”
Shaad D’Souza’s WEIRDEST, MOST CREATIVE, AND MOST RACIST THINGS POP STANS SENT HIM THIS YEAR OVER REVIEWS ON THE INTERNET, RANKED AND REVIEWED
8. “You are a bitter, fat, pathetic excuse of a human. It’s the likes of you that give Pitchfork a bad name. You should not have a career at all, miserable bitch.” – itsjustsakyi on Instagram
SHAAD: This one has some admirable snark, but it reads as lazy compared to some of the others. 5.1/10
7. “Testing other queer artists down for a dime looks insane. Congrats on ur 10 mins of fame. No one takes you seriously just the lil Indian f*g in the office.” – Salvadorcats on Instagram
Incoherent, but kinda funny. 5.8/10
6. “The fact that they saw this and pitchfork said ‘Let’s hire that’.. omg” witdess on Twitter
This was attached to a screenshot from my Instagram where I do look a little dowdy, but I like the implication that Pitchfork contracts based on looks. 6.0/10
5. “I must admit this man from pitchfork has a lot of nerves coming for Katy Perry, one of the biggest pop stars in the world, looking like this” – kyscharli on Twitter
This one was attached to a picture where I’m smoking (awesome) blonde (awesome) and wearing a weird Lady Gaga hoodie (awesome) and because they were able to dig that image up, I’m not really sure where from, this gets a 6.5/10
4. “Not him being a curry butter chicken 
Lazy, but Mustafa made around 100 comments on various posts over the course of a few days, including some violent threats to kill my friends’ children. For his tenacity, he gets a 7.0/10
3. “Your selfies are like chemical castration drugs that make people impotent” – ketheja007 on Instagram
This one made me laugh. Stans can be so creative! This one’s from the mind of a true hater. 8.5/10 Best New Harassment.
2. “Did your ancestors slave to Katy Perry’s family? Why do you hate Katy so much.LOL 
This one’s just sad, really! 1.0/10
1. “Are you ready to die julab? i find it very funny and very ironic you work for pitchfork considering how you should be working under a call center like the rest of your curry fried uncles and aunts coolie writing halsey a bad review won’t change the fact that after you got done typing you raised your arms and the entire office called a security alert due to the stench which i suppose is understandable seeing as all of you live in poverty and despair constantly wondering if the next grandma you call will unknowingly give you her credit card information maybe instead of giving someone a 4.7 you should use your average 4.7 credit score and rent out a 7/11 because its the only thing you’ll ever be known for other than baljeet from phineas and ferb mr malaun and maybe instead of saying halsey is cosplaying any of the artists she took inspiration from realize that your entire kind is cosplaying the center of the death star with the red dots every last one of you have in the dots every last one of you have in the center of your heads you would think knowledge would be brought to life from the dot but no, just body odor and retardation making your mouths dryer than the Sahara desert maybe instead of visiting the taj mahal to write your reviews you should visit the shower and a couple of english classes dotty” – drwongthany on Instagram
The Phineas and Ferb reference confirms my long-held suspicion about Stans, which is that they’re all between six and 13 years old. This one just keeps going on and on like that one passage in Catch-22, or Ulysses, or whatever, which I find enjoyable to read. 8.0/10
sellasouls’ Favorite Yu-Gi-Oh! Cards of 2024
1. FiendSmith Engraver cause when it came out they was $150 each coming at $450 for three and I got them at $75 each hella based
2. Spirit Of Yubel cause who don’t got yugioh gx nostalgia
3. Dark Beckoning Beast cause that boy has 0 atk 0 def & puts in work fr
4. Unchained Soul Of Rage. yugi boomers sleep on new gen artwork
5. Super Starslayer TY-PHON. This card is so fucking busted & artwork is actually fucking insane like a evil gundam vibes fr
Popstar Benny’s Top 10 Places He Smoked in 2024
- sardinia, italy
- at jazz fest, atlanta during andre 3000’s set
- treehouse airbnb, atlanta recording my album, Oasis
- riding around austin, texas during sxsw with paris aden
- childhood home, in backyard on trampoline
- in piedmont park, atlanta
- malibu beach
- at shaky knees fest, atlanta during foo fighters’ set
- in herbert von park, brooklyn
- in my room, los angeles
Meaghan Garvey’s Top 5 Dentist Appointments of 2024
- MEAGHAN: Ok, so I crack my right front tooth off in a banh mi sandwich in Hoi An, Vietnam. (A fake tooth last attached 10 years ago and thereby right on schedule to detach yet again.) I pop it right back in and go about my business for the next week as it rattles around in there. Upon returning to America, I visit the Today’s Dentistry and ask them to re-glue it. Oh no no, they tell me upon investigation. First off, you have gum disease. Then you need a root canal. Then, and only then, you will need two new front teeth. Until then, they say, you must eat only soft foods.
- Being from the Midwest, it takes me til 2024 to discover “overnight oats.” They’re good to have for lunch when you’re on a diet of goo. Dr. Gamalinda glues in a temporary front tooth, but solids are still off the table until my permanent set. He also forbids weight lifting and tells me to practice humming in the interest of never completely closing my mouth.
- As it turns out, I need two root canals, one for each front tooth. I ride the bus home drooling, spitting now and then into a paper cup.
- Fresh off a 5-day bender reporting from the RNC, followed by a 3-day bender at Pitchfork Festival, I arrive back at the dentist (my 9th visit of the year) to get two new front teeth drilled into my skull. The procedure takes three hours.
- I return for a final check-up, my 10th visit of the year. I’m proud of you, says Dr. Gamalinda says. You’re going to need to come back to get fitted for a mouthguard. Yeah right, I tell him. See you in 2034.
504icygrl’s Top 5 Female Artists This Year
Heaven
Woo Da Savage
VickeeLo
DENISIA
EllaOnDaMic
Pinkest’s Top 10 Top 10 List Ideas of 2024
10. Lights, Camera, Pinkest: Top 10 Worst Color Graded Films of 2024
9. Tickle Me Pinkest: Top 10 Times We Laughed Through the Pain
8. Is This as Good as it Gets?: Top 10 Times We Made Sarf Feel Like an Afterthought
7. Practice Makes Pinkest!: Top 10 Times We Cancelled Practice This Year
6. Top 10 Fish to Fry: A Pinkest Airing of Grievances (and Cod)
5. Pink is the Warmest Color: Top 10 Sapphic Pinkest Moments
4. Top 10 Jokes I Thought Would Work But Wait, Fuck, Hold On
3. Pinking and Driving: Top 10 Beer Cans that Look Like Soda Cans
2. I Pink Therefore I Am: Top 10 Times I Was The Smartest Guy In The Room
1 . On The Pink of Destruction: Top 10 Times My Stage Banter Almost Went A Little Too Far
Carlos Viesca’s Top 3 Times He Sprained His Ankle this Year
- Falling down the subway stairs in Osaka, Japan (right ankle)
CARLOS: Gripping onto Google Maps in my right hand and figuring out where to get lunch, I missed a step and collapsed onto my leg. My friend was nowhere to be found. I sat on the steps contemplating life until he called me, wondering where I was. We got on a bus where he got off at a random stop without a word, and I was left alone to hobble back to the hostel. He sent me this image with no caption while I iced my foot.
- Playing basketball against the first D1 Pakistani American hooper (left ankle)
I started my year off on the wrong foot after falling on it while trying too hard in a pickup game against a childhood friend who went on to become the first D1 Pakistani American basketball player. The doctor thought I might need surgery, and my old friend would later unfollow me on IG…
- Slipping off a concrete court in the oldest park in Austin, TX (left ankle)
This one just made me give up on my hoop dreams.
Jameson Orvis’ Favorite Skoolio Beatpack Snippets of 2024
JAMESON: All forms of music consumption through streaming platforms are inherently undignified, yet I do feel particularly degenerate when I listen to producer beat packs on SoundCloud. They fall in an ambiguous grey area somewhere between a DJ mix and an electronic album, seeming to exist solely for the purpose of selling beats to aspiring SoundCloud rappers rather than the enjoyment of curious music listeners and eluding easy classification for year end lists. Most producer beatpacks reflect this status as advertisements, being at best incoherent collages of random mp3 files from a producer’s Ableton exports folder, but Skoolio has elevated the creation of beat packs into an art form of its own. There is no obvious difference between “electronic album” and “elevated beat pack”, but I think it is more informative to contextualize Skoolio’s compositions as the latter, highlighting their legitimate function in selling beats as well as drawing focus to their form as single continuous tracks which weave fragmented sonic tapestries and evoke a certain deficiency of attention span common to music made by SoundCloud producers. I will attempt to do justice to Skoolio beat packs as an artistic form unto itself with this list.
アニファシ anifash(dance 2k19) 0:00 – 1:00
The first minute of “アニファシ anifash(dance 2k19)” my most listened to piece of music in 2024. It sounds like you are standing at the base of a waterfall made of electricity as a pulsating magnet induces a rhythmic flow into the stream. It is all-enveloping. Sometimes I think about the “(dance 2k19)” tag, conventional wisdom might suggest the cutting edge of a 20-year nostalgia cycle would be now drawing on the early 2010s for Witch House and Dubstep, but here Skoolio has annihilated the passage of cultural time to its logical extreme, nostalgia mining the year just before the pandemic.
selection of skying music | jan – mar 24 mix 2:00-3:00
{{resurrection6}}•𝖈𝖚𝖑𝖙𝖃𝖕𝖗𝖊𝖘𝖘* | [Cplex3] January Mix 21 8:00-9:00
Both of these pensive snippets function to separate my present emotional being from my life experience. Every event I have experienced in my 25 years on this Earth is sculpted from some cosmic putty and laid out before me in a line, time slows down and I am forced to contemplate my life direction.
[2023] hearteyesL – EP 2: egl/bjd 4:30-8:00
djacc – cyberspace positron [mix] part 1 0:00-3:00
If Skoolio’s music exists on a spectrum between beat pack and electronic project, then the tracks on the djacc/hearteyesL alternate account are more firmly in full length solo project territory, with brilliant results. I hear hints of united jump front/helltekk hardcore revivalism, a touch of shiny bitcrushed hell under.net sextrance, a dash of artcore’s cinematic anime soundtrack strings, an infusion of sigilkore synths, and maybe just a sprinkling of botanica and you arrive at these genius soundscapes, fried maximalist electronic music but without dariacore’s need to simultaneously sample 10 different songs.
bonus
2XS 보라 – musicolor (prod skoolio)
Skoolio also produced a k-pop song this year, it sounds so weird but so bouncy. I am obsessed with how well it works.
Kieran Press-Reynolds’ 10 Best Things People Called Him When He Had Long Hair and an Unkempt Beard This Year
10. Dirty hippie
9. Vagrant
8. Norville “Shaggy” Rogers from the Scooby Doo franchise
7. The German electronic producer Superpitcher
6. Grizzly Adams
5. Jesus of Nazareth
4. Fleet Foxy
3. Drug-addled ‘70s folk singer-songwriter
2. David Brainrot Wallace
1. Patriot Front member
Megha’s Favorite Children’s Books of 2024
I’m a Children’s librarian so I read a lot of Children’s books. If I weren’t a Children’s librarian, I’d probably still read a ton of children’s books. Teaching kids is very similar to teaching adults in some ways; they’re all stubborn, they’re all curious, and they’re all constantly forming opinions about their surroundings. I’ve read books about Jerry Lawson to Googoosh, I’ve learned more about grief from kids books than I ever have from an adult book, and I relearn notions of kindness and love that are often missing from adult books. Even as an adult, you can learn so much from a children’s book so here’s a short list of some of my favorite fictional Children’s picture books published this year!
We are Definitely Human by X Fang
Missing Momma by Winsome Bingham
A Map for Falasteen by Maysa Odeh
Bookie and Cookie by Blanca Gómez
If You Run Out of Words by Felicita Sala
The Teeny Weeny Unicorn by Shawn Harris
Just What to Do by Kyle Lukoff
I Know How to Draw an Owl by Hilary Hippely
Justin A. Davis’ 15 Favorite Rap Lines of 2024 (Based Purely on Delivery)
“Caught him in the morning, turned his ass to EGGS AND GRITS! / Hold up, turn right here right here right here I see him hold up hold up… WHERE HE WENT?!” —2Sdxrt3ball, “Frag”
“Me and my brother got chains today, this VVS, VVS glisten” —Bktherula, “CRAYON”
“Bullets to his chessssst” —Che, “Miley Cyrus”
“The money got my core rotten / put my mans on, like scantron, it gave him more options” —Da$h, “Free YSL”
“Faking like you sipping drank, you niggas sipping Nyquil / Only time a nigga got power over me, he paying the light bill” —GloRilla, “PROCEDURE”
“I got a fetish for the money, I get needy! / I’m gon’ bring it out around my brothers, I’m not greedy” —Glokk40Spaz, “Blame Dem Drugz”
“If I say I love you, say you love me back / I smoke so much weed, you would think I’m prescribed for cataracts” —Glorygirl2950, “WNBA”
“When you’re broke, crushing coke don’t take much coaxing / Cooking the raw is a foot in the door, I’m tryna bust it open” —Ka, “Such Devotion”
“What is it, the braids?!” —Kendrick Lamar, “euphoria”
“I got t-rex barrels, but this lil’ barrel is long like my arm” —LAZER DIM 700, “Xtras”
“Pedestrians tryna scramble and survive / Break the tension and watch energy collide / I barely got any drip, but I could potentially be fly” —Lungs, “Act Like U Know”
“J’ai ouvert beaucoup d’portes, yeah, j’ouvre les gates / Je prends l’avion, t’sais qu’j’suis high à la gate” —Rowjay, “Kendrick”
“Gotta be watching what you say, boy, you know your cousin watching” —$amaad, “Stop Rapping Bout Oxy”
“Of course, for sure, you got it, uh huh, unless…” —Teezo Touchdown, “Daylight”
“I put a M with a M, that’s a mmm” —Valee, “Ruff”
Zazie Bae’s TOP 5 TERRIBLE RECORD DEALS SHE GOT SENT FOR HER ARTISTS IN 2024
5. DISTRIBUTION DEAL, BUT WITH QUARTERLY PAYOUTS:
ZAZIE: The worst of both worlds, you’re getting essentially a minimum wage to substitute-teacher level advance to have your checks come out even more infrequently than Distrokid. Plus it generally makes it difficult to work with other companies if you get bigger if your shit’s on a different service.
4. DISTRIBUTION DEAL BUT WE TAKE 25% OF THE STREAMING REVENUE AND 30% OF PHYSICAL MERCH
This is similar to the previous one, while you technically retain ownership of your masters, by far the easiest way to monetize the master recordings is through digital and physical sales. I got offered several of these for very low advances with the promise of still being independent while they did they “marketing” for it, which is essentially just paying some 14 year olds on Tiktok. Even if you get an advance, don’t ever go for worse splits than 85/15, you favored on a distribution deal.
3. 50/50… BUT WE DON’T KNOW HOW TO MARKET YOU
Explicitly, we were in a position where I sat down with the marketing team and there were so many disagreements on how to appropriate the funds that they ended up just stripping the marketing budget from the proposal… But didn’t replace it with an equal advance. Essentially we would be giving 50% of the record just for the vibe of being signed while still handling PR ourselves. Very funny proposition.
2. WE OWN YOUR SONG, FOREVER.
Once we had a tiktok song pop off there were a few propositions to just buy the song outright with a practice that I don’t think is even like, legal in certain states where the company took 100% of the song for, as language described “the rest of time”. The record label that proposed this literally tried to get my artist to sign that night without any legal counsel over Docusign it was nuts.
1. DISTRIBUTION DEAL BUT WE GET A BIGGER PERCENTAGE AS YOUR MONTHLY LISTENERS INCREASE
Literally the most counterintuitive ass shit that I ever read bro I can’t lie. Especially given the fact that Spotify is known to have random hikes or falls for a day as they adjust the monthly listener algorithm this climbed to them getting 30% of the streaming revenue if you hit a million monthly listeners without any advertisement commitment.
Mano’s Top 10 Fakemink Songs of 2024
Favorite new rapper of the year.
- Die Today (prod. Reklus1ve)
- H.cv,lhgc,,.XoXo (prod. fakemink)
- Training (prod. Zoot & Satch)
- Little (prod. bbpue)
- Thank God (prod. fakemink)
- Slurricane w/ EsDeeKid (prod. fakemink)
- Brat (prod. Reklus1ve)
- So Blown (prod. fakemink)
- PillowFight (prod. Ok & vacancy)
- Dancing in the Rain (prod. Cranes)
Jack Riedy’s 10 Favorite Sonic Youth Bootlegs
JACK: I knew of Sonic Youth. Fender Jazzmasters, pals with Kurt Cobain, “Homerpalooza,” some kind of old New York, “Teen Age Riot,” alt-rock it couple until they weren’t. I knew them as an important band that broke up when I was in high school. But Kim Gordon’s aptitude with rage beats on her new album The Collective made me curious about her old band. I clicked on the recently reissued Walls Have Ears and heard a cacophony reminiscent of Miles Davis’ electric period. And like Davis, Sonic Youth were widely bootlegged by real heads who recognized the raw power of an endlessly evolving ensemble.
I tend to approach new-to-me bands like an overager student, dutifully referencing rankings and reviews for the consensus favorite album then moving on to the deep cuts. For Sonic Youth, I tried something different. Guided by Tyler Wilcox’s Doom and Gloom from the Tomb, I listened to nothing but live performances, hopping haphazardly across the decades ignorant of track titles and lineup shifts. Sonic Youth soon became one of my favorite bands, and I spent hours this year pinned to their wall of sound. It was freeing.
Gordon once said that playing bass was merely “a byproduct of wanting to make something exciting.” (Bass players can relate.) But her low end anchored the band in a sense of abandon inherited from The Stooges, The Velvets, and Funkadelic. Sonic Youth left behind three decades of interesting music, and though I never got to see them myself, I can hear their influence any night of the week in Chicago whenever some adventurer conjures up a punishing level of noise in a small club.
- Drum Logos, Fukuoka, Japan 2001
- U4, Vienna, Austria 1989
- Smart Bar, Chicago 1985
- Campo Pequeno Lisbon, Portugal 1993
- Rockpalast, Dusseldorf, Germany 1996
- Double Door, Chicago 2006
- Shoreline Amphitheater, Mountain View, California 1995
- Fowlers Live, Adelaide, Australia 2008
- Hold That Tiger Metro, Chicago 1987
- From The Basement Maida Vale, London, UK 2007
Solomon Adams’ 2024 NPR Tiny Desk Concerts Wrapped
SOLOMON: Live bands cure depression! I have been religiously listening to Tiny Desk Concerts since high school, but after graduating college this past summer I manically went down a Tiny Desk rabbit hole to distract myself from the reality that I’m now a real adult. Naturally, I then ranked my top Concerts, hoping to post it on Substack, but like so many other half-baked ideas, I never finished. To end the year, I thought I’d finally share this list as an NPR Tiny Desk Concerts Wrapped of sorts:
You listened to 207 some arbitrary amount of Tiny Desk Concerts this year, but you came back to one Concert again and again:
Not that it’s a competition, but you definitely had some favorite performances…
Your 2024 NPR Tiny Desk Concert Leaderboard:
Narsh’s Top 50 LAZER DIM 700 Songs of 2024
NARSH: The true joy of rap, for me, is surprising both your listeners and yourself with the verses you come up. And no one else this year has put together more unexpected flows, rhymes, and punchlines than LAZER DIM 700. Every “FAWK” earns its exasperation and no level of beat distortion can turn me off from leaning into catch his next bar.
1. awsum
2. andy
3. reel trench boy
4. fukk 26zombie
5. max stream
6. Injoyable
7. li twan
8. Alltime
9. Captivity
10. lame f**k
11. evil curse
12. Futon
13. Bragging Rights
14. Gang Moshan
15. Loitering
16. Jack rabbits
17. Jinni
18. Gunsmif
19. Tempestry
20. sheft
21. GET GO
22. Barnacles
23. VS
24. slp Draco
25. Wigan out
26. Remove wanted Level
27. BLACK OPS II
28. my lil pow
29. shoot freely
30. Resident evil
31. Not a fan
32. Sindable
33. Disscussable
34. iCarly
35. promo za
36. wrong turn
37. WHICH WAY
38. Uzi in a K5
39. Greg Heffley
40. 7ft opponent
41. 007
42. Giwout
43. mosh pit
44. WTM
45. Xtras
46. Winchester
47. Horseplaying
48. Asian Rock
49. METEOR
50. 0436
5 Random Opponents Who Whooped Minh Tran’s Ass in Pool This Year
MINH: This past year, I started playing lots of pool because it was a forgiving physical activity while I recovered from ACL surgery, and because I always wanted to be someone who was good at it. Part of getting better involved playing lots of strangers in lots of bars, and I got my ass whooped constantly by people I would probably never come across in any other setting. Here are five of them.
The One Guy Who Essentially Hazed Me
On a warm Spring day, I was indoors getting my ass handed to me by an older player who beat me with one hand behind his back. It did not make me feel any better that he was too drunk to speak, and about a dozen people were watching and heckling, calling me “Mr. Brooklyn Tech”. Months later, he would tell me that pool was a journey, and that the problems one encounters in life and on the table are in a way one and the same.
The Mathematician
Someone tried to convince me he got this nickname because of his mental computations when calculating angles and points of contact, but it’s far more likely that this old Asian man got his name as a play off of “The Magician,” the nickname of legendary Filipino pool player Efren Reyes. The Mathematician had a wide stance and pointed his stick up to Heaven before lining it up on the cue ball. It was a level of flair I had never seen before in person, and I wish the game gave points for style. While waiting to play, he said to me and another person that he thought Flushing was a stupid name for a neighborhood, and that everyone who lives there calls it Frushing anyway.
Another Old Guy Who Made an Insane Joke about Asian People
He asked me if I ever played in the pool halls in Sunset Park. I told him no. He said it was a strange experience; everyone kept looking at him, and he couldn’t quite figure out why. He wondered if it was because he didn’t look “like this”, and made slits with his eyes.
Mr. “I don’t want any trouble”
This man kept saying he didn’t want any trouble, and just wanted to establish order and keep the peace. The thing was, he wasn’t really doing much of anything besides repeating that phrase and claiming he was controlling his anger. He told my friend and I that his family had lived in Manhattan Beach for generations, and that he didn’t like the direction the neighborhood was going in. He said there were a lot of secrets in this town, and didn’t elaborate.
The Girlfriend Impressor
He wore a t-shirt with a rack of billiard balls on it and cleared the table in two innings. He coached his playing partner with patience and care, lacking any condescension or the typical skeeviness that comes with the territory. After they won, they politely bowed out and went on with their lives.
Gustavo Marinho’s Favorite IG Reels of 2024
GUSTAVO: Welcome to my Instagram reel algorithm. In no real order my personal 10 of the year + a few extra for yah headtop.
2 – “OH MY GAWD”
3 – Mellinal Uncle
4 – AP ClapBackology
9 – Cooked Skyrim
10- Blissful Dancing
Honorable mentions
Vasant Sundaresan’s Favorite Instrumental Albums of 2024
Anna Butterss – Mighty Vertebrate
Fabiano de Nascimento, Sam Gendel – The Room
BADBADNOTGOOD – Mid Spiral
Sven Libaek – James Craig Sails Again
Fabiano de Nascimento – Harmônicos
Nala Sinephro – Endlessness
Etelin – Patio User Manual
Passepartout Duo, INOYAMALAND – Radio Yugawara
Brad Mehldau – Solid Jackson
Benjamin Koppel, Scott Colley, Jacob Karlzon – PORTABLE INFINITY
Jacob Karlzon – Winter Stories
Kazuma Okabayashi – Synchronicity
Daniel Santiago – Daniel Santiago Plays… Clapton
Oliver Patrice Weder – The Shoe Factory
Darren Petrosino’s Top 8 Ambient Jungle and “Intelligent DnB” Playlists Based on the Volume of Work He Completed to Them This Year
DARREN: Atmospheric jungle/DnB mixes are nostalgia bait for post-Y2K babies who really really miss 1996. They’re also among the best playlists for locking the fuck in. Between grinding out cover letters, drafting fiction, and vetting out the AI-generated mixes from this very list, I found myself dialing to these 8 comps more than any others in 2024.
8. nook: “fy_resort | Intelligent DnB / Jungle Mix” (gateway drug to LTJ Bukem’s remix of Jodeci’s “Feenin”)
7. [mystery]: “Atmospheric Jungle DnB Sesh (Vol. 4) [3K SUB SPECIAL!]”
5. Jungle Fatigue Kru: “Jungle Fatigue Vol. 4”
4. 4AM Breaks: “Modern Ambient Jungle Mix [2] (Intelligent DnB)”
3. Dopo Goto: “Playstation 1 nostalgia ambient atmospheric jungle drum and bass mix” (holy SEO)
2. FIREWALKER: “atmospheric drum and bass compilation that will make you go ⋐(◉▾◉)⋑” (Super Monkey Ball is a frequent reference point for these comps’ nostalgia. virgin AI generation vs chad Aiai veneration)
1. Jungle Fatigue Kru: “Jungle Fatigue Vol. 3”
Josh Svetz’ Top 10 Deep Dive Obsessions of 2024
1. The Lore of New Edition
SVETZ: At this point most people have seen BET’s The New Edition story, so I’ll spare you how Michael Bivins discovered Boys II Men, or the infamous on stage brawl between Ronnie Devoe and a coked out Bobby Brown. But, one thing they didn’t touch on was a rumor that’s been debated for years. In the middle of recording Bobby Brown’s “Every Little Step,” the story goes Brown was strung out and sick, leaving the record company to ask Ralph Tresvant to sub in for some recording sessions. Essentially, Tresvant may have ghost vocals on the chorus and bridge of the song. Brown has vehemently denied this, but Tresvant’s been silent. Marty Machat, Brown’s former manager, says it’s absolutely true though.
2. The Epidemic of White Midwest YouTube Dudes Doing “I Ate Blank For a Week” Challenges
From Zach Smigel to Sir Yacht, white dudes with cameras spent the year filming themselves eating the common man’s delicacies: Sheetz, Buccees, Long John Silver’s and more were consumed, while still highlighting the romanticism of average midsize Midwest living. But my favorite revelation was that dollar general and dollar tree aren’t actually cheap. Many of the items are actually more expensive at DG and DT than your local Walmart and hometown grocery store. That’s marketing for ya.
3. The Plagiarism Saga of James Somerton
Before Kendrick Lamar thoroughly ether’d Drake into oblivion, there was the fall of James Somerton courtesy of the expert research conducted by HBOmber Guy and Todd In The Shadows. But the fallout was more interesting. Already accused of plagiarism Somerton decided to fake a suicide attempt to gain pity points. It would be sad if it wasn’t so pathetic.
4. The Death of Joy Division/Rise of New Order
Two great, but very different bands, the Joy Division/New Order saga has many twists of triumph and tragedy. But the one thing that interested me was the reluctance of Bernard Sumner to step up as vocalist in place of the deceased Ian Curtis.
5. Mother Love Bone: The Unheralded Catalyst of Grunge
In the ’80s, Stone Gossard, Jeff Ament, and the late Andrew Wood formed the first commercially successful Seattle punk/grunge band, a sweet appetizer to the domination of aloof twenty somethings that were equally stupid and contagious. After Wood’s death, Gossard, Ament and Wood’s roommate Chris Cornell formed the tribute band Temple Of The Dog, of which, was used for the first sessions to introduce a young Eddie Vedder on vocals, who would eventually team up with Gossard and Ament to form Pearl Jam.
6. The Mr. Beast is Over Party
Mr. Beast got canceled finally and apparently it was “mostly” bullshit. But one thing that wasn’t: Beast Games being the most unsafe game show since Opposite Worlds. Several contestants ended up in the Las Vegas ER, shoutout to my nurse homegirl for giving me the non-disclosure details.
7. The Wild West Of Music Influencers & Payola
Most of those YouTube interviewers and platforms that do freestyles charge artists thousands to get on. I won’t elaborate.
8. Adult Swim’s Infomercials
Turns out H. Jon Benjamin and David Cross are the godfathers of those weird fever dreams you remember as a kid when you saw the tv glow deep within your dreams. Indeed, the vessel that brought us Too Many Cooks and Unedited Footage Of A Bear was first founded by Cross and Benjamin, who ended up getting their idea stolen by Mike Lazzo, igniting a decade long feud where Lazzo’s callous response still lives in the pantheons of greatest reddit meltdowns.
9. Jenny Nicholson and The Failure of Disney’s Star Wars Hotel
The best journalism done all year was by a nerd with a video camera at Disney World. Nicholson’s epic four-hour odyssey served as a trainwreck of excess and sly marketing, an expose of how big corporations corrupt our childhood dreams, relying on the lazy touch of nostalgia rather than delivering an unforgettable experience. The most revealing part though was when Nicholson, hyped for the big finale dinner show experience, ended up with a table where a poll objected her and other patrons’ view, showing that even at a ridiculous $6,000, the hotel botched one of their leading attractions.
10. The Persecution Complex of Francis Ford Coppola
Megalopolis is clearly an allegory for Coppola’s rise and fall in Hollywood, though his white whale has been in development since 1982. After succeeding with The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, Coppola, teaming with other New Hollywood pioneers such as George Lucas, Wim Wenders, Jean Luc-Goddard and more to give the filmmakers power over the studios by founding Zoetrope Studios. And while several issues occurred to lead to its downfall, the main event was how Coppola, the man known for gripping war movies and profound mafioso crime dramas, decided to risk the studio to make… a comedy romance musical starring Teri Garr that lost so much money it bankrupted Coppola and ended the New Hollywood Movement.
Kevin Crandall’s 7 Philosophy Paper Ideas From My Notes App
KEVIN: I’m a philosophy PhD student and have a ridiculous amount of random paper topics/titles littering my notes app. Links are to Stanford’s Encyclopedia of Philosophy to give some reading about some concepts I mention. Will any of these ever be written? Check back next year.
- Possible Universes Aesthetic Analysis of Lupe Fiasco’s Discography
Lupe-verses, if you will.
- Aesthetic Degradation as a Form of Epistemic Harm
Does degrading the status of art harm the ability of the artist to produce knowledge?
- ‘Particularly’ as Denoting a Nested Adjective Reading in the Case of Attributive Noun Modifiers
This is just looking at defining how the word ‘particularly’ modifies adjectives that modify nouns in relation to the comparison class they pick out. Shoutout Montague Semantics.
- On Kantian Bullshit
What would Immanuel Kant think about bullshit? I actually wrote this one recently.
- Blue Lock and Epistemological Frames
I actually don’t think Blue Lock’s animation is that bad, which is apparently an unpopular opinion. I do think that Isagi’s little puzzle piece shit has philosophical merit.
I swear if I see another person say some shit like “the US isn’t a democracy, it’s a republic!” …
- One Piece and Just War Theory
“Pirates are evil? The Marines are righteous? These terms have always changed throughout the course of history! Kids who have never seen peace and kids who have never seen war have different values! Those who stand at the top determine what’s wrong and what’s right! This very place is neutral ground! Justice will prevail, you say? But of course it will! Whoever wins this war becomes justice!” ~ Donquixote Doflamingo
Will Gendron’s Most Brazen Engagement-Chasing Moments of the 2024 NBA Offseason
WILL: Before hoopers on the highschool circuit were fully aware of how their performances would be clipped and circulated in the digital highlight economy, there were two major institutions for prospect reels: Hoopmixtape and Ballislife.
Courtside Films, while lesser known, was also part of this vanguard (along with Home Team Hoops) and in the decades since has fully embraced the need to chase engagement. This play for views really amps up in the dead months (July to October) of basketball where the minutiae of offseason slop is the sole thing keeping the wheels turning.
Here are some of my favorite thumbnails and video titles from the channel this year:
4-FOOT-5 KID LOCKS UP 6’8 5-STAR FRESHMAN?! (This is a more recent cut but emerges from the MSHTV Camp, a popular youth basketball showcase that outfits its participants with some of the ugliest jerseys you’ve ever seen. Every year there is a fully developed 14-year-old who isos against a defender two feet smaller than them.)
When white hoopers got their respect (I like this one because it has all the makings of an August post — the reel is almost 30 minutes, there’s a good mixture of NBA talent thrown in and it compiles something no one even thought to ask for.)
Let the big dog eat moments
Best PG under 6-foot each yeah the past decade
5th Grader Pulls From Half Court
Viral fourth grader Kason Angert GOES OFF in Kobe Grinches (This might not have been from the summer but in the first 30 seconds of the video an elementary school player gets a technical foul for taunting.)
Clutchpoints graphics:
Drew Millard’s Top Ten Bob Dylan Songs (Objective)
10. “Slow Train” (Slow Train Coming)
9. “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” (The Basement Tapes)
8. “Idiot Wind” (Blood on the Tracks)
7. “Street Rock” (Kurtis Blow feat. Bob Dylan)
6. “Let’s Stick Together” (Down in the Groove, Wilbert Harrison Cover)
5. “Like a Rolling Stone” (Chalamet Version)
4. “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here with You” (Rolling Thunder Revue live version, Bootleg Vol. 3)
3. “When the Night Comes Falling from the Sky” (Empire Burlesque)
2. “Jokerman” (Live on Letterman feat. the L.A. punk band The Plugz, 1984)1. “Property of Jesus” (Shot of Love)
1. “Property of Jesus” (Shot of Love)
Jude Noel: Every 2024 Weekly Shonen Jump Manga that Debuted this Year, Ranked Best to Worst
Ultimate Exorcist Kiyoshi
Ichi the Witch
Syd Craft: Love Is a Mystery
Hima-Ten!
Yokai Buster Murakami
Super Psychic Policeman Chojo
Psych House
Kyokuto Necromance
Astro Royale
Shinobi Undercover
Dear Anemone
Hakutaku
Andrew Matson’s Year in Gear
Best airbrush artist to DM and ask to customize your shit: Sha
Best eBay searches:
- “Barbarian rugby”
- “Tommy Bahama black silk shirt”
- “Waxed cotton”
- “Ventile” (doesn’t often hit but worth doing)
- “Mephisto”
- “Levi’s 505”
- “Balenciaga Arena”
- “Settlemiers”
- “Polo rugby big pony”
Pants of the year: Earth\Studies MP-108 Utility Pant
Sneaker of the year: Body of Work x SAS Journey Velcro
Best tailor in NY to get stuff hemmed, cropped, dyed, “anything is possible”: Taailor Shop
Best lookbook: Willie Norris for Outlier
Olivier Lafontant’s list of Arsenal players and the Lucki songs they remind him of
Bukayo Saka / Chosen One
Martin Odegaard / Count On Me 3
Gabriel Martinelli / Tune & Scotty
Kai Havertz / Send Me On My Way
Declan Rice / All Love
Leandro Trossard / New to Me
Jurrien Timber / Geeked N Blessed
William Saliba / Widebody
Gabriel Magalhaes / Y NOT?
Ben White / No Bap
David Raya / Tarantino
Lily Goldberg’s recommendations that people typed into her Notes app
JASON LUNCH
BART MURDER
HARPER VALLEY FOLK FEST
WALLY WORLD
Can’t anyone here play this game?
The gang who can’t shoot straight
SUCCESS – MARTIN AMIS
20TH CENTURY PIANO GENIUS – art Tatum
CRESCENT
CHARLIE PARKER
DEXTER GORDON
CLIFFORD BROWN
THEFT IS PROPERTY
FALSE STARTS
Ross McElwee (Sherman’s March or the other one)
Hyperpop Daily’s Top 5 Memes of 2024
2. Stanclickin influence on underground tiktok
3. Whatever Friutsnacks had going on
4. 2slimey
Abe Beame’s Definitive Ranking of the Best Pieces He Didn’t Write This Year (2024 Edition)
ABE: Reporting live here from the end times of being able to write about cool shit for money. You only get to see the sporadic Ws, but aside from the occasional cryptic late night apoplectic frustration Tweet, deleted soon after hitting send, you have no idea how many Ls are involved in this sausage making process. If I had to assign a batting average to my 2024, it’d land somewhere in the vicinity of .500, which would be great if I was a sweet hitting, heartbreaking right fielder in Flushing, but not so great if you’re someone attempting to pull down a (small) percentage of your income doing this, who tends to weight the Ls far heavier than the Ws.
So without further ado, as a holiday season gift for your schadenfreude and to my great discomfort, here is a bloodletting of the pieces I couldn’t land in 2024, and why I think they failed. May this help you all remember those Ls are just as important to whatever is left of this process, and feel slightly less alone, if only for a moment.
15. ENO (Review)- Brian Eno had an extended run experimental documentary/unconventional biopic at Film Forum a few months ago so late in the run I tried getting an editor to let me write about it. Didn’t get a response and if I had to guess it’s because it’s clearly out of my lane and I smoked the timing.
14. Pixar Won By Programming the Father Daughter Superbowl- When I noticed Disney slated the follow-up to an absolute father-daughter classic for Father’s Day weekend, I tried my hand at something like a predictive industry piece about smart timing and scheduling, no one bit. What sucks is I was absolutely right. $155m domestic, was the biggest opening weekend of the year to that point, and spurred a clutch of “MOVIES ARE BACK” superlative headlines. What doesn’t suck is I talked my way into an advanced screening, without a greenlight, with my daughter.
13. Back To Zemeckis– This was going to be looking at Bobby Z, a director often defined, and eventually consumed, by the specific tech he used from project to project over his decorated 40 year career. Got 0 bites on this despite pitching pretty aggressively, I’m guessing everyone correctly predicted the stink wafting off Here (which I still haven’t seen, but would very much like to!) and passed.
12. Oregon is the New Burgundy- The Willamette Valley is a fascinating region, with soil and climate that allows many hard to grow, indigenous varietals from other venerated wine regions to thrive there as respectable, if not in some cases more interesting New World iterations. I wanted to do a deep dive with growers and winemakers around Oregon. No one else wanted me to because they doubted the “commercial” (clicky) viability of something so specific and nerdy, which could be true.
11. What Billboard’s TikTok #1s Tells Us About the Future of Music- Every Friday I get an alert on my phone reminding me to clock this semi-newly established Billboard chart. The list is fascinating because it is close to a schematic diagramming the chaotic randomness of the algorithm and what it elevates, tied more to the creativity and luck of content creators than new releases from big commercial artists, so I wanted to track the #1s for a year to look at the story it tells about how the way we find and consume music is changing. Brick.
10. Action Bronson Profile- Putting this in because I’ve given up after two plus years of pursuit. Wanted to discuss the fascinating intersection of food and music Bronson occupies, at this point as much if not more of a viral food moment engineer than a viable rapper, but no matter how opportune the moment I couldn’t get him on board.
9. KB Brookins “Pretty” Review- Pitched this when the offer hit my inbox because I fuck with KB both as a writer and a poster. Months later, an editor I love to work with greenlit it. Read the book, came up with what I thought was a pretty interesting approach, but in the interim the editor got a promotion and just stopped responding. We’ve worked together on other things since, but sometimes your piece gets lost in the pile when shit gets hectic in the other inbox.
8. Time Again- I spent most of the summer in this bar at the edge of Chinatown at the mouth of the Manhattan Bridge, which was like an open air Studio 54 most Thursday evenings. It became a place where you’d randomly take shots with House of the Dragon cast members or see rappers hanging at communal tables with random influencers and no security and I wanted to capture that energy.
7. Angel Reese is a Rockstar- I went to a Sky Liberty game over the Summer and wanted to write about Reese in the middle of her rebound streak as a phenomena and avatar of the WNBA surge, largely free of the uncomfortable conversations her peer and sometimes rival Caitlin Clark provokes. Spent two months tinkering on this with an editor who was essentially doing me a favor because sports wasn’t their department. We worked hard and got the piece to a pretty good place over two months, then the outlet hired a sports editor who killed the piece, without bothering to even contact me directly. Very cool!
6. Why Are Two Drill Rappers Trump Supporters?- This was inspired by Sheff G and Sleepy Hallow coming out at a Trump Rally in the Bronx over the summer. In retrospect, I had the angle wrong. I thought it was more of a finger waggy piece about a certain strain of rap’s underlying conservatism, when it should’ve been about the two representing a bellwether for a political shift in the outer boroughs, but I couldn’t see that at the time and I doubt any editors would’ve either.
5. [REDACTED] Oral History- Have to tiptoe carefully here, which sucks because I did nothing wrong. I pitched an anniversary piece to a place I’d very much like to write for someday, that has never so much as acknowledged a pitch or sent a rejection. A month later, they announced they were doing a very gently adjusted version of the exact pitch themselves.
4. What Do You Do When There Is Nowhere Left to Write?- This one came after another in a year full of blind corporate layoffs. It’s the undercurrent animating this entire list. The feeling of impending doom is tangible as the job ranks thin and the talent starving for crumbs multiplies. Several places I pitched had versions of the piece underway, but wanted to clock that this was very much the apocalyptic vibe hanging over the year.
3. No Other Land Review- My film of the year, a fantastic documentary from the frontlines of ethnic cleansing in Palestine that still doesn’t have distribution. I begged, I pleaded, I offered to write the piece for free, no dice. To be fair, several of the places I pitched did cover the film to some degree (which is great! Go see No Other Land if you can!) so it could’ve been as simple as the outlets weren’t interested in me writing about it. Which I can respect.
2. Elyanna, A Palestinian Popstar, Live in NY- This on the other hand. Elyanna Marjieh is a Chilean/Palestinian popstar who looks like Shakira and sounds like Rihanna. I first pitched her when she was supposed to play New York in the Fall of 2023, at the outset of a national tour, then 10/7 happened. I got to see her in January as part of a benefit hosted by Ramy Yousef, but wanted to follow that with coverage of her moving, sold out performance at Irving Plaza in February I attended with my wife. Couldn’t get anyone interested.
1. How A Ditmas Park Facebook Group Explains The Online Palestine Discourse- I’ve written about Ayat before, a new school burgeoning Palestinian restaurant franchise in New York that is rewriting the rules for how Palestinian businesses in America express their identity and politics. At the end of last year, they opened a new location near my apartment in South Brooklyn. Before they had even opened their doors, the neighborhood Facebook group became a war zone for all the toxic takes that choked my social media feed in the wake of 10/7, along with the power imbalance that came with simple advocacy for the restaurant being labeled “hate speech” by moderators. Ayat’s lovely owners responded by hosting a free Shabbat dinner for the entire neighborhood, and has been a hit ever since. I pitched covering the dinner around to no avail, with one outlet telling me they’d most likely cover it in house, then never covered it.