20 November 2017
A Blonded Year
Frank Ocean’s 2016 album Blonde is my most played album ever. According to my Last.fm history I have a cumulative track play of over 1,200. Divide that by 17 (the album has 17 tracks), that’s equivalent to me playing the album approximately 65 times front to back over the course of a year. That’s at least once every week. I’ve spent more time listening to Blonde than hanging out with some of my closest and most cherished friends. I’ve cried to Godspeed on train and Uber rides home, used Self Control as a soundtrack for a myriad of emotions deliberate and not, and adapted the line “I’m not brave!” as a rallying cry rather than an admission of weakness.
18 June 2016
Finding Dory reminds us to cherish differences, in a world where hate seems easier
Every Pixar franchise has an underlying theme that goes beyond what we initially think it will be about. As much as we like the idea of our toys coming to life when we’re not in our bedrooms, Toy Story showed us our own Holden Caulfield-esque fear of growing up. WALL-E, a film about a semi-sentient janitor robot literally cleaning up the mess that people made on Earth, proved that our laziness does drive innovation but warned us that embracing it instead of looking for healthier sources of inspiration will be our demise. All of Pixar’s films are billed as family-friendly entertainment, but the two that tackled family in the most direct sense are The Incredibles and Finding Nemo. The former implied that the uniqueness of each family member can be harnessed to build stronger ties, while the latter, quite surprisingly, acts as a modern day guide to parenting.