The Tangential

Don't be boring. Don't suck.

  • My Parents Were Married 38 Years Ago, Had Me 36 Years Ago, and Broke Up Last Month

    My Parents Were Married 38 Years Ago, Had Me 36 Years Ago, and Broke Up Last Month

    “I had lunch with your brother today, and I met with your sisters tonight,” Dad said as he drove me home from the airport last month. He paused for a long time, steering with one hand and holding his cigarette with the other. Then he said something that came out like a question. “I’m divorcing…

  • A Guide to Throwing the Most Heretical Good Friday Party on Your Block

    A Guide to Throwing the Most Heretical Good Friday Party on Your Block

    Step one. Buy a pack of “Hello, My Name Is … ” stickers for you and your friends. Assign everyone to be their favorite Good Friday character: Jesus, Peter, Mary, Herod, Barabus, Pilate, and don’t forget Judas! 10 lent points if you dress the part. Once you’ve all picked your persona of the day, hit…

  • Where You Shoulda Put a Ring

    Where You Shoulda Put a Ring

    You shoulda put a ring ON it if: – it was a neatly arranged napkin you wanted to keep that way – you wanted to give it more “tingle” – you wanted it to rule them all, find them, bring them all, and in the darkness bind them – you liked it You shoulda put a…

  • Suggested Track Listing for Carly Rae Jepsen’s Covers Album

    Suggested Track Listing for Carly Rae Jepsen’s Covers Album

    God Bless the U.S.A. Maybe (Lee Greenwood) Get Out of My Dreams, Get Into My Car Maybe (Billy Ocean) I Kissed a Girl Maybe (Katy Perry) Fall On Me Maybe (R.E.M.) Like a Virgin Maybe (Madonna) I’m Goin’ Down Maybe (Bruce Springsteen) Push It Maybe (Salt-n-Pepa) Beat It Maybe (Michael Jackson) Eat It Maybe (“Weird…

  • The False Mystique of Living in Small Town USA

    The False Mystique of Living in Small Town USA

    I’m 27 years old. And for approximately 85% of my twenties, I’ve lived in a small town. (The other 15% I was in Rochester, MN, and Minneapolis, MN, in Loring Park.) Point is, when someone has said I’ll meet you at the bowling alley, I’ve known which one. Occupying the lone coffee shop in town,…

  • The Freakish Resonance of the Final Destination Movies

    The Freakish Resonance of the Final Destination Movies

    “You are obsessed with Final Destination,” my boyfriend told me the other day, as I was talking on the phone in my car, describing the freakish accident I totally could have just gotten into, in my mind. “Of course I am.” “But why? They’re not even good movies.” “Well .. the first one is. No,…

A short history of The Tangential

The Tangential is a pop culture and creative writing blog launched in 2011 by three writers living in Minneapolis: Becky Lang (now Radecki), Jay Gabler, and Katie Sisneros. That was a golden age of irreverent confessional blogging, and over the first couple years we built a national following. Notably, we gained over 120,000 followers on Tumblr, where we were often associated with the provocative, extremely online writers in the movement known as alt lit. We created spinoff blogs including The Sport Hole, The Party Whip, The Tangential Ruins Minneapolis, and Tan Genitals. We hosted Minneapolis events and published three books.

We were having so much fun, in fact, that we never got around to monetizing. Oops! Well, we did have a little income from the books and events, and we became an Amazon affiliate. (This is your official disclosure that we subsidize our hosting costs via revenue from partner links.) Eventually, though, the editors and contributors who fueled the site’s early years largely moved on to other projects.

Today, The Tangential is run by Jay, who continues to publish criticism and other writing as well as to maintain the site’s catalog of posts — if only for, as we’ve always said, “the good of society.”

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