The Tangential

Don't be boring. Don't suck.

  • How I’ve Dramatically Re-Shaped My Mild Run-Ins with the Law

    How I’ve Dramatically Re-Shaped My Mild Run-Ins with the Law

    • At the age of 8 in 1993, I phoned 911 when my dad refused to play catch with me in the backyard. I hung up immediately. But blue phoned back, forcing my mom to give me a crash course in “proper apologies.” Later at the swimming pool, I told my friends there had been…

  • Playground Personal Brands

    Playground Personal Brands

    Kid With ADHD Who Can’t Stop Quoting Quagmire from Family Guy™ “Gemstone Expert” Boy Who Gets Along Better With Girls™ Girl Going Through Puberty Early Who is Embarrassed About Her Sports Bra™ Boy Who Doesn’t Get He Shouldn’t Throw Balls Hard at Special Needs Kids During Dodgeball™ Windpants Guy™ Kid Talking About R-Rated Movies He’s…

  • The Presidents of My Lifetime: Memory Dump

    The Presidents of My Lifetime: Memory Dump

    Gerald Ford: President when I was born, which is something not many people can say because he stepped up to replace the scandalized Nixon but was not reelected, via being a doofus. At least, that’s what I gather from Chevy Chase Saturday Night Live sketches I’ve seen on YouTube. Jimmy Carter: President when I was in diapers….

  • Indie Musician’s Guide to Taking Criticism

    Indie Musician’s Guide to Taking Criticism

    1. Turn it back on the journalist. How much do they know about music? Can they even play hot cross buns on a ukele? Hmm? They probably don’t even know what an E flat sounds like. They wish they were a *real* musician but went into writing cuz they sucked at music and resent everyone…

  • What Male Politicians Say About Contraception, and What Women Hear

    What Male Politicians Say About Contraception, and What Women Hear

    “ This contraceptive thing. My gosh, it’s so inexpensive. Ya know, back in my days they used to use Bayer Aspirin for contraceptives. The gals would stick it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly.” – Foster Freiss What women hear: “I miss the days when good women baked cakes while we blew our…

  • Best/Realest Tweets of the Week, 2/12-18/12

    Best/Realest Tweets of the Week, 2/12-18/12

    – Compiled by @JayGabler 0 likes

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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