The Tangential

2018 British Arrows, at the Walker Art Center, Commercialize Hope (We’ll Take It)

“Christmas is not only getting too commercial, it’s getting too dangerous.” Those words from A Charlie Brown Christmas floated back to me as I watched this year’s British Arrows — the annual highlight reel of British ads, a popular seasonal attraction at the Walker Art Center. Linus and Charlie Brown were concerned about aluminum trees and sibling…

Thanksgiving Audiobook Review: Nathaniel Philbrick’s “Mayflower”

About the book: Nathaniel Philbrick’s 2006 history chronicles the Pilgrims’ journey from its genesis in turn-of-the-17th-century Britain through their 1620 arrival at what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts; concluding in 1678 with the end of King Philip’s War, a devastating conflict between European settlers and Native Americans. The colony that only survived its first year because of…

Book Review: How Much Do You Need To Know About G.I. Joe?

In Back to Our Future (2011), David Sirota argues that G.I. Joe is in significant part responsible for indoctrinating children to accept a state of permanent warfare against “a stateless and (literally) faceless terrorist group conducting attacks from caves, desert encampments and other secret hideouts.” It’s certainly true that as we ’80s kids grew up and…

Book Review: Two Titles Take Loving Looks Back at Late 20th Century Kids’ Culture

When computers failed to bring the world to an end at the dawn of 2000, everyone decided that Y2K fears had been overblown. They were, in a technical sense, but it’s also true that the turn of the century proved pivotal to the way technology mediated our experience. Napster brought the entire record industry to…

Fall Fun (and Frustration) with the Millennium Falcon

Maybe there’s something about the Millennium Falcon that’s inherently both thrilling and frustrating. My first Falcon came into my hands in the early ’80s. It was after the holidays, and the Kenner toy was on sale at Target. “Jason,” said my mom, “you could buy that with your Christmas money.” I could?! I did. At home that night, my…

Egypt’s Sunken Cities Surface at Minneapolis Institute of Art

If you thought archaeology had lost its magic in this age of satellite and drone photography, Mostaf Waziry would like to disabuse you of that notion. The head of Egypt’s Supreme Council for Antiquities (now that’s a job title) regaled press at a Thursday morning preview for Egypt’s Sunken Cities at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Only 40%…

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.”