The Tangential

“Alien: Covenant” is the Perfect Anti-Escape Movie for Summer 2017

If Rogue One, with its prominent resistance motif, was the perfect SF franchise movie for 2016, the bleak Alien: Covenant might be the one that’s most apt for this dispiriting year. Ridley Scott’s genius with the original Alien was to mix that decade’s dystopian science fiction sensibility with a classic horror setup, enlivened by Sigourney Weaver as one of the…

“Journey to the South Pacific”: A Poignant Voyage at Science Museum of Minnesota Omnitheater

Journey to the South Pacific hits all the bases you expect from an Omnitheater film. There are the sweeping helicopter vistas, the underwater shots looking up at the shimmering sun through vast schools of fish, the laughing children glorying in the pure joy of nature, and even a wacky montage where fish seem to form a doo-wop chorus.…

“Pics or It Didn’t Happen” Shows What Instagram Shuts Out

Pics or It Didn’t Happen, a potent new book of images collected by Arvida Byström and Molly Soda, opens with Instagram’s republished Community Guidelines. In the name of maintaining “an authentic and safe place,” the guidelines forbid nudity. This includes photos, videos, and some digitally-created content that show sexual intercourse, genitals, and close-ups of fully-nude…

MSPIFF Kicks Off, Ponderously, with “Lost City of Z”

Last night at St. Anthony Main Theatre, several people queued up to welcome us to opening night of the 36th annual Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival. Alderman Jacob Frey talked about the impact the festival’s had on the neighborhood. Mayor Betsy Hodges, preaching to the decidedly converted, talked about the importance of the arts…

“Queen of the Desert”: Werner Herzog Puts White Privilege On a Camel

If you’re a fan of ’80s Oscar bait who wonders why they don’t make ’em like that any more, then grab a tub of popcorn and settle in to enjoy Werner Herzog’s Queen of the Desert. A historical epic that never makes any sudden moves, it’s a movie that explores the Middle East circa World War…

Places Nick and Raven Could Have Gotten It On

A deer stand A flu-ridden ball pit at a McDonald’s PlayPlace A salon floor covered in freshly shorn hair The cow-birthing pen at the Wisconsin State Fair An ebola quarantine unit The set of Celebrity Naked and Afraid A Gulf Coast shrimp farm A Bourbon Street gutter during Mardi Gras A pit full of discarded…

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.”