The Tangential

Where Do We Go From Here?

Last night I went to a screening of O Brother, Where Art Thou? at Gold Medal Park in Minneapolis. I arrived late, picking my way through the hillside crowd until I found my friends. Behind us, the downtown skyline lit up and scrolling vertical marquees advertised the current productions at the Guthrie Theater. Before us played a movie about…

“Ghostbusters” Are Back (They Never Really Left)

I really wanted to go see Gremlins for my ninth birthday in 1984, but my dad decided that movie looked too violent — so instead my party turned into a Ghostbusters party, and I was immediately obsessed. I bought every book, sticker, and shirt I could afford; including one “Who You Gonna Call?” sweatshirt to wear, and…

Minnesota Whites: Start Seeing Color

Last year, I was at a meeting where a group of community leaders were grappling with some of the challenges facing Minnesota and the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area. We were looking at the results of a recent survey that showed, among other things, that substantial numbers of Minnesotans are seriously concerned by the achievement gap in…

“The Lion King” Roars Again at the Orpheum Theatre

Disney’s The Lion King has returned to Minnesota for a fifth time, following its world premiere at the Orpheum Theatre in 1997 with return engagements in 2005, 2007, and 2012. From the reaction of the audience last night, its return has been long-awaited. The crowd roared as the curtain opened to the spectacular first scene…

“Seeing Nature”: Minneapolis Institute of Art Celebrates Landscapes

Let’s be honest: landscape painting isn’t exactly the sexiest subject for an exhibit. It sounds like something you’d bring your 903-year-old grandma to. The Minneapolis Institute of Art’s Seeing Nature, though, packs a punch. After walking through just three compact but generously-stocked galleries, you might just leave seeing the world a little differently. The work on…

Names for Future Bourne Movies

The Bourne Identity The Bourne Supremacy The Bourne Ultimatum The Bourne Legacy Jason Bourne Bourne Bourner Jason JB Bourne Again Bourne This Way Bourne Free Dee Dee Bourne Kaitlyn Bourne A$AP Bourne Bourne To Be My Baby Posh Bourne Poot Bourne The Bourne Identity Crisis Bourne Under a Bad Sign The Bourne Tax Audit –…

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.”