The Tangential

Don't be boring. Don't suck.

  • Marvel Wins Again With “Captain America: Civil War”

    Marvel Wins Again With “Captain America: Civil War”

    I found myself thinking about Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice a lot while I was watching Captain America: Civil War. The films both address the evergreen comic-book question of acceptable losses. Is any civilian casualty in the fight against demon aliens attacking New York from a portal in the sky acceptable? Is it the…

  • My Requests for Who Will Replace Michael Strahan on “Kelly and Michael”

    My Requests for Who Will Replace Michael Strahan on “Kelly and Michael”

    Live! with Kelly and Michael is important to me. It symbolizes getting to wake up when you want and have your coffee with your cat/dog while catching up on the latest celebrity whatever stuff. Aka living the dream. Now that I’m “living the dream” (working freelance) and have returned to this morning routine, Michael Strahan has…

  • The Star Wars Have Been Won

    The Star Wars Have Been Won

    Today is Star Wars Day. I was reminded of that yesterday, when I saw several people posting grumpy requests not to tell them “May the Fourth be with you.” The fact that I’ve seen only negative buzz this year about the ad hoc holiday leaves me wondering: is this a day people still feel like celebrating? I’m not suggesting disappointment…

  • “Modern Forms”: Photographer Nicolas Grospierre Finds Beauty In the Wreckage

    “Modern Forms”: Photographer Nicolas Grospierre Finds Beauty In the Wreckage

    According to my 1968 Webster’s, the definition of “modern” is: of or characteristic of the present or recent times; not ancient: often used to designate certain contemporary tendencies and schools of art, music, literature, etc.; as, modern architecture and furniture are characterized by functionalism and lack of extraneous ornamentation. The first part of that definition still basically hasn’t…

  • “The Story of Emoji”: Gavin Lucas Has the Inside Poo on Those Ubiquitous Little Icons

    “The Story of Emoji”: Gavin Lucas Has the Inside Poo on Those Ubiquitous Little Icons

    Where did emoji come from? Why did they seem to suddenly become ubiquitous? Are they here to stay? Should you or should you not use them in sexts? Those aren’t especially profound or difficult questions, but there’s been no handy way to find the answers all in one place — until now, with the publication…

  • Where Your Ass Gets Taken When You Fuck Various Celebrities Good

    Where Your Ass Gets Taken When You Fuck Various Celebrities Good

    Beyoncé: Red Lobster Shia LaBeouf: a conceptual “restaurant” at PS1 (livestreamed) Carly Rae Jepsen: a Chuck E. Cheese that she booked out entirely for herself Toby Keith: Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar and Grill Ted Cruz: his basement, where he keeps those 100 soup cans Orlando Bloom: Ibiza Lena Dunham: a Starbucks in a…

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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