All Stories
The Oscars is shaping up for a showdown
Awards season is around the corner, with opponents ready to duke it out in the ring of swanky luncheons and Hollywood hobnobbing. In this corner, the reigning heavyweight champ: a version of every Oscar-baiting, prestige movie you’ve ever seen. And…
As Hollywood courts influencers, movie critics are getting squeezed out
Modern-day movie publicity has changed significantly over the last several years. The standard routes of press interviews on shows like “Access Hollywood” and “Entertainment Tonight” are still around, but they’re far from the main way people hear about a new…
The complicated yearly renegotiation of being a queer NFL fan
The NFL’s regular season is back this week, and these days the game barely leaves. When I was a kid, it was a Sunday religion with a Monday night encore. Now there is Thursday too, and Saturdays late in the…
“King of the Hill” is the real America, if we allow it to be
Once Hulu confirmed the “King of the Hill” revival was officially moving forward, it didn’t take long for the Internet to wonder how Hank Hill would have voted in the previous three elections. Speculations have varied from hard yeses to…
Space Force’s new uniforms scream fascist supervillain
Donald Trump was a busy man when the film “Starship Troopers” debuted to largely confused audiences in 1997. Then 51, the future president was rebuilding his brand after a widely-reported bankruptcy and a separation from his second wife Marla Maples.…
How to spend a perfect day in Milwaukee
Milwaukee is a city I’ve always loved, but now I can appreciate it even more through adult eyes. I was born and raised here, moved to New York and eventually came home, where I put down roots with my then-girlfriend,…
The rock critic who changed the way I listen to music
“A great new sound reaches us, always, as a miraculous gift.” The rock critic Dave Marsh, now of blessed memory, wrote that about Albert Ayler in 1998, and out of the thousands of memorable words Marsh wrote about music, that…
Costco chicken bake meets weeknight galette
I love food court food. Not ironically, and not only in the nostalgic way one loves things that arrived alongside an adolescence spent under fluorescent lighting. I love the architecture of it: the trays, the paper cups, the strange little…
Mariska Hargitay and the quiet death of the award-show roast
The news that Mariska Hargitay will host this year’s Primetime Emmys didn’t inspire many posts in the usual social spaces, and there’s a good reason why. Despite last year’s ceremony boasting a four-year viewership high, the general audience doesn’t seem…
“GTA VI” leaks draw more scrutiny than Epstein files
A version of this essay first appeared in Crash Course, Salon’s free morning newsletter. Sign up for early access to articles like this, plus more of Salon’s bold journalism on how policies, movements and culture wars affect real people. On Aug. 31,…