live-performance
Live Music with Charles Austin
Live video performances of songs by Charles Austin, Brock Winthrop (Alex Nichols), and Asian Kung-Fu Nation.
2026-02-06 • 1 min read Watch >>movie
The Return of Homemade Horror Show
The kids are all fright.
2025-10-31 • 0 min read Watch >>essay
Nothing's scarier than silence in We're All Going to the World's Fair
A look at the cinematic storytelling techniques of a slow-burn, coming-of-age indie horror movie that asks the most important spiritual question of our times: 'What if the internet's a demon we summon into our lives by posting on it?'
2023-10-18 • 9 min read Read >>music-video
A Cross on a Gravel Road (Music Video)
A Midwest ghost story.
2023-10-04 • 1 min read Watch >>analysis
Mike Viola's Paul McCarthy is an open love letter to classic rock
An album review (sorta), but mostly a look at the craft of veteran songwriter/producer operating at the top of his game
2023-09-20 • 9 min read Read >>essay
How to make peace with the unsatisfying grunt labor of writing
On Rick Bass, the spirituality of working at your craft, and fighting for what makes you feel free
2023-06-21 • 10 min read Read >>essay
Kill the part of you that cringes
Let he who has not been cringe cast the first ironically detached subtweet
2023-06-01 • 7 min read Read >>movie
Homemade Horror Show 2023
Every October since 2018, on a coffin-black night in Chicago, local indie filmmakers and horror buffs gather to make their offerings to Homemade Horror Show—an annual anthology of indie horror/comedy shorts.
2023-03-08 • 0 min read Watch >>album
"Redshift" by The Okay Lakes
A soundtrack for moonsilvered night drives on the patchy back roads of the Midwest — out where the county lines of art-folk, indie rock, and Americana meet.
2023-02-23 • 3 min read Learn More >>