Wow and Flutter

I tried. I really did. It’s been two weeks since Drake’s ICEMAN came out, and after giving the album a few fair listens, I can acknowledge the bops and his skill as a rhyme slinger when he’s properly motivated. And while there are many things he’s trying to make the audience do on his most important release since the early part of his career, the one thing he couldn’t do is make me care. He…

Crab in black bean sauce, at least as it is served in American Chinese restaurants, starts with a whole crab, most likely Dungeness here in LA, still in the shell, chopped into sections, and stir‑fried until the shells are bright red. It’s then simmered in a fermented black bean sauce. The sticky, unctuous umami bomb was among my father’s very favorite meals. We observed his birthday this past…

Early during this year’s March Madness, I said, “My annual worry with the Bruins: they don’t have enough  ‘dawg’ for the SEC teams and Coach Cori overcoaching in big games.” Well, I was proven wrong on both counts. The 2026 National Champions got there by defeating the two best teams in the SEC, and by the end, Cori Close had ascended to join the ranks of the most quotable and noteworthy coaches…

Tiffany asked me what I wanted for my 51st year, and my quick answer was “to get to the money.” To sit courtside at Los Angeles Sparks games and say hi to Dee, our favorite bartender in the Delta Sky lounge. To travel for basketball reasons on a whim. To join our wealthier friends in donating to the arts. To become fluent in opera. To be a patron of the spaces that generate the vibes I want…

View on Threads Ironically, my intention to spend more of my life away from screens crystallized around a social media post. I’ve known Zadi Diaz since the heyday of blogging, the rise of YouTube, and those few years when SXSWi cared more about the culture and creativity of the web than about monetizing enthusiasm at scale. She has always placed a grounded, human lens on our shared digital…

Dylan Byers said something on an end-of-2025 episode of The Grill Room that stuck with me (paraphrasing): The best media story of the year is about people who have created something on their own. I don’t know what their long game is as businesses, but they’re definitely having fun. And it’s joyful. I spend a lot of time in my inbox with people who are very upset at their media organizations.…

A year before we married in the city, we spent a Memorial Day weekend in New Orleans. We stayed at Hotel LeCirque. It stands on what is now Harmony Circle, once called Place du Tivoli. In 2010, it was still known by the name it had carried for more than 130 years: Lee Circle. As in Robert E. Lee, the defeated Confederate general. Our room faced the circle, where the enormous statue of Lee,…

Every year, when I check my unused holiday card inventory, I open up the old Apple MacBook box I use to store the best cards I’ve received and read through a few of the lovely notes people have sent. I admire the artwork of those cards—some beautiful, some witty, some handmade with care.  I don’t have a similar keepsake spot on my phone for the emoji-filled texts I receive on our shared…

María Ampara Escandón loves Los Angeles. More importantly, she understands it. Her novel, L.A. Weather, is about family and the subtle nuances within each relationship. It’s also about identity, the hold that secrets can have over us, and how we handle the crises that can face a family unit in any given year. Los Angeles is where the Alvarados happen to live in this story. This city I love is…

This past Wednesday, my family hosted a musical tribute to my father, Kevin Toney. I wasn’t an active participant in the production or planning. Outside of doing half of a rough draft of a script for the M.C., I tapped out. “This is not for us,” I said. “This is for everyone else.” It was more than that, of course. It was my mother’s gift to his musical legacy. The show was a retrospective of…

On my 20th spin of Not Like Us, I figured out why Kendrick Lamar‘s latest is so electrifying. The last time LA hip hop was up was Nipsey Hussle’s Victory Lap at the GRAMMYs in February of 2019. His death a couple of months later, followed by Kobe Bryant, his daughter, and several others less than a year later, turned the city and the music melancholy and insular. The pandemic would soon follow,…

I’m an AI skeptic. That’s not true. I have been cautious about rapidly incorporating AI tools into my everyday work, even as usage and excitement by others have grown exponentially in the last year. Recently, though, I’ve been playing with AI solutions more frequently. I’ve been frustrated with the quality of Google search results and started exploring Perplexity AI. It was helpful when I looked…

It's been a while since I gave up on Evernote. I think I've finally figured out what will work for me now.

Photo by Walling on Unsplash I have been searching for an app to replace Evernote for quite some time now. Although I thought Notion was the one, I eventually gave up after using it for nearly two years as it was too heavy for personal use. First, I stopped using it to capture my “read later” links. Instead, I used bookmarks and read later in Safari until I stumbled across Anybox in a…