My Internet: Foster Kamer / Embedded: The great internet culture newsletter of our day, Embedded, invited yours truly to do their “My Internet” questionnaire. Let this be a lesson to anyone tempted to give me the column space to explain the way I go about things online: I very, very, very much will. At length.

What’s the Deal with The Dare? / The New York Times: A good way to set yourself up for failure is to headline a story with a semi-rhetorical question about one of the most talked about pop artists of the past few years, on the eve of their debut LP release. A good way to offset that failure is by getting secondary quotes from Charli XCX and 100 Gecs’ Dylan Brady, and hoping nobody notices.

OJAS, Devin Turnbull, and The Great American Listening Room / GQ: If you had the chance to listen to any record of your choosing on one of the single greatest hi-fi audio setups in the world, what would you pick? And how much would you agonize over your decision in the weeks before (and for a lifetime after)? Click and find out!

What Does Andre Agassi Want From Us? / Racquet Magazine: A good way to set yourself up for failure is to attempt a 6,000 word cover story write-around —with an unapologetic slandering of pickleball — about Andre Agassi, and also, to let your editor slap another one of these unhinged rhetorical question headlines on it, too. Luckily, as it guest-edited by legendary longtime Esquire editor-in-chief David Granger, the damage here was limited, and mostly, to pickleball enthusiasts.

Bright Lights, Fast City / GQ: With a billion dollars on the line, the inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix was poised to be a spectacle, a fiasco, a bona fide mess, even for Las Vegas — and having grown up there, I’d know. On assignment for GQ, on the ground, in the paddock, and around the track, as the drivers, fans,  money, and 200 MPH cars swirled into a week of chaos, celebrity, speed, and circus, I watched one of the greatest shitshows American sport has ever seen unfold. Here’s how it went.

Romy Madley Croft / The New York Times: Too many things to count drew me towards the story of Romy Madley Croft — singer, songwriter, and guitarist of The xx — the last of her band’s three members to release a solo album, beyond that intrinsic pressure: Wanting to produce work radically different than the world has came to expect from her; the artistic and personal identity she wanted to reconstitute in public; her collaborators. She let me speak her closest friends and collaborators (Fred Again, Jamie xx, Vic Lentaigne), and she let me into her life, from a queer club night in Brighton to her Coachella rehearsals in Shoreditch, with the kind of access to watching an accomplished and talented artist at work anybody — writer or not — can only dream of. 

The Theraposeurs (or: Fire Your Therapist) / The Washington Post: Chief among the abundant professional hazards of tweeting as a writer is the chance an editor will see whatever absurd thing you expelled from your brain into the ether, call your bluff, and convince you to writing about it. (Reminder: Never tweet.) In this case, I was flagged for mouthing off on a celebrity’s use of therapy speak, and you don’t say ‘no’ to an editor like Mark Lotto. The story ran online and in the print edition, prompted a published letter to the editor, and as of this writing, has 811 comments by people who, for all intents and purposes, should fire their therapists, and/or think I should fire mine.

Fred Again / The New York Times: A few months before he closed out Coachella, before he sold out Madison Square Garden in a few minutes, getting ready for the release of his latest album as his feverish fan base multiplied by the minute, and as the enormous amount of propulsion behind him grew to escape velocity — rocketing him from an earthbound musician to a global phenomenon — I spent some time with Fred, Again, and spoke with some of his closest collaborators (Brian Eno, Four Tet, and Romy Madley Croft) as the phenomenon of his success readied an ascent into orbit.

The Gatekeepers of New York / Interview Magazine: Some of New York’s most quietly influential, powerful denizens are neither rich nor elected, nor do they control a domain any bigger than, say, a restaurant. And yet: Underestimate their reach at your own peril. For the relaunch of Interview with the March 2023 issue, the guardians of New York’s most coveted tables spoke with me, and spilled their secrets.

The Inn of the Seven Graces / New York Magazine: How much is a hotel worth? $700 a night, if it’s capable of staving off a full-on mental breakdown on a cross-country road trip, as was the case here.

If These Carpets Could Talk / A24: Occasionally, as a writer, you get sent an absolutely deranged prompt for an assignment, like, hey, you remember those movie theater carpets from the late 90s/early 00s that were an aesthetic onto themselves? We want you to figure what the deal there was. If anybody but A24 asked me, I’d probably have said no. Related: I now own several 2.x4s from the “yellow house” of Midsommar my grandchildren will one day be asked to employ when bludgeoning me out of my aged misery. They will also be delighted by these carpets.