blog.thirty-one // A decade of writing (mainly) on the Internet has made me preconditioned to expect little-to-no response to anything I share online.
When pursuing this line of work, you learn pretty quickly not to take that dynamic personally. The Internet is large—and fractured into a million different rabbit holes. If anything, it’s getting larger every day, and even more fractured. Without that fundamental understanding (and a belief in my writing), I would’ve stopped trying a long time ago.
Still, when waking up on Super Bowl Sunday, one does question if it’s worth sending out this thing at the same time as the Big Game. Linear television may be dying, sure, but the NFL is quietly bigger than ever. In 2024—a year that included the Olympics and a presidential election—seventy-two of the top one hundred broadcasts in the U.S. were pro football games.*
Yet as I’ve written about previously, showing up every Sunday evening for the past six months and crafting a space to discuss the things in my purview—mainly creators, culture, and creator culture—hasn’t just proven itself to be a fulfilling exercise, along with a chance to reconnect with friends and family. This space has also served as a launchpad for even more. Our gatherings at the studio, for example, have already seen people commute from up to an hour-and-a-half away so they can share their creative projects with peers (more on that later, as it’s gotten us pretty dang excited).
Additionally, some of you all have written to me to say that reading the blog has become a habit of sorts. One email I received last week said this:
Found myself headed to bed Sunday night missing the blog and then boom it came through!
So yes, this space will keep chugging along, even while competing with the Super Bowl.** We have a lot coming up in the pipeline, from stories to share and gatherings to host.
My one ask today: If you know someone who wants to join us on our mission to Make the Internet Feel Smaller, send them this blog. It goes a long way—we really appreciate it!
Alright, we’re saving the next interview from our “Twenty-Five Calls for 2025” series for Thursday. In the meantime, here’s a new column from yours truly.
— NGL
P.S. Last blog, we talked with Alex Robinson about creative imposter syndrome and completing a Kickstarter for her new film, Meatball. You can read more here.
One // I think I should briefly touch on the Super Bowl…Halftime Show.
I’m gonna be honest, I didn’t care enough about Patrick Mahomes’ Chiefs trudging to yet another championship to actually turn on the game.
Nevertheless, I’m finishing this thought at a moment when it seems like Kansas City is on its way to a proper trouncing at the hands of the Eagles. I know this because I did tune into Kendrick’s halftime performance, which was…fine? It never really felt like his catalogue was fit for a Super Bowl environment, but I digress.
But he did the thing! Not only playing “tv off” (MUSTARDDDDDD), he also nonchalantly a) brought out Samuel L. Jackson wearing an Uncle Sam costume b) name-dropped Drake and c) rattled off A minorrrrrrrrr. The wildest rap beef in recent memory has now concluded with a couple references sandwiched between sanitized lyrics and a cheesesteak.
The broadcast has moved on. The loop has been closed. Unless we’re Philadelphia police officers bracing for overnight carnage, we can now all go to sleep knowing that yes, Kendrick did call Drake a pedophile on the world’s biggest stage.***
Two // I think our gatherings so far are accomplishing exactly what we set out to do.
In December, I shared my thoughts on how to form true community:
If six people show up at the same spot every Sunday morning to go for a run, those experiences help foster a shared language, with inside jokes and mutual understanding. As that run club grows every following Sunday, the shared language becomes the glue that ties its members—old and new alike—together. It’s what keeps everyone coming back.
Nonetheless, if the founder of that run club decides to outsource their community formation to someone else—and show up once it’s already built—they can’t really speak the shared language with true conviction. They don’t really know what makes the thing hum, and they’ve missed the boat when it comes to better understanding the core group that produced magic early on.
So far, we’ve held three gatherings at the studio: a housewarming, an afternoon of co-working, and an evening of screening projects and collecting feedback. It’s been a steady mix of newcomers and now-regulars. Some folks have driven from suburbs as far away as Aurora; others have commuted via bus, train, and another bus.
Hosting people in the studio isn’t a small lift. It’s an investment of our time, time that could otherwise be spent producing more of our own creative work.
Thing is, when Shua, Moy, and I began meeting every week to talk about some of the things we wanted to accomplish with our studio, we kept coming back to bringing people together through regular gatherings. If that’s what we were really looking for—to build this creative neighborhood of sorts—then we figured that there’s probably a lot more people like us out there, too.
Well, I’m excited to say that the neighborhood is growing. On to our next event on Saturday…****
Three // I think it’s worth highlighting some of the creative people joining our neighborhood.
While I sadly can’t mention everyone, here’s a few names →
Alex Nguyen is finishing up his senior year of his undergrad film program. He manages several underground rappers around the city—and is currently writing an anthology series on the Chicago drill scene, spotlighting both the creative triumphs and destructive violence that drill has wrought.
At our Friday co-working session, Alex read a scene from the show’s pilot, and his blend of dark humor and first-hand experience had everyone hooked the whole way. In the script, one of the main characters insults his producer using a string of expletives and the word “troglodyte”; along with laughing at the oddly specific verbiage, I’m not embarrassed to admit that I had to look “troglodyte” up afterwards.*****
Becky Larrain is also a college student—she’s focused on creating lifestyle videos and mini-documentaries on her YouTube channel. At our “Show Your Work” night, Becky shared a recent video titled “what if you took a pic of everything you ate?” and asked for the group to tear in while giving feedback.
Everyone agreed that her editing style is really fun. Some of the room for improvement was more consistent audio quality and a stronger conclusion. All in all, it was cool seeing a mix of professional cinematographers, experienced short film directors, and food reviewers offer their insight on how to improve a vlog. Speaking of which…
Arsenii Morin is a cinematographer from Russia with experience shooting commercial work and music videos. Arsenii moved to Chicago from London last month; he’s against his home country’s war in Ukraine and is figuring out how to stay in the States long-term.
He shared a spec music video he shot for the rising Belarusian band Molchat Doma, whose hit song “Судно (Борис Рыжий)” created a trending sound on TikTok. Unfortunately for Arsenii, Molchat Doma’s reps stopped responding after receiving the video, so he was interested in feedback on how he could improve his next big project.
Thing is, we all reaffirmed that Arsenii’s cut was…really good! And it’s dope to hear that he and his collaborators plan on adapting what they shot into a short film.
To conclude: we’ve really enjoyed hosting such a wide variety of creatives, and we plan to highlight more members of our neighborhood in the coming weeks.
Four // I think visiting bookstores is one of the best methods of exploring a neighborhood.
Local bookstores are not only special in their own unique ways—they also serve as a community pillar and a lens into the people and places surrounding them. When I’m visiting a place for the first time, I’ll often plan my trip around a bookstore and then explore the area from there.******
I hadn’t been into Myopic Books in roughly six years, but now that I live down the street, it was about time I popped my head back in. The store is crammed with new and secondhand titles alike; what I distinctly remembered about it—the third-floor bench and reading area—is still intact, with a great view out to the bustling Milwaukee Avenue on a Saturday night.
I ended up picking up Chain-Gang All-Stars. Not exactly the lightest read, yet I’m already a hundred pages in and captivated so far.
Five // I think The New Yorker’s centennial is a beacon of hope.
Look, at one-point-two million paid subscribers, the literary magazine may be a singular beast among a struggling media landscape.
Nevertheless, even as the race to succeed longtime editor-in-chief David Remnick is in full swing, the ability of The New Yorker to continue producing incredible work one hundred years in gives me hope. Hope that there is a place for longform storytelling and beautiful print products to continue finding readers in the years to come.
Thanks for reading! Shoot me a reply, comment, or DM if anything resonated with you in particular—I respond to them all.
* This is technically a decrease from 2023, which saw the NFL take ninety-three slots. But again, given an extremely contentious election also happened last year, the NFL’s dominance is really just unparalleled. In comparison, the NBA didn’t have a single broadcast rank.
** No matter what happens over the next several years, you’ll never hear us claim to be bigger than the Super Bowl. We all know what happened to the last guy who tried that.
*** Also: “I want to perform their favorite song, but you know they love to sue” was diabolical.
**** This one’s gonna be a surprise—more on that later.
***** It’s a person who lives in a cave or in seclusion.
****** Give credit where credit is due: My increasing affinity for visiting bookstores can largely be attributed to Vicky’s life goal of reading every book on the planet.