Jason Toney

Illustration of two dark-skinned hands holding a smartphone, with icon-style app cards (calendar, messages, notes) fanned out above it against a blue background.

September 2, 2026 / 0 Comments

What Poor Timing

Daily writing prompt

What are your favorite 5 apps on your phone?

NYT Games: part of my morning ritual, and I share my scores with a group of friends every day, a habit that started back during the pandemic. I like it as a way to get my mental juices flowing and a low-friction way to stay connected with several people I like.

Insight Timer: my meditation app of choice since Paramount finally took away my corporate benefit access to Headspace. I’ve completed over 100 days straight of meditating with the app. I thought I liked the consistent structure of the guided meditations Headspace produces, but Insight Timer offers more fluidity, discovery, and variety, and it clearly keeps me coming back. I’ve also enjoyed several of the multi-day courses.

Planta: I’m a plant dad, and most of my plants are truly thriving in no small part due to the scheduled upkeep, tips, and tricks this app provides.

Balatro+: the only game besides the NYT puzzles on my phone. I’ve played this on and off for years, and it remains very challenging. I just beat a new level yesterday and had by far my biggest score, and got the same thrill of accomplishment as the early days of the game, even though it didn’t unlock any new cards, decks, or other surprises.

Pocket Casts: I think I’ve written about this before, but I still haven’t found a more enjoyable podcast app. The only thing that could make it better is episode-specific recommendations based on what I actually listen to rather than just what I’m subscribed to.

But as you may have read, I’m trying to spend much less time on my phone.

View from behind a small tan-and-white terrier with tall, alert ears, looking out over a sunlit patch of green grass with tree shadows falling across the lawn.

September 2, 2026 / 1 Comment

See You Outside?

Last night, I sat in the gym for several minutes after my elliptical run, scrolling Threads in my phone’s web browser. I clicked like on fan art and memes about the latest episode of the HBO series Lanterns and news of first-round wins of some of my favorite players in this year’s US Open alongside a smattering of other Women’s Sports news and conjecture. What I was interacting with wasn’t the problem. These are all things I enjoy and am actively invested in. Very few empty calories in this session. The problem is that it shouldn’t have been happening at all.

A few weeks ago, I removed all the social media apps except for Instagram from my phone. No Threads. No Facebook. No Bluesky. No LinkedIn. Instagram is hidden and requires my face to unlock it. The impetus was realizing that idle scrolling sessions were getting longer. They were keeping me from falling asleep at night or getting out of bed in the morning. The meaningful stuff—women’s sports, TV & film discussions or industry news, Los Angeles news & culture, interesting reads, communicating with friends and acquaintances—were shifting to shocking or stupid videos, rage bait, or digital ephemera that was intended to keep my attention but not ignite my mind or heart.

And still, here I was in the terrible browser experience of my preferred social media timeline, and it keeps cajoling me to reinstall the app. I haven’t succumbed. Yet.

Jenny Odell, whose writing on this topic has long been a critical resource for my attempts at avoiding the brain-rotting effects of modern digital society, recently suggested on the How to Touch Grass podcast that one approach is to take an “outsider’s perspective” to our relationship with our phones and apps before attempting to change anything. Examine how what you’re doing in these spaces makes you feel, like a scientist observing a subject, without judgment, and then treat the findings as an experiment.

She describes digital habits as grooves formed geologically over time, which is why cold-turkey attempts fail. Social pressure and muscle memory pull us back. This is exactly how I ended up fumbling around threads.com in the Chrome mobile browser. Text mesages between me and Tiffany and our basketball friends are dotted with shares from Instagram and Bluesky and Threads and even though I know I can usually wait until I get back to a desktop experience to consume and enjoy the memes, jokes, and news, the thumb clicks because of course it does and now I’m looking at my notifications and here’s a good point about the latest episode of my favorite TV show and some stranger is wrong about the Los Angeles Sparks and there’s a random dashcam video of people doing stupid things on a freeway somewhere in America and what terrible thing did Pete Hegseth do now and, wait, where did the time go?!

I don’t want this on my phone, and I definitely don’t want to lose precious minutes of my life thoughtlessly while sweating post-workout in the middle of the gym or in the car for who knows how long after I’ve reached a destination.

Do I need a physical impediment to curb these habits, or can I figure out how to “stand apart” from the device on my own?

In Vauhini Vara’s Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age, she examines how tech companies have both fulfilled and exploited the human desire for understanding and connection by creating these experiences that we seem to find so useful and inescapable and then building so much wealth and power around them that it is nearly impossible to disentangle ourselves from them individually or as a society.

While reading through her own spelunking into the deep crevices of her Google search history, Amazon shopping orders, and ChatGPT chat logs, I smugly thought to myself, well, I don’t use these things like that.

Lies.

I used Google Search over 2600 times in the last 12 months. I watched over 2400 videos and shorts on YouTube in the last three months. I’ve made only nine purchases via Amazon this year, but as I dug into these troves of data, I realized that what I do online is ultimately beside the point. What I know and what many people are coming to the realization of lately is that when I think about the most meaningful experiences of my life and days, they are hardly ever connected to something I experienced on a screen. When my father passed, I, of course, looked to my digital world to make sense of things and found it lacking. I was using an AI-powered journaling app called Dot at the time—it’s now defunct—and while I was initially impressed by its seeming insightfulness, I quickly found that a software program cannot express true empathy and understanding. When the things in your life that you most wish would not happen occur anyway, healing comes in the presence of other people. I walked through my grief with my friends as we hid in my mom’s sewing room during the repast, sipping Japanese whiskey and laughing through the tears. I gave shape to my loss by listening to my mother, sister, and others as they expressed his departure’s impact through their own words and actions. No chatbot could give me that.

Vara similarly and to great effect exposes how she used ChatGPT as a partner in writing an essay about the grief of losing her sister at a young age. The piece brought her great acclaim, but ultimately, she realized the parts ChatGPT “created” were memories that weren’t hers. Even if clever, it wasn’t real.

I’m hungry for real things. When I write in my journal about the things I want to remember from the day, it is rarely a meme, reel, or back-and-forth argument with strangers online. Life is about the other humans in it. Really in it. Life is the people you share a domicile with or a street with. Life happens for me when I talk with a neighbor as I walk to the grocery store. What I remember is meeting people and learning about their hopes and dreams. I also remember being in a sports venue, hugging, cheering, and celebrating with my fellow sports fans.

I also remember when a real friend or family member texts or calls, and we get involved and invested in each other.

Odell fills the time she might have previously spent scrolling her phone or staring at screens with enriching experiences outside of the house. Standing appointments in nature and the physical world. I’ve been thinking about that too. Many of my day-to-day activities and hobbies currently default to an app or a website. Maybe, though, it’s time I sought out learning Spanish in person with others instead of with Mango. Maybe I need more standing appointments to volunteer rather than my ad hoc approach now. Maybe when I’m bored, I go to the park or the coffee shop or call a friend or family member and have an impromptu hang.

Like the old days.

Maybe I need a Brick.

See you outside?

P.S.

I originally intended to mimic Vara’s book and provide detailed examples of my digital activity (searches, purchases, YouTube videos), but that felt like too much navel-gazing and would’ve pushed me further down the digital rabbit hole, when I really want to be “out there” and not “in here.” My ego, though, is particularly proud of one aspect of my Google activity, so I’m going to share the words I’ve used the “define:” search function with over the last year.

quartile
disambiguation
artifice
fungible
forthwith
apprehend
epistemic
clarity
loyalty
totem
anathema
aegis
quatrain
heathen
heretic

I tend to look up words when I want to be sure I’m using them correctly or when I want to get into the etymology (I just googled to make sure that was correct) of a word or phrase.

Poster Image for the documentary "Power of the Dream" featuring a graphic with bold black serif text on cream reading "POWER OF THE DREAM," with a cutout photo of a woman basketball player mid-dribble tucked between "POWER" and "OF THE," and the U.S. Capitol dome silhouetted after "DREAM." Below, a red panel with black-and-white cutout portraits of five women featured in the doc.

July 30, 2026 / 0 Comments

Common Sense Bigotry and the WNBA’s Golden Goose

In the summer of 2020, Senate candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock were underdogs in Georgia until incumbent Senator and WNBA team owner Kelly Loeffler fully aligned with Trump’s MAGA movement and their attempts to turn the Black Lives Matter activism of the league’s players into a campaign strategy.

The players turned their attention to ousting Loeffler from her seat of power both in DC and in the owner’s box, and they succeeded in doing both, helping to put Ossoff and Warnock into the positions they now hold and are fighting to keep in this year’s midterm elections.

This summer, though, while Ossoff and Warnock continue to be a thorn in the side of, incredibly, a second-term Trump, the activist in the W that we’re being presented with is Sophie Cunningham and her “common sense bigotry.”

It occurred to me early in this thirtieth-anniversary season, now that the league has its watershed media rights deal and the players have their historic CBA, that both sides of that equation may have chosen to turn down the temperature on being so publicly politically active, even if it was never discussed explicitly. And even if their approaches are wildly different.

Players stay on the floor for the national anthem this summer. “Statement Tees” are infrequently worn unless you are Coach Cheryl Reeve or the always outspoken Natasha Cloud. Despite the dreadful record of the current administration and the progressive enthusiasm heading into this fall’s election cycle, there’s no collective action to be found among these women in 2026.

And that is their right. I’m not demanding action, just noting its absence.

Meanwhile, the league front office has taken a different approach. Or, perhaps, an approach similar to one popularized by their parent organization’s biggest star of the 1990s: “Republicans buy sneakers, too.”¹

Caitlin Clark’s arrival in the professional ranks a few seasons ago brought a fan base that does not share the same values as those this league has been cultivating for most of its life. That they have glommed onto her, her team, and her teammate, Cunningham, seems to have inspired the most Corporate America thing possible from the association: protect the goose that lays the golden eggs at all costs.

I imagine they see it as being apolitical. But nothing is apolitical in this country, and when that stance becomes just not trying to antagonize “common sense” Americans, what you really get is what we’ve seen over the last week.

Cunningham spouts her “common sense bigotry,” doubles and triples down, and gets rewarded with halftime show appearances on national broadcasts.

Meanwhile, a coach who might have a different perspective on her comments and the rights of trans people to play sports is cut off by her team’s PR team for a statement full of baby pablum.

When a team owner’s arena is invaded by bad-faith actors seeking to fabricate an incident, her understandable reaction and interaction with them result in disciplinary action from the league.

That seems pretty political to me. Choosing to coddle the bigots because you want them to keep spending their money is a devil’s bargain.

It also completely ignores what else has happened over the last five years and the groundswell of youthful progressive enthusiasm that has organically built around the league during that time. That fanbase, the one that will stick around long after Clark and Cunningham ride off into the sunset, has the values that underpin this league. And it is the fuel that drives all who thrive in and around women’s sports.

The lifeblood of women’s sports is inclusivity. We are here because we want to cheer for these women, this bountiful, broad, cornucopia of athletes, who compete like hell while also clearly being about something greater than themselves.

The billionaire NBA owners, both at a league and team level, may not want to hear that, but ignore it at your peril. Chasing fickle fans who have no respect for the people who have kept this thing going for the last 30 years may turn away the folks who get it better than you ever will.

And then you’ll be left holding an empty bag.

That’s just common sense.

Yes, I know that Jordan denies saying it. ↩︎

July 11, 2026 / 8 Comments

I Hate The Way We Talk Online

A little over a week ago, I asked on Threads:

Without googling or using a chatbot, do you know what the top songs (by chart position) in your favorite genres are right now? Could you sing, rap, or even hum them if asked?

What I expected in return were answers from acquaintances and strangers alike about their awareness of what’s actually popular, rather than the hyper-personal, algorithmically curated music being piped into their ears or the tunes that the hyper-niche online music fandom they may be a part of was promoting.

What I got instead were weirdly defensive or hostile replies that seemed to take my innocuous question as an invitation to debate the merits of charts including conspiracy theories about their purpose. Others merely wanted to pat themselves on the back for having edgy tastes.

I’m desperate for some sense of a shared cultural language or zeitgeist right now, but not like this.

On a recent episode of Brittany Luse’s It’s Been A Minute podcast, Wired’s Jason Parharm argued that this current stage of overly algorithmic social media has fostered a “main character” mentality where the primary currency is attention and everything, and everyone is judged through that lens. In this world, platforms reward “algorithm-speak” over individual expression and nuance, and any sense of a monoculture around anything other than the algorithm is almost non-existent.

The price of engaging with topics I care about or content I enjoy in spaces where I know like-minded folks exist is that I earn the attention of those who care more about winning algorithmically than connection. Much like literacy, social skills have atrophied in this age of social media.

As the World Cup has been showcasing lately, we can still find commonality and shared language around live sports, but even that is being fractured by the ways we experience the world through our digital frameworks. I’ve written before about how attending WNBA games in-person is nothing like the tribalism rampant when discussing the W online. I’d amend that today to note that fandom around one particular player and team can sometimes feel like the comments section IRL when they come out in full force at your home arena.

They reek of that “main character” mentality in which people assume they are the most entitled to everyone’s attention rather than reading the room and being good guests.

It’s infuriating.

I’m rejecting the shifting social mores that place the highest value on attention. I’m done with aura, rizz, maxxing, and mogging. I’m not accepting a post-literate society.

I refuse!

Let’s discuss topics without feeling the need to win a non-existent argument.

Hot takes? No.

Unsourced Breaking News from non-journalists? Nah, B.

Engage with nuance. Show the grace you would extend offline to those you meet on these virtual streets.

Have something real to say? Write a blog.

Want to better understand the world we live in? Read a book.

Want to be a creator? Don’t let AI write your shit, render your art, or make your infographics.

Don’t be a “main character.” Be a person.

Don’t make me enter my curmudgeon era.

Despite how far back I have to scroll to find my year in age verification features, I’m too young and pretty to be a full-time crank.

Photo of a boy in sunglasses and a white polo shirt waving an American flag, smiling, in front of a wooden fence.

July 4, 2026 / 1 Comment

What to this Negro is America at 250?

As I entered our local grocery store this morning, the security guard called me over.

“I like your shirt,” she said. I was wearing Angel City FC’s Immigrant City tee.

“Thank you,” I replied.

“I said to my church women’s group today, ‘Happy 4th of July to the Americans first and also…”

She stammered a bit.

“Wait, I am trying to get my words.”

I waited.

“Happy 4th of July to the Americans first and also for the immigrants. Like your shirt.”

“Well, none of our people are originally from here. We are all immigrants,” I said.

“Except the people who were on this land,” she retorted.

“And yet, those are the ones whom our nation considers least American. But, as my shirt says, ‘Los Angeles is for everyone.’ So is America.”

As we parted, I said loudly, “My African sister, my American sister, Happy Independence Day!”

She smiled widely and yelled back, “For all of us!”

For all of us.

Photo by Janay Peters on Unsplash

The New York Knicks celebrate their 2026 NBA championship, holding the Larry O'Brien trophy and wearing gold medals and white championship hats, surrounded by team members in navy championship apparel.

June 18, 2026 / 1 Comment

The Power of Friendship

“It’s us,” Shannon said when I wondered aloud some twenty years ago about who would fight for what’s right. She’s been gone for over a year now, but I’ve returned to her moral clarity again and again as we navigate the overwhelming selfishness that has always been a core part of the American psyche, but in this faux gilded age of Trumpism, is a genuine crisis.

Back in April, Sophie Haigney wrote that the word “courage” has fallen out of fashion because it requires you to have some kind of moral-based conviction.

The valorization of ‘high agency’ is emblematic of a moment when risk-taking is overvalued. It’s an ethos for a gambler’s time, and we’re living in one. ‘Courage’ has a moral valence that agency doesn’t. Agency is about action, but it tells us nothing of direction.

Even using the royal “we” in our fractured society feels as quaint and outdated as courage apparently is. But that kind of overwhelming selfishness is not a winning posture if you value your soul. And, more importantly, if you value and respect those around you, near and far, you know that what we need more of is earnest courageousness in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.

Even if we’ve fallen out of the habit of using the word, the folks who have been out in the streets doing the work to protect their neighbors against ICE over the last year have shown nothing but courage. For those of us who haven’t become stuck on the perch of skepticism and cynicism that so dominates our hyper-individualized media consumption, we can recognize those who stand up and do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do. Sometimes they do so individually, but collective action seems most effective in this age of “high agency” individuals who seem to value only fealty to getting rich and getting over.

Maybe that’s why the 2026 New York Knickerbockers winning has been such a euphoria-inducing victory. Ever since their come-from-behind win in Game 5 of the NBA Finals—their first championship in 53 years—a meme has been circulating online. In it, the joke is that the Knicks defeated a stacked, favored San Antonio Spurs team with the “Power of Friendship.”

Meme showing a large figure in San Antonio Spurs gear labeled "3 top five picks, best player since Wilt, Champagne legacy game" beside a small figure in pink New York Knicks gear labeled "The power of friendship."

The image makes light of that collective power but, historically, movements built on courageous, unified, collective action filled with belief, determination, and an unwavering will to win, not just for self but even more so for each other, are celebrated as the greatest when they finally break through. Throughout their historic playoff run, Knicks players repeatedly talked about their effort being driven by a desire to see each other win and by their commitment to their fans and the city of New York. You would think that in a team sport, that kind of sentiment would be common, but given how high the monetary stakes are, that kind of selflessness is consistently usurped by showcasing what one can do individually.

I think we’re off individual profiles of courage, though. We’ve been starving for that “We Shall Overcome” energy. Individualized action, absent any grounding humanistic principles, is the claimed modus operandi of the power brokers in our society.

Rebecca Solnit has been arguing that “maybe the community is the next hero.” As the five boroughs come together to celebrate their conquering basketball team this week, I think she’s right. Because part of the “Impossible Joy” surrounding the way the Knicks won is that it’s validation of something community-centered folks want to believe. If that long-doubted team could do it, then we can, too. We, the people, can win together and do the hard things not merely because we can but because we must.

There’s no soul in doing only for self. The consequence of doing nothing is untenable.

I’d been searching for new language that effectively describes this idea of collective courage. Solidarity is where I keep ending up, but it doesn’t quite cut it.

Maybe I should stop looking. Shannon already provided the perfect terms.

Us.

It’s us.

The Power of Friendship wins again.

Illustration of a melting snowman tipped sideways out of an upside-down ice cream cone. The snowman has a mustache and a deadpan expression. A Santa hat sits knocked off to the side. Drawn in loose black line art on a white background.

May 29, 2026 / 0 Comments

Make Them Care

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 acknowledges early on in “Make Them Cry,” the introductory track, that he should be maturing. He says “40” is pressing him to dig deeper, but over the next seventeen songs, he doesn’t do that. Instead, before he even gets to the end of this opening salvo, he reverts to his toxic masculinity and tendency towards ruminating over transactional relationships.

In the last six months, I’ve been buoyed by fresh music from De La Soul, Nas, and Conway the Machine that showcase points of view that have matured with age. Each artist acknowledges how life has affected them while still delivering the boom-bap in their own unique ways. In between spins of ICEMAN, I’ve found Conway’s You Can’t Kill God With Bullets to be a palate cleanser. The East Coast rapper whose face doesn’t move tells an incredible story of loss and grief that runs in parallel with his success in hip hop and business, all while elevating his lyricism and delivering the motivational hustler anthems he and his upstate New York compatriots are known for.

De La Soul’s Cabin in the Sky is primarily a beautiful eulogy for Dave “Trugoy the Dove” Jalicoeur, a seminal member of the trio who passed away in 2023. This is the group’s first release since his untimely death, and it never sways far from reckoning with his absence, celebrating his life, and honoring his spirit with what is ultimately an uplifting collection that fits right in with their long discography filled with records that have reflected where they have been at each stage of their life.

Nas’s collaboration with DJ Premier, Light-Years, has remained in rotation since its release, particularly his collaboration with AZ, “My Story, Your Story.” What I have appreciated about Nas’s most recent bodies of work is that you can feel his status as an elder statesman without him having to depart from the style of rapping with which he came onto the scene over 30 years ago. You don’t have to change what makes you you to show growth. Just don’t hide who you are, and we will connect with it on wax.

At some point in a long musical career, you should want to trade disposable hits for substance, especially after your crown has been tarnished and your character has been questioned but that seems beyond Drake.

Losing the 2024 beef with Kendrick Lamar gives him an opportunity ripe for showcasing emotional work, and I give him credit for acknowledging his defeat, but what he goes for on this album isn’t reflection or even resurrection but revenge. “Make Them Pay” is the strongest song on the album, with rhyme schemes and flows that are effective flips and rebuttals of those two-year-old bars from Lamar. None of those directed at Dot land more than a glancing blow, but those aimed at people to whom he has real relationships and affection sting. There’s genuine sentiment behind the clever barbs for Lebron James, J. Cole, and DJ Khaled. Ultimately, though, there’s little meat on the bone. He comes across as an internet reply guy, self-satisfied with finding the perfect meme or attempting to ratio the Original Poster over interrogating his own role in the situation.

Maybe the problem, though, is that Drake is more of a character to be portrayed than who Aubrey Graham is as a person. We don’t know that guy. We only get to know “the boy,” a nearly 40-year-old man-child who can’t believe that these transactional relationships he’s been in may be emotionless arrangements for the other parties as well, be they women he’s dated, collaborators, or famous friends. Is the real man, Aubrey, the kind of person who thinks shouting out Adin Ross and Samuel Bankman-Fried in 2026 is a flex? That’s the kind of person whose album cover gets adopted by Trump’s White House for feeling MAGA-coded. For every time I get amused by a punchline or the way something is delivered, there’s another where I just shake my head at the incredulity. Being a memelord at this big age is not the move.

We almost get to something approaching self-reflection on “Firm Friends,” ICEMAN’s penultimate track. Over a stripped-down Conductor Williams production dominated by slow-tempo piano strikes, Drake’s rhymes glide over the song, earning the popular compliment of modern hip-hop fans, “He’s talking, bro!” And he is. He talks directly to individuals, institutions, and, perhaps, even himself as he explains where his head is at right now and how he plans to operate in the future. At one point, he threatens to turn “The Boy” into “The Man,” but worries that people won’t understand.

And that’s where he loses me again. If you’re truly the greatest rapper alive as you continuously claim, that’s what you’re supposed to make us do.

Understand.

Photo of whole crab in black bean sauce served in a rustic clay pot, garnished with sliced green onions, with chopsticks resting across the rim. Shallow depth of field, muted background. Photo by Vernon Raineil Cenzon.

April 25, 2026 / 0 Comments

Earthly Treats

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 week as a family by ordering a take-out feast in which this signature dish took center stage. As we sat around my mother’s dining room table, sharing updates on the extended family, job interviews, what’s going on in our fair city, and anything else that came to mind, I imagined my dad there with us, listening and smiling as was common in these kinds of situations, content with letting the loudest voices in the room ramble on from topic-to-topic as love, friendship, and warmth filled the space.

While I’m sure we all had at least a bit of melancholy visit us on that day, it didn’t find me when we were together.

Dave McMurray, a Detroit-born saxophonist, composer, and bandleader whose decades-long career spans jazz, rock, R&B, funk, and pop and includes work as a sideman with artists like Albert King, The Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan, offers a thesis statement about dealing with grief right at the start of his late 2025 release, I LOVE LIFE even when I’m hurting.

“I know despair don’t care, but be strong!”

It’s a matter-of-fact recognition of truth rather than an exclamation, yet it still stings like an unexpected slap back from the brink. McMurray’s album has been my soundtrack for finding a grounded sense of hope and optimism when those feelings of sadness and loss compound.

Throughout the work, he uses his mastery of the genre to show where and how he finds the will to keep going: in a smile, a joke, or a kind word (even if not explicitly for him), in music that can ignite something within. Beyond “This Life” and the title track, I’m drawn to “We Got By,” a cover of the tune from Al Jarreau’s debut album, with neo-soul vocalist Kem joining McMurray, honoring a lineage of Black resilience. The track is immediately followed by a cover of Yusef Lateef’s “The Plum Blossom” that knocks my socks off. McMurray picks up the flute here, and the performance never fails at lifting my spirits.

I first became aware of McMurray as a sideman on Kem’s debut album Kemistry, the 2003 release by the also Detroit-born singer and songwriter whose warm, romantic songwriting helped define a quieter, emotionally grounded lane of early-2000s R&B. Kemistry returned to regular rotation around this time last year because it was a connection between a friend who died unexpectedly and me.

The opposite of staying stuck in that loop of sadness and despair is to turn to our creative sensibilities. A loss of his own inspired McMurray to say, “I love life even when I’m hurting.” He told Downbeat Magazine’s Bill Murkowski that, a month later, he’d write the track of the same name as a way to give form to what he had been feeling.

The opening track, This Life, was written last. While its original intention was to reckon with physical trauma, that same pain he’d seen in a friend that inspired the title song, he now sees its connection to the precariousness of this cultural and political moment, both at home and abroad.

It is difficult these days to escape the doomscrolling. With a flick of my thumb, real-world turmoil—uncertainty, anxiety, and violence that feels both distant and imminent—plays on an endless loop.

On one of the social media apps, a painter I don’t know asked, “Does art really matter right now?”

A friend replied to her with a quote from the American writer, filmmaker, and activist Toni Cade Bambara:

“The role of art is to make revolution irresistible.”

As McMurray’s work reminds us, living is not optional. Loving is not frivolous. Optimism is not a luxury reserved for easier times. Creating transforms that which ails us into something that might heal those wounds.

And sometimes you’re mended by wishing a silent happy birthday to your father while sharing one of his favorite earthly treats with the people he loved most.

Photo of the UCLA women's basketball team gathered around the 2026 NCAA National Championship trophy, wearing black Champions caps and shirts, smiling and holding up four fingers. Blue and gold confetti covers the trophy and floor.

April 19, 2026 / 0 Comments

Bleed Blue, Pt. 2

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 in basketball. It wasn’t the Xs and Os that garnered so much attention for UCLA’s leader, though I think that’s an underappreciated aspect of her attributes; it was how she talks about the culture she’s cultivating, the lessons and habits she’s building in her locker room, and her commitment to never losing sight of her role as an educator and dream merchant. The best coaches in women’s basketball all seem to have these qualities, but what clicked for Close this year is that she’s figured out how to do it her way: earnest, selfless, demanding, hokey, and, perhaps most important of all, joyful.

“I love these girls,” is what Most Outstanding Player, Lauren Betts, has been saying during their whirlwind media tour since winning the championship. There’s something going on in Westwood. Unabashed happiness. Relentless care. Both in pursuit of excellence. We’ve seen it at gymnastics meets and volleyball matches, and most recently at Easton Stadium with the ninth-ranked softball program.

Last year, I couldn’t put my finger on what was behind my allegiance beyond proximity, but on a beautiful day watching the Bruin bats dismantle the Cal Bears in a doubleheader, I realized that it’s about more than being able to get to campus in twenty minutes or less. The softball squad exhibited characteristics similar to those of the championship basketball team. During every pitch, infielders constantly encouraged whoever was on the mound. When someone was at the plate, the coach was, to use the parlance of athletes, pouring into them. Before blasting her 31st homerun of the season, senior Megan Grant was encouraged by Coach Kelly Inouye-Perez to “send a missile.” And over the back wall, she did. On the rare occasion a pitch made it past one of her players and was called a strike, Inouye-Perez turned into their advocate, informing the umpire that “it wasn’t a good pitch,” calling out the particulars that made it as such. Regardless of the outcome of each at-bat, hitters were told they had made good choices. “Pro choices.” “Team choices.” Each person seemed encouraged to bring their unique flair to their position, while all were incredibly invested in their collective performance rather than individual success. During the afternoon, Grant and fellow senior Jordan Woolery became the first teammates in NCAA Division I history to collect 30 home runs in a single season. The Bruins would break three other school and conference records during the two wins.

After the games, three graduating seniors were informed that they had been given golden tickets to be drafted by the fledgling Pro Softball league, AUSL. “She wants her girls with her,” Elle Duncan would say after Meg received her ticket. She’d get her wish granted. Twice.

Like Betts and the basketball squad, it’s team over everything.

In this era of “I alone can fix it” ruthless individualism, I’m most inspired by evidence of earnest, joyful, hardscrabble people working together.

I shouldn’t have been searching for the dawgs on the bench; the interlocked hands and confident smiles were more than enough.

Can I get an eight-clap?

March 21, 2026 / 1 Comment

51

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 to see in the world.

We stood in line at the home opener for ACFC, surrounded by people who want to live in the same inclusive, collaborative, and supportive society that I want, and that’s what I desire.

More of this.

More reminders that the chaos on our screens isn’t always reflective of the realities of our neighborhoods.

I want to love my neighbor like atoms sharing a cell.

I want to love my body like a turtle loves its shell.

I want to be where joy is.

I want to be joy.

I want joy.

Joy.

What do I want in my 51st year?

To rain down joy on my loved ones and enemies alike.

I want to be a warrior of light.