I put this together after a tournament road trip in 2015-2016, and it still perfectly encapsulates the experiences that changed my life back then and have had me building friendships and locals scenes ever since. This is already nostalgic to me, as it’s been far too long since I’ve hopped in an old car with 4 other dudes to drive way too long to a gross hotel in a second-class city and pack into a room for a weekend, all just to goon. 

Here’s the first thing I made when I went freelance, originally greenlit by Vice, then they backed out the day before production. I made it on my own anyway. Clearly a learning experience all around, but the piece itself is strong, and sagely predicted the rise of a player who is now utterly, famously dominant across many more games in Sonicfox.

So uhh I logged back on!

I don’t know who’s still here, but at the very least: hello there, abyss! When I left, I was figuring out how to take what I learned in film school and my professional life and use it to help the gaming communities I was growing to love. It’s been a crazy few years through the ups and downs of that, and I’d love to use this space to share some of my favorite work and reflect on it briefly.  Prob won’t be memeing or politically shitposting much here, twitter exists for that now, but stick around if you like free, well made docs and stuff that are weirdly wholesome coming from the me y’all knew way back when. 

Phil’s “Wait wtf you still use tumblr?” Official Top 10 Albums of 2015 List.

Musically, 2015 boils down to a whole mess of albums that are really great, but none that truly hit the bars set by the tops of years past. This wasn’t easy.

1. New Bermuda - Deafheaven: I thought Sunbather would be impossible to follow up, but Black Metal’s least favorite shoegazers have done it. There’s a whole lot going on here for what is essentially a straight up metal album. 

2. Thank Your Lucky Stars - Beach House: After four albums, Beach House was starting to seem out of ideas, and then they released the best thing they’ve ever done a month later. This is my most played. 

3. B’lieve I’m Goin Down... - Kurt Vile: It’s rare to find this delicate of a balance between the sad truth and loving acceptance of life’s complexity in a single album. Kurt is simultaneously vulnerable and witty to a Vonnegut extent.

4. To Pimp A Butterfly - Kendrick Lamar: This is the opposite of Kurt’s effort. Kendrick cannot deal with any aspect of life, and he just lashes out at everyone for a solid hour.

5. Carrie & Lowell - Sufjan Stevens: No quip will do this album justice. Sufjan let’s you right into his head. He doesn’t veil a an inch of his feelings. You feel his grief as if it was your own, and it’s beautiful and brilliant in every way.  

6. Fading Frontier - Deerhunter: I never thought I’d see the day Bradford Cox seemed happy in his music. This album is confident, free, and progressively Poppy. The more they channel The Cure, the more I like it.

7. Abyss - Chelsea Wolfe:  Abyss blends metal, drone, and electronic elements to accent what is easily the spookiest album of 2015. Seeing this live really sealed the deal for me. She’s a genius. 

8: Kannon - Sunn 0))): Sunn takes a break from their trailblazing collaborative drone efforts to make some straight up “I’m summoning satan, but I need to get this work done” music. Bless.

9. The Ark Work - Liturgy: It’s “not black metal.” We get it. That allows this album to be viewed without genre hangups. One bad rap song aside, this is a really innovative heavy album in a genre that often seems out of new ideas. 

10. Jenny Death - Death Grips: Death Grips broke up again, but now they’re back again, and they’re making hardcore punk. This a return to form for a band who have been all over the musical map since Exmilitary. 

Honorable Mentions: Rules / Trick - Alex G, DEATH MAGIC - HEALTH, Summertime ‘06 - Vince Staples, Joy, Departed - Sorority Noise

A few of my coworkers and I flew down to Texas to document Red Bull’s Cliff Diving series. 

Divers leap from as high as 90ft, a height from which even a mostly-perfect impact would maim someone who isn’t in remarkable physical shape. We followed around Rocco, the world’s foremost female cliff diver as she dominated yet another competition. 

More sentimental sap.

I met so many cool people on here back when it wasn’t all curated reblogs. I really wish there was still a refuge where so many people were expressing themselves across so many mediums. When I was young and incapable of social interaction sans-alcohol, people on Tumblr taught me that meaningful relationships can start on the internet.  We could come here to fearlessly express ourselves and have somewhat-compelling discussions without just being dicks to each other. I was talking to someone (that I met on the internet) tonight about how fucked the web is at this point. We agreed that the free spirit and sheer chaos of the early web is largely gone, and that was the internet I loved. Now brands want to be our friends, every site wants to be more “conversational,” and I can just drown my sorrows in amazon prime impulse-buys if any of that becomes too overwhelming. 

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I miss when we could all be our own little alter-egos on here, it wasn’t about building your brand, and that when we reached out to each other, it often led to the discovery that when the internet persona melted away, you were all pretty sweet.

Charleston, and horrible news in general.

When I first got into news, it was all excitement. Obama’s reelection had an electricity to it that made the job worth the obscene hours. It wasn’t long after that that the places I grew up around were demolished by a powerful storm, and a bunch of children were executed in their classrooms. 

Being in news means living with these things in a way I could never have expected. While it affects everyone, I always felt like it was important to be affected, and that somehow, by reporting this stuff, feeling it, and trying to express and expound upon how to deal with it, we were helping. 

Three years later, on as grim a news night as you get, I’m on my way out of news. The feeling is still there, and largely the same, as is the want to do something about it. Unfortunately, that want is now accompanied by a helplessness, and even a feeling that the media only makes everything worse.

It feels as pointless as it does necessary to say that what happened in that church in Charleston was beyond awful, and that something ought to be done. Maybe there’s some other way, now that news has come and gone, to make a dent in a society whose extreme end is so violent and so misguided. 

The easiest place to start is to listen to the black voices that stand up this week to remind us all that we are a long, long fucking way away from racial equality in the land of the free. 

This is the first reel of mine that I almost feel good about.