I was once a child who spent several hours a day curled up in a chair tearing through books from start to finish. I checked stacks taller than I was out of the library at a time, and almost always finished them all. But like many once-avid readers, when I hit high school, the demands … Continue reading I Learned to Love Reading Again While Quarantined (And So Can You, with These Eight Easy Steps!)
Dearest Jane, Tis I, your ye olde editor. I am writing to confirm that I have received the first draft of your new novel, tentatively titled Emma, or Clueless & Cantankerous. Whilst I agree that Emma is, as you say in your letter, “straight fire,” and, to wit, a savage satire of the class system … Continue reading What if “Emma,” But Murder?
If you asked me three months ago, in a pre-quarantine life, what my coping strategies would look like come the quasi-apocalypse, I would have lied so hard. “If this is really and truly it,” I joked in the blessed early days, “I’m shaving my head, getting approximately one million stick-and-poke tattoos, and riding a motorcycle … Continue reading Three Things My Sourdough Starter Taught Me About My Attachment Style
In a dream you saw a way to give birth to a premature baby on an airplane, and after a harrowing, hours-long labour, during which it looked at many times like the baby might not survive, you finally named the healthy newborn Ronan Farrow, and you were full of joy. In a dream you saw … Continue reading That One Jenny Holzer Truism About Dreams But It’s Now About My Own Weird Quarantine Dreams
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The year was 1956. Europe, torn up and traumatized by war, needed something that might help it heal. In came the Switzerland-based European Broadcasting Union with an at-the-time highly ambitious idea: broadcast a song contest between European countries, each represented by a performer, to the whole of Europe simultaneously. Ever since then, with the exception … Continue reading Did Susan Sontag Write “Notes on Camp” Specifically About Eurovision? Who’s to Say?
Supporting your local bookstores has never been so important. And this is especially true of queer-owned bookstores, the holy grails of non-alcoholic daytime hangout spots for queer people. I consider myself very lucky to live in a city with a small, very lovely queer bookshop, run by a married couple. It is therefore a no-brainer … Continue reading How to Order a Book From Your Local LGBTQ Bookstore When You Are Quarantined and Also Very Gay And Also Very Anxious About E-mail
If you are a reader of The Niche, a repressed small-town Midwesterner, a gay Christian, the sort of person who collects novelty stamps, or, really, a gay person in any capacity, chances are that you have a sense of Sufjan Stevens’ immense impact on our cultural landscape. But did you know that he’s become enough … Continue reading Every Song That Namedrops Sufjan Stevens Without Actually Being By Sufjan Stevens, Ranked
In the basement of a home in suburban Winnipeg, Bradford How and his high school chums would spend their Friday nights partying while watching Electric Circus, longing to be a part of Toronto’s vibrant nightlife. A television show that aired on MuchMusic and various Chum television networks from 1988 to 2003, Electric Circus offered a … Continue reading An Ode to “Electric Circus,” The Original Tiktok
Let’s cut to the chase: positivity is necessary to survive tough times with grace and sobriety. Little wonder that the phrase #GoodVibesOnly has earned its own hashtag on social media. But now is the time to be realistic instead of blindly optimistic. The coronavirus pandemic isn’t going away anytime soon, and turning a blind eye … Continue reading Six Things You Can Do to Help People Survive the Coronavirus, None of Which Involve Singing “Imagine” From the Comfort of Your Mansion
