By My Lights: A May 19 Surprise Package

As we plunge headlong toward the end of May and the last weeks of Spring Quarter 2025 at SPU, I am facing the most stressful work weeks of the last few years. The end of the academic year collides with my book deadline, and I’m so far behind on both impossible tasks that I’m really struggling. My colleagues glance at me worriedly as I stagger from meeting to meeting, trying to bear up under the pressure.

Maybe that’s why Tim Robinson’s new comedy did me more harm than good with its nightmarish scenarios of social awkwardness. (More on that later in this post.)

You can anticipate a rush of new posts here once I clear those marks. But for now, I’m hanging on to life by my fingernails, kept awake by caffeine and panic, trying to manage my daily to-do lists. If this is the last you hear from me, know I was striving to fulfill my promises right up to the moment my heart failed.

So, bear with me. This Substack should return to its usual standards soon. And when it does, I’ll be able to tell you more about the book I hope to see in bookstores in 2026.

In the meantime, here are a few crumbs from the feasting table when it comes to all of the goodness happening right now in arts and culture. Crumbs are just about all I have the time to enjoy right now.

A few months ago, I showed up here to rave about the unexpectedly amazing live show by Sixpence None the Richer at Seattle’s Crocodile Cafe, a dream-come-true show with an ideal set list of the band’s greatest songs and covers. It was clear that the band themselves were energized by their reinvigorated sound and their new material, some of which stands strong alongside their best work.

Perhaps I should have anticipated that they would capture this and preserve it for the record. I didn’t, and so I was stunned when I opened my profile at AllMusic.com to update my list of favorite 2025 records so far and discovered a notification that the band had released Live at Gruene Hall, which features the set list of the show I saw almost exactly.

Live albums are always complicated affairs, and this one does have its rough edges. The sweetness of Leigh Nash’s singular voice has always been better suited to pop than rock, and that’s part of what makes this band’s chemistry unlike any other I can recall. The limits of that sound become clear here — while Nash is clearly overjoyed by the crowd and the occasion, we can hear evidence of some fatigue in her voice as she strives to match the heavy guitar sounds of the band around her. In the studio, it works — producers can amplify her voice to ring out clear and true in a rock-and-roll context, but on this particular night we can hear some strain.

But that doesn’t take away from joy of Sixpence’s obvious exhilaration over what Nash calls “one of the best night’s ever for us.”

While I recommend newcomers focus on the studio albums — the new EP, Rosemary Hill, features their hard-rocking new high “We Are Love” — fans will treasure this record of a tour that delivered so much more than nostalgia. I won’t be surprised if we look back at this as a sort of re-launch, with more records coming soon. Here’s hoping.

Bass Almighty celebrates the Boss

Thanks to “Bass Almighty” — Diana Butler Bass — for spotlighting Bruce Springsteen’s bold truth-telling.

Note: The Anti-American Wannabe-Fascist in the White House is making public threats against the true Boss, suggesting he will punish him for, well, being a true American and exercising his right to free speech about the truth. What more proof do we need that the Orange Antichrist has no respect for the Constitution? (Indeed, I’ve lost count of how many ways he has dismissed our foundational document at this point.)

Remember — President Pumpkinhead included a copy of the U.S. Constitution in the Bible that he sells. Strange, yes, that he would promote and sell a compilation of texts that he flagrantly disrespects and disobeys on a daily basis?

Here’s Bass’s post…

Bruce Almighty

Several weeks ago, I was in a small group. Around a circle, we shared about where we are and how we are feeling.

The Cottage

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If what you want is cringe, Tim Robinson’s Friendship is here for you.

Here are some of the notes I initially posted on Letterboxd after I seized a chance to see Friendship last week. I’ve expanded on them a bit here.

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Note to self: Make a Letterboxd list of films with titles that announce the opposite of what we see in the films. (It’s happening! And with the help of some of my Letterboxd contacts, the list is growing.)

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"I don't know if there is anything wrong because I don't know how other people are." – Barry in Punch-drunk Love.

Tim Robinson’s Friendship seems like it could have played as a social-anxiety nightmare for Adam Sandler’s poor Barry.

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Scene after scene, we watch Craig prove spectacularly unprepared to navigate social situations. If you’ve ever felt awkward, insecure, or otherwise unable to find the right wavelength of a group’s conversation, you will ache on the inside and perhaps even recoil in dismay as Craig stumbles into one calamitous faux pas after another. You may even recognize yourself in some of his missteps. (You know, it’s actually really easy to walk full speed and face-first into a plate-glass panel in front of a group of people. What’s the big deal? Why do I feel attacked?)

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This marks the first time I’ve ever actually thought, “Hey, Paul Rudd is aging!”

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This is a lot less the awkward buddy comedy I thought it would be (à la Step Brothers) and much more a film “from the studio that brought you Dream Scenario and Men.” The movie is at its best when it’s letting Tim Robinson shove his character into increasingly humiliating errors and embarrassments, but when it veers into the kind of surreality that makes us ask if we’ve stepped into another dimension, it takes on a familiar kind of A24 horror-tinged blandness. Your mileage, as they say, may vary.

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Friendship is almost certain to be, ten years from now, the most heavily quoted film of 2025. I’ve always laughed at the terms “Black Forest Ham,” but I’ll laugh harder next time.