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If it’s a funeral, let’s have the best funeral ever.

These words, printed in white type against a black screen like a social media apology, open Shut Up And Play The Hits, the 2012 documentary directed by Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace. When the film premiered 10 years ago this week at the Sundance Film Festival — it later played theatrically in the U.S. for just one night that July — the epigraph had an unmistakable meaning: Shut Up And Play The Hits is about the “final” concert by LCD Soundsystem, held at Madison Square Garden in the spring of 2011. In the movie, we see performances from the show intercut with footage of head LCD James Murphy before and after the gig, including a long, philosophical interview with the cultural critic Chuck Klosterman.

The emotional climax of Shut Up And Play The Hits comes when Murphy, who has expressed uncertainty throughout the picture about whether he’s made the right decision to shutter LCD Soundsystem, is invited to take one last look at the band’s gear before it’s sold off and scattered to the winds. On paper, this is an unusual trigger for a cathartic moment — in fact, one might even call it a strained contrivance for a movie without a strong ending. But as it’s portrayed in the film, the sight of keyboards and sequencers and microphone stands sets Murphy on a Proustian reverie in which the life of LCD Soundsystem flashes before his eyes. And, like that, he breaks down dramatically into tears.

I can’t say how this played at Sundance in 2012. But in 2022, like so much about Shut Up And Play The Hits, this scene is so preposterous that it registers as unintentionally hilarious, like a This Is Spinal Tap for early 21st century indie rock. And the reason for this is obvious: LCD Soundsystem did not break up. They went on a five-year hiatus, and then returned in 2016 to play a series of lucrative shows, including some high-profile appearances at Coachella, Bonnaroo, and Primavera Sound. And then they released their fourth album, 2017’s American Dream, their first for Columbia Records.

To break up and then reunite is hardly unprecedented in popular music. But most bands don’t go out by booking the biggest concert of their career and explicitly marketing it as a “farewell” show. And it’s certainly uncommon to immortalize that show with a self-mythologizing film. Yes, it’s true that The Band continued after The Last Waltz set the blueprint for Shut Up And Play The Hits, but they carried on without Robbie Robertson, the guy who conceived the breakup show and pontificates the most in the film about how he’s eager to escape “the road.” James Murphy theatrically mourned the loss of his gear on celluloid and then procured more gear (or maybe even the same gear?) a mere half-decade later.

Again: He had the right to bring back his band! But LCD Soundsystem’s subsequent “reunion” (if we should even still classify it that way as this point) has transformed Shut Up And Play The Hits into a completely different film. This is what fascinated me most when I revisited it recently. So much of the movie plays in retrospect as unwitting self-parody, and therefore is far more revealing now than it was likely intended to be 10 years ago.

Some of this has to do with how “extremely early 2010s” Shut Up And Plays The Hits seems now, like when Murphy expresses his ambivalence about the band’s end by doing an extended analysis of a Kanye West tweet. (Times were so simple back then!) Some of this has to do with the jarring incongruity between Murphy’s self-serving rhetoric about what LCD Soundsystem “means” (such as aligning the band with a romantic DIY punk-rock ideology) and the reality of what’s on screen (Murphy conversing with his British manager as he sits surrounded by indie-famous luminaries backstage at MSG).

But mostly the accidental satire of Shut Up And Play The Hits stems from Murphy’s relentless push to make this concert (and LCD Soundsystem by association) historically significant. This is conveyed both by how the film is shot and edited — specifically the focus on the audience, who we see basking the band in worshipful adoration in frequent slow-motion montages, which is precisely what you don’t see in films like The Last Waltz and Stop Making Sense — and Murphy’s endless ruminations on whether he’s doing the right thing by ending a band whose legacy is putting out three pretty good albums in the aughts. When you consider that R.E.M., an exponentially more consequential group than LCD Soundsystem by any metric, broke up just five months after this concert by issuing a press release (and then stayed broken up), the self-importance of Shut Up And Play The Hits becomes even funnier.

Not that I’m interested in only laughing at Shut Up And Play The Hits, because I actually believe this film is historically significant, just not in the way it was intended. When viewed with the benefit of hindsight, it really is an “end of an era” film in the vein of The Last Waltz, it’s just that it doesn’t come across as triumphant.

To be fair: There are some genuinely exciting performances. “All My Friends” is an undeniable anthem. “Someone Great” still tugs at my heartstrings. The cover of Nilsson’s “Jump Into The Fire” is expertly rendered. But this was a moment when aughts-era indie was peaking, as signified by the guest-star appearance by the members of Arcade Fire, just two months removed from winning the Album Of The Year Grammy for The Suburbs. Never again would life be as good for either band.

It’s clear now that this period of time, when middle-aged NYC groups could command the culture’s attention by staging a grandiose curtains-closing arena-rock concert, ended soon after the last weeping hipster exited Madison Square Garden. Shut Up And Play The Hits not only marks this denouement, but also the end of “breaking up” being a thing at all in rock music. The relative lack of blowback to LCD Soundsystem’s return proved that the public now understands that any band’s future return — save for possibly R.E.M. — hinges on a combination of sentimental longing, boredom, and stupidly generous festival offers. But that wasn’t the case just five years earlier. Back then, it was still possible to suspend disbelief just long enough to buy the idea of a farewell concert, even as Murphy counterintuitively insists over and over that LCD Soundsystem isn’t even a real band.

It’s no surprise that the central anxiety that animates Murphy in Shut Up And Play The Hits is his self-conscious fear of appearing uncool. This seems to be his main motivation for staging the farewell concert in the first place. It’s his stab at a “let’s just do it and become legends” moment. As he explained to the New York Times in 2017, “The idea of it being ‘next’ was just unappealing. I didn’t want to be that band. I liked being the band that was relevant to me. I felt like we were about to be the band that was not relevant to me.”

Watching the film now, it’s inarguable that the fate Murphy feared is precisely what happened, which gives Shut Up And Play The Hits a poignancy that it didn’t have a decade ago. It’s become very easy (maybe too easy) to take shots at LCD Soundsystem. This is the band who has been pilloried recently for supposedly spreading Covid and co-conspiring with evil corporations on corny holiday specials. Meanwhile, the canon of cool-guy late 20th century music with which Murphy is closely aligned has dimmed in critical favor. As a result, it’s become increasingly difficult to explain to younger generations why this band was ever at the center of indie culture in a way it’s not for, say, The Strokes. (Grouchy bad-asses in leather jackets have a long shelf life.) It’s not that Murphy has “lost his edge,” to quote his most famous song. The kids are no longer coming at him from behind; they’re in an entirely different lane. They no longer care about guys like him.

The critic Larry Fitzmaurice recently wrote an insightful piece about LCD Soundsystem that helped me understand my own distance from their music since that fateful 2011 concert at MSG. Like many music writers engaged with indie rock in the aughts, I was an avowed LCD fan, especially of the self-titled 2005 debut and their landmark second record, 2007’s Sound Of Silver. But I was barely interested in 2017’s American Dream, and I rarely reach for the old records these days.

Fitzmaurice writes:

As a white man prone to white T-shirt wearing and varying levels of unkempt facial hair, there was something about James Murphy in my late teens-early 20s that made me think, “Hey, that could be me, maybe.” That sounds stupid, and it is stupid, but I was far from alone in that aspirational belief. (Anecdotally, I heard other white male critics say the same around the time, nothing accurately quotable though.)

Allow me to fill in the blank left by the parenthetical: I was one of those white male critics. At the risk of horribly embarrassing myself, here’s an excerpt from a column I wrote right before the Madison Square Garden concert, written in the form of an open letter to James Murphy (shudder):

Like a lot of music critics, I feel a special kinship with you, because we are you. Or, rather, you are a better, smarter version of us. The relationship music critics have with you is similar to what film critics have with Quentin Tarantino, who, like you, started out as a know-it-all fan who, unlike most critics, took all the trivial, microscopic specificities he absorbed from every corner of his fan experience and found a way to create something new with it. But even if you guys are big-shot artists now, you’re also still critics at heart; you did it like Godard, critiquing art by making better art.

To be clear, plenty of people thought this frighteningly sycophantic screed was a bit much at the time. Writing for Slate, Jody Rosen called my piece a “deranged fanboy’s cri de Coeur,” which I knew was a devastating burn even before I looked up what “cri de Coeur” meant.

Reading my own words confirms that LCD Soundsystem appealed to a certain subset of music critics by essentially flattering them. We appreciated the “meta” nature of what he was doing — the way he wrote songs about listening to songs, and then cataloguing songs, and making this seem like something that could make you the center of attention at a party. (Rather than the person people avoid at parties.)

Ultimately, I don’t think I was wrong to observe that Murphy was a kind of critic-musician who instead of writing reviews made records that reflected his aesthetic ideals. The problem (and this is what Rosen nailed me on) is that I bought too much into the mythology of the “farewell” concert at the risk of ignoring simple logic: Of course a man in his early 40s wasn’t actually retiring. It was always the move of an intensely self-reflexive artist who wanted to engineer the “perfect” ending for his band based on how future generations would theoretically revere him for it.

In the space between Shut Up And Play The Hits and LCD Soundsystem’s return, I grew up a lot. I became a parent. I wasn’t going out to bars every night. I like to think I am a little less narcissistic and more inclined to define myself not by what I like but by things that actually matter. You remember that episode of Seinfeld where Jerry dates a woman (played by Janeane Garofalo) who is exactly like him? At first, he loves it. But eventually he comes to a pivotal realization: “I can’t be with someone who’s like me,” he wails. “I hate myself!” My relationship with James Murphy is a lot like that. But my problem isn’t really with James Murphy. It’s with the James Murphy I see inside of myself.

I wonder if James Murphy, in some way, feels the same. Whatever you want to accuse him of, you can’t say that he’s still overly concerned with looking cool. You don’t reunite your band, put out your worst record, and then collaborate with Amazon if you’re still worried about shoring up your punk bonafides. If that’s the case, I’m actually happy for him. We all could stand to be liberated from our inner James Murphy, even James Murphy himself.

2022’s Scream is dedicated to horror legend Wes Craven, who passed away in 2015 after directing the first four installments in the series. There’s a “For Wes” title card as the closing credits begin to roll during the film, but if you stick around until the end, you’ll see some other familiar names. Rian Johnson gets a “thanks” from filmmakers Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (it’s obvious why if you’ve seen the movie), as does some of the original Scream cast, including Drew Barrymore, Matthew Lillard, and Jamie Kennedy. Those three don’t appear in the new Scream, but you can hear them.

“So with Matt Lillard, we have his voice in the movie. He is the voice of the Stab 8 Ghostface with the flamethrower and then he also has a line in the house that says, ‘Cool house, Freeman!’ at the party when Amber’s walking by,” executive producer Chad Villella told Fandom. That is not nearly enough Lillard. The people demand more Lillard (even if casting him as flamethrower Ghostface is an inspired choice).

Gillett also revealed that Barrymore, who appears in the original film’s iconic opening scene, has a voice cameo “as the principal at the high school. That’s her reading the announcement at the end of the school day. And Jamie Kennedy also voice cameos at the party. He’s the guy who says ‘Someone’s goofy ass dad is kicking us out’ while Mindy and Francis are making out on the couch.”

Sadly, the Ghostface parody from Scary Movie was not thanked.

(Via Fandom)

In theory, Democrats have control of the Senate. In practice, well, that ain’t happening, and the shut-down of voting rights legislation (The Freedom to Vote Act and John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act) this week is a prime example. Democrats Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin refused to change the filibuster (which Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer hoped to abolish, although honestly, this outcome is no real surprise), and Republicans sure took advantage of that non-development (their continued ability to block legislation that they cannot stomach) with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell delivering remarks in the aftermath.

What transpired was… not great. McConnell originally promised to go “scorched earth” if the filibuster hadn’t survived, but he didn’t have to worry about all that. Nor does Mitch have to think about voting access being expanded through more early voting possibilities and mail-in ballot measures. Instead, he was able to deliver some (unfortunately phrased) remarks when asked (via Mediaite), “What’s your message for voters of color who are concerned that… they’re not going to be able to vote in the midterms?”

McConnell responded, “Well, the concern is misplaced because if you look at the statistics, African-American voters are voting at just as high percentage as Americans.” And the issue there is that McConnell is comparing these voters as though they’re two different groups with the suggestion that “African-American voters” are not “Americans.” It’s not a fantastic look (and it’s even dog-whistle-y, and people noticed).

McConnell has yet to further comment on the reaction to his comments. He might be more worried about Lindsey Graham recently threatening his leadership. Politics, it’s a mess!

(Via Mediaite)

Donald Trump may be dreaming of taking back the White House in 2024, but the State of New York could have other plans for him. On Tuesday evening, New York Attorney General Letitia James released a statement in which she confirmed that her office, which has been investigating the former president and his allegedly crooked businesses, has already “uncovered significant evidence that suggests Donald J. Trump and the Trump Organization falsely and fraudulently valued multiple assets and misrepresented those values to financial institutions for economic benefit.” Now Trump, who has never been one to take responsibility for his actions (see: January 6, 2021), is fighting back.

While Trump’s days of tweeting out insults for days are over following his permanent ban from the social media site one year ago, he attempted to do what in his mind is the next best thing: appear on a right-wing radio show and lob abuses at James and her office from there. As Raw Story reports, the former president was a guest on “The Mark Levin Show” on Wednesday night, where Levin broached James’s statement and asked Trump: “What is it about you, you apparently scare the hell of these people, that they really want to put a stake through your heart?”

Trump, blissfully unaware that he had just been compared to a vampire, had an answer—and it was as nonsensical as it was evasive (as if you’d expect anything less). “There’s never been anything like this,” Trump replied, as usual seeming to imply that everything’s bigger in Trumpland. “They’ve weaponized all of these law enforcement agencies, and we didn’t. It’s a bad thing to do, but we didn’t.”

Because all roads seem to lead back to Hunter Biden, the former president went on to seemingly clarify that by “we didn’t” he had meant that his administration did not go after Joe Biden’s son—even though they did. Viciously. Yet Trump went on:

“We didn’t, you know—they come after my kids, who are great kids, and just, it’s a disgrace, but they’ve weaponized it. And the people who are doing it are the people who campaigned. You look at the attorney general in New York—just take a look at that. This is a woman that went out and campaigned on getting Trump. She got into office by viciously campaigning about Trump. I used to hear about her. I’d say, ‘Who the hell is that?’ And it was horrible what she was saying.

“And then she gets in, and even after she was in, she thought it was so funny, she went on The View a couple of weeks ago—and, you know, very threatening—and horrible that you’re allowed to do that, and you’re not really allowed to do that.”

Whining about what someone is or is not allowed to do in their professional capacity is rich coming from a man who practically turned violating the Constitution into a sport during his brief spell in office. But something tells us that James isn’t going to let a little thing like being called “horrible” by the man whose secrets she’s finally beginning to unravel derail her.

You can watch the full interview (via Rumble) here.

(Via Raw Story)

Hot off of the success of Bad Trip and his current stint on The Righteous Gemstones Season 2, comedian Eric André stopped by Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Wednesday night where he opened up about getting the call to appear in Jackass Forever. Obviously, André jumped at the chance with the Jackass crew.

“Oh my god, they raised me. They shaped my worldview,” André told Kimmel before admitting he also immediately had second thoughts. “It was the quickest I’ve ever said ‘yes’ to a project, and then I was immediately terrified because being on a Jackass set is like the Vietnam War of comedy. Every step you take, a real landmine or an explosive could be underneath.”

While André wasn’t exploded, he did learn that being a part of the Jackass crew opened him to things like Johnny Knoxville breaking into his house on Christmas Eve while André was sick with Omicron:

He had toilet paper and an Andy Warhol wig, and he started toilet papering my house. My alarm goes off. I’m stoned by myself, paranoid, and I open the window. I don’t know it’s him, so I’m just yelling out the window like, “I’m calling the police! I have a gun!” I open the door. I’m like, “I’m going to kill you, man. I have a gun and the cops are on their way.” And [Knoxville] goes, “Dude, how good would the publicity have been if you got me arrested and shot me right before Jackass comes out.”

To be clear, this was Knoxville’s way of cheering André during his bout with COVID. And setting aside the initial terror and chance of gunfire, it seems to have worked. A good time had by all!

A few months ago, hip-hop fans’ dreams came true when it was announced that Eminem, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar, and Mary J. Blige would all be performing together at the 2022 Super Bowl Halftime Show on February 13. Now, as the big day is less than a month away, Pepsi has shared a cinematic new teaser video for the performance.

“The Call,” a near-4-minute video helmed by Straight Outta Compton director F. Gary Gray, features each artist getting an important call, prompting them all to head to SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California for the big game. Through the cinematic clip, snippets of the legends’ iconic songs set the stage for the show, as the ad features “Rap God,” “The Next Episode,” “Family Affair,” “Humble,” “Still D.R.E.,” and “California Love.”

Gray says of the video in a statement (via The New York Post), “Each time I collaborate with Dre, it seems to mark an important moment in entertainment history, from projects like Friday, Set It Off, Straight Outta Compton, to now the Pepsi Super Bowl LVI Halftime Show. As a super fan, I consider it an honor and privilege to authentically build and create this moment with five of the most legendary artists in music history.”

Todd Kaplan, VP of Marketing at Pepsi, also said in a statement, “Now that we are just weeks away from the most anticipated Pepsi Super Bowl Halftime Show performance of all time, we’re bringing fans closer to the magic of what will certainly be a colossal moment in pop culture history.”

Watch “The Call” above.

Record Store Day has grown to become an established and beloved institution in the music industry, and now the annual celebration of all things vinyl and in-person music-buying is breaking new ground. This year, they are having their first Global Ambassador, and now they’ve revealed that the first person to assume that role is Taylor Swift.

Swift says in a statement:

“I’m very proud to be this year’s Global Ambassador for Record Store Day. The places where we go to browse and explore and discover music new and old have always been sacred to me. Record stores are so important because they help to perpetuate and foster music-loving as a passion. They create settings for live events. They employ people who adore music thoroughly and purely. Those people and shops have had a rough few years and we need to support these small businesses more now than ever to make sure they can stay alive, stay eccentric, and stay individual. It’s been a true joy for me to watch vinyl sales grow in the past few years and we, the artists, have the fans to thank for this pleasant surprise. Happy Record Store Day, everyone! Stay safe out there.”

Record Store Day is set to return for its 15th anniversary event on April 23.

Taylor Swift had a great relationship with vinyl in 2021. In May, Evermore broke the record for biggest US sales week for a vinyl album since that data was first tracked in 1991. The album went on to become the year’s No. 2 best-selling vinyl album in the US, just a fraction of a percent behind Adele’s 30.

Upworthy is sharing this letter from Myra Sack on the anniversary of the passing of her daughter Havi Lev Goldstein. Loss affects everyone differently and nothing can prepare us for the loss of a young child. But as this letter beautifully demonstrates, grief is not something to be ignored or denied . We hope the honest words and feelings shared below can help you or someone you know who is processing grief of their own. The original letter begins below:

Dear Beauty,

Time is crawling to January 20th, the one-year anniversary of the day you took your final breath on my chest in our bed. We had a dance party the night before. Your posse came over. Aunts, uncles, grandparents, closest friends, and your loving nanny Tia. We sat in the warm kitchen with music on and passed you from one set of arms to another. Everyone wanted one last dance with you. We didn’t mess around with only slow songs. You danced to Havana and Danza Kuduro, too. Somehow, you mustered the energy to sway and rock with each of us, despite not having had anything to eat or drink for six days. That night, January 19th, we laughed and cried and sang and danced. And we held each other. We let our snot and our tears rest on each other’s shoulders; we didn’t wipe any of them away. We ate ice cream after dinner, as we do every night. And on this night, we rubbed a little bit of fresh mint chocolate chip against your lips. Maybe you’d taste the sweetness.

Reggaeton and country music. Blueberry pancakes and ice cream. Deep, long sobs and outbursts of real, raw laughter. Conversations about what our relationships mean to each other and why we are on this earth.

---

This is grief in our home.

We lost our first-born daughter, Havi Lev Goldstein, on January 20th, 2021, at 9:04am. She died peacefully in our bed, in our arms. She died from a cruel disease called Tay-Sachs, that strips your mind and body of every function over 12-18 months. Havi was two years, four months and sixteen days old when she died.

My husband, Matt Goldstein, and I underwent preconception genetic testing for Tay-Sachs disease. We are both Ashkenazi Jewish, a population that has a higher risk for having a mutation in the gene that causes Tay-Sachs. We took our genetic testing very seriously. My testing results came back showing that I was a carrier; Matt’s results said he was not. Given the autosomal recessive nature of the disease, both parents need to be carriers for the fetus to be at risk of inheriting the disease. Months later, we were pregnant with our first child.

Tragically, Matt received the wrong test, and his carrier status was mis-reported. Matt was in fact, a carrier for Tay-Sachs. 15 months into her life, we learned that our daughter, Havi, was now a victim of this fatal, progressive neurodegenerative disease. In an instant, we were transformed from being not only first-time parents, but now first-time parents of a dying child.

From the date of Havi’s diagnosis, December 17th, 2019, to her death on January 20th, 2021, we followed her lead. She never spoke a word, never walked a single step. But she communicated powerfully through smiles and tears, through the brightness of her eyes and the back-and-forth movements of her head. She loved, deeply. And when you closed your eyes and listened closely, her voice was clear.

Havi taught us that life can be even more beautiful and painful than we ever imagined. And when we live at the edge of that deepest beauty and deepest pain, then everything—our hearts, our world view, our community—will deepen and expand.

We honored Havi’s life every Friday night with family and friends in a celebration that we called Shabbirthday. The word is a combination of Shabbat and Birthday. Havi’s favorite food, the only food that she ever crawled toward, was challah, the braided Jewish bread that we eat every Shabbat. And we knew that her birthdays would be limited to two. That was not enough. We wanted more. So we threw Havi 57 Shabbirthdays before she died. Balloons, cakes, beach walks, fancy dinners, always a challah, and beautiful songs and prayers. We didn’t pretend to be happy on these Shabbirthdays. We weren’t. We were heart broken. We didn’t throw parties to distract or numb the pain. We found moments of beauty and celebration embedded in and between our deepest pain. We knew we needed the love and support of our closest people right there with us, too. And we treated every moment as sacred, not scary. As holy, not superficial.

This is grief in our home.

Since Havi’s death, we continue to honor Shabbirthdays every Friday. Now, we read poems, listen to Cole Swindell’s, ‘You Should Be Here’, and close our eyes tightly to try and recall the feeling of her wrapped tightly in our arms. Sometimes it’s hard to breathe. Sometimes I don’t want to open my eyes at the end of the song. And sometimes, I feel okay. Sometimes I can even smile through the song and cuddle with our beautiful younger daughter, Kaia. Whatever the feelings are, however the anguish of grief is manifesting, I pay attention.

Havi’s story is for anyone who has lost the person they love most in this world; for anyone who has watched someone they love lose their beloved; or for anyone who has yet to be touched by their own tragic loss and is open to learning about what it might feel like for them one day.

For me, Havi’s death is not a one-time event. It happens over and over again every moment she is not where she is supposed to be: Picking out a mismatched set of clothes that look adorable anyway; walking into preschool with her little hand gripping my index finger; pausing between the slides and the swings for a few bites of fig bar at the playground; playing with her little sister who looks up in admiration at her god given best friend. The losses are layered and constant. And they will accrue, every day, and on every missed milestone until the day I die. I’m not sure people understand that about losing a young child.

I think that the only way to be okay is to keep inviting our dead into those spaces, to keep them present in those moments where they should be. And not in a delusional way, either. Only in a way that helps us to create new memories and experiences with them since their life on this earth was so tragically short. Relationships don’t have to end when the physical ends. We don’t need to relegate them to the margins. As our therapist, Dr. Joanne Cacciatore puts it: We keep them right in the front row. From that place, they can participate actively in the life they were meant to have. And we can be proud to include them in it. And they can continue to encourage us to live a life of fullness and in service to others.

Even after only one year on this earth without Havi, my relationship with her has undergone profound and deepening changes. In the same way that relationships in the world of the living require immense attention and constant adjustments, so too, do our relationships with our dead. There are moments when I can still feel the touch of Hav’s softest cheeks against mine and there are also moments when I feel far away from her. There are times when I can hear her voice in my head and in my heart and times when the silence is everywhere even though I’m begging for her to show up.

A lot of this journey is a solitary one but it’s made so much easier when other people in our lives keep Havi present. This looks like so many beautiful things: Havi’s name written in the sand; outfits in the color purple; beautiful sunsets over mountains filled with wild flowers; a glass raised ‘To Hav’ before dinner begins; photographs on a bookshelf; text messages on important dates; acts of kindness in the spirit of a beautiful little girl. We do not need to ‘move on’ and we never will. We want to be joined in existing in the space where love and pain coexist for that is the space where we are closest to Hav. We, we all, can be changed forever by the power of loss. Falling into its embrace can make us more powerful, more productive, more alive, and more human. But that growth is ours to discover and cannot be rushed, or forced.

I wish we were kinder to grieving people. I wish we understood that grief is not scary. Losing Havi is the worst possible thing I could have ever imagined as a new mother. It is tragic and unnatural. But what is natural is to want to keep her close to us, to want to make her proud, to want to make the world better in her name, to want other people to know and love her. Those are all natural, quite beautiful, instincts that keep grieving people feeling like they can be okay and maybe even that they can become bigger and better versions of themselves.

I know my relationship with grief, and with Havi, is going to change many more times in my lifetime. I only hope that there will be more safe places to inhabit my suffering when it does.

Children are not supposed to die before their parents. But they do. And they do in this country, they do in all of our neighborhoods. And there are thousands of children, and their parents, who deserve a dance party filled with deep soulful sobs, uncontrollable laughter, and the rhythm of the music keeping us all on our feet for one more day. Most importantly, they deserve to be remembered.

“There’s bad news about former-president Girth, Wind, and Liar.”

That’s how Stephen Colbert kicked off the part of Wednesday’s The Late Show monologue dedicated to Letitia James, the attorney general of New York, taking legal action against Donald Trump (the late-night host refuses to call him by his name) and two of his kids, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump.

“For the last three years, he has been under civil investigation by New York attorney general, Letitia James. Well, last night in court filings, James outlined a pattern of possible fraud at the former president’s business,” Colbert said. “That’s believable, certainly more believable than a pattern of business at the former-president’s fraud.”

James filed the motion after Trump attempted to block James from questioning Donald Jr. and Ivanka under oath. “Lord, please make that happen,” Colbert prayed. “Please. I don’t ask for much, and I don’t ask often. All I want before I die is to see Don Jr. swear in on a jar of hair gel. It’s the only thing he believes in.”

Colbert continued to make fun of Trump’s habit of “tripling the size of his assets,” including telling Stormy Daniel that “his penis was three inches.” With that horrible image permanently seared into your brain, you can watch The Late Show clip above.

January’s PlayStation Plus lineup was a strong one for anyone that needed games to sink extreme hours of their time into. Thankfully, all these games are free for every PlayStation Plus member to add to their library so we can all access them at any point. However, with games of this size, it can be a little difficult to decide which game to start with first. It would be easy to tell someone to just play the “best” game first, but we all have different tastes, interests, and priorities in what games we seek out.

So instead what we wanted to do was rank this month’s PlayStation Plus choices in the proper order to tackle each game. How we decided the placement for each game will be explained in each section, but one of our primary considerations was long-term viability. How long is this game going to last, will it still be relevant in a few months, and how easy is it to pick up and play? All of these games are great, but having some kind of order of what to play it in can help people decide what game to tackle first.

3. Persona 5 Strikers

It is at this time that we want to remind everyone that all the games we are discussing today are in fact great, because fans of the Persona series are likely dumbfounded as to how it’s ranked last on this list — especially one that is as good as Persona 5 Strikers is. It gives us everything we could ever want from a spin-off game with the return of some great characters, a story that picks up nicely where the last game left off, and a new combat system that blends in perfectly with the previous one. What’s not to enjoy?

The problem is that almost everything about what makes Persona 5 Strikers its best is predicated on playing the previous game, Persona 5. The player won’t understand why they should care about these characters, why they’re the way they are, or what a “shadow” is. The game doesn’t take much time to introduce to the player backstory either leaving anyone that is entering the series for the first time completely in the dark. This doesn’t mean that the game can’t be enjoyed without that backstory, as the plot is self-contained, but it just won’t hit the same without the context of previous events.

Play Persona 5 first. The recent expansion, Persona 5 Royal, is the definitive version of the original turn-based JRPG and is worth the 100+ hour journey. If you fall in love with it the way many did before it then Strikers will be right there waiting.

2. Dirt 5

This game looks so good visually. Anyone with a PlayStation 5 needs to download Dirt 5, put it on the best graphics settings possible, and look at how gorgeous everything is. From the way the mud splatters as cars drift around corners, to the damage that appears as cars bump into each other, to the varying backdrops that each course is placed on, this is an incredible looking game — and an extremely fun racing game at that. Everything about it oozes style from the menus to the customizable cars themselves.

So why not put it at No. 1? Because as fun as Dirt 5 is to play, the fun highly depends on how much you enjoy racing games. If you’re a huge fan of the genre then Dirt 5 is going to takeaway many hours as you try to unlock every car, win every race, and maybe even rank on some of the leaderboards. For the average player, though, this is a game to randomly pick up when you’re in the mood for a racing game. Great to play for a few hours, scratch that itch, and then pick it up again when the urge to play strikes again however long that takes.

Dirt 5 is in that way perfect for PlayStation Plus. Most fans of that franchise have likely already bought the game so now anyone that just has a curiosity can give it a go. It’s definitely worth playing just to see the visuals alone!

1. Deep Rock Galactic

What if you took a first-person shooter, made it co-op, added some horror elements to it, and then created procedurally generated levels? That combination gets you the incredibly charming and enjoyable Deep Rock Galactic. Everything about this game from the cell shaded colors, to the way the dwarves interact with one another, to the creepy bugs that infest these caves gives off an appeal that feels very distinct to this game. The guns are fun, the worlds are fun to explore, and it’s an absolute blast with the right group of friends.

Even better? This game just launched for the PlayStation. That means everyone playing on that console is going to be playing it for the first time. Have a running PlayStation party with a group of friends? Get everyone to download Deep Rock Galactic and watch as the hours sink away deep into the night. It’s a delight and one of the only gripes we can give with it is that, without that group of friends, it can feel like it’s missing something. It is so dependent on the co-op that the single-player experience can suffer for it. That said, it’s doable and solo players get a helpful little droid to join them and zap bugs. So that’s fun.

Find a group of friends and play Deep Rock Galactic. You’ll be glad you did.