Revisiting her first “Rounding Third” column lets Angela Vasquez-Giroux touch on one of her favorite subjects, Detroit Tigers first baseman Miguel Cabrera (who should have been AL MVP in 2010). Read “Rounding Third: year one”

Gavin Craig’s favorite part of The Idler is the surprises, and to try to make his own contribution, he serves up a bit of lore about how The Idler got started, and Ayn Rand’s unexpected contribution. (Surprise! You thought he was going to write about video games.) Read “Diary of a Casual Gamer: year one”

Serge Gainsbourg was an ugly man, but he had a talented, eclectic, and shockingly good-looking daughter. Mike Vincent watches Charlotte Gainsbourg’s films and listens to her music in “Family tree” (Beck has a cameo, but it’s not a flattering one.)

Kevin Mattison observes that The Idler is at its best when it’s weirdest, and he traks his own course off the beaten path in “The Cinephiles: year one”

Mike Vincent is a chatty man, and he looks back on a year of sound and talking in “Dysphonia: year one”

The Idler is the kind of site that would be nothing without our readers, so we asked a few of them what they enjoyed most from our first year. Check out the results in “Year One: Readers’ picks”

Rosemary Van Deuren comes full circle, starting and ending with John Waters, with some really outstanding interviews in the middle. Like a pie. Some kind of deeply weird, wonderful John Waters/interview pie. Read “Flipside: year one”

Kate Sloan looks back at her first year of writing, how she’s branched out a bit from just words and drawings, and outlines a scenario in which she might just have to fight you. Read “Drawn and Paneled: year one”

Wayne Barlowe is a living legend in the world of science fiction painting and creature art, and his work has appeared everywhere from the covers of Time and Newsweek to the film Avatar. Rosemary Van Deuren interviews him in “Wayne Barlowe”

Sometimes it’s not enough to watch a movie. Sometimes you have to watch somebody watching a movie, especially when those somebodies are a hapless janitor and two robots and the movies are some of the worst movies ever made. Daniel J. Hogan celebrates the wealth of Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes available on Netflix in “Movie sign with Mystery Science Theater 3000”

Pumps, TV, and tattoos, Ana Holguin looks back at what made the first year of “PopHeart” so great in “PopHeart: year one”

Exactly one year after The Idler‘s first post, the editors share some of their favorite pieces. Not in any particular order of course, or with any particular methodology. In fact, I’m sure there’s some really great stuff we left off, but it’s a good place to get started. (Man, I’m going to go take a nap. This all just smacks of effort.) Read “Year One: Editors’ picks”

Lindsey Malta looks back at the evidence of a vibe (or several). Read “Thoughtcicles: year one”

As is only appropriate, the writer of our first column gets us started. Jill Kolongowski looks forward, back, and gives a tip of the hat to the Idler column that gave her a new direction. Read “The F-Word: year one”

My first column, “Miggy and the minors,” tried to get at this a little, I think. I wrote about the epic awesomeness of Miguel Cabrera — who I still believe should have been the AL MVP last year — at a time when everything around him was going south. Once again, the Tigers were tanking after the All-Star break — but Miggy, like the beast I compared him to from Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming,” dragged the rag-tag team along with him to at least keep the chances of a pennant run alive a little longer.

Looking back, that seems to have paid off for the Tigers now — and for my conception of Miggy as the epic hero. If Miggy had gone Juan Gone on his teammates and eased up (and, hey, who would blame him, really, for letting off the gas when he was the only one revving the team’s engine?) I don’t think this year’s team would show the grit to do what they’ve done: sweep the Indians; come back from behind to take down the Royals; go deep into the bullpen to muscle out a win.

That’s what makes Miggy a hero — he inspires greatness in the rest of his team.

A guy like Alex Avila is a great example. He’s got talent, work ethic, pedigree. Does he become an All-Star catcher who looks like he’s been in the league for ten years without learning a bit of that poise and determination from Cabrera? Not sure, but I like to think Miggy rubbed off on him. Same for Brennan Boesch, who’s clearly absorbed some of Cabrera’s plate approach this year — helped, no doubt, by his fluent Spanish.

Of course, at times he is a tragic hero (see: “In which Miguel Cabrera breaks my motherfucking heart”). But he’s human. And sweet sassy molassy, I just love him.

But beyond how awesome I was in the beginning (snark), what has really been badass about The Idler is how much my own writing, and even the way I am thinking about the things I write about, has been influenced and augmented by the other Idler columnists.

If there’s a column I wished I had written, and one I think of often when I write my own stuff, it’s Ana Holguin’s invocation of another hero and the place he held in her younger years. She just nailed so much so perfectly: nostalgia, heroes (that in childhood seem so much more tangible), mental illness, family, longing.

Having a bunch of smart bastards around has challenged me, too, to think about my beloved baseball in different ways. Kate Sloan’s piece on the homoerotic overtones of The Dark Knight Returns not only inspired me to read the graphic novel (which was AWESOME) but to think harder about the role of sex, sexuality and gender in baseball. Without Kate’s work, I don’t think I’d have written “Pandering with p-words.”

I could go on forever about The Idler. I’m honored to be a part of it, and I can’t wait to get back to writing. (I’ve been on an unscheduled hiatus — who knew switching jobs would be so time-consuming?)

A few things I’m working on:

• I picked up a copy of Rickey Henderson’s Off Base yesterday (FOR 25 CENTS!), so I’ll be rocking some paleo-blogging on that bad boy.
• Moneyball hits theatres this month, and I’m planning a man-date with some of my softball buddies. Expect a review, and answer to the burning question, Will Brad Pitt be believable as a man who is not incredibly attractive?
• There’s some stuff to catch up on, like a review of my progress as a third baseman and my goals for the winter. (Yep, I’m going to go back to the coach to get some more bruises.)
• And it’s pennant time, and then playoff time.

We’ve got a lot to look forward to. Thanks for staying with us this far.

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Angela Vasquez-Giroux writes about baseball, poetry, and other things for The Idler. Find her on Twitter at @A_V_G_W

In all honesty, I think “Click, click, click” is still pretty good, mostly because I spent more time writing it than most of the other pieces I’ve written for the site. I’ve tried to stay true to the “diary” part of my title, writing as much as possible about the games I’m playing at any particular time, giving my more-or-less off-the-cuff impressions, and trying to be smart and entertaining while doing so. Sometimes I do pretty well. Sometimes, I just do.

“Diary of a Casual Gamer,” however, got started while I was writing for a different site. Kevin Mattison had been doing some film writing for a site called Ditching Otis, and I jumped at the chance to reach out to a broader (or at least different) audience than was reading my personal blog. Ditching Otis seemed fun, had a couple of good writers, and used a photo of Nietzsche wearing steampunk goggles as its logo. Good times were had by all.

Until the dude who ran Ditching Otis shut it down, totally and without any warning. One morning it was just gone. I probably should have taken the ads selling gold investments on the side of the page as a warning. Kevin spent a day or two trying to talk the dude into giving it another go, but it wasn’t long before we decided that we could do a better job ourselves. And without tooting our own horn too much, we did. After all, had you ever heard of Ditching Otis before this column? (Seriously, eff that guy. He was a Ayn-Rand-loving, self-centered douchebag who shut down Ditching Otis because he decided that he wasn’t going to make any money off a site he wasn’t paying people to contribute to. Whereas I’m a charming, self-centered socialist who takes pride in not making a penny off a site I’m not paying people to contribute to. Totally different.)

I’ve already highlighted a number of my favorite Idler pieces from our first year, but if I’m supposed to be talking about the writing that has had the most impact on my own, then I really need to give credit to Andrew Simone, whose list of “Essential indie games” and link to Brandon Boyer’s GDC microtalk have had a huge impact on my thinking about what video games are and should be doing, and Kate Sloan, who reminded me how much I love comics, and that there’s a lot of really great, really smart ground left to cover in writing about Batman.

And dear god, you know, everyone else! I read everything that goes up on The Idler, and the fact that The Idler‘s writers still surprise, inform, and entertain me (and thus, hopefully, our readers) is what keeps the site going.

I know I asked everyone to talk about what they wanted to do in the next year, but I’m going to exert editor’s prerogative and decline to do the same. (Other than to say that the “Gamers’ Club” will be making a return in the next couple of weeks, and we’ll be playing the SNES game Earthbound.) What I’m looking forward to most about the next year is continuing to be surprised by The Idler‘s writers. I wouldn’t want to spoil it for anyone.

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Gavin Craig is co-editor of The Idler. You can follow him on Twitter at @craiggav.

Coming off of my own blog, Four Inches of Dirty Water (A clumsy Robert Altman reference), which mostly consisted of pretty straightforward film reviews, I think I was still struggling a bit to find my voice. My first piece for The Idler — “It’s the unanswered questions that haunt us” — was a pretty sloppy mix of review and essay. It wasn’t until I began to focus more on The Idler‘s overall theme of more esoteric, nerdy enthusiasm that I found any sort of stride. That approach was best summed up by my co-editor: “We’re at our best when we’re weirdest.”

2. What was your favorite column that you didn’t write?

Since I already picked Gavin Craig’s “The horror before words” in the editors’ picks, I think I’ll go with fellow cinephile Adam Simmons’ “Panic in the 70s.” When it comes to 70s film knowledge, Adam simply cannot be topped. Plus, that cat’s got an encyclopedic knowledge of box office stats. Seriously, he just recently told me how much money Hoosiers (1986) made. . . off the top of his head!

3. What sort of things do you want to write about in the next year?

I’m hoping to get into a bit more local stuff, maybe hitting up some festivals to find those diamonds in the rough. Detroit has always struggled with the kind of self-congratulatory, clique-ish vibe that can often steal the attention away from real quality, interesting work. With the recent insurgence of artists into the area I look forward to seeing what this year brings us.

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Kevin Mattison is co-editor of The Idler, as well as being an occassional film review contributor for Real Detroit Weekly, a filmmaker and videographer. You can follow him on Twitter at @kmmattison.

My first column was not as much a column as a diatribe against the writer Neal Pollack. I’m not sure that my style has mellowed, but I think the first column stinks: clunky, short, and sort of pointless really. I don’t know if it is the best first thing I could have written. Granted I’m my own worst critic but I don’t think much of many of my early graphs. They seem tossed off, too short, dependent on cliché and lazy insight. It almost seems like the early columns were ones where I spent my time debunking or raging against something or for something that I liked. That is fine enough, I guess, but it isn’t very thoughtful. I would rather read something I disagree with that is intelligent as opposed to a Captain Caveman style holler from the hills. Now I do remember that my column was initially supposed to be an every other week deal, but by way of having sent the editor FOURTEEN columns I ended up running every week ever since. I think that where I’ve gotten the column now is much more reflective and insightful into my own psyche as opposed to being about music per se. I’ve enjoyed stretching out, enjoyed getting stuck on a genre and writing about that genre for for a month or more. Doing so has allowed me to revisit items I haven’t heard in some time. I think my favorite column is probably “Girls talk.” There is something in there, something I think I could expand outwards, something about that topic that really sticks with me. I don’t think I’m a strong writer; I feel too conversational, too television, less literature. I can’t explain it other than to say that I try and sometimes I hit (an infield single) and sometimes I miss. But I keep trying, which is important. I gave the column the name Dysphonia and if you haven’t looked up the word, it is a medical term for disorders of the voice: an impairment in the ability to produce voice sounds using the vocal chords Really what it means is the inability to speak. Speech is communication and sometimes I feel like I am trying to overcome my own issues with communication, and I think that is why I so love the “Girls talk” article.

2. What is your favorite Idler column that you didn’t write?

I enjoy “The F Word;” there is something urban and young about the column that I get a kick out of. I like reading “Flipside” by my dear pal Rosemary as it opens doors, in a way, into her line of thinking about certain things. I’ve known her for some time and always read the posts. I dug the obit for Randy Savage in “PopHeart.” When I read it the first time I managed to read it like I tend to read things, like a hummingbird flitting around the page. When I re-read the article it was fucking devastating. I really admire the ability to be so frank and raw when revisiting the horrors in our pasts. Her amazing article made me think about my own history watching wrestling (still do — shut up) but it made me think about it as an escape as opposed to a story. Honestly I had never thought of the genre as an escape until re-reading that story. I admire the honesty, and I admire the clarity with which the piece was written. Something about being able to stand back and assess and discuss with such clarity and ability to be in touch with the emotions is very powerful. I would say envious too, of the ability to write so clearly.

3. What sort of things do you want to write about in the next year?

Honestly, I’d like to just go balls to the wall and write all the bits I have on this list on my old laptop. I just got a new MacBook Air with actual battery power so I’d love to just finish up so many of the ideas I have in my head before they float away like a fart in the wind. I hope to keep writing about music in a way that accentuates the positives without getting too morose about things out of my control. I do feel like I turned a corner in regards to music this summer, read my column about selling LPs for background, and I hope to see where this new direction takes me. For the first time in a long time I am okay with the fact that I am not really the insane music guy that I have been for the past 17 years. I am no longer jealous of the free time other people have to devote to music, the time that I once had but wish I hadn’t had. I hope to continue to write about what I like and what I don’t like, and I hope that when I am writing about something I don’t like I am clear, and honest, and funny without being reactionary or brusque or dismissive. Frankly I would be happy writing about stuff that people felt compelled to COMMENT ON! C’mon folks, challenge my points, I want the discussion! I got NINE comments on my Springsteen article! NINE! I know you are out there, it can’t just by my Mom reading this thing!

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Mike Vincent lives in Northern Michigan. He likes to claim that he is oldest member of the Idler gang but still has to suppress laughs when his kids fart.

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Suzanne Fischer:

Duck decoys, lost laptops, and a necklace to grieve with: Teal Amthor Shaffer’s post “Souvenirs” is a bittersweet exploration of the emotional power we invest in objects.

Suzanne Fischer is a historian and writer who lives in Detroit. She cares about people, places, and things. Find her on Twitter as @publichistorian

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Michael Abbott:

My favorite essay from the The Idler‘s first year — a difficult choice among so many stellar pieces — is “Harry Potter and the Evil Empire” by Angela Vasquez-Giroux. I am the ideal target reader for Ms. Vasquez-Giroux’s prose: a baseball-loving, Yankee-hating bookworm who resisted the charms of Harry Potter because, as the author puts it, I’m often a “hater of all things beloved by everyone else.” Typical of The Idler‘s broad cross-cultural vision, this essay manages to connect literature, sport, Johnny Damon, “and his ragtag gang of self-named misfits, the idiots, lacking pedigree and pinstripe.” Yes, Ms. Vasquez-Giroux, the Yankees ARE Voldemort. . . and watching them fail at the end of the season/story is a pleasure I’m delighted to know we share.

Congrats on your first year, The Idler. Here’s to many more.

Michael Abbott writes and hosts the Brainy Gamer blog and podcast. He also teaches theater, film, and new media at Wabash College. Find him on Twitter at @brainygamer.

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Ryan Claytor:

Kate Sloan’s honest and intelligent articles on comics (“Book reviews for the comic lover’s soul” and “Smart Girl at the Party: Web Comic Round Up, Part III” to name but a couple) have both reminded and informed me about a number of comics-related news, reviews, and web-comics. I’m looking forward to seeing more from this talented writer.

Ryan Claytor is a comics artist and professor living in Lansing, Michigan. He currently teaches Comics Studio courses at both Michigan State University and the University of Michigan Flint. Claytor is most widely known for his self-published, autobiographical, comic book series And Then One Day. Find him online at www.elephanteater.com/.

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Kevin Nguyen:

I’ve always loved The Idler‘s slogan: “Refusing to apologize for the things we enjoy.” There’s an unabashed nerdiness that pervades the site, and every time I finish a piece on The Idler, I think to myself, “These are my kind of people.” Case in point: Gavin, Andrew, and Daniel’s re-playthrough of Final Fantasy VII. The “Gamers’ Club” concept was creative, the format loose, and the end product was a series of thoroughly enjoyable and insightful posts about how the game has aged (Daniel: “Two women fighting over Cloud? This was like crack to a sixteen-year-old boy, I tell ya. Years later, it still makes for great story telling.”), how it should be played (see Andrew’s character and materia management piece), and sometimes, in the process, what it says about its players (Gavin: “I feel a bit underpowered, but I always feel underpowered at the end.”). Anyone who hasn’t played FFVII will still be able to appreciate the enthusiasm and quality of analysis, but if you have a nostalgic adoration for the Final Fantasy series like I do, you’ll understand why exactly these are your kind of people.

Kevin Nguyen is an editor at The Bygone Bureau. His only marketable skill is an above-average knowledge of European geography. He has been useless since the introduction of the atlas in 1477. Find him at Twitter at @knguyen.

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Landen Celano:

What’s amazing about The Idler is that it not only provides personal perspective and entertaining exploration in each of its writer’s articles, but it also doesn’t coddle current crazes and pander to passing obsessions. Readers will find delightful deliberations on a wide array of topics like Kevin Mattison’s personal reactions to the work of French filmmaker Jacques Tati through the lens of Slyvain Chomet’s The Illusionist in Kevin’s “Jacques Tatis, there and back again.” It’s this type of feature that not only highlights a current work that deserves more universal attention, but also turns its attention to an artist that has been grossly overlooked by the pages of mainstream cinematic history. Mr. Mattison’s response to The Illusionist is not only intelligent, it also perfectly demonstrates the individualized personalities that make The Idler so engaging.

Landen Celano is an actor and writer in the Los Angeles area. You can find him at Twitter at @landencelano.

My first column for The Idler was “The passions of John Waters”, about Waters’ 2010 memoir Role Models. The nice thing about writing nonfiction articles is that you’re not usually forced to revisit them. It’s easier to plow ahead onto the next piece, unlike novel-writing, where the length and weight of the project forces you to continually rehash over phonebook-sized page-stacks of storytelling, cohesiveness and technique. I don’t normally reread my nonfiction articles, because all I see are things I wish I’d have done better. The thing that stands out to me most in “The passions of John Waters” is a quote from Waters himself, where he said playwright Tennessee Williams “saved his life” by being “joyous, alarming, sexually confusing and dangerously funny.” Waters did much the same thing for me when I first discovered his underground films and writings at age sixteen. In a serendipitous turn of events, I’m preparing right now for a trip to Toronto where I’ll see Waters perform his live, one-man stage show, This Filthy World. Seeing Waters speak live is a life-long dream of mine, and writing here that it’s actually going to happen this month sends butterflies of anticipation teeming through my stomach. When he steps out onto that stage, I might just faint. Or have one of those spontaneous orgasms like you hear about middle-aged women having at Michael Bolton concerts. Whatever I might do, I can rest easy knowing that John Waters is very difficult to offend. Once a man has signed a fan’s used tampon, most other fan-behavior has got to seem positively vanilla.

2. What is your favorite Idler column that you didn’t write?

My recent favorite is Mike Vincent’s “The language of letting go,” which deals with all the little losses that come as rites-of-passage while growing up. The article is about Mike selling some of his vinyl LPs — things he swore he’d never part with, but which he’d come to value less the older his small children became. It’s an interesting, introspective, personalized account of how our values shift as we become adults. And how even when those shifts are completely normal, appropriate and healthy, they can still be a little heartbreaking when we look at the scope of our lives, the things that used to take forefront importance, and the innocence we inevitably trade for the wisdom we gain. A lot of Mike’s columns examine, through music, the little, normal losses of life, and the reality that your life will change whether you want it to or not, and whether you try to help foster that change or whether you fight it tooth and nail. “The language of letting go” talks about daily change and loss in a way that is refined but also strong, and unique but also completely relatable. It also touches on how music relates to our sense of self, both as an artistic identity and as a physical commodity, like a record album.

3. What sort of things do you want to write about in the next year?

This week I was excited to share my interview with award-winning artist and writer, Wayne Barlowe. Wayne is an astounding talent, a fascinating person and a delightful human being, and this interview was a real treat for me to conduct. I’m currently working on an interview with another extraordinary visual artist who creates amazing work, and I’m looking forward to finishing that one soon! I’m also honored to be working up an interview with an incredible fantasy author whom I admire deeply. Other upcoming interviews include a provocative new industrial dance musician, a comic book writing-and-drawing brother duo, and the founder of a small but dynamic new independent cosmetics company. One of my biggest goals with my column “Flipside” is to give readers access to researched interviews with thought-provoking artists, writers and others. Additionally, I hope that “Flipside” interviews provide a place where subjects themselves feel they have the platform to discuss their work in-depth, talk about their experiences and processes, and give a perspective on the industries they work in. One of my newer goals with “Flipside” is also to introduce readers to up-and-coming faces in the arts industries. Creative people who are forging their way with attention-grabbing work, but whom you may not have heard of just yet. On August 17th I debuted “Peeps to watch out for,” an addition to “Flipside” which will highlight up-and-coming creative people with a few questions about who they are and what they do. The first “Peeps” highlighted fresh faces from the performing arts and modeling / fashion circuit, and future installments will include new illustrators, painters, doll-makers and comic artists. In addition to conducting interviews, which I enjoy very much, I’ll also be rotating in a few essay-style pieces like those I’ve done previously for The Idler. Articles that dissect eclectic arts figures and works with an emphasis on valuable but underrepresented angles — things like the thread between sociological and artistic “climate changes,” the fringes of gender and sexuality, and the way aging art compares to the work that’s being produced right now in our changing world.

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Rosemary Van Deuren is the author of the young adult fantasy novel, Basajaun. View more of her fiction and essays at www.rosemaryvandeuren.com. You can also be Rosemary’s friend on Facebook and follow her on Twitter at @rosemaryvan.

By the time I caught my breath January was upon us. I was an aunt. I had traveled to Detroit twice. And my older sister had gotten married. I was sleeping on a regular basis, more or less. It was time to write.

Gavin and I went back and forth on a few column ideas before settling on comic/graphic novel reviews. I wrote my very first piece for the site on Alison Bechdel. If I were to describe my crush on Alison Bechdel in one word it would be BOUNDLESS. If I could describe it in eight words I would say, I’m ready to put a ring on it.

Bechdel’s long-running strip Dykes to Watch Out For, perhaps did more to get me comfortable out of the closet than the previous five years being out of the closet did.

Read her. Love her. Propose to her and I will have to fight you.

It’s terribly hard to pick a favorite Idler column that I didn’t write and not feel like I’m playing favorites. Also, some of my favorites have already been noted by the editors. I love Jill Kolongowski’s piece about us getting unintentionally black out drunk at 5 pm on a sunny patio in downtown Boston on her birthday. The writing is smart and brave and I also like anything that is indirectly about me.

I love Ana Holguin’s “On winning and losing it” because it challenged me to consider this trending train wreck in a different way and also made me examine how society was appropriating language. Chain language like #winning is catchy, but people also used to wear stone washed jeans and over-sized pocket t-shirts and Keds.

I also particularly enjoyed Lindsey Malta’s “The seven deadly sins for children,” in which Lindsay deconstructs the holy tome that is the musical movie Rumpelstiltskin (1987) starring Amy Irving and Billy Barty. The breakdown of sins is pitch perfect. I’m hoping she’ll be inspired to do a similar watching of the Disney tales a la this cracked.com piece on beloved characters with undiagnosed mental illnesses.

In the past month or so I’ve grown weary of picture books and have instead started writing a few pieces on city livin’ and being queer. Mostly I am biding my time until Bechdel publishes her next book. If her book tour comes to Boston you can bet your idle selves that I will have tales of slipping her my number and a formal proposal in comic form at Harvard Book Store.

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Kate Sloan is a writer and editor living in Boston, MA. She’s the smart girl at the party. You can read her blog at http://staycutegirl.wordpress.com/ and follow her on Twitter at @kate_sloan.

My first column was “Bad (so bad that it’s good?) romance.” It discussed the ways in which I feel I should be more sophisticated, refined, adult and all the ways that I feel I don’t meet those expectations. I have to say that those issues are still a part of my life. How do I balance my love of clothes and makeup and fashion and a ridiculously involved obsession with television against my life as an academic, a professional reader and critic? What has changed is that through my writing for The Idler I’ve gained more confidence in my idling. The positive feedback I’ve received, the minds I’ve changed (even if just a few and slightly) have helped me feel better about what I love. I’m definitely checking, if not chucking, the shame.

2. What is your favorite Idler column that you didn’t write?

I have to say the one that comes to mind is Jill’s piece on cooking chard. That sounds a little silly, maybe, but it’s true. I just really enjoy how she approaches the chard like this alien lettuce full of many secrets. So many people are concerned with fancy cookery lately and honestly I think it’s just too much. Yeah, I’ll tear up at the beauty of a Prada pump, but I find the intricacies of an endive salad pompous and bourgie. (I’m an enigma, so sue me.) What’s great about Jill is that she attacks cooking from the novice perspective. At the end of the day, she just wants to eat and eat something good. She gets there in her writing with a delightful mix of tactful description and self-deprecating humor. “What is a chard?” she wonders. I didn’t know what it was either, Jill. Thank you for telling me.

3. What sort of things do you want to write about in the next year?

It’s hard to tell what will bubble up in the next year. I tend to be inspired by whatever’s happening
around me and run with it. I suppose I’d like to discuss art and crafting some more. I know I’ll talk about TV. Breaking Bad, United States of Tara, and In Treatment are all shows that I need to gush over. More (women in) stand-up comedy theorizing. Perhaps something about tattoos? The world is my idling oyster. Happy Idlerversary, everyone!

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Ana Holguin writes “PopHeart” for The Idler.

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Jill Kolongowski

Of all our wonderful Idler writers, I think Jill’s the one who hit her stride the most quickly and consistently. With her cooking pieces she invited you into her kitchen, equally as excited to share her failures as she was her successes. But for me she really nailed it with her “Liquid indulgence” piece, which stepped a little bit outside of that comfortable groove to share the kind of funny, personal story that makes you want to hang out in that kitchen in the first place. –KM

Mike Vincent

This was a tough one for me. Mike’s got a couple of really great pieces about fostering a relationship with his son through music that really stuck with me. But in the end I had to go with “U2 in East Lansing (before and after)” because I think it epitomizes what makes Mike such a great Idler contributor: Pure passion. If you missed this show, Mike’s piece is about as close as you can get to real thing. –KM

Angela Vasquez-Giroux

It’s difficult to not start each of these paragraphs with the words “this is my favorite writer,” but Angela Vasquez-Giroux was exactly the sort of person I had in mind when The Idler got started, and we were lucky to get her. She’s a passionate baseball fan with a deep and intimate knowledge of the game, and she will never, ever simply give me summary of last night’s game. She may give me a poem about listening to a game with her grandfather, complain about Fox’s truly atrocious baseball broadcasts, call Jeter out for being a cheater, or when I’m lucky, do all of these things at once. My favorite piece of Angela’s however, has to be “Doing everything you do, in a skirt, or, Some thoughts on being a girl, doing boy things,” because not only does Angela know more about baseball than you, and love the game more than you do, she’ll outrun, out throw, and outhit you, all while wearing a skirt. Softball, after all, is just baseball “with bigger balls.” Damn right. –GC

Ana Holguin

One of The Idler’s strengths lies in offering unique perspectives on common topics. I think we really hit it out of the park when that unique perspective gets an origin story. Ana’s “PopHeart” column has covered many topics that often cross paths with one another, but I never expected to read anything like “The Macho Man vs. the family secrets” which links former WWF superstar Randy “Macho Man” Savage with escapism from childhood trauma. Even less expected was how touching it turned out to be. –KM

Kate Sloan

Editing The Idler is usually one of the cushiest jobs around (which is good, because the pay sucks). Every once in a while a writer and I will send ideas back and forth, or I’ll give a gentle nudge with a possible suggestion when someone is coming up on a deadline (or has watched one go by), but normally I just get to sit back and click the “publish” button. Kate Sloan’s “Gaying up Gotham” was a rare exception to this, where after talking about a couple of ideas, Kate sent me a short draft of a piece about the homoerotic undertones between Two-Face and the Batman in Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns. I sent a short note to Kate that said something like, “You CANNOT write about homosexuality in The Dark Knight without writing about the Joker.” Kate wrote back to say something like “Yeah, you’re probably right,” and her second draft knocked it out of the park. It’s still one of the smartest things we’ve run. –GC

Rosemary Van Deuren

I have always found religion to be fascinating, especially in social context. In “Non-Catholic Catholicism: Jesus Christ Superstar,” Rosemary discusses one of the few (maybe the only?) successful pop culture/ Catholic cross-overs, and why it works so well (admitting that some of its success has a little to do with Jesus and the apostles’ hot factor). –KM

Andrew Simone

I desperately want to know where Andrew Simone finds the games that he writes about, and the second most important reason I read him is that I haven’t figured it out yet. The most important reason I read (and share) Andrew’s writing is that he’s incredibly in touch with the ways that form and content work together (or don’t) in video games, particularly independent PC and browser games. One of the best examples of Andrew’s keen sensibility can be found in his review of the Octodad game, “A Day in the Life.” It’s a unique and clever game, but Andrew really gets to the heart of it by observing that the player’s clumsy control of the Octodad character is actually the central feature of the game itself. Being an octopus pretending to be a human is hard, and Octodad (and Andrew) get it exactly right. –GC

Kevin Mattison

Kevin Mattison has written a number of strong pieces, and he’s right up there in the group of people who have done the most writing for the site (so it feels almost like a crime to pick just one piece), but the column I keep coming back to is the one where he surprised me. I’ve known Kevin for a long time, and watched a lot of movies with him, but “The madness of Klaus Kinski” felt like a bolt out of the blue. I had never heard of Kinski, much less ever seen any of his work, but using Werner Herzog’s documentary My Best Fiend Klaus Kinski as a jumping-off point, Kevin quickly but thoroughly introduces the life and career of this troubled but brilliant man. It wasn’t until I watched the trailer for Kinski’s Nosferatu the Vampyre that I realized that I’d been staring at his face on a poster in Kevin’s basement for years. I get a little bit of something like that from nearly everything that Kevin writes. –GC

Gavin Craig

I’ve known my co-editor for quite some time now, and he’s always had a gift for finding significance in the seemingly insignificant. Knowing this, I was excited to read his video game column, as I was sure it would offer some unique insight into a medium often struggling for legitimacy. He hasn’t disappointed. And being the former roommate mentioned in “The horror before words,” it was impossible for me to not pick it. Plus, it contains the line, “the difference between fear and horror is the difference between being killed and being eaten.” ‘nuff said. –KM

—

We owe a great deal of gratitude to all our writers. We may complain about the editor pay, but the contributor pay is just as bad. Your creativity, idiosyncrasies, and keystrokes make The Idler what it is, word by word, idea by idea.

Teal Amthor-Shaffer
Tim Carmody
Landen Celano
Gavin Craig
Andrew DuPont
Zac Gorman
Daniel J. Hogan
Ana Holguin
Jill Kolongowski
Lindsey Malta
Kevin Mattison
Francine McKenna
Sarah Pavis
Adam Simmons
Andrew Simone
Kate Sloan
Rosemary Van Deuren
Angela Vasquez-Giroux
Mike Vincent
Sarah Werner
Travis R. Wright

Thank you, and thank you, and thank you again.