Monthly Archives: March 2026

Nudie Can’t Fail

Art History, Art is My Middle Name, Music

This one probably isn’t about what you think it is

This post is part of my ongoing project to migrate my old Art Is My Middle Name newsletter archives to my own website. Learn more about all that.

Originally published May 21, 2020

Hey, There,

It’s not much of a secret that I love country music. The good stuff, the old mid-20th-century stuff, with a firmish wall somewhere in the early 80s that gets breached only by a few holdovers from the previous era or traditionalists looking back and working with the tools of that age.

It’s the music I grew up with in rural Nebraska. The house I grew up in—originally, per my grandfather, a shack to store corn in that was then retrofitted into a house—was small, and the living room was dominated by my parents’ enormous stereo console, and I have two competing good memories there: listening to them play Hank Williams and Johnny Horton really, really loud, and sitting next to the console pulling vinyl off the shelves, looking at the album art (I often roll my eyes now when I hear people wax rhapsodic about how digital music takes away the album art experience, but hell, maybe they’re on to something).

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Mucha Do About Something

Art History, Art is My Middle Name

Yes, that subject line is bad but you should have seen the other options

This post is part of my ongoing project to migrate my old Art Is My Middle Name newsletter archives to my own website. Learn more about all that.

Originally published May 13, 2020

Hey, There,

Let’s talk about Alphonse Mucha! Or, really, let’s talk a little about Alphonse Mucha and use that as an excuse to wallow in some of his fantastic art.

“Who’s Alphonse Mucha?” you might be asking. He was a ginormously influential illustrator around the turn of the 20th century, and even if you don’t recognize his name, I can just about guarantee that you’ve seen some of his work:

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The Principality of Minneapolis

Art History, Art is My Middle Name

Would that our city were as funky as the street at promised

This post is part of my ongoing project to migrate my old Art Is My Middle Name newsletter archives to my own website. Learn more about all that.

Originally published May 7, 2020

Hey, There,

So, Prince absolutely *dominates* Minneapolis street art.

Mural on back of building at 26th and Hennepin, Minneapolis

Which makes a lot of sense. Because let me make a controversial statement: Minneapolis* loves Prince.

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A Painting You Certainly Know

Art History, Art is My Middle Name

And almost certainly love.

This post is part of my ongoing project to migrate my old Art Is My Middle Name newsletter archives to my own website. Learn more about all that.

Originally published March 15, 2020

Hey, There,

Let me open up by saying that the backend process for this one didn’t go the way I thought it was going to. I expected to have to do a bunch of research, only to find that it’s actually a pretty well-known body of knowledge, leaving me just to tell you the story. Which: relieving, but also kind of disappointing, because ever since the tail end of grad school, I’ve kind of wanted to be the guy who cracked the hidden story of Dogs Playing Poker.

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A LIFE IN FILM #23- FARGO

A Life in Film

A Life in Film is a project where I’m writing about a movie from every year I’ve been alive.

1996: Oh Geeze

FARGO (dir. Joel Coen, officially; but come on, Ethan was there)

OK, here we go. This is it, this is the big one (clutches chest like Fred Sanford). There’s some wiggle to this, but on most days if you asked me what my favorite movie was, my honest answer would be Fargo. It’s the movie I use to gauge the beginning of my mental adulthood; it’s a loving but pointed document of a place I love; but most of all, it’s a stupendous work of art on its own merits.

I didn’t always think so. I saw Fargo in its initial run, and massively didn’t get it. Profoundly didn’t get it. A couple of years later, I saw it again and GOT it, and all I can conclude is that somewhere in that space, my adult critical faculties finally came fully online. It’s handy to have a solid calibration on that.

Cinema!
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