FLEX THAT CHAMP RING

hell to the yeah

Awesome to see & hear @marchxness.bsky.social essays that I've been thinking about for YEARS read tonight by their authors. Have you picked up your copy of the anthology yet? If not you can get it here & you'll be glad you did: www.splitlippress.com/product-page...

this is outstanding work

Join our March Xness Anthology Zoom launch in 24 minutes! Register here for url: tinyurl.com/hitrepeat

Tomorrow night on Zoom! Hear my lovely spouse @martinseay.bsky.social read from the astoundingly good @marchxness.bsky.social anthology with lots of other brilliant writers!

Upcoming Lit events: 4/7 @marchxness.bsky.social anthology Launch & Zoom reading; 4/11 Morgan Day at Stacks Oro Valley; 4/12 Tucson Essay Movie Club at Casa Video; 4/19 Music, Essays, Karaoke. Get on the substack to keep up with what's coming up in Tucson! open.substack.com/pub/tucsones...

TOMORROW: @marchxness.bsky.social Anthology launch event at 7pm CT! Featuring @danchaon.bsky.social, @stevenchurch.bsky.social, @mlfaliveno.bsky.social, @dellegeller.bsky.social, @toddkaneko.bsky.social, @elenavox.bsky.social, @mossyair.bsky.social + @martinseay.bsky.social! tinyurl.com/hitrepeat

I get to be online with all these cool people on Tuesday evening (4/7, 7pm CT) for the launch of the March Xness anthology Hit Repeat Until I Hate Music from Split Lip Press. I can’t promise that my kids won’t barge in and wreak havoc. Register at: tinyurl.com/hitrepeat

Tucson Xness frenz take note of our upcoming in person event 4/19 (and zoom launch reading 4/7 for everyone NOT in Tucson which is most of you!)

Hello, @marchxness.bsky.social friends! I decided instead of doing “Poetry Month,” I’m doing “Songs that Talk About Other Songs Month,” and if you want to come share favorites or just chat music, I’d love the March Xness to slide into April Ridiculousness. open.substack.com/pub/katiedar...

TUCSON SHOW OUT; everyone else we are doing a Zoom launch TUESDAY at 5pm Pacific

Incredibly proud to be a part of this wild ride of a book! #steinmania

Substack tourney recap coming your way this weekend but we wanted to invite you to our HIT REPEAT UNTIL I HATE MUSIC ZOOM book launch TUES 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern. Register: tinyurl.com/hitrepeat

"Rozz was a very young gay man singing about blood, loneliness, guilt and death at the start of “Gay Cancer” aka the AIDS crisis." To mark the anniversary of his death I updated the essay I wrote about Rozz Williams and Christian Death for @marchxness.bsky.social's March Vladness contest.

It's not that I'm bitter about being beaten by Ben Folds (Five) in March Sadness, it's just that I LOVE Langley Schools Music Project & own it on both CD and vinyl & think you should all vote for it!

The Best Album of 2001 Round 1 Match #8 #48 Ben Folds, ROCKIN' THE SUBURBS VS. #81 The Langley Schools Music Project, INNOCENCE AND DESPAIR Go here to vote: forms.gle/m4FUXJ83BSiS...

surely

Kodiak is really pumped about the @marchxness.bsky.social anthology!

Hit Repeat until I Hate Music is out! If you've been reading essays about sadness for the @marchxness.bsky.social tournament, my Sugarhill Gang chapter here is doing...something entirely different. (No one has ever turned away sorrowing from Rapper's Delight. It's right there in the title.)

The winning bracket (by @legaultd.bsky.social) got the Championship game and result correct, 2 of the final 4, and 4 of the Elite 8 correct. Well done sir. You will receive a special prize (we'll be in touch)!

Congrats again to our Sadness 90s Champion, @mfitejohnson.bsky.social! The victory also means your bracket ended up being very competitive. NOT, however, quite as competitive as @legaultd.bsky.social's, who won the 2026 Bracket Challenge!

I had a blast repping Brick all month! We didn’t get the gold but I look better in silver anyway. And for my post game snack, you better believe I’m eating one of these Brick cookies. Great game, @mfitejohnson.bsky.social! 🧱

People have noted the high @marchxness.bsky.social vote count, and I don’t know how to explain all of it. My husband and friends are all incredibly supportive. Mostly, though, I think my biggest strategy was just being a high school English teacher for the past 20 years:

I’m really happy and overwhelmed to have won the @marchxness.bsky.social championship. So much respect to @cicilybennion.bsky.social and her incredible, vulnerable essay. I felt connected to so many you in this tournament, both through your essays and interacting with you here. I will miss this ❤️

It's here! Super stoked for this anthology and to have an essay in it—the first I ever wrote for @marchxness.bsky.social, on the Creatures’ Exterminating Angel, Virginia Woolf, misogyny, and learning to trust myself as a musician. I love this tournament and community, and so glad to be part of it!

Having blundered my way into the lottery this year on my first try, I can testify that the @marchxness.bsky.social essay is a genre unto itself, and one I'm into. Ordering!

“When Folds sings ‘she’s a brick’ and he’s ‘drowning slowly,’ I can’t help but wonder if the song is being fair, if there is not some way to take more ownership for the events unfolding.” @cicilybennion.bsky.social has my vote! marchxness.com#/sadnesscham... @marchxness.bsky.social

We salute you, Ben Folds Five and especially @cicilybennion.bsky.social, for your deep tournament run. No shame in a loss especially this deep. Dion is undeniable, but you played great. Excellent work. You deserve a rest!

THAT'S THE BUZZER! MARCH SADNESS 90S EDITION HAS CROWNED A NEW CHAMPION! FINAL SCORE: CELINE DION, "My Heart Will Go On" and @mfitejohnson.bsky.social 784, Ben Folds Five, "Brick" and @cicilybennion.bsky.social 474. Congratulations to both our finalists for an outstanding game.

Just minutes remaining in this year's championship game but the winner doesn't look to be in question. Celine Dion and @mfitejohnson.bsky.social played an exceptional game to top off a great run in this year's tournament!

Gotta go Celine here. If Titanic is not '90s sadness, nothing is.

The March Xness Anthology is here! Thank you SO MUCH to @splitlippress.com and to everyone who's contributed to the Xness anthology and the tournament as a whole ❤️🎸🥁

The @marchxness.bsky.social anthology we've all been waiting for is finally here! So thrilled to have my essay on "(I've Had) The Time of My Life" of Dirty Dancing fame included in this much-anticipated mixtape of phenomenal writing. Get yourself a copy today!!

Wondering if at least some of the (many) votes for Celine are revenge/protest votes (which is legitimate of course)

On this, the last day of @marchxness.bsky.social, I was delighted to encounter this absurd thread, which made me think back to the beginning and @leahmensch.bsky.social's essay

The @marchxness.bsky.social anthology is out today! I love this tournament, and I’m so glad to have one of my essays from years past got included: “The Best Christian in the World,” about Creed’s “My Own Prison” and my own fallout with Christianity, among other things. So much good writing in here!

And over and over again, my essay has been received with generosity and grace. So, truly, how could I be mad or sad today? I am lighter and happier than I’ve been in a while.

But I wrote it anyway. And then I put it out there. And not only that, I continued to put it out there. Again and again, asking more and more people to read it and vote. Suddenly, I was broadcasting a story about a part of my life that I had, up to that point, shared with only a handful of people.

Beginning this essay, I was surprised by the force with which this experience was demanding to be written about. My early memories of listening to Brick came back to me only after I’d selected the song. And those memories raised all sorts of messy questions. Good for an essay. Harder for life.

Writing for March Xness has been a better experience than I could have hoped for. I’d been trying (on and off) for ten years to write and publish something about my experience being abused as a teenager, but nothing was ever quite right. And then there was, too, the fear, which always held me back.

WOOT!

If you are looking to vote for an underdog, may I submit Brick?

Anyway, the songs are both worthy @marchxness.bsky.social finalists, & very well-represented by their essayists. Good game! Even if not especially close at the moment! Get those votes in, y'all!

In my last listen for the @marchxness.bsky.social final, what got me was the bridge, especially "As weeks went by it showed that she was not fine"—some top-notch assonance and consonance, & also that word "showed," which points back to the aborted pregnancy, scrambling the chronology.

The appeal of "Brick" is almost exactly the opposite. @cicilybennion.bsky.social's @marchxness.bsky.social is obvs great on its susceptibility to misinterpretation—& even when we DO know the story it's telling, it seems to retain a few mysteries it won't totally resolve.

The various @marchxness.bsky.social Titanic jokes remind me that for as much of an insane (& expensive) spectacle as the movie is, what stays w/ us is Jack & Rose on the prow, Jack drawing Rose like his French girls, Rose (not Jack!) afloat on the door: scenes that invite meme-ing & repurposing.

Of course @mfitejohnson.bsky.social's @marchxness.bsky.social essay—you've read it, right?—admirably covers song-as-product: a site of "secondhand emotions" (cf. @allisonwrites.bsky.social on "Kiss the Rain" & yearning) but also of real connection w/ others via a shared cultural landmark.