JohnValbyNation

Earlier this month, LCD Soundsystem released one of its first proper singles in nearly seven years: “American Dream,” a shiny bit of sad-sackness that, like many of the group’s best tracks, feels both elegiac and ecstatic. “In the morning, everything’s clearer/when the sunlight exposes your age,” sings 47-year-old frontman James Murphy, as groggy synth-beats and…

Quick, do an experiment: Whip out your phone and take a short video. Trees outside your window, the other people in line with you, whatever. Now here’s a question: How did you shoot it? Did you hold the phone sideways, to get a horizontal, or landscape, shot? Or did you hold it vertically? Odds are…

Consider the gravity. Monday night, Russell Westbrook, the Oklahoma City Thunder point guard whose manic, irresistible brilliance made him one of the NBA’s most divisive figures, was awarded the league’s highest individual honor: Most Valuable Player. The coronation was in some ways a fait accompli; the closest rival for the award, James Harden, could only…

How do I know if filming a public confrontation is my civic duty or just click-rabid voyeurism? Don’t ask why, but for a few years my brother-in-law and I had a tradition of watching Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man to round out our Thanksgiving night. Stuffed full of bird, lethargic and tipsy, we’d settle in to…

Recently I learned, along with the rest of the world, the heartbreaking news that my friend and colleague Bassel Khartabil was dead—and in fact had been dead for two years. He was secretly executed by the Syrian government after having been imprisoned since 2012. While those of us in Bassel’s global community of friends held…

Boys named Alexander in children's books have terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days. People on the internet, however, often have terrible, horrible, no good, very bad weeks. This last week was one of those. But let's say that maybe you've been out of range for the last few days and have no idea what's…

From the very beginning, Taylor Swift's songs were all about us. Her self-titled debut album, released in 2006, was bolstered by a pair of warm-blooded singles—the sprightly "Our Song" and the love-worn "Tim McGraw"—that instantly established Swift as both confessor and confidante; she let listeners in on all of her secrets, while also giving them…

In the very first episode of Game of Thrones in 2011, the very first scene at Winterfell was about the children: Septa Mordane praising Sansa for her elegant embroidery; Bran trying and failing to land an arrow in a target while his brothers laughed; Arya showing him up from twice the distance, hitting the bullseye…

In the quaint town of Billund, Denmark, 30 teens have the ultimate after-school job: disassembling the thousands of creations that will be built each day by visitors to the Lego House, opening September 28. (Hear that? It’s the clattering of 25 million Legos under one roof.) Designed by hotshot Danish architect Bjarke Ingels, the 40,000-square-foot…

At a recent open mic in Los Angeles, Mike Glazer donned a silver mask and a hoodie, climbed onto the stage, and began a standup routine. If you didn’t know his secret, watching his set would’ve been extremely awkward. His jokes felt ill-rehearsed. Glazer read them directly off his phone’s screen. Actually, the jokes weren’t…