2015 — The Monarch Review
Big Ass Boombox 2016
Monday, December 28, 2015 11:39 — 0 Comments
On January 8th and 9th, the third annual Big Ass Boombox festival will take over the Crocodile Cafe and the Upstairs downtown and host it’s massively well attended free, all-ages music and literary festival. Featured bands this year include Ever So Android, Julia Massey, The Great Um, Gibraltar, Furniture Girls, Bigfoot Wallace, Electric NoNo, Abraham, Chris King & The Gutterballs and about two dozen more. Featured readers include dating guru Maggie MK Hess, City Arts music editor Jonathan Zwickel, poets Michelle Penaloza and Rebecca Hoogs, Seattle Weekly music editor and VICE contributor Kelton Sears, prose writers Shaun Scott and Adrian Ryan […]
Three Songs To The Head vol. 37
Wednesday, December 23, 2015 11:07 — 0 Comments
Hello and welcome back to Three Songs to the Head where we share three songs that moved us, three songs we love, three songs we can’t get out of our heads! Today, we’re featuring Chi Turner, Greet the Sea and Chris King & The Gutterballs. Enjoy! Sometimes you need a really smooth souled-out jam to kick the morning off and Vancouver, B.C.’s Chi Turner has just the thing for you. This track, “Am I Dreaming,” is like the moment when you put the needle down onto the record and you know moments of bliss are about to come. But on […]
All Millennials are Kevin McCallister
Tuesday, December 22, 2015 11:38 — 0 Comments
The following is an excerpt from Shaun Scott’s e-book “Something Better: Millennials and Late Capitalism at the Movies,†available on Amazon and iTunes from Thought Catalog Books. This holiday season marks the 25-year anniversary since the release of Home Alone. Millions of Millennials may grow nostalgic for the memories the movie evokes. Because no matter what became of Macaulay Culkin, Millennials will always see a part of themselves in Kevin McCallister. Home Alone begins when members of a giant extended family in Chicago take turns demeaning young Kevin McCallister. In the film’s breathless opening sequence, Kevin McCallister has his culinary […]
Rapid Transit – Kristine Ong Muslim
Monday, December 14, 2015 11:19 — 1 Comment
For you, it is always rush hour, always the same hydraulic hiss of electric train doors tight-lipped about their vacuum, their hull swollen with immediacy, their carriage smothered by your restlessness, always the same familiar melodic ding of train doors clamping shut their seamless traction, their gaskets and threaded metal joints— the slow wear and tear prodding you along, for all time oblivious to your aimless lurching forward to whatever city you have fled from this time. Chafed by friction, the rails hold up, hold down your roaring part of the world.
Two Poems – Patrick Ahlers
Friday, December 11, 2015 11:37 — 4 Comments
Introduction:Â My name is Patrick Ahlers. Outside of the occasional anger-poem, I didn’t put much in the way of pen to paper during most of my adult life. Then, in my early thirties, I found out that I have cancer. A little while later, my already grim prognosis was shredded even more to bits when they found the ivy-like reach of the spread of the disease. As I snuggle so closely to death, I find one of the easiest ways to be able to look at my wife and daughters’ beautiful faces – to be able to look at my life […]
Adele’s Hello Video
Wednesday, December 9, 2015 13:45 — 0 Comments
Adele’s “Hello†has, at the time of this writing, 651,735,775 views on YouTube (and inspired this SNL video with nearly 12,000,000 views). That means millions of people have had their heart broken and turned, just in the last few weeks, to Adele to feel their pain again. Adele has proven herself over the last handful of years to be the best breakup songwriter in the world and has brought more tears to eyes than sliced onions. To help process the heartfelt tone and tenor of “Hello†I imagined what five halves of ex-couples must have gone through when seeing the video for the […]
Jim Brantingham’s Traveling Light
Wednesday, December 9, 2015 11:47 — 0 Comments
Hello! Welcome to the announcement for the first book produced by The Monarch Review (available to buy below!). We are thrilled to say we’ve completed the editing, laying out, printing and production of Traveling Light by Seattle author, Jim Brantingham. Â You may remember Jim’s work in the first print edition from us, Monarch #1. He was the only author in the anthology to write a piece of fiction and a poem. Jim was also the first fiction writer we published on the Web site some five years ago. Traveling Light is a beautiful book filled with stories, memories and analysis […]
A Very Alan Thickemas
Thursday, December 3, 2015 11:40 — 1 Comment
Whether we know it or not, we’ve all had at least a minor obsession with the actor, TV host and songwriter, Alan Thicke. We’ve seen him on middle-class sitcoms, hummed his tunes and sung his cheesy lyrics. The man who was famous for the fatherly role of Jason Seaver on Growing Pains is also responsible for the theme songs for shows like Diff’rent Strokes and The Facts of Life. Thicke, though, is also the star and basis for the Seattle-based movie – and my new holiday season obsession – A Very Alan Thickemas, produced by Seattle-based film collective, The Beta […]
Hall of Fame DJ Marco Collins’ Top 14 Local Albums of 2015
Wednesday, December 2, 2015 18:50 — 1 Comment
Marco Collins changed millions of people’s lives in the 90’s as a DJ for 107.7 The End, making famous bands like Beck and Harvey Danger, and he remains one of the most interesting and important voices in the Seattle music scene today. He’s a friend of the Monarch (which is awesome!) and a thrower of great shows (like this one for MusiCares that we really suggest you get tickets for while they last). After you get your tickets to the show, check out these 14 bands and their outstanding records released this year! 1. Amos Miller- “SuperSquare†2. The […]
Against Where’d You Go, Bernadette – Alex Gallo-Brown
Tuesday, December 1, 2015 9:44 — 6 Comments
I recently moved back to Seattle after living away for almost seven years. One of the first things I read after I returned was Where’d You Go, Bernadette (2012), the celebrated comic novel by Maria Semple. I sought it out mostly because of its setting: urban Seattle. I had long been surprised by how little the city was represented in contemporary literature. As a young writer growing up here, I had looked for writing that spoke to the city that I knew and mostly found writing about the Pacific Northwest—stories that were set near the city but almost never inside […]
The answer isn't poetry, but rather language
- Richard Kenney
