<![CDATA[The Melt by Jason Diamond ]]>https://www.getthemelt.comhttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!711C!,w_256,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F137b4768-6f72-46ec-b5f9-c46fb6d9e410_1280x1280.pngThe Melt by Jason Diamond https://www.getthemelt.comSubstackWed, 29 Apr 2026 18:04:30 GMT<![CDATA[Lena Dunham's Remembrance Of Things Past]]>https://www.getthemelt.com/p/lena-dunhams-remembrance-of-thingshttps://www.getthemelt.com/p/lena-dunhams-remembrance-of-thingsThu, 09 Apr 2026 15:20:32 GMTSorry. SORRY! I’ve been busy the last few weeks and haven’t written anything here. I did that thing where I had a bunch of articles due elsewhere at the same time. In case you didn’t see any of them, I wrote about how custom embroidery is so hot right now (and hopefully stays that way) for the NYT Styles section, profiled Simon Kim as he gets set to ope…

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]]><![CDATA[Looney Tunes Is For The Children ]]>https://www.getthemelt.com/p/looney-tunes-is-for-the-childrenhttps://www.getthemelt.com/p/looney-tunes-is-for-the-childrenWed, 18 Mar 2026 14:46:51 GMTNow that the Oscars are in the rearview, and we can stop talking about whether or not Timothée Chalamet’s comments on the state of ballet and opera might have any impact on his chances of winning (spoiler: Michael B. Jordan was always going to win, and if anybody deserved to be a runner-up it was Ethan Hawke for his role in Blue Moon), I’ve had some tim…

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]]><![CDATA[It's Always Twin Peaks Day]]>https://www.getthemelt.com/p/its-always-twin-peaks-dayhttps://www.getthemelt.com/p/its-always-twin-peaks-dayThu, 26 Feb 2026 17:19:00 GMTI’m writing this two days after February 24th, a day that likely doesn’t mean much to you unless it’s your birthday or you’re a big Twin Peaks fan. There once was a time when I would have scheduled this to go up on that day because an editor might have told me people would be Googling “Twin Peaks Day” and they wanted to capitalize on the SEO…or whatever…

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]]><![CDATA[We're In the Middle of The Great Flattening ]]>https://www.getthemelt.com/p/were-in-the-middle-of-the-great-flatteninghttps://www.getthemelt.com/p/were-in-the-middle-of-the-great-flatteningTue, 10 Feb 2026 19:18:48 GMTI know this guy we’ll call Jack. He moved out to Los Angeles during the 2010s after ten years of working in the NYC hospitality industry. Around that time, all kinds of people I knew who could begrudgingly be put under the label of “creative types” made the same move throughout the decade, supposedly because there was a whole new gold rush happening out…

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]]><![CDATA[The Perfect Album at the Perfect Moment ]]>https://www.getthemelt.com/p/rachels-songs-for-egon-schiele-30-yearshttps://www.getthemelt.com/p/rachels-songs-for-egon-schiele-30-yearsMon, 26 Jan 2026 19:40:19 GMTI was sitting in the living room of the musician Will Oldham in his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky about seven years ago. The house we were in served as an auxiliary space; it had been his home, but he’d moved his family to somewhere a little bigger and kept the smaller place as a sort of workshop/storage space that was littered with CDs, books, and i…

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]]><![CDATA[Diamond District Supreme ]]>https://www.getthemelt.com/p/diamond-district-traxnyc-fighthttps://www.getthemelt.com/p/diamond-district-traxnyc-fightTue, 06 Jan 2026 14:42:49 GMTI’ve been out of pocket for the last month thanks to 1. Needing a vacation. 2. Going on vacation. 3. Having laptop troubles while on vacation and no way of fixing them until now. So, sorry about the lag in posts. You know I still love you. Since I’m currently one of those people you don’t feel sorry about who is stuck in the Caribbean because the presid…

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]]><![CDATA[The Millennial Novel Comes of (Middle) Age]]>https://www.getthemelt.com/p/millennial-middle-novelhttps://www.getthemelt.com/p/millennial-middle-novelWed, 03 Dec 2025 18:44:04 GMTIn 2019 I worked what I have to assume will be my last job where I went to an office five days a week and served as an editor for a website. I say that it’s likely my last gig of that kind mostly because those jobs aren’t really available these days, and given the state of media, I don’t know if I’d want to go back even if I didn’t have bigger responsib…

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]]><![CDATA[The Melt Presents: Bad Guys #1]]>https://www.getthemelt.com/p/the-melt-presents-bad-guys-1https://www.getthemelt.com/p/the-melt-presents-bad-guys-1Tue, 25 Nov 2025 16:19:16 GMT

I’m kicking off the next Tinned Fish Book Club selection by presenting the first ever event put on by The Melt. Join me as we explore what makes Martin Scorsese’s 1995 masterpiece about sinful people in Sin City so enjoyable even with all the hands getting smashed, demanding of more blueberries in muffins, and heads getting squeezed in a vice. This is t…

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]]><![CDATA[Revisiting Flops and Other Things ]]>https://www.getthemelt.com/p/revisiting-flops-and-other-thingshttps://www.getthemelt.com/p/revisiting-flops-and-other-thingsFri, 21 Nov 2025 17:16:45 GMTHappy Friday. Here’s the latest “And Other Things…” that I’m sending out every week for paid subscribers. I’d love it if you want to become one. If you are one, thanks. It means the world.

Help support The Melt

Before I start with this week’s e-mail, I wanted to say that if you’re in Miami, I’ll be at the Miami Book Fair this Sunday. My panel is called “Of the Tribe: Facets & Farce of Jewish Life,” and I think I’m there for the “farce.” It’s in room 8202 (Building 8, 2nd floor). After that, I think it’s time for a little rest from the Kaplan’s Plot world tour. That said, if you or somebody you know likes stories about mobsters, intergenerational trauma, encased meats, Chicago, the immigrant experience, and/or the dark side of the American dream, I can’t think of a better Hanukkah or Christmas gift than my lil novel. Buy it at an indie or somewhere online, but I especially think that if you’ve got a dad over 60 who has a Jewish-sounding name and grew up somewhere like Chicago, Philadelphia, New Jersey, the Bronx, L.A., or Miami that he’s going to love getting Kaplan’s Plot as a gift.

OK. On with the show.

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]]><![CDATA[Embrace The McCallister Mindset]]>https://www.getthemelt.com/p/home-alone-decor-mccallister-mindsethttps://www.getthemelt.com/p/home-alone-decor-mccallister-mindsetWed, 19 Nov 2025 16:23:51 GMTI generally think you shouldn’t start doing December holiday stuff until after Thanksgiving, but that hasn’t stopped the algorithm from serving up this one "before and after” meme of the Home Alone house in the movie back in 1990 and what it looked like in 2024. It’s a bummer to look at, another example of boring, bland, “modern” home design that lacks …

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]]><![CDATA[All Men Are Shipwrecks ]]>https://www.getthemelt.com/p/edmund-fitzgerald-men-shipwreckhttps://www.getthemelt.com/p/edmund-fitzgerald-men-shipwreckMon, 10 Nov 2025 20:06:33 GMTSomething I like about people from the middle of the country is when you get them on the topic of what they consider the real Midwest. Some will forget that the Dakotas or Nebraska count, and one of my friend’s from Kentucky once put forth a theory that Louisville is the most Southern Midwestern city, while Cincinnati is Southern despite being in Ohio. …

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]]><![CDATA[The Dummies Are Multiplying!]]>https://www.getthemelt.com/p/the-dummies-are-multiplyinghttps://www.getthemelt.com/p/the-dummies-are-multiplyingFri, 07 Nov 2025 16:52:58 GMTWild times around these parts, and that’s perfect since I finally have the bandwidth to send out the weekly letter to paid subscribers that’s sort of a mish mosh of things I like and random takes on some of the interesting things that happened this week. For starters, I’m pretty sure you didn’t escape the news that New York City elected Zohran Mamdani as its next mayor, and if you did then I’d love to hear more about the meditation retreat you must have been on since I’m feeling pretty fried these days.

Want to read this and some of the other paid subscriber stuff I post?

Sometimes this Friday e-mail will be a bunch of random things I paid attention to over the week that was, but this time around, since I couldn’t escape election talk, it’s all about what might have been one of the weirdest, funniest, most exciting, and also stupidest weeks in recent memory.

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]]><![CDATA[Curtis Sliwa And The Last Of the Tri-State Loudmouths ]]>https://www.getthemelt.com/p/curtis-sliwa-nyc-loudmouthhttps://www.getthemelt.com/p/curtis-sliwa-nyc-loudmouthMon, 03 Nov 2025 17:35:48 GMTThe mayoral election takes place in New York City this week, and barring polling data being wrong in a way that would make 2016’s presidential election look like a simple accounting error, Zohran Mamdani is going to win, while Andrew Cuomo will likely retire from politics and end up doing more work for his new pals at Fox News. Of course, nothing is cer…

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]]><![CDATA[The American Genius Of Poison Ivy And The Cramps ]]>https://www.getthemelt.com/p/american-genius-of-poison-ivy-the-crampshttps://www.getthemelt.com/p/american-genius-of-poison-ivy-the-crampsWed, 29 Oct 2025 18:06:45 GMTSomething I’m finding is that when you’re working on a book about the Ramones, people love to ask how much time I spend listening to the band’s music, and the answer is not that much more than I did before I sold the book. I’ve always been a fan of the band, so if I put on Rocket to Russia or I decide to listen to “53rd & 3rd” two or three times in a ro…

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]]><![CDATA[Talking About The Novel Of The Year]]>https://www.getthemelt.com/p/lucas-schaefer-the-slip-best-novel-of-2025https://www.getthemelt.com/p/lucas-schaefer-the-slip-best-novel-of-2025Wed, 22 Oct 2025 13:15:42 GMTAt the end of August, I finally got the chance to sit down and talk with Lucas Schaefer about his debut novel The Slip. Since then, the book went on to win the the Kirkus Prize for Fiction, and my claim that I made at the start of our talk that it’s my favorite novel of the year still holds. Paying subscribers can scroll down and watch the conversation, and if you haven’t read the book, it’s high time to pick that bad boy up.

In other Tinned Fish Book Club news, the next selection is for November, and, this time we’re going nonfiction by reading Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas by Nicholas Pileggi. This time around I’ll be doing an online seminar about the book on a date TBD sometime around the second week of the month, along with some other fun stuff for paid subscribers that I’ll have more info on soon. If you’re not a paid subscriber, please consider becoming one. I keep a lot of stuff free, but in the new year there will be more stuff behind the paywall besides just the book club.

Become a paid subscriber by typing your e-mail in the little box below this caption.

As for the book club pick, I know that it might seem like an abrupt switch, going from a debut novel to a 30-year-old nonfiction book, but I figured with the anniversary of both the book and Martin Scorsese’s adaptation that also came out around this time back in 1995, it was as good a time as any to pick it up and give it a read. Interestingly, I think there are some themes in the book that resonate more in today’s world than they may have back when the book and movie first came out, and I’ll talk a little about that during the seminar.

And if that’s not enough, in December I’ll be hosting a live event that ties into the book and film in Manhattan. More news on that coming soon, but it’s going to be part of a series I’m starting that I’m excited as hell to tell you about.

In the meantime, go pick up a copy of Casino, and I’ll see you in November.

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]]><![CDATA[Why Japan's Iconic Men's Magazine Popeye Went English For The First Time Ever]]>https://www.getthemelt.com/p/japanese-magazine-popeye-english-issuehttps://www.getthemelt.com/p/japanese-magazine-popeye-english-issueMon, 20 Oct 2025 13:29:34 GMTI have spent an untold amount ofAmerican dollars buying copies of the Japanese magazine Popeye, and the saddest part is that I can’t even read it. Only in recent years, thanks to the convenience of Google Translate, have I been able to get some idea of what the text says. Before that, it was very much just me looking at the nice pictures and using my im…

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]]><![CDATA[Boardwalk Empire Is HBO's Overlooked Gem]]>https://www.getthemelt.com/p/boardwalk-empire-is-hbos-overlookedhttps://www.getthemelt.com/p/boardwalk-empire-is-hbos-overlookedFri, 17 Oct 2025 16:05:09 GMTPeter Biskind’s East Riders, Raging Bulls is one of those books I think about at least twice a day, and I sometimes will wonder whether the 2000s Golden Age of TV will ever get a similar treatment. I know the allure of late-1960s and early-’70s Hollywood is more interesting with its cultural sea change and weirdo rebels totally reshaping the entire indu…

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]]><![CDATA[We Have Always Lived In The László Krasznahorkai Story]]>https://www.getthemelt.com/p/we-have-always-lived-in-the-laszlohttps://www.getthemelt.com/p/we-have-always-lived-in-the-laszloFri, 10 Oct 2025 18:18:41 GMTLászló Krasznahorkai won the Nobel for literature. Alex Shephard and Mark Krotov at the New Republic don’t think the Hungarian writer winning is “fun,” writing that the prize once had a “weird era” that “was also a reflection of the absurdity of the prize itself.” Their argument is that the prize has become predictable, and that all of the older writers…

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]]><![CDATA[Lou Reed's Beautiful Halloween Dirge]]>https://www.getthemelt.com/p/lou-reeds-beautiful-halloween-dirgehttps://www.getthemelt.com/p/lou-reeds-beautiful-halloween-dirgeWed, 08 Oct 2025 19:10:05 GMTIt’s that wonderful time of year when I dial up It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, except this year it’s even more special since I’ll give Lulu a rare glimpse of television by letting her partake in my annual ritual. That might happen tonight, but it’ll likely wait until the weekend when I’m searching for ways to occupy a toddler who has about 500 t…

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]]><![CDATA[It's Thomas Pynchon Autumn ]]>https://www.getthemelt.com/p/thomas-pynchon-autumnhttps://www.getthemelt.com/p/thomas-pynchon-autumnMon, 29 Sep 2025 15:38:34 GMTI haven’t read Thomas Pynchon’s Shadow Ticket yet, nor have I had a chance to see One Battle After Another, Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film that tries to take Pynchon’s work and adapt it to the screen. I’ll get around to both as soon as I’m not taking planes, trains, and automobiles on my own book tour, because I’d rather not feel rushed experiencing…

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