Joyce Millman

Pop cultural essayist and blogger

Seattle, WA

Veteran of alt-weekly journalism (music and TV critic, Boston Phoenix), daily newspapers (Pulitzer-finalist TV critic, San Francisco Examiner) and web media (original staffer and TV critic, Salon.com). Humor pieces appearing in McSweeney's, The Belladonna and more. Blogging about music, pop culture and personal history at joycemillman.wordpress.com

Joyce Millman

Pop cultural essayist and blogger

Seattle, WA

Review: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Feb. 27, 2023, Climate Pledge Arena, Seattle
Two weeks shy of seven years. That’s how long it’s been since I last saw Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band in concert. To say “a lot has happened” since then would be an understatement, so I won’t go there. But here we were on a wintry Monday night
Joyce Millman Writes
To Burt with love
to appreciate just how much Burt Bacharach and Hal David contributed to the canon of pop love songs, imagine a radio station's Valentine's Day playlist without their input. To name a few. Bacharach and David are the greatest love-song writers of the pop era (although they did occasionally turn out the odd -- sometimes very odd -- movie theme, like "Raindrops Are Fallin' On My Head," and the stray protest song, like the anti-war ballad "The Windows of the World").
Salon.com
MUSIC
Cheerio, Seinfeld
My Salon piece on the end of "Seinfeld," and how the show about nothing changed TV.
Salon.com
TV
Don Corleone Declares a Mattress War.
My friends, do you toss and turn all night, or wake up in the morning with aches and pains? These are the signs that you need a new bed. I am Don Corleone, founder of Mattress Godfather, the capo di tutti capi of the Five Families of Mattress Retailers. At Mattress Godfather, you always get the best deals in the Tri-State area, but this weekend will be extra special.
McSweeney's
HUMOR
Finally an HMO That Fits Your Lifestyle, Budget, and Deep-Rooted Mistrust of Doctors
We here at NoneMedical know what a hassle it can be to get quality healthcare when you need it. Nobody likes spending hours in waiting rooms, being exposed to who-knows-what, only to have a doctor take a cursory look at that weird rash on your neck and tell you it’s not cancer. No biopsy, no tests, just a curt, “It’s nothing, smear some Aveeno on it.”.
McSweeney's Quarterly
TELEVISION/RADIO; The Gentle World Of a Joyful Sponge
WHO lives in a pineapple under the sea? / Absorbent and yellow and porous is he!'' That's the opening of the theme song to ''SpongeBob SquarePants,'' the frisky Nickelodeon cartoon series that's the second-highest-rated kids' show on television. According to Nielsen Media Research data, a third of the show's viewers are adults -- and if those adult viewers are anything like me, they can't resist a show with the words ''absorbent'' and ''porous'' in the theme song.
The New York Times
TV
Special Delivery
In the summer of the plague year, my other half and I moved from San Mateo, California, where we had lived for 33 years, to Seattle, Washington, to be in the same city as our only child. We loved the Bay Area. We had friends there, family, purpose. But the pandemic came and with it, the clear, overriding imperative to reunite our family and weather this together.
Joyce Millman Writes: Personal blog of Joyce Millman
Outside Baseball
Fox's new drama about a woman in Major League Baseball, 'Pitch' aims to tell an uplifting story of female empowerment. But is it realistic? In Pitch, Fox’s new drama series about the (fictional) first woman to play Major League Baseball, our first glimpse of the heroine is a voyeuristic glam shot from behind.
The New Republic
A Map of the Future: Bruce Springsteen’s “Darkness on the Edge of Town” at 30
(In 2008, the Friends of the Springsteen Collection at the Asbury Park Public Library asked me to write a piece for their website commemorating the 30th anniversary of “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” originally released June 2, 1978. Here is that piece as it appeared on the Friends website. Eventually, the piece was published with updates in 2012 in Eric Meola’s book “Streets of Fire: Bruce Springsteen in Photographs and Lyrics 1977-1979” (It/HarperCollins).
Joyce Millman Writes: Personal blog of Joyce Millman
MUSIC
I’m the Merciless Mirror in the Fitting Room of Macy’s and I Will Crush Your Soul
Welcome, Mortal Woman with the armload of bedazzled, bell-sleeved peasant blouses! Enter and be judged! Stand under the dank lighting in my Macy’s cubicle and bare your flaws to me in triplicate! For there shall always be flaws. An unexpected stomach pooch. A jiggling upper arm when you had been certain the weight training was working.
The Belladonna
HUMOR
Aretha forever
Let’s not speak of Aretha Franklin in the past tense. Let’s speak of her in eternals. The sun and the rain, the earth and the sky, love and faith, sorrow and perseverance. Aretha embodies all of those things and gives them voice, a rich, supple voice flowing with humanity. It’s among the two or three greatest voices popular music has ever known.
The Mix Tape: Personal blog of Joyce Millman
MUSIC
Daily Itinerary: How Rep. Maxine Waters Stays in Fighting Form
6:00am: Up and at ’em, Maxine! Time to get these 78-year-old bones moving! Trump’s ass isn’t gonna kick itself. 7:00am: House gym. Six miles on the bike, 15 minutes of jump rope, then I put on the gloves and do some heavy bag work. Got to get in shape for the fight of my life. Impeaching Trump is going to be tough, no doubt about that.
The Belladonna
HUMOR
We are family
When we last saw New Jersey Mafioso Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini), he and his wife Carmela (Edie Falco) and teenagers Meadow (Jamie Lynn Sigler) and A.J. (Robert Iler) were huddled around a table at the red-sauce Italian restaurant run by Tony's boyhood pal Artie (John Ventimiglia), taking refuge from a howling rainstorm and a power failure.
Salon.com
TV

About

Joyce Millman

Political satire and other funny stuff has appeared on McSweeney's, The Belladonna, Points in Case, Robot Butt and The Toast.

Blogging about music, TV and pop culture from a personal view at Joyce MillmanWrites

The backstory:

Boston Phoenix (1981-1987): Music critic, TV critic.

San Francisco Examiner (1987-1995): TV critic. Finalist for Pulitzer Prize in Criticism, 1989 and 1991.

Salon.com (1995-2001): Founding staff member, TV critic, assistant editor Mothers Who Think vertical.

Freelance pop cultural essayist (2001 - present). Work has appeared in print and online in the New York Times Sunday Arts & Leisure section, the Village Voice, L.A. Weekly, The New Republic, Variety and the Boston Phoenix.

Original essays appear in seven anthologies published by BenBella Books, including "Neptune Noir: Unauthorized Investigations into Veronica Mars", and "Flirting with Pride and Prejudice."

Contributed an original essay to Eric Meola's "Streets of Fire: Bruce Springsteen in Photographs and Lyrics 1977-1979" (HarperCollins, 2012).