Every year feels longer than the last—a necessary side effect of age, or simply the slow, unstoppable march of time speeding up as we hurtle towards the end of life. There will be more beautiful blogs in 2020, but now is the time for reflection. Here’s what we wrote that we loved, from our hearts to your brains.
Everything Burns
I wrote this in the car while my husband and I drove through a cloud of wildfire smoke, which was cathartic and also hellish. The experience changed me completely, and in writing through it, I came to be at peace with my own anxieties about death and living through the apocalypse. This is the new world, bitch—and I’m gonna fight for it!—Joan Summers
The Last Popeye’s Chicken Sandwich in America
Sometimes it’s nice to have a space to work out my own personal feelings of nihilism, but it is especially nice when I can funnel that nihilism into a rather long meditation on viral chicken sandwiches and hype. Everyone dies eventually and don’t you ever forget it. —Megan Reynolds
Charly Bliss’s Ecstatic ‘Chatroom’ Is Rage Therapy Through Pop Music
I don’t enjoy blogging, or anything really, but I enjoyed this conversation with Charly Bliss frontwoman Eva Hendricks. —Maria Sherman
Actors Who Are Bad at Acting
Some blogs just work well as sociological experiments, and this was one of them. —Clover Hope
‘How Many Stories Can You Write About Rape’: 20 Years of Law & Order SVU
I got to interview both ADAs Alex Cabot AND Casey Novak for this story. What’s not to love? – Hazel Cills
I Spent a Week Interrogating My Dislike of Pete Buttigieg and These Are My Findings
Of course I will vote for him if he’s the eventual nominee, but please know that this blog is how I feel about Mayor Pete, a weenie who is not to be trusted. —Esther Wang
Katya and Trixie Mattel Walked a Mile of Red Carpet to Speak to Jezebel
They say never meet your heroes, and now I know why because no moment will ever match the two minutes I looked Katya and Trixie in the eye makeup. —Emily Alford
Paula Abdul Keeps Talking About Surviving a Plane Crash for Which No Record Exists
Do you know that I watched every single interview that she did this year and no one asked about this? Not Andy Cohen, not Wendy Williams. What the fuck? Wake up, people! The truth is out there and I can only do so much over here in Blogville. Are you with me or are we just going to let her run around talking about this for the rest of our lives? (Who am I kidding? I’d be totally fine with that. It’s a lot of fun.) —Rich Juzwiak
Why Are Men at the Gym Wearing Dick Towels? Jezebel Investigates
Sure, yes, I did much more important pieces of investigative journalism this year. But dick towels! DICK TOWELS. Nothing beats going long and hard on such a dumb-ass topic. (Except for Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson tweeting at you about it.)—Tracy Clark-Flory
‘Soulful Vanilla Child’: When Pink Was Black
During the most nightmarish summer of my life, this freaky piece about Pink’s early career and racial ambiguity became my favorite form of escapism. I initially thought this was just going to be a goofy musing about how I thought Pink was black when she first hit the scene (in my defense, I was nine-years-old). But it quickly turned into a deep dive of how Pink, her record label, the media, and audiences responded to her adoption—and eventual abandoning—of black musical stylings and aesthetics. I hope this piece acted as less of a fiery indictment on Pink and more of an odd aughts time capsule, a throwback to a time when Pink could rock cornrows and speak in a blaccent with nary an uproar. —Ashley Reese