January 9th, 2026

Let's fuck shit up like Thomas Kinkade

Thomas Kinkade is an artist you've seen even if you don't know him. He makes vaguely religious paintings that are sold at Hobby Lobby before AI took over everything. He also overdosed on wine and valium. God is beautiful, god is everywhere and yet I tempt fate because when the abyss swallows me it will be the most horrific death I can impart on others. That's what it means to "fuck shit up like Thomas Kinkade."

I was thinking really hard about my percocet in my room listening to this album I'm reviewing (Grand Delusion by Coma Cinema) for the first time, spacing out and enjoying life, and it hit me that I was Thomas Kinkade. I made some shitty art. I made it for myself and tried to sell it and it never went anywhere. From the first song I had incredible buy in. I had a drink too. It's a concept album kind like Night of the Iguana, one of my favorite movies, though I think NotI is better than GD. It's about the fantastic and the lies we tell ourselves to keep living. It's about how we can't live without the lies. And of course, it's about lost love, god, drugs, and everything else the egoless use to identify themselves. I think it starts pretty strong but then dies out.

Sonically, it's a "bedroom rock" type album, whatever Bandcamp means by that. They have some chill twinkly guitar, maybe it could be like a slower emo reminiscent of American Football. It's slightly repetitive with some rather blunt crescendo. Lyrically, it's kind of mediocre. I think that's part of the charm. It's on the nose, it's stupid and it has no idea what to do about it. It feels something powerful and has no way of communicating it besides this... slithering mediocrity. Thomas Kinkade, we all forgive you.