Hello friends,

Recently, after a long hiatus, I began drawing again using Procreate on my iPad. I was an amateur artist for a long time, and have a minor in 2- dimensional art, but I fell off of it due to personal reasons a little more than a decade ago, so I'm super rusty. Art was something that used to bring me a lot of joy, and I'm hoping to improve on my skills and return to that joy now that I'm back at it.

Listen. I can't stop drawing Jimmy and Kim from Better Call Saul. I don't think I've ever been as invested in a fictional couple as I am with them. I don't know what it is about it, but I think part of it has to do with the fact that in Breaking Bad, Saul does not have a Kim. He seems to be on his own, miserable and busy sexually harassing his secretary, Francesca. When Better Call Saul started, I instantly liked the Kim character, but had a creeping sense of dread because her absence from Breaking Bad means that, at some point, her and Jimmy split paths. Whether or not she's dead, or just not in his life anymore, I'm not sure yet. And that makes me very anxious. I'm incredibly stressed about it. I love them, and I love their doomed relationship. So I keep drawing them. I can't stop drawing them.

I've always been very attached to fictional characters, especially when it comes to television and movies. I remember the NYPD Blue episode when Jimmy Smits' character, Bobby, dies. I was in my room, sobbing over it, when my father knocked on my bedroom door. He opened it, looked at me, and said, "You know these aren't actual people, right?"

And yeah I knew that Jimmy Smits is fine. I don't know what he's doing right now (probably sleeping in a big bed full of money), but he's probably relatively ok. I loved his character on NYPD Blue, and I was so moved to see how Dennis Franz's Sipowicz was suffering from the death of his friend and partner. It was really sad!

And I've talked often about seeing American Beauty in the theaters for the first time, sobbing over the ending, while my friend Brian awkwardly tried to console me. I know they're not real people, I know they're just characters written by writers, often to manipulate our emotions. Characters that resonate with us for whatever reason. I know they're not real, but I don't care. I like them, and I love them, because often they're better representations of real life people. Often, I find I can connect with them more. Fuck, there's even a 30 Rock episode that makes me cry (the Christmas episode where Jack realizes that his mother, Colleen, was sleeping with FAO Schwartz in order to get Christmas presents for her children: "You couldn't even see the tree").

And I will never forgive Netflix for not ending GLOW the way it should have ended, the way it deserved. I've already established that I love Marc Maron's character, and was very relieved to see him confirm that, in the script, yes, he and Alison Brie's character do end up together in the end. I would've like to see that, though.

Last week was the anniversary of Kurt Cobain's death, gone 28 years, one year longer than he was ever alive. I tweeted about how sometimes I think of what Nirvana meant to me, I think of the feeling I got when I first listened to them, the feeling I got when I was a super fan of theirs, how devastated I was when he died. Sometimes I try to re-create that feeling and fall short. Someday I'll write about how Nirvana meant everything to me, and I'm not really sure why. I am grateful that Kurt was alive, that I got to live in the same time as him, that he spoke to me in a way that no one else had.

Pop culture means different things to different people, all of it valid, all of it important. In this issue you'll find about 40 features from contributors who set out to define what pop culture means to them in their own way. From Valley Girl to James Bond to Romper Stomper, all avenues of pop culture are explored in this very issue, our biggest issue of the year, and our most favorite. I hope that you will read this issue and find something that speaks to you in a way that Kurt Cobain once spoke to me. Perhaps these writers and artists will be their own contribution to the pop culture landscape that is your life. I thank each and every one of them for taking the time to send us something, and I thank each and everyone of our submitters who weren't chosen for this issue. We had to make some extremely hard passes, as we do every year, and it never gets easier. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

I also want to thank our staff: Chris and Matt, Sean, Gabriel, Joey and Jeanne, Ashley and Ramona, and our returning cover artist Alex, who you may remember when his simian sensation Mr. Butterchips lived in our pages before moving on. This is the issue that makes me grateful the most for a staff that puts so much dedication and time into each issue as possible. They all work very hard on this issue, and I want to thank them immensely. Thank you thank you thank you.

As for Drunk Monkeys itself, we will reopen for submissions next week through the end of May. We're catching up on our in progress subs, so hold on tight. We still have up to a one year wait for fiction and poetry publication after acceptance, and I apologize for that delay, as usual. Thank you for your patience and your belief in us as a journal.

Moving forward this year, I hope that you will keep us in mind when you write your pop culture inspired work. We always take pop culture submissions; they're not just dedicated to the April issue. I hope if you stumble across an episode of television you think is perfect, or a movie that everyone hates but you love, you'll think of us when you want to write about it. We could not be who we are without you.

Love always,

KCH