Next week, I turn 50 years old, completing a half-century of spinning around the sun. And I’ve noticed that many of the things that once shined bright in my youth have lost their luster. Many of the things that I valued and enjoyed—some of which I masochistically enjoyed—are no longer that important, or that much fun.
I never fathomed that I would teach George Orwell’s novel “1984” in a media course. Published in 1949, the novel certainly has its merits as a deeply imaginative work of dystopian fiction, but what could it possibly teach about our contemporary media landscape?
What I truly admired about these Romantic poets, however, was the fact that it didn’t seem like any of these dudes had to work real jobs. While Keats did train to be a surgeon, he died before he could practice medicine, and guys like Lord Byron didn’t have to put aside “Don Juan” to scrub dishes.
When I was 12 years old, my cousin and I were racing our bikes on the street in front of my aunt and uncle’s house. We were gliding, neck and neck, toward the finish line at the end of the curb, when my cousin pulled ahead, and my front tire clipped my cousin’s back tire, launching me over the handlebars, face first, onto the cement.
It took a glorified carnival barker and his billionaire buddies, led by one of the most soulless and reprehensible people on Planet Earth, putting our democracy in grave peril for me to realize that, other than voting and writing a few op-eds along the way, I have not given much to a democracy that has given me everything, mainly my freedoms.
Aside from being one of the most viewed annual sporting events worldwide, the Super Bowl is primarily a celebration of everything American—gluttony, debauchery, consumerism, violence.
While journalists were seldom recognized at restaurants, the literary landscape had also changed. With the smartphone assuming its role as the slavemaster for most Americans, fewer and fewer people now had the attention span necessary to sit down and read an actual book.
There is “something” about staring down the barrel of a half-century on Planet Earth that has set changes into motion for me.
The concept behind the performance of “High School Dropout,” developed by comedian and co-host Mike Dupont, was incredibly innovative and original.
Make a list of your goals for 2025. Know you’re unlikely to follow through with most of them; know the act is largely symbolic; know your ass is never waking up early to exercise.
‘Twas the night before Festivus, and all through the house, not a wallet was sighted, and I was losing my freaking mind.
Arguments in favor of identifying “Die Hard” as a Christmas movie include the film being set on Christmas Eve, during a Christmas party, where a group of terrorists take hostages in the Los Angeles skyscraper. Off-duty police officer McClane then takes on the terrorists, and the rest of the film follows the general three-act script of any action film to its conclusion.
In November, Netflix dropped director Jerry Ciccoritti’s “Hot Frosty”—such a fetchingly oxymoronic title—and this reviewer predicts that, for years to come, holiday audiences will be warming up to this tour-de-force film the moment after the Thanksgiving turkey hits the fridge.
To be honest, I’m not sure how I feel about the resurgence of the mustache. While I’m vehemently opposed to the revival of the mullet—which I shamelessly flaunted long after the trend originally passed—I’m ambivalent about the mustache.
For those of you who were too busy stuffing your gullets Thursday and may have missed the news, Vito the pug pulled off an epic upset at The Kennel Club in Philadelphia and was named “Best in Show,” the first pug to win the award since humans started broadcasting the competition in 2002.
Speaking of relatives, I’ve long wondered if luck—good or bad—might also be hereditary. To my knowledge, scientists have yet to isolate a “luck” gene, but I’m sure that we can all probably name a few families who seem to have an inordinate amount of luck—horseshoes up the keister—as well as some families who seem downright snakebitten.
In an attempt to preserve my liver and my mental well-being, I’ve decided to take a “time out” from any media reporting on Trump, or the imminent plans to exact Project 2025, or the apparently inevitable demise of democracy.
In my own attempt to make sense of this, I went for a long walk in the woods—maybe channeling my inner-Wordsworth—the day after the election. For some reason, the lyrics to Bruce Springsteen’s “Independence Day”—from his 1980 album “The River”—kept playing in my head.
