Music Genres in the 1990s
They were playing 1980s “hair metal” at the coffee shop recently: bands like Guns ‘n Roses and Mötley Crüe. Then all of a sudden, I heard the opening riffs of Nirvana’s “About a Girl”....
Category: Entertainment
Essays on books, movies, television, music, video games and other forms of entertainment
Big Sports and the Cable TV Bubble
In economics, a “bubble” occurs when when something gets wildly overvalued. Its value increases to ridiculous amounts, until people realize what’s going on. Then the bubble bursts. This has happened many times throughout history,...
The People’s Almanac and Book of Lists
I’ve always been a big fan of trivia and random facts, as the eclectic nature of this blog will attest. Nowadays I get most of my random trivia from the Internet, sites like Cracked...
The Problem with Prequels
We live in an age of fictional universes. It’s no longer cool to write a self-contained story. Instead we like to geek out at extended franchises, like the Star Wars or Marvel universes. Even...
The Great Videos of “The Great War”
There was a time in the early 2000s where history documentaries were few and far between. The History Channel, once a haven for history buffs, moved to showing reality shows. For a while, there...
The Formulaic Comforts of HGTV
I grew up on a steady diet of This Old House, but since that’s only on every so often, I settle instead on HGTV. I watch it on the treadmill at the gym, and...
Getting in Shape with Pokémon Go
“That’s so last summer,” said one of my friends when I mentioned Pokémon Go. “I can’t believe you’re still playing that.” That seems to be a lot of people’s reaction, in fact. When the...
The Matrix Rebooted
Back at the turn of the century, The Matrix was the coolest thing in sci-fi. I was a fan of the movie, like so many others. But 16 years later, the movie and its...
More Interesting YouTube Channels
I watched a lot of YouTube during my unemployment, and I discovered a lot of cool YouTube channels. I love YouTube channels that are educational but entertaining, channels that fill the role abandoned by...
The Plants of Jurassic Park
I love Jurassic Park (especially the first one), and I’ve watched it more times than I care to remember. But up until recently, I didn’t notice a major plot hole in the series. Plants....
