Living a Purposeful Pop Culture Life
The first time I ever went first at a four-way stop I was 22. I remember it so clearly: it was an autumn zing of a day, the kind where the world just feels like one giant sigh of contentment. I sidled up to the four-way stop near my apartment… [Read More]
She Died of Secondhand Embarrassment
Spanish-speakers have a term for it: pena ajena. Much cleaner and snappier than English’s clunky “secondhand embarrassment” (a term cobbled together by laypeople, as it’s not even in the dictionary), pena ajena describes shame or embarrassment one might feel on behalf of someone else. It’s that latter part that’s the… [Read More]
The Stories We Tell About Our Pets
I have two cats. The older one, Lil, is a straight up broad. She is assertive, entitled, fiercely loyal, and, I suspect, on the lower end of the Autism spectrum. The younger one, Lucy, is a total dork. She sticks her tongue out when she concentrates and exhales sharply out… [Read More]
10 Things I Hate About Your Phone
1. There’s these neat things called folders. Have you heard of them? Maybe you haven’t, because judging by the 234 apps you have on 17 separate swipe screens, you are living under a folder-sized rock. Do your thumbs ever get tired from all that swiping? Do you ever have trouble… [Read More]
Email Newsletters Are Having a Moment
There is something decidedly old school about the intention and execution of podcasts—all timbre and narrative and toe-tapping theme songs—but their delivery is far from quaint. I wrote recently about what it feels like to live in a golden age of podcasts. It’s kind of this weird marriage of old… [Read More]
Different Books Should Be Read in Different Ways
Recommending books is an art that too few people have mastered, because it’s easy to ignore all of the moving pieces involved. Who are you recommending the book to? What are they going through, if anything, in their life right now? Is this book for a vacation, a palette cleanser,… [Read More]
I Don’t Follow Sports So I Watched ESPN for a Week
I have a handful of pop culture blindspots: theatre, comic books, video games, and sports. Ah, SPORTS! I mean, listen: I can rattle off the names of every player on the 1997 University of Arizona Wildcat Championship team (and what NBA team they ended up on), I can recognize and… [Read More]
The Many Different Types of Instagram Likes
I’ve never really considered myself an easy like on Instagram. I want you to earn that laborious little double tap, you know? I mean, unless you’re @harlowandsage, you better believe that I am putting in at least four seconds of thought before I decide whether or not to like your… [Read More]
This Is What It Feels Like to Live in a Golden Age of Audio
Before Serial (B.S.), I listened to a couple of podcasts: Pop Culture Happy Hour and Hollywood Prospectus. Though I think they are both excellent and I continue to listen to them every Friday and Tuesday, respectively, they are easy to drop in and out of; they don’t ask much of… [Read More]
Unpopular Opinion: HBO’s ‘Game of Thrones’ Sucks
Brace yourselves. A rare and extremely vitriolic opinion is coming. I think—and have thought since its premiere in 2011—that HBO’s exceedingly popular and critically acclaimed show Game of Thrones is, in a word, shitty. I am (or at least have been made to feel) very much alone in this opinion…. [Read More]
