Category: Culture

As I mentioned in my intro blurb for my songs of the year list, my listening habits weren’t exactly expansive this year. I tended to lean on a lot of the same albums and genres throughout the past 12 months, ...

For whatever reason, this 2023 list was the most difficult I’ve ever put together. And yet, it was also the easiest list for me to write. That might be because it’s also not a very adventurous list – it mainly ...

I’ve been compiling lists of my favorite songs of the year since at least 2013. For whatever reason, this 2023 list was the most difficult I’ve ever put together. Part of that is that my relationship to music has changed ...

One of my earliest memories is being home sick from school, watching Mothra vs. Godzilla on VHS. I don’t know why my mom chose that particular movie to rent for me that day (RIP West Coast Video), but it kicked ...

David Fincher’s The Killer opens up with the kind of scene one might expect from a movie about an international assassin. Our steely, unnamed lead (Michael Fassbender) waits for days in a gutted Paris building (later revealed to be a ...

The year was 2018, and the Oscars had a problem. Well, the Oscars always seem to have a problem, but this time they felt like they had a solution, too. Coming off of the least watched Oscars telecast in history, ...

We’re back! It’s the final episode of our Planet of the Apes season! One might think that a film titled War for the Planet of the Apes might be like a war movie. Mike Lovito calls it more of a ...

The evolution of Terrace Martin is anchored and centered around one consistent element and that’s simply musicality. From the blog era of rap to the multi-hyphenate music culture of 2023, there are two elements that make him stand out from ...

I go to a lot of shows alone. The short version as to why is that one, I no longer live near the people I would usually go to concerts with in the past; and two, I listen to more ...

In “all-american bitch,” the dynamic opening track of twenty-year-old pop phenom Olivia Rodrigo’s sophomore album GUTS, the former Disney Channel sneers to the listener that “I know my age, and I act like it.” It’s a line that sums up ...

I am a fierce defender for and advocate of my home state of New Jersey. I’ve heard all the jokes and I have rebuttals for all of them. But take a ride on NJ Transit’s Morris and Essex line from ...

The Houston rapper's followup to Astroworld is ambitious, if a little inconsistent

Guns don’t kill people, people kill people – or so goes a common phrase trotted out by those of us who are skeptical of gun control measures. But even though it’s usually invoked to argue that we should focus on ...

I wonder, sometimes, if I ask a little too much from art. Granted, “thinking too much about art” is what I’ve done for fun since I was about 14 and what I’ve strived to do professionally since I was about ...

In  “Cary & Brooke Go to an AIDS Play,” the fifth episode of the third and final season of Comedy Central/HBO Max/Max’s cult hit sitcom The Other Two, Cary Dubek (Drew Tarver) is desperate. A few episodes prior, he started ...

Matt Reeves, director of Cloverfield and The Batman, joins the Planet of the Apes franchise with this 2014 installment. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is without a doubt a new highpoint for the series. The amazing Andy Serkis ...

Rant: I purposefully waited to publish this article a week later to see the responses of the BET awards from cultural critics and how the audience responded.  One of the criticisms I saw again and again was that people were ...

Reboots are all the rage, or at least they were in 2011. Planet of the Apes gets another turn at the Reboot process with Rise of the Planet of the Apes. It’s a film that has aged remarkably well over ...

Despite what the Grammys and Twitter stan armies would have you believe, music is not a competition. Sure, it’s competitive in the sense that every industry is competitive, but there are no win/loss records, no championship titles, and no playoffs.  ...