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In which I breathlessly and irrelevantly discuss Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell was profiled on 60 Minutes last night. My wife and I were trying to make dough at the time, and it needed about an hour to rise. I had just watched the obliteration of the Colts by the Cardinals, and 60… Continue Reading →

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Lena Dunham be damned, because the ‘guys’ of ‘Girls’ are pretty interesting too

The trailer for Season 3 of Girls (which comes back January 12th) is on YouTube today / embedded above, and cultural responses have rolled in from all corners of the Internet: for example, The Wire — which used to be called The Atlantic Wire, but… Continue Reading →

Mostly from a U.S. standpoint, what’s the biggest ‘where were you when…’ moment in history?

The 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination is tomorrow; I’m sure most of you potentially reading this knew that by now. I was watching Tom Brokaw on The Daily Show last night, and he made some good points regarding that moment in American… Continue Reading →

Jennifer Lawrence is the past, the present, and the future of entertainment

Hunger Games: Catching Fire comes out tomorrow at midnight, so The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has an article today entitled “Lawrence is Hollywood’s modern everywoman,” referencing, of course, Jennifer Lawrence. She’s the star of those films (the first one made about $692 million worldwide, and was… Continue Reading →

The world of infomercials is insanely interesting

I had insomnia for a while as a kid, so I spent some time watching infomercials. I didn’t really think about it a lot, but once in a while in my 20s I’d check out a few on YouTube, just… Continue Reading →

So, “selfie” is the Oxford Word of the Year for 2013. Thanks, Australia.

Yes, that happened — and according to Oxford, the decision was “with little if any argument.” Oxford had it as a ‘word on the radar’ back in June 2012 (the Oxford Dictionaries blog is surprisingly pretty interesting), but as they themselves… Continue Reading →

R. Kelly is probably deserving of a long-form New Yorker profile

The above clip is from last night’s Saturday Night Live; Lady Gaga was the host and musical guest, and she performed this jam “Do What U Want” from her new album (Artpop); the actual song features R. Kelly, who himself has… Continue Reading →