It’s been a tough year to be a contrarian. It was just too hard to feel very strongly about anything. Sure, on a geopolitical scale the year was pretty momentous, particularly in the Middle East and in “occupied” city commons across the U.S. But for those of us who escape from the real issues of [...]

(NOTE: Don’t worry if you’re not caught up on THE WALKING DEAD. The following is SPOILER FREE!) Ah, the best laid plans…yadda yadda yadda. I had been trudging through this lumbering season of AMC’s THE WALKING DEAD confident that I could finally write off this show—a show I was never overly enamored with in the [...]

Happy Book Week! Here’s why you don’t have to read books anymore. I’m kidding, but only a little. Like many people who choose to write things for the Internet that exceed 140 characters, books are and have always been an important part of my life. Books are the ultimate comfort form of entertainment, because they [...]

A few weeks ago, some generous soul saw fit to bring in a box of extremely delicious buttermilk donuts to be shared by everyone who works in my office. Extremely delicious translates to heart clogging, gut expanding, sleep-inducing goodness. Some office mates sensibly took only small portions, cutting the donuts into pieces for a nibble. [...]

Breaking Bad is hands down the best show on television right now, and maybe the best ever. It certainly ranks up there. No show has been able to sustain such dramatic momentum and continuously improve from season to season quite so well, without devolving into a soap opera or throwing out random subplots. Most impressively, [...]

There is nothing quite so bittersweet as seeing time wear down the virility and effectiveness of the people we look up to in our lives. We see our grandparents and then our parents slow with age, and go from towering, irreproachable figures of strength in our lives to, well, human beings. This happens much more [...]

The point of Labor Day weekend has always flummoxed me. Why do we need a holiday weekend at the end of August? Presumably we’ve been taking our vacations sometime over this period, and enjoying those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer. Yet apparently we need a break after all of that, a break that completely [...]

As anyone with cable can attest, we’re currently in Renaissance of television, with some of the most insightful, original, and exciting storytelling ever produced not just for the small screen, but for any screen. Anyone who doesn’t get cable probably doesn’t watch television, since the most broadcast network fare is the exact opposite—bland, formulaic writing [...]

About a month ago, the video rental and streaming subscription service Netflix announced that it was nearly doubling its charges for its most popular subscription plan from $7.99 a month to $15.98. Upon hearing this news, we all went ballistic. I certainly did. I’ve been a loyal customer for years, and now they want to [...]

What is the one constant in life? It’s not friends and family, it’s not career and it’s not death (which technically would be the end of life, so hardly a constant). Don’t even bring up taxes—they’re always there, but there are plenty of ways to cheat on them or ignore them until the IRS comes [...]