We’re getting into the season of summer stock, theater festivals, and outdoor Shakespeare performances: from now until the end of August, someone between here and California will always be doing “Oklahoma!” or “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” I am, anachronously, a […]
Tag: Generation Y
Subtle dangers of lower-case letters
Have you noticed that, in national news articles, reporters increasingly tend to quote statements that emerge from the Twitter pages—rather than the actual mouths—of public figures? I’m not writing to complain about this. Twitter is a popular medium for trivial […]
My girlfriend is a doctor
Like all serious literary artists, I exist within a near-constant state of writer’s block and often have to consult other people for ideas. When I ask my girlfriend Quinn what I should write about for my column, she always has […]
Visiting Sam
I took a field trip last week to the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston to see the famed Samuel Adams brewery. I was in the city anyway, and it felt like an important beer-lover’s pilgrimage that I ought to make […]
The revenge of the victors
Before you head to the multiplex to witness what many expect to be the summer’s biggest blockbuster—“Avengers: Age of Ultron,” which comes out on May 1—you may want to ask yourself one question: what, exactly, are Marvel’s “Avengers” avenging? The […]
A guide to supermarket sushi in Rutland
What exactly is the state of sushi in American culture? Once the most cutting-edge, exotic style of foreign cuisine to reach American shores, it now sits humbly within mass-produced plastic trays at virtually every large supermarket in America. Today, “California […]
Choosing beauty
For more than a decade, the soap company Dove has sought to subvert unrealistic mainstream beauty standards by encouraging women of all shapes, sizes, and colors to love their bodies. The latest ad in the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty […]
The next video
Have you noticed that new feature on YouTube where, once you’ve finished watching a video, a 10-second countdown begins, after which a new video of YouTube’s choosing automatically starts? This audience-retention stratagem was introduced experimentally late last year for randomly […]
Whom to love in March
If you’re like me, you never watch regular-season college basketball, and then when the NCAA tournament rolls around and nobody can talk about anything else, you have to root arbitrarily for certain teams and against others, since you have no […]
In art, the lines are always blurry
In the immediate aftermath of the courtroom verdict that awarded $7.4 million of the profits from the 2013 hit “Blurred Lines” to the family of Marvin Gaye (whose 1977 single “Got to Give It Up” was allegedly plagiarized), two distinct […]