Categories
podcasts

My Current Podcasts

Everyone is into podcasts these days. Here’s a common conversation I have had. A: “So, I was in the car listening to a podcast-” B: “Wait, you listen to podcasts? Me too!” A: “Really, what podcasts do you listen to?” As much as I enjoy them myself, I don’t think it is unique or surprising […]

Categories
movies

Avengers: Infinity War Reaction

I had originally planned to write a movie review, but frankly, my opinion doesn’t really matter. You were either stoked and already saw it, or you don’t care and will not be convinced by me to go. Instead, I will provide my spoiler-filled thoughts to the movie covering morality, death, and cinematic determinism, but mostly just […]

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movies

Rewatching the MCU Phase 2

The marathon continues! Here are my hot takes on Phase 2 of the MCU. Of course, there are spoilers everywhere, not only for the movie mentioned but also for other MCU movies. Beware. Iron Man 3 (2013) – 5/5 I like this movie more than consensus, though I’m not sure why. I liked the twists […]

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movies

Rewatching the MCU Phase 1

In anticipation of Avengers: Infinity War, Julie and I have been rewatching all of the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies. Since we started late, we started by needing to watch a movie roughly every two or three days, which is way faster than my typical screen viewing, which is probably a movie every two or three weeks […]

Categories
reading

Discarding Anything That Didn’t “Spark Joy”: 8 Months Later

I’m in a book club called “Big Yak Mountain,” and we don’t read anything in particular. We’re 43 books in, and have read books from Ready Player One, which is going to be a Spielberg movie soon, to Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem, which is definitely not coming to theaters near you. Some are thought-provoking. Others are mindless. Many […]

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reading

Why I’m Not Sentimental About Books

I discovered over the past month that many bloggers write an annual “Books I Read Last Year” post. Anecdotally, this might in fact be the only post that many bloggers write for the entire year. Although I will tease them for not writing more often, I can’t make fun of them for their reading habit […]

Categories
games personal reading

My Favorite Things (with Evidence)

People love to share their favorite things. They write gift guides. They sing songs about them. They form committees to publish lists. They will bore you endlessly at parties. However, most of that is just talk. To really know what someone’s favorite things are, they need to put their money where their mouth is: what […]

Categories
television

A Tale of Two Treks

Olympus Has Fallen and White House Down. Antz and A Bug’s Life. 30 Rock and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Sometimes 2 movies or TV shows with the same premise are released at the same time. Some people say that it’s the result of the zeitgeist. I believe that they are usually a coincidence since there is so much […]

Categories
reading

My Life on a News Diet

Like many liberals, the last presidential election really forced me to think about my own role as an American citizen. In the month or two afterwards, I ended up writing a list of over 50 things that I could do to make this a better country. Of that, I ended up actually doing somewhere around […]

Categories
movies

Rewatching Star Wars as Movies

(Author’s note: there are really minor spoilers of the original and prequel trilogy, but there are no spoilers for Rogue One in the blog post ahead) I was a huge Star Wars as a kid. I first encountered it in 1st or 2nd grade when I checked out a Star Wars juvenile paperback from the library and […]