Yesterday marked the four-year anniversary of the death of one of my favorite musical artists.
Jun Seba, known professionally as “Nujabes,” was a Japanese DJ who combined melodies, blended notes, shaped sounds, and crafted music that I regard as profoundly special. He didn’t just make music I liked. It was more personal than that. Continue reading
I guess toy commercials have been targeting girls this way forever, but to be honest, I never really thought much about it until recently.
I record most of my favorite television shows on my DVR, so I usually get to speed through the commercials, which means I rarely see toy commercials. The only time I ever encounter them is when I’m watching recorded episodes of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that air on Nickelodeon.
When the first commercial break came up, I checked my phone instead of fastforwarding to where the show starts back. What I saw when I looked up from my phone was a commercial aimed at girls for some sort of “High School Monsters” dolls. They had huge heads, with giant eyes, but had slender, “shapely” bodies, all posed in somewhat provocative stances. It seemed a little… weird. And wrong. Continue reading
Something interesting happened when Facebook went from being a closed community for college students, and opened its doors to literally everyone, exposing our undergrad-only environment to the world.
Suddenly, we weren’t just a bunch of college kids with a secret realm all to ourselves. Now, our parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings and cousins (both young and old) were pouring into what had been an “underground haven” for university students around the country.
When it first happened, we were a little shocked. There was a general air of “What just happened?” as we all looked around with our mouths agape. We’d been found out, and now had to share this space with just about everyone we knew. And at first we didn’t know how to handle it. It was awkward. Everyone you knew suddenly had new insights into your life, and people began asking themselves, “Do I really want this person to see that? Is this post is going to confuse these people?” Continue reading
If you’re not an obsessive fanboy like I am, then you’ve probably not kept up with all the news surrounding the newest Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. It’s been the target of a colossal amount of scrutiny for more than four years, largely because of the Hollywood names associated with it.
Michael Bay, best known for directing the recent slew of Transformers movies, has a poor reputation among the geek elite. When his name is mentioned, a collective groan can be heard across the internet, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror. And while this new TMNT movie is not directed by Bay, he is credited as a producer, as his company, Platinum Dunes, is producing the film. Continue reading
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