Weird takes on pop culture, served fresh daily.
I handed my voice assistant 30 days of unfettered access to my dating apps, playlists, and 2 AM search history, then asked it to grade my love life like a quarterly earnings call. The numbers were brutal. The ROI on my dignity was worse.
Every American road trip has a villain, and it's never the traffic — it's the brown sign promising a mystery cave 12 miles ahead. I ranked the roadside attractions of my childhood by how badly I wanted to stage a kidnapping to get out of them.
The DMV has never once asked me to 'please wait to be seated,' but make no mistake — I am being seated. I spent a season treating public sector waiting rooms like a food critic treats tasting menus, and the results are in.
Somebody had to hold the Daily Planet accountable, and apparently that somebody is me, a fictional retired J-school professor with a red pen and zero remaining stakes. Below, the papers of television and film get the peer review they never asked for.
Every 'In a world...' trailer, every museum exhibit about tidal pools, every safety spiel before the log flume — I'm now convinced it's the same man, and he is everywhere. Come with me as I build a tournament bracket to crown the true Unofficial Voice of America.
Every award show season, I get a little wistful that nobody hands out trophies for the stuff I'm actually good at. So I wrote acceptance speeches for the Emmys of Ordinary Existence, and yes, I thank my fifth grade teacher in all of them.
I treated my group chat like a fantasy football league, complete with a draft, scoring system, and mid-season power rankings. The commissioner's report is in, and frankly, half the roster is requesting a release.
I spent an entire billing cycle on hold with America's biggest utility companies, and I have notes. Mostly about the saxophone. Here is my track-by-track review of the year's most unwillingly listened-to album.
My therapist suggested journaling about my past. She did not specify that 'the past' included a full staff of imaginary companions I terminated without severance. So I did what any chronically online adult would do: I reviewed them. Formally. With stars.
Disaster movies require gravitas, sweat, and the ability to yell at a monitor. Sitcom actors require a laugh track and a coffee shop booth. I ran the numbers anyway, and some of these picks might actually save us.
Some people carry stress. I carry thirty years of regional car dealership jingles, fully intact, note for note. A board-certified nostalgia exam of the ads that will outlive us all.
I spent an evening logging into accounts I haven't touched since the Bush administration, and what I found was worse than I feared. A museum-quality exhibition of my worst impulses, rated on cringe, nostalgia, and job-interview lethality.
If a hurricane was bearing down on my zip code, which fictional news anchor would I actually listen to? I ranked them all, from 'immediately grabbing the go-bag' to 'this man once read a fire warning as a segue into sports.'
We ran corporate America's most beloved (and unhinged) restaurant mascots through a hypothetical compliance review, and the legal exposure is staggering. Ronald McDonald, we need to talk about your performance. And your shoes.
Streaming killed the concept of a 'fake band,' because technically every one of them could drop a single at midnight. We ran the numbers on which fictional acts would actually generate revenue — and which ones would be a tax write-off.
For thirty years, TV's cashiers, stockboys, and 'weird regulars' have absorbed our protagonists' chaos without thanks. We filed the formal complaint the Screen Extras Guild was too fictional to write.
We ran decades of beloved 'very special episodes' through a modern HR compliance review, and the results are catastrophic. One episode was so bad the only appropriate punishment was dissolving the entire company.
Algorithms spend billions trying to predict what consumers want, but a singing chihuahua from 1997 beat them all. A tribute to the ad jingles that never left, plus one writer's failed attempt to evict 1-800-COLLECT after thirty years.
Television's most beloved characters have been running deeply unlicensed food operations for decades, and nobody has ever asked the obvious questions. We did. We rated every sketchy side gig on legality, Yelp survivability, and estimated health inspector response time.
Six hours of 3 a.m. television ads taught me more about American consumer psychology than any marketing class. Here's what happens to your brain when the only witnesses to your insomnia are testimonials from a man named Skeptical Steve.