I knew I had a problem when I was convulsing on the bathroom floor, hunched over, holding my stomach in pain. I had rewatched a video of a chubby kid trying to do a backflip at least 20 times…
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As a society, we have lost the art of true music journalism. Big statement, I know, but I stand by it. Now we can sit here and discuss interviewers who are successful and known for their work, but successful doesn’t equal high-quality…
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Recently, I watched The Blair Witch Project. I had very low expectations of the movie, because people who’ve watched it before often called it “boring” and said “nothing happens until the last 10 minutes.” While things do heat up at the end of the movie, I would never describe it as boring…
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Any good marriage to live music demands the inevitable affair with Ticketmaster. Since 2021, I have been inching steadily closer to the milestone of 200 live musical performances, having personally attended shows ranging from King Crimson’s final tour, four Clairo concerts, 10 Phish concerts, two Tyler, The Creator concerts, and shamefully, Undertale LIVE and Machine Gun Kelly performances…
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We are now in the midst of autumn, and in my opinion, it couldn’t feel less like it. Instead of the changing leaves and the chill in the air bringing me the comfort and coziness it once did, it’s a reminder that time is continuing to march on. Each browning leaf that falls serves as a reminder that my time as a college student is almost up, and only the unknown stands before me…
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From 4th to 6th grade, I had the best teacher in the world: Ms. Carlson. She taught us about the corners of history that are too often left in the dust. From Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, we learned about Ida B. Wells and Cesar Chavez, diving deep into their lives and the movements they fought for…
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When it originally aired its first episode in April of 2020, Smiling Friends seemed like a breath of fresh air. A full first season from Adult Swim in January 2022 solidified the show as a hit, with a second season in 2024 and a third season premiering this fall…
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When I die I want my headstone to say I was Team Conrad. I need my future lineage to know I stood on the right side of history when it came to The Summer I Turned Pretty…
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This admiration for sad art has been present ever since my first memory of connecting to music when I was seven years old: I heard “Für Elise” playing on my mother’s music box, and gasped at how the simple melody tugged at my heartstrings. I felt a mix of emotions I didn’t even know the meaning of yet: gloominess, wistfulness, wonder, and angst…
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One night of doom scrolling on TikTok led me to a clip of Cabaret from the 1993 West End Revival. Admittedly, the clip first caught my eye because of a young Alan Cumming, but my focus quickly shifted once I became aware that someone in a gorilla costume was alongside him. I watched the clip through and was struck by the end at the last line delivered…
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A sitcom from 2004 might’ve helped a number of Nickelodeon-watchers survive junior high, but what about a survival guide to college? Post-grad? How about life? How about (as per Jaden Smith) – the socioeconomic state of the world right now!? This feels unfair, Ned! Where’s the survival guide for that…
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I think it would be fair to say that most of us remember the groundbreaking controversy from a few years ago, when it was outed that actor Armie Hammer, best known for Call Me By Your Name and The Lone Ranger, was allegedly into cannibalism. However, with a multitude of media pieces in recent years centralizing cannibalism as a plot point, I dare to ask an emboldened question: Do we, as consumers, find cannibalism sexy?…
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You’re the next best thing. The biggest and brightest. The world leers its ugly, piercing eyes towards you and for a moment, however brief, the stage is yours. You may land the trick, or fall flat on your face, or perhaps stand frozen in the headlights—but, no matter what happens, your moment will pass. Then the world is onto its next unfortunate fad. And you are the old forgotten thing. And no one is anyone.
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In the mixed-reviewed documentary Have A Good Trip: Adventures in Psychedelics, celebrities recount their wildest psychedelic experiences—some profound, but most ridiculous. What it fails to mention is the deeply political potential of acid…
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I didn't know my hair was curly until I was seventeen years old. Growing up, my mother did my hair the way she did hers: wash, brush, air dry. That worked well enough, until I started to go through puberty and my hair texture demanded its time in the spotlight…
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It’s a strange thing to step into a new country, thousands of miles from home, and find that the soundtrack to your travels sounds an awful lot like your daily walk to class. In a far-too-crowded club in Prague, my friends and I dance to I Love It by Icona Pop, Pitbull’s Hotel Room Service, and American oldies we ourselves
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The discussion of nepo babies has been on the rise when it comes to the entertainment industry. Now, whether you like them or not, they are having their own kind of takeover. Just in the past few months, some famously known nepo babies have been in the media. Lily-Rose Depp is a common example since her parents are Johnny Depp and…
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The series is 12 books expounding on the profound immorality of such a system, as well as criticizing the defense of “this is how things have always been done.” Hiccup has to fight against the established system of violence not with the iconic Toothless we know and love from the DreamWorks movies, but with an exceptionally disobedient dragon roughly the size of a Jack Russell Terrier…
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The term "pride and joy" has been used since the early 1800s when Sir Walter Scott used it in his poetry. These terms have evolved over the years, but I believe queer pride is deeply connected to joy. As a genderqueer person who is pansexual, I have been numbed to the fact that all queer representation in the media is depressing, tragic, and an excuse for representation. The issue can boil down to simple queerbaiting, which is a term for when writers tease, but never actually show, queer representation or joy.
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They were never pregnant. They have a miscarrige. They back out at the last minute. They become ill and die. They are forced to continue. They decide adoption would be a better fit. Television will do anything and everything to avoid actually depicting a character actively getting an abortion. Walking right up to the line, or rather the clinic door, before turning around and never discussing it again.
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