Daedalus Howell researches the recherche near the epicenter where arts, society, and culture collide. This magazine is a record of his explorations.
This time of year many Gen X parents are making nostalgia-driven searches for A Charlie Brown Christmas, the animated special from 1965 that set the standard for producing seasonal affective disorder in children (FYI, it’s available on Apple TV+). If you happen to make it through the melancholic ode to holiday disillusionment and catch the […]
Remember when Nirvana played live on MTV Unplugged, but bassist Krist Novoselic looked like he was playing an electric bass? Yeah, that irked me too—for the past 27 years. I finally looked it up today—the internet is still a marvel in this regard—and learned Novoselic was actually playing a Guild B3OE semi-acoustic bass rented for […]
TV is not really TV anymore. It’s more like a video jukebox fed by the internet. It’s also one of the few remaining platforms on the internet that we can talk back to and only annoy the person next to us. Anything else shared online could get us digitally dogpiled, so do what my dad […]
As the saying goes, “If you remember the ’90s, you were there and bored.” That’s unless you were a reader of an inky supermarket tabloid that boasted headlines about the fabled “Bat Boy” and other “journalistic” meshugas that instantly turned your coffee table into a Ripley’s Believe it, Or Not exhibit. Well, believe it or not—it’s back: The Weekly World […]
James Bond just underwent a redemptive reckoning onscreen. The latest iteration of Superman is, as the New York Times reports, “Up, up and out of the closet.” Rebranding cultural icons seems all the rage. And not just for superheroes. Many public-facing entities have endeavored to refresh their image, some to fix longstanding cultural offenses—looking at you, […]