Millennials didn’t kill beer. Gen X killed beer when every dude with a passing understanding of basic chemistry and the tall dollars he made after five years in the tech industry decided to open a craft brewery solely to concoct the most rancid IPA hop-bomb they could come up with. I’m Gen X and I used to enjoy beer…

There was an article over on The Takeout the other day that was like “What are you looking forward to after this is over?” Most comments were “hug my mom” or “go to my bar” or “take a trip.” I didn’t want to Debbie Downer everyone there, but all I could think was “What am I looking forward to after this? The…

My recent realization: When all this is over, I’m going to be considered Upper Middle Class and my life won’t have changed a bit. Right now, I have a stable job that pays just enough for me to cover my utilities, my mortgage, daycare, and my debt payments with a little left over for some cheap takeout food and an…

Back in the 80s we called them “spokesmodels” and they competed on Star Search. Competed for what, I don’t know, because I can’t name a single winner who went on to anything.

It’s ok to be bored sometimes. Life is filled with boring things. They’re what help us appreciate the interesting stuff even more. It’s like why immortality would make life meaningless—part of what makes something valuable is its rarity.

As a former production editor at several of the largest publishers in the world, I can tell you for a fact that publishers do not fact check memoirs. The expectation is that any fact checking has been done by the writer. This is why memoirs are about as useful as historical documents as movies “based on a true story.”

Maybe I’m being overly sensitive, but I was just on a conference call and the chair of the group ended with “So how is everybody doing with this? Everyone’s fine, right?” And the phrasing just seemed to discourage anyone from admitting that, no, we’re not all fine. Unsurprisingly, everyone said they were doing ok.…

But does the 60 days forbearance count toward the total amount of forbearance you’re allowed over the life of the loan? I’ve had to take a forbearance a couple times over the years and there is a limit. I wouldn’t put it past Trump to act like he’s giving us something we already have.

After 9/11 we were told to go shopping or the terrorists win. So the last time we had a national crisis, we were made to believe our consumerism and materialism was the solution. And now we have another crisis. Of course we’re going to act this way. People need to be led. Unfortunately, in times of real crisis, we’ve…

You know one type of anxiety I’m not seeing get any coverage: 9/11 PTSD. I lived in NYC then and worked in Times Square. 18 years and I never made a big deal about that day. Yesterday, I was in a team meeting with coworkers (I live in Maine now) about the impending closing of our office and said “The only thing I can…

Would that it were so. I work in marketing in the corporate services industry and the realization by the partners that they’re going to make less money has them already looking around for ways to trim. My boss told my team that we need to use this time to make Marketing indispensable because our jobs may be on the…

Trump is horrible, but there’s lots of blame to go around. I’d like to put some on George W. Bush. The last time the US was presented with a test even close to this level, rather than ask Americans to sacrifice even a little, we were told to go shopping, to indulge our consumer urges, and maintain our unexamined…

They told him his grandpa went to live on a farm upstate and he thinks Pappy Friedrich is still there. I hope gramps gets to play with my dog who went to live there in 1987.

Who paraphrased it from a longer quote from Theodore Parker.

The iPhone has 3 cameras and Night Vision now. Disney+ means I can go right from watching a Star Wars movie to a Marvel movie without changing apps. DoorDash will bring me food from any restaurant in my area, including the ones that didn’t use to deliver. Siri lets me send text messages without having to type and to…

I’m a far Left socialist, but I’m also a pragmatist. None of the candidates is progressive enough by my standards, but I also realize someone like me would never be elected. Warren represents enough of a progressive platform that I think she could have moved this country a little bit forward. Not enough, but I’ll take…

Obama liked to use the quote: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I don’t think this is true. I think the arc of the universe bends towards comfort. The one constant you can say about human civilization is that it’s always more comfortable to be alive today than it was yesterday. And…

Elizabeth Warren: She understood this election and this country has to be more than just “Not Trump.” She had ambitious ideas and detailed plans that don’t fit well in a sound byte and yet was still one of the best speakers and debaters in the bunch. She had experience and education and compassion. She had my vote…

I don’t necessarily agree that it’s better, but the common argument I’ve seen is that Gremlins 2 is a satiric deconstruction of Gremlins 1. Dante was philosophically opposed to making a sequel but forced somehow by the studio to make it. So he decided to give a big middle-finger to the studio and infuse the film with…

When I taught college around 2009-2015, I had many, many freshman assure me that “racism isn’t really a thing with our generation.” Most of them would be the age of the scumbags in that picture when it was taken.