“a brand new settlement composed of Hylians”

Economically, Maine and Jamaica are more similar than you realize—they both depend heavily on tourism dollars (and both are trying to move away from that imbalance because of how precarious it is for an economy to rely on tourism). If anything, I see Jamaica’s dependency on cruise ships as a cautionary tale for Maine…

Honestly, I have no horse in the pot race. I’ve never tried marijuana and, at 43, have no desire to start. What annoys me about marijuana is the amount of time, money, and effort that is put into trying to legalize/decriminalize something that no white person has ever had trouble getting and rarely goes to prison for…

Thank you for proving my point. Humans are terrible at stopping, thinking, and changing direction. I agree, this pandemic will be no different than previous and those to come because people would rather endure the misery they know than take a chance on a better world they don’t.

That is a wild oversimplification of the state of the world. The largest demo who die from COVID are obese, diabetic, and/or have high blood pressure. Is that because of China’s wet markets? Every respectable expert says widespread testing is the way out of this shutdown (and maybe could’ve prevented the measure being…

A pandemic is a good time for reflective introspection. How did we get here? What were we doing that caused this situation? How can we be doing things better? Humans are terrible at stopping, thinking, and changing direction. We have an opportunity right now because there is no “back to normal” after this. Things will…

People vacationed in the Caribbean before cruises were so ubiquitous; they’d continue to vacation there if cruises went away.

I just read “A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Boomers Betrayed America.” Everything you said tracks with the assessment in that book. The cruise industry is a perfect analogy for white Boomer America: oversized, invasive, entitled, indulgent, and leaving devastation in their wake.

They started letting cruises dock in Portland, ME, a few years back. The tourism uptick has been minimal. But then they leave dock and dump their waste in the Atlantic, damaging the lobster fishing grounds. Lobster being one of the reasons tourists come to Maine and an industry that employs a lot of people, there’s a…

The same gymnastics that were required to go on a cruise before the pandemic: “I heard that maybe they’re bad for the environment, but one cruise isn’t going to kill the planet and I just really want something and I’m unaccustomed to not getting a thing I want.”

I reject your reality and substitute my own. The Pop-Tarts of my youth were perfect!

I had this moment of, I don’t know, clarity? Introspection? The other day I went into the supermarket to buy frozen french fries. Half the frozen french fry section was empty and there were still a dozen different options to choose from. Something about that really put the American supermarket phenomenon into…

I recently ate Pop Tarts for the first time in maybe 20 years. They don’t put as much frosting on them as they used to. When I was a kid, the frosting went edge to edge; now there’s a good 1/2 inch of exposed, flavorless crust left over after you break one into four pieces and work from the middle to the side.…

There’s no conundrum. Having to vote for Joe Biden fucking sucks. And it sucks that we keep ending up in these “lesser of two evils” situations. But the awful reality is that we have to momentarily set aside this awful thing he allegedly did and vote for the one option who won’t continue to destroy the entire country…

I keep wondering if this will mean a return of more mid-budget movies. The multiplexes are now basically the home of the big budget tentpole action movies. But if the theaters can’t pack enough people in to warrant a $300 million budget and studios look to streaming for the majority of their revenue, will we get more…

“Hey, we got this Popeye movie we’re trying to make. Who should we get to direct it?”

I saw Return to Oz in the theater as a kid and don’t remember anything about it other than leaving the theater feeling confused and in need of a bath. I think it might’ve been what kept me away from other grimy 80s fantasy films like Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. I could also blame The Neverending Story for that. 80s…

Far more “offbeat” than Blank Check, which is basically a dime-a-dozen 90s kid wish fulfillment farce along the lines of Little Big League and Dunston Checks In.

If the criteria is “offbeat,” movies based on safe classics like Tuck Everlasting and Three Musketeers are disqualified. The only appropriate choice is Tron.

Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron. Tron.…