THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS (ANNOTATED FOR HYPER-AWARENESS)
It was the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, which I immediately questioned as being hyperbole. A sleepless, annotated reconsideration of repetition, pop culture, and the quiet permission to stop optimizing the moment.
IN PRAISE OF THE SEASONAL CORPORATE TENDERNESS WE CALL “COMFORT”
The Starbucks Holiday Season isn’t about coffee, it’s about emotional survival. This is an ode to the Red Cups, and an annual ritual that just barely holds us together just long enough to reach the tepid consistency of January.
THE THANKSGIVING SIDES FANTASY DRAFT SCOUTING REPORT
This year’s Thanksgiving Combine analyzes every side dish with unearned confidence: high-ceiling starches, scheme-dependent greens, locker-room glue rolls, and the volatile brilliance of cranberry sauce. A mock-sporting event disguised as cultural anthropology.
THE MAGICAL SYNCHRONICITY OF BOB SEGER & MICHAEL JORDAN
Somewhere between Detroit and Chicago, God invented tempo. Michael Jordan supplied the footage; Bob Seger wrote the soundtrack. What happens when blue-collar gospel meets supernatural hang-time theology? Perfect rhythm. Brief transcendence. Maybe the truth.
FILM BROUGHT TO YOU BY COMING ATTRACTIONS (NOTES FROM THE JOURNAL OF CINEMATIC ANTICIPATION, VOL. 1)
Somewhere between TRL and TikTok, we stopped watching stories and started watching sizzles. Every scene is a pitch deck for a next scene, every emotion has a teaser. Cinema isn’t dead—it just learned how to scroll.
HOT ZONES: DISPATCHES FROM AMERICA’S PIZZA FRONT
From New York’s fold-and-run pragmatists to Chicago’s butter-lined, deep-dish fortresses, this is a dispatch from the American pizza front, where every region defends its crust like it’s a constitution.
MTV IS DEAD (AGAIN) ((OR IS IT?))
MTV didn’t die—it metastasized. The channel that invented cool taught us how to package it, post it, and overdose on it. Now, forty-four years later, we scroll through its descendants: feeds full of confessionals, countdowns, and chaos.
TOWARD A GENERAL PRACTICE OF POP-CULTURAL OVERTHINKING AS CANON
This is not an introduction. It’s a field manual for the faithful of overthinking—those who treat the Cheesecake Factory menu as scripture, Marvel as liturgy, and reruns as Homeric hymns. In a culture built from repetition, abundance, and absurdity, the only sacred act left is analysis itself. Welcome to the canon of recursion.