Okay, so you’re high. And you’ve got the munchies. And this is October, so there’s candy everywhere at the store. So you grab a bag of fun-sized fun, and you take it home to the buds with whom you share your bud. And you enjoy the candy, of course, but…
American Idol has been around for eight years and going on ten seasons. And really, anything has a natural life span, and television shows, for the most part, live theirs in close to dog years. Like Great Dane years. Which means, essentially, that American Idol is long in the tooth…
Granted, chili is something of a sacred thing — and the nature of that sacredness varies, depending on where you were brought up, and what your grandma ladled into a bowl. Still, there are some things that you can do to chili that seem like anathema, whether or not you…
A couple of years back, we covered some of TV’s worst theme songs, but the list was just too long not to revisit. In honor of the new TV season, let’s take a second look at more of the worst that TV theme songs have had to offer over the…
Television shows tend to be set on the coasts — in California or New York, usually. Anywhere else, and the show is often about that place as much as the characters: Miami in Miami Vice, Cleveland in The Drew Carey Show, or Cicely, Alaska, in Northern Exposure. So it is…
Some people are scared of Barbie and her seemingly anti-feminist position in pop culture. And those people are just plain terrified of Bratz dolls and their big-eyed whorishness. But some dolls… some dolls aren’t disturbing because of your social views, or for reasons having to do with the ways you…
Let’s be real for a moment: being a kid is dangerous business. You could swerve that two-wheeler into traffic, or fall out of that tree you’re climbing, or fly that kite into a power line. Just about everything that a kid does over the course of an average day is…
What’s for dinner? Whatever the answer, it’s probably got an ethnic origin–or a supposedly ethnic origin. Because many of the foreign foods that we all enjoy aren’t really very foreign at all. In other words, you can cross these ten dishes off your list, because, frankly, they’re all just as…
Marketing stuff to kids is pretty easy — which is why the government prevented tobacco companies from doing it — even subtly, supposedly accidentally — a few years back. McDonald’s Happy Meals are the latest to feel their knuckles rapped by this particular ruler — the obesity epidemic among kids…
As important as food is to the real world, there aren’t all that many foods unique to the fictional world…which might be a very good thing, considering the inherent dangers in these following fake-foods and drinks. Some dangers are slight, others more sinister, some plain disgusting. But in the end,…
Sometimes, even here in king-sized America, you just can’t eat the whole thing. Maybe it’s because you’re actually paying attention to portion control, or maybe your Mom still fixes meals to feed an entire farm crew who’s been toiling in the fields since before dawn. Either way, there will be…
Or ribs, or chicken, or fish, or steak, or any of the stuff that you normally think of when you consider what exactly to toss on the grill for the three-day weekend. If you’re limiting your grill to just hot dogs and ground beef, you’re just not optimizing your grill…
Sending your kid off to summer camp can feel pretty magical to parents — they get to have some fun, after all, and you don’t have to feel guilty about getting some long-overdue personal time. Maybe a short adults-only vacation, or just some quiet in the house instead of the…
Maybe you knew enough about Spider-Man not to embarrass yourself. And yeah, most folks know the basics of Batman. And seriously, even my grandma knows Superman well enough to carry on a decent conversation. But Iron Man? Even with the first movie under your belt, what with the fog of…
I don’t know who came up with the idea for this day. But seriously: genius. And why not celebrate it in a way that not only allows you to indulge your love of all things Star Wars, but also helps you identify who exactly is on your same Jedi-wavelength? Seriously,…
Kids’ shows have always had small jokes designed to go over the heads of the little ones and appeal to the parents in the audience. Or if not the parents, at least to the creative teams on the shows themselves, as they try to stave off serious depression after realizing…
Easter isn’t a holiday that’s rife with media and art devoted to it. There are few TV specials of which to speak. Save for Christian rock stations, no radio stations devote 24 hour coverage to Easter songs (which would pretty much amount to replaying “Easter Bonnet” and “Peter Cottontail” over…
Everyone has their least favorite Easter treat–you know, the stuff you find in your basket year after year despite never liking the stuff, never eating it, and even leaving ol’ Easter Bunny a note kindly suggesting he spend a little more time on the candy aisle next year, or risk…
NBC’s new show The Marriage Ref got a lot of promo time during the Olympics, which has more to do with the continuing power of Jerry Seinfeld than anything resembling real quality (although it deserves mentioning that host Tom Papa is both genial and funny, with a sort of a…
Soda, like most everything else in the world, has a lifespan. Some sodas live long and prosper, while others die and fade away (or, as is true of a few on this list, end up in the bargain section at Walmart). This list is devoted to those drinks that quenched…
There are foods we eat only out of sheer nostalgia. Foods that, like cigarettes, probably take a sliver of your life away every time you consume them. But really? Totally worth it. Not only because they taste (for the most part) like what you remember from childhood, but because eating…
Back when you were young, only taste mattered in terms of drink selection. Well, that and availability — i.e. what your Mom allowed you to have. But mainly it was taste — you weren’t thinking about caloric content, or artificial sweeteners, or the effects of too much caffeine on your…
