Life in the eighth grade just wasn’t easy. I don’t allow my present mind to flutter back to those days all that often, but every now and again a song will come on the radio and before I can even stop it from happening, I find myself conjuring up terrifying images of the unflattering short haircut I was talked into getting by friends I now believe might really have been very stealth enemies. It was a look defined by the kind of uncontrollable frizz that could have potentially toppled an empire and it was smack dab on top of the head of a girl whose self-esteem was already quaking due to the braces plastered across her teeth and not nearly enough Champion sweatshirts hanging in her closet. It was a rough time and it was made exponentially more difficult the day my mother announced that she was marrying a man I knew full well was a putz. For the purposes of this little tale, I am going to call him Bill – because that’s his … Continue reading →

There comes a point during each and every year when the leaves turn from a bold green into a way less vibrant shade of dark yellow, when Oreos, M&Ms, ice cream, and lattes become available in pumpkin spice, and everyone in the vicinity begins to smell vaguely of nutmeg. The sun sets a bit earlier each evening and I fall asleep pondering the age-old question of exactly when I’m supposed to break out my boots or if I should continue to wear sandals while hoping my fake tan is continuing to fool anyone who isn’t blind.

It’s the time when the networks release their newest shows after hyping them nonstop for months and it’s also the time when I’m afraid to watch any of them because I’m reluctant to get hooked on another show, lest the day come when I choose to never again leave my house because I’ve become too emotionally attached to my twelve remotes. It’s the time of year when all of my favorite candy begins to appear in what some marketing … Continue reading →

Like anyone with a hint of a pulse and a semi-decent attention span, I was quickly drawn into the first season of Mr. Robot. Even the commercials for the show were intriguing; they gave away almost nothing about what the eventual plot turned out to be, but there was a style to them that I responded to immediately. The show looked like it was going to be gritty, like it had been shot by some genius in 1973 before the studio system decided to sign him to a binding contract and then required that he trade in his testicles and his taste for some pure mainstream appeal that came with pure mainstream profit.

Only two minutes into the pilot, Mr. Robot managed to remind me of Taxi Driver and Fight Club in terms of having an unreliable but charismatic antihero protagonist and the lush wide shots, off-kilter pacing, and Elliot’s voiceover that came out like a drug-numbed drone settled deep within my head. I focused on the characters and their interactions and I was … Continue reading →