“Saturday Night Live” recently did a sketch that mocked Kanye West’s latest awards show-related apology, which came two and a half weeks after Kanye rose in protest at the Grammys when alt-rock legend Beck beat out R&B star Beyoncé for […]
Tag: brett yates
Generation Y
Going to the movies at the “Everything Store”
What do you do when you’ve already watched all the good movies on Netflix Instant? Reevaluate your life, maybe? No, you move on to the digital movie library at Amazon Instant Video. Like Netflix, Amazon.com offers a subscription service for […]
Column
Adnan’s appeal (legal and otherwise)
Nearly four months after the premiere of “Serial,” I finally experienced the cultural phenomenon that was Sarah Koenig’s murder-mystery podcast. A spinoff from NPR’s “This American Life,” Koenig’s project was a 12-episode audio program that reexamined the 1999 killing of […]
Column
The beer that men buy
One of several interesting aspects of Budweiser’s schizophrenic 2015 Super Bowl commercial—not the one with the puppy, the other one: the anti-microbrew ad that characterized craft beer drinkers as effete posers while asserting the unfussy superiority of plain old Bud […]
Column
Beer war: Vermont vs. Oregon
It is well-known that Vermont produces some of the best beer in the universe. With no out-of-state distribution, the Waterbury-born IPA Heady Topper (by The Alchemist) has maintained its place as the top-ranked beer in the world on the popular […]
Column
Gen-Y: Oscar, the undecided voter
By Brett Yates A popular Fox News meme is the notion that the American entertainment industry (to which Fox News itself, as a serious journalistic enterprise, of course does not belong) is outrageously, disgustingly liberal in its politics. This may […]
Column
Gen-Y: Kanye and the Beatle
By Brett Yates At the dawn of the New Year, just moments after the ball dropped in Times Square, Kanye West unexpectedly gifted the world with a new song called “Only One”—and the world paid attention. The song was noteworthy […]
Column
Gen-Y: The Vermont Bowl
By Brett Yates Now is the time of year when one cannot glance at a TV inside a restaurant or bar (the sort of restaurant or bar that never changes the channel from ESPN, I mean) without encountering a college […]
Column
Gen-Y: The New Year’s Eve movie
By Brett Yates The “Christmas movie” represents a treasured cinematic subgenre with well-known iconography and an established array of tropes. It’s a distinct phenomenon, serving a distinct function: to bolster the idea of an entire ritualistic “holiday season” of consumer […]
Column
The top ten videos of 2014
Last week, YouTube released its annual (I assume) list of the ten most viewed videos of the year. Each of the videos therein received tens—if not hundreds—of millions of plays in 2014, which makes the almost total banality of the […]