The first worldwide pandemic in 100 years revealed our weaknesses all over the world. While misguided and straight-up wrong information disseminated through some parts of the world, other countries acted fast to slow the spread of the virus. I traveled at the end of February and had a distinct impression that the virus was somewhere …
Continue reading “5 Countries That Totally Aced Their Coronavirus Responses”
The odds of scoring a role in a single movie or TV show are tiny. You stand a better chance of winning the lottery than finding consistent work as an actor, let alone fame. So it’s not surprising some of our favorite screen actors went on to traditional jobs post-fame. 10 Celebrities With Totally Normal …
This summer, Japanese beetles devastated my neighborhood. They eat flowers, leaves, trees; you name it–they’ve destroyed it. There are traps you can buy, which lure the Japanese beetles in with pheromones. The traps work almost too well. Within a few hours, they fill with hundreds of beetles. The plastic sacks hang in nearly every garden, …
Hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean runs from June through November. It’s half the year when giant storms sweep along the coast with high winds and heavy rainfall. As someone who’s grown up in the desert, fearing a hurricane wasn’t a thought until I saw the damage Katrina caused. The Category 5 storm destroyed New …
If there’s one spectacular thing to come out of the dumpster-fire of 2020, it’s the soaring adoptions at animal shelters. It’s no wonder because the best dog breed of all time will always be the rescue dog. But the American Kennel Club keeps data on all the rest and their popularity. If you’ve yet to …
Back when I was a naive suburban-dwelling teenager, I worked as a barista with a woman from Sandwich, Illinois. Having been nowhere and knowing nothing, I thought it must be the most whimsical place on Earth. Was every restaurant a sandwich shop? Did they have a town-wide sandwich holiday? Its Main Street has the requisite …
When Gene Roddenberry imagined Star Trek, it was a future in which scientists and explorers could jet across the world as warp speeds. In just moments, they could fly from one side of a solar system to another. But even in a future where traveling 2,000 times the speed of light is commonplace, the universe …
If you’re of a certain age, you can remember a time before reality TV. When writers, not producers, determined the course of events in a program. But when the Writers Guild of America went on strike, first in 1988 and again in 2007, networks discovered they didn’t even need writers to create content viewers would …
Are you getting ready for the second-wave double whammy of coronavirus and the flu this fall? Maybe you’re starting to feel a little disquieted in your urban center? Or, you’re just ready for a change of scenery and zip code? Maybe it’s time to head to a small town. If there’s one thing Netflix romcoms …
Do we love Tom Cruise or hate him? On the one hand, Top Gun, Mission Impossible, and Jack Reacher. But also, Scientology. His exes are like refugees emerging from a cult post-divorce. And his winning smile takes on a twinge of hysteria on talk shows. In a #MeToo world, everyone’s asking if it’s still possible …