Briefly, Anyway — I’ve been procrastinating on doing one of these for long enough, so here goes. My name is Ben and I’m a 26-year-old writer living in Philadelphia. I love to write. Some of the authors that have had the greatest impression on me are Tom Robbins, Khaled Hosseini, Sam Esmail, Vince…

And the value of living in the moment — The year is 2020 and it’s Thanksgiving day. It’s a crisp, bright, and vibrant fall and the politics of a contentious year are lingering thick in the air. Political signs still stubbornly litter lawns beneath the canopies of Pennsylvania trees. Maples, oaks, and dogwoods are…

Cruise control, learning to type, and exploring a boundless world with a slap-in-the-face ease — I bought my Ford Focus for a bargain only a few months before a pandemic swept its way across the world. A mere few weeks after I first heard the word “Corona,” the car’s value practically tripled overnight. It had been a generous deal for even pre-pangolin-borne illness prices. It…

a life within the cloud — When my dog chewed up the 4MB memory card for my Nintendo GameCube, I thought it was the end of the world. But fortunately, the save files that it held lived to see another day. In fact, they’re still living now — dusty and defeated in the bottom of a…

Adam Sandler’s spellbinding swan (ladybug?) song — Quietly released in 2023, the straight-to-Vudu reboot of the 1989 classic, Honey, I Shrunk The Kids, is a movie some will claim never needed to exist. …

The tale of a stapler, his two unlikely calligraphic companions, and the journey destined to define a generation — “Do you ever think that there’s something more?” “Damn it. Here goes Gerald again with the needless philosophizing. If you don’t s — ” “Hold on, Rodney, let him speak,” a third voice emerged from across the desk. He had a square, toothy smile atop a long stiff body. Rodney…

A children’s TV show done right — Perhaps no show has ever explored the inexhaustible imagination of early childhood as expertly as Rugrats. Though I didn’t quite grasp what made it so special in those early years I spent watching it, it’s not difficult to see what children would find so enthralling in these whimsical, diapered dreamscapes. …

Maybe I was already an old soul by age five — The year is 2001 and my parents and I are staying in our family’s commodious little cabin on a quiet street of a sedated lakeside town. The exterior is beige, the windows are a worn red with paint chipping from the sills, and the humble little structure stands in a…

The multiverse is confusing but I don’t care — Sometimes, the reception of new Marvel movies and TV shows can feel almost arbitrary. I can’t help but see something strange in the way The Marvels has been panned while Loki has received near-universal acclaim. It seems that the same critics leveling charges of convolution against The Marvels are turning…