Introducing … Movie Nights! (Though Somehow That Seems Like a Familiar Name)
A couple of weeks ago, online journalist/blogger Martyn Wendall Jones of Christ & Pop Culture shared what he called a “found poem” composed entirely of lines from Plugged In movie reviews. Here’s an excerpt: John is injected with a drug that renders him unconscious.A small group of twentysomethings seems to be high.We see the hole in […]
Something Old, Something New (And Nothing at All That’s Blue)
Here’s something most of us never talk much about: all the stuff that’s quietly going away. It might be dirt roads in your neighborhood or the grass downtown. It might be wristwatches or monocles (although that latter bit of eyewear is said to be, amazingly, catching on again among the hipsters these days). It might […]
Thoughts on Life’s Tragedies, Mysteries and Dignity as We Grieve for Robin Williams
I’m missing Robin Williams today. We all are here at Plugged In. We’ve talked of little else this morning. Odd, in a way, since none of us have ever met him personally. Not odd, though, since all of us have “interacted” with him in countless movies and TV shows and news interviews. You see a […]
I Text, Therefore I am a Teen
I was struggling a bit to make a solid point to my daughter the other day about texting. She’s in the process of transitioning from middle school to high school and, as is the case with nearly all of her peers, her phone is becoming an ever-bigger part of her life. (Truly, just like the […]
Watching TV for a Living
I really didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up. I was probably too busy playing basketball at school and working at home to help our family make ends meet on our small country mini-farm to spend much time grappling with the vastness of the future. The present was just too full […]
We Crave Connections With What We See
I really do hate to admit this, but I once tried a particular brand of whiskey just because it was featured in a movie. It was years ago—long before I started working for Plugged In, I should say for the record. But I had made an emotional connection to that movie, and I still remember […]
Eat Read Love
Teens aren’t reading for fun anymore. But they are eating for fun quite a whole lot. Hey! Maybe something can be done about that. Let me back up a bit. Let’s first look a little harder at the whole teens-aren’t-reading-as-much-as-they-used-to thing. According to a study of a bunch of other studies, presented by Common Sense […]
Deer Devouring Your Hyacinths? Blame Bambi
Media matters. The things we watch get behind our eyes. The things we listen to don’t just go in one ear and out the other. The entertainment we pick for ourselves isn’t just entertainment. This is a tried and true Plugged In dogma. On one level or another, pretty much everyone agrees that no one […]
Real, Real, Real, Real, Real, Real, UNREAL!
It’s a drum that’s been pounded until the sticks break and the skin tears. It’s not so much a cliché anymore as it is absolute dogma, like gravity or inertia. So much has been written about it that any writer who dares do so again is doomed to sit, motionless in front of the computer […]
What My Wife Thinks About What Kirsten Said
Heidi, my lovely bride of nearly 20 years, will love reading this blog post. Not so much because I wrote it, mind you, but because of the things Kirsten Dunst said that inspired it. A little background: Heidi has had a bit of a crazy career, but a successful one nonetheless. And much of that […]