Culture Clips: A Different Sort of Blackout
Yesterday, the world’s social media feed was inundated with black squares instead of pictures. And no, it wasn’t because your Internet connection was taking its sweet time downloading the pictures. It was part of a movement called #BlackoutTuesday. According to Rolling Stone, the original idea was called #TheShowMustBePaused, and organizers asked the music industry to […]
Culture Clips: Maxed Out on Streaming Services?
HBO Max debuts this week leaving many people reeling as they pick and choose which streaming platforms are best for their families. As Vulture.com points out, “Finding something to watch on TV used to be as simple as turning on the set, flipping through a few dozen channels, and stopping when you stumbled upon something […]
Do Disney’s Recent Kids Shows Pull Punches on Important Issues?
When Disney+ was introduced last year, it kicked the nostalgia of my adolescence into overdrive. With shows such as Boy Meets World, Lizzie McGuire, That’s So Raven and many others from my youth now at my fingertips (not to mention lots of spare time to view these shows due to the COVID-19 quarantine), I’ve been […]
Thirty-Four Years on Screens?!
If you’ve ever worried whether or not you spend too much time looking at screens, consider this: A new study commissioned by Vision Direct reports that “the typical person will spend a staggering 34 years looking at phones, computers or televisions.” Staggering actually seems like the correct word to use here, especially when I consider […]
Entertainment That Might Cure Your Boredom (and Benefit Others)
“We may be apart right now, but coming together has never been more important,” says the Global Citizen, an organization dedicated to ending extreme poverty. And it has a point. It seems crazy that just a few months ago, we were all commuting to and from work, attending school in actual classrooms, and giving our […]
Culture Clips: Pomp, Circumstance and the Coronavirus
Well, here we are in week…wait, is it week six or seven of quarantine? Honestly, I’ve lost count. Regardless, though the days have started blending together, for many folks, this week of quarantine stands out as preschools, kindergartens, high schools and colleges do their best to celebrate graduation. A couple of weeks ago, thousands of […]
Some Good News About ‘Some Good News’
Perhaps one of the most exhausting things about the coronavirus epidemic is the nonstop negative coverage about the coronavirus epidemic. And the news can be pretty bleak. Lives have been lost, businesses have been shut down, and many families are struggling to make ends meet. (If you or someone you know is struggling through this […]
How my life as a TV and movie critic has changed as a result of coronavirus
Because of the coronavirus, all of our lives look different these days. We’ve all been forced to make plenty of changes. But some of us have had to make fewer changes than others. In my pre- (and hopefully post-) COVID-19 days at Plugged In, a typical workday for me included grudgingly waking up (what can […]
Living in a SIMS-ulation
Twenty years ago, the world was introduced to a new kind of “living” with the introduction of The Sims. You didn’t shoot anything in this very different videogame, and there was no high score. Instead, gamers created personalized avatars that just knock around in a city or suburbia for a while. For the past two […]
Culture Clips: #DontBeASpreader
The entertainment world has come to a screeching halt as coronavirus continues to spread across the globe. Movie premieres have been delayed, concerts have been cancelled, Broadway’s stages have gone dark and theaters everywhere have closed their doors in the hopes of containing the disease. In addition to washing our hands and not touching our […]
