I have been putting off this book review for a long time. It is not because I did not want to write it, but because I had to process a serious hangover of disappointment. Let me be perfectly clear: that disappointment has absolutely nothing to do with Ready Player One* itself. The first book is an absolute blast. The problem is that my initial euphoria was completely hijacked when I eagerly jumped into the second book*, only to abandon it halfway through.
Look, the electronic music scene is usually a sea of distant figures behind laptops or expensive masks. It is rare to find someone who actually feels like a person you’d grab a coffee with, but Fred again.. (born Fred Gibson) managed to break that wall down. He didn’t just stumble into the spotlight: he built a foundation on texture, imperfection, and a level of vulnerability that makes most DJs look like robots.
I spent years chasing metrics and optimizing content for clicks. Here is why I am turning this platform into an unfiltered space to write for the joy of it.
Look, I am just going to say it: I would have never called myself a Linkin Park fan back in the day. Don’t get me wrong, I always thought they were a cool band with incredible musicians and massive tracks, but I was never a card-carrying, vocal fan. I was never the guy rushing out to buy tickets the second a tour was announced.
Look, I am not a die-hard soccer fan. My daily schedule does not shift just because some team is playing a match halfway across the world. But when a massive tournament kicks off, my brain flips a switch and I slide straight into a deep phase of hyperfocus.
Look, being born in 1990 means we’ve seen a lot of artists try to “pivot,” but nobody does it quite like Colson Baker. The man we know as Machine Gun Kelly didn’t just stumble into the spotlight with a guitar and a pink aesthetic. His story starts in Houston, though he spent his early years bouncing around the globe because his parents were missionaries. Eventually, he landed in Cleveland, Ohio, where the grit of his surroundings started to bleed into his music.
Look, I’ll be honest with you: I’ve been slacking a bit lately. The World of Warcraft universe is absolutely massive and completely overwhelming. A lot of these stories get a bit dry, feeling heavy and told a million times over. But I still set a personal goal to read through the Warcraft books in chronological order just to finally get a clue about what’s actually happening in Azeroth.
If you told a metalhead in 2006 that the kids from Sheffield playing generic deathcore would eventually headline the biggest festivals in the world as a genre-fluid pop-metal machine, they would have laughed you out of the pit. But that is exactly what happened. The story of Bring Me The Horizon (BMTH) is the ultimate case study in why you should never let a scene or a subgenre gatekeep your creativity.
Let us get one thing straight before we start. Buddhism gets a bad rap as some mystical, incense-scented religion where you sit on a isolated mountain and ignore the world. It is not that at all. At its core, it is a gritty, hyper-practical system for mind training and a philosophy of life designed to cut through the noise.
Look, if you want my deep dive on whether this entire series is worth your time, go hit up my other article first. But if you are just looking for a clean, spoiler-free rundown of the absolute madness that goes down in book one, you are in the right place. Grab your coffee, lock the door, and let me break down how the world ends and the real game begins.
Look, I didn’t just “watch” Tulsa King on Apple TV. I inhaled it. Every single night, I found myself itching to get back to the couch just to see what Dwight Manfredi was going to do next. The first season moved at a breakneck pace, and honestly, it left me wanting more.
I told you that I would use this space not only to show you cool songs I discovered, but also to share the immense amount of knowledge I have picked up while spending way too much time deep in the internet again. I already mentioned that I would follow up on Sleep Token. For that, I had to look within a bit more, organize my thoughts, and put everything into a logical order.
Look, I have told you before that I am doing everything I can to kick my smartphone and social media addiction. But I am also incredibly weak when it comes to online shopping, which means right now, I am in the middle of rationalizing a massive impulse buy.
I just wrapped up The Midnight Library*, and I needed to get these thoughts down before they drifted away. If you have been tracking the literary circuit lately, you have probably seen this one bounced around quite a bit. It is a book built on a massive, fascinating premise, but the execution left me feeling incredibly conflicted.
Ted Lasso is a clinic on humanity, disguised as a sports comedy. If you came for the soccer, you might stay for the biscuits, but you will definitely leave with a different perspective on how to treat people. Here is the breakdown of the first three seasons and a look at where the Richmond universe is headed.