There is a lush musicality to pretty much everything that John Legend creates and performs. It comes from an innate understanding of the smoothness and richness of his music, a sense of how it and his voice work together, all of it coming perfectly together to lend his songs an Continue Reading
TV
Can a naughty kid become nice? Air NZ’s Christmas ad answers the question
Ah, the age-old Naughty and Nice list. The bane of kids with poor behavioural karma the world over, Santa’s obsession with “making a list and checking it twice / Gonna find out who’s naughty and nice” forms the centrepiece of this year’s Christmas ad from Air New Zealand. Reflecting Continue Reading
Dr. Tenth Christmas Surprise! Or how to deal with a man in red and white and a lively snowman
Let’s be fair – Santa, stripped of all his promise of toys and red-and-white clad jolliness is a bit weird. I say this as a man very much-enamoured of Christmas and its many and varied feel good trappings, who rightly regards Santa Claus as a fairly good guy who Continue Reading
On 1st day of Christmas … I decorated my tree with 11 new pop culture ornaments
I am not a Christmas traditionalist. Well, I am and I am not, said as I pivot, rather precariously on the fence of what sounds dangerously like festive decorating ambivalence. What I mean is that while I love all the warm-and-fuzzy, bright-and-shiny trappings of the season so much so Continue Reading
Happy Christmas from Sesame Street: Bert and Ernie Exchange Gifts
Ernie and Bert’s friendship is one of the many delightful things about Sesame Street. They are devoted to each other in the way only the truest of friends are, willing to sacrifice something that makes them happy if it means their dear friend will be even happier. Especially at Continue Reading
Cartoon bloopers? Rick and Morty has them and they’re, of course, HILARIOUS
SNAPSHOT This (NSFW language) blooper from Adult Swim animates Roiland continuously breaking during Rick’s explanation to his family about how and why he turned himself into a pickle. Every time Roiland gets to the obviously silly, obviously not sincere line about how Rick “understands Morty’s suspicion” because he has Continue Reading
Happy Christmas from Gilmore Girls: “Santa’s Secret Stuff” (S7, E11)
Spending any kind of time with Lorelai (Lauren Graham) and Rory Gilmore (Alexis Bledel) is always, without exception, a delight. Even more so when it’s Christmas, a time so wonderfully magical, even when delayed (more on that later), that it transcends the fact that season 7 of Gilmore Girls Continue Reading
Still delightfully charming … meet the real John Lewis
SNAPSHOT Every year, the British retailer John Lewis runs a wonderfully heartwarming holiday advert that perks up interest in holiday shopping. While the company is indeed on Twitter as JLandPartners, a Blacksburg, Virginia man, who also goes by the name John Lewis, is the actual the owner of the Continue Reading
Being human and being hurt are the same thing: The Kominsky Method (season 1 review)
Let’s be honest – growing old doesn’t look like a whole heap of fun. Sure you have the wisdom of all those hopefully-happily accumulated years, a nice line in public transport discounts and the time to shop for all those bargains that evade the more time-pressed of us. But Continue Reading
Saturday Morning TV: The Secret Squirrel Show
First appearing in a prime-time animated special, The World of Atom Ant and Secret Squirrel, on 12 September 1965, Secret Squirrel (voiced by Mel Blanc) is my favourite Hanna-Barbera character after Scooby Doo. I’m not sure if it’s because he debuted on TV out the year I was born – Continue Reading