‘Tortured Poets’ succeeds with emotional story of two heartbreaks

Share: For the average person, releasing a double album after a year filled with a record-breaking tour and movie combo, and a triage of high-profile relationships ending and beginning sounds like hell on earth, but not if you’re Taylor Swift. Swift’s latest whopping 31-track release “The Tortured Poets Department” and its sister “The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology” highlight a new but also not-so-new stage of her stardom, the double breakup album. Coming out just under two years after her last big release “Midnights” (which …

Bars, booze and barbecue: How to spend the perfect Pasadena day

Share: Pasadena may not be the hippest or trendiest city in LA county, but it still has a lot to offer anyone looking for a walkable day of fun after class or something to fill up their weekend plans. As summer approaches and students start to have more free time, many are seeking cheap and fun activities to experience with family and friends. Few cities in LA County are even relatively walkable, making Pasadena a hidden gem for those without a car or those simply …

Facebook for friends is dead, long live the marketplace

Share: Tucked away on the now barren Facebook feed that’s filled with people I knew over a decade ago, but no longer keep in touch with is a button for the best items for sale in your community which the site was never built for. The Facebook marketplace is your one-stop shop for vintage goods, used furniture, art, and some really weird stuff if you’re lucky.  Facebook as a social media site has been on the decline for years. As their user base grows to …

Huzzah! Wenches, mead and jousting enchant the Ren Faire

Share: Want to learn how to say “kiss my ass” in Gaelic? Or have your palm read by a woman who charges anywhere from thirty to a million dollars? If so, head on over to the original Renaissance Pleasure Faire in Irwindale, CA. Deemed the largest costume party in LA, the Renaissance Faire is an annual event where thousands of people of all ages dust off their corsets and tunics for a fun day of jousts, archery, shopping, and Elizabethan-style live performances.  One major attraction …

‘Abigail’ sinks teeth into vampire genre with hilariously hammy bloodbath

Share: Finally freed from the clutches of Ghostface and the “Scream” franchise, Radio Silence is back to deliver bloody goodness to the big screen with their latest release “Abigail.” Moving on from slashers the team has tackled the tried and true vampire genre of horror to a perfectly hilarious and gory effect.  This movie’s set-up starts out fairly simply and involves a group of criminals, given code names based on the rat pack, who kidnap a girl (the titular Abigail) who is the daughter of …

‘Civil War’ avoids real conversation of America’s dangerous divide

Share: What kind of American are you? How would you answer that with a gun to your head? Is that something that we should be asking ourselves? A24’s newest movie “Civil War” tries to answer the question with a gun to the head, but at the same time, it doesn’t and instead replaces those questions with jarring and often disturbing visuals which gloss over the real questions like how our nation got to that point. Don’t come into this movie expecting anything or wanting your …

The ‘Big Three’ beef is heating up and Drake just won round one

Share: The first round of the ‘Big Three’ beef has concluded and in a span of one month, we got three albums, two diss tracks (kind of), and one participant turned casualty. Coming into the fight there was a wide consensus that Drake for some reason was at the bottom of the pole, but after this preliminary round, it’s time to throw that list away and actually get it right this time. What reignited the Cold War feud into the fiery onslaught it is now …

Crawl out of your vault and go check out ‘Fallout’

Share: Amazon’s live-action adaptation television series “Fallout,” doesn’t fail to impress new viewers or old fans with its faithful rendition of the post-apocalyptic video game series. The show satisfies what one should expect from Fallout: nuclear wastelands, cynical humor, jazzy music, ominous mutants, and bloody violence. Premiering on Prime Video with 8 episodes for its first season, “Fallout” doesn’t directly adapt from any of the existing games but rather expands on them as a chronological continuance of the series. Starring Ella Purnell, Aaron Moten, and …

What’s the big deal, it’s just the tip?

Share: To tip or not to tip that is the question. Does the server have to do anything specific to get your money or is it wraps from the jump and there’s no tip regardless of what they do? When the IPad does more work than the cashier should you still tip that 20%? Are you thinking about the employees in the back of the kitchen? These are just some of the questions that a lot of people, especially college students, think of when entering …

Dev Patel fights tooth and nail in bloody brilliant directorial debut

Share: After sitting on Netflix’s shelf for years before producer Jordan Peele took it off their hands and brought the film to the big screen, “Monkey Man” finds Dev Patel rising to the top as an unlikely action hero who holds his own against the “John Wick” franchise.  Patel, who broke through at 18 when he starred in Best Picture winner “Slumdog Millionaire,” serves as writer-director-star of “Monkey Man,” a far cry from the dramas he’s known for. In his stark departure, he punches against …