The Game

The Game

From time to time I like to revisit movies from around Culture Ground Zero. Since Western pop culture is now fully in the grip of a fanatical cult bent on memory holing the past, it's beneficial to look back on what we've lost. One of the most tragic casualties of…
October 4, 20213 Comments
Escape from LA

Escape from LA

In the early 21st century, an American presidential candidate wins a highly unorthodox election by leveraging a national disaster. As the front man for an extreme moralizing movement, he oversees the implementation of sweeping neo-puritanical directives to enforce his sect's moral vision nationwide. Federal law enforcement is tasked with prosecuting…
September 27, 202110 Comments
The Frog for Whom the Bell Tolls

The Frog for Whom the Bell Tolls

One of my recent posts on the last great age of 2D gaming put me in a mood to revisit the tragically poorly served classic Link's Awakening. I'm still savoring this playthrough, so a full review will have to wait. In the meantime, here's an intriguing tidbit from retro gaming…
September 24, 202112 Comments
Shadow Hearts

Shadow Hearts

Victory may have defeated JRPGs, but video games represent the one segment of pop culture that survived Ground Zero. At least for a decade or so. Today, the corporatization of vidya has made up for lost time with a vengeance. Consider the outright disappearance of the entire video game midlist.…
September 20, 20214 Comments
Link's Awakening

A Link to the 90s

Recently in my internet wanderings, I chanced upon a rare buried treasure--the sort that used to pop up regularly before the death of the web. The following piece of archived video only runs three minutes, but in that short time it captures the look and mood of Nintendo headquarters in…
September 1, 20216 Comments
Video Gambling

Video Gambling

If you're familiar with the refined generational theory discussed on this and other counterculture blogs, you know that Generation Y is clearly differentiated from the Millennials by the latter's gullibility and loathing of the past in contrast to the former's tractability and morbid nostalgia. Of all the pop culture stories…
August 25, 202118 Comments
OnlyFans Dead

Winning the War on Porn

The generational shift against porn I noted a while back may have started bearing fruit sooner than expected. In a surprising announcement, the social media application OnlyFans said that they would no longer permit “sexually explicit content” on their site starting Oct. 1. The shocking news comes after the media…
August 23, 202126 Comments
Nostalgia Bar

The Nostalgia Bar

Much has been written on this blog and others about generational theory and nostalgia. Counterculture writers have done extensive work showing how the old demographic models based on age have broken down in the face of accelerating social change.  If your predictions are based on lumping folks who came of…
August 11, 202114 Comments
Lecter Skinsuit

Ignore the Skinsuits

A major hurdle to understanding our new era that most people struggle to surmount is the shift from an economic frame to a moral frame. Everyone currently living in the West was raised under a Left vs Right paradigm with roots in the eighteenth century. Especially in its American expression,…
July 27, 202127 Comments
Master and Commander

Master and Commander

As Hollywood progressively loses touch with its audience, finding a genuinely entertaining, non-propagandizing movie made after 1997 is a rare treasure indeed. One such overlooked gem graced theaters in 2003 to critical acclaim but disappointing box office. Yet it remains a sterling exemplar of its genre and even has wisdom…
July 26, 202124 Comments