The Drummer Nobody Saw Coming Marlon Brando could do almost anything. Act, seduce an audience, disappear into a character so completely you forgot his name. What most people don’t know: he was also obsessed with percussion, specifically conga and bongo drums, and frustrated enough by their design to file a patent. Tuning a traditional conga…
A Spin-Off That Punched Above Its Weight When Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio released Judgment in Japan in December 2018, nobody expected a courtroom drama about a disgraced lawyer hunting eye-gouging killers through the neon-soaked streets of Kamurocho to become one of the most beloved games in the Yakuza universe. But that’s exactly what happened. Takayuki…
JetBlue Pulled the Price Hike Twice Most airlines raise baggage fees once, quietly, in the dead of winter when nobody’s watching. JetBlue did it twice. The first hike came in February 2024. Then, on March 22, the airline rolled out a brand-new dynamic pricing structure splitting the year into peak and off-peak periods, each with…
The Sea Was Too Small A hotel right on the beach in Vietnam. Crystal water, fishing boats bobbing at the horizon. The kind of scene you’d frame and hang in a hallway. Two tourists checked out after two weeks and told staff their tour agent had lied to them. No sea, they said. Just a…
No Touchdowns on the Lord’s Day For most of American history, Sunday wasn’t game day — it was God’s day, and the law backed that up. Blue laws, some dating to the nation’s founding, banned secular activities on Sundays so that Christians could observe the Sabbath without the distraction of a ballgame. As baseball exploded…
Berserk Is Still Unfinished Business The 1997 Berserk anime isn’t perfect. The animation creaks in places, the pacing stumbles, and it cuts before the story’s most devastating moments land. But if you want brutal medieval warfare and a friendship that curdles into something monstrous, this is the place to start. Griffith leads his mercenary army…
The Brother Who Vanished He showed up on a Saturday to help gut the garden room and then disappeared. Day one, no call. Day two, nothing. By day four it felt personal. His sister rang every morning and got voicemail. On day eight, he turned up at the front door with a single bag. His…
When Love Gets Genuinely Weird Cupid Parasite kicks things off with a premise that sounds like a fever dream and somehow works perfectly. You play as Cupid — the actual goddess of love — reassigned to a matchmaking agency on Earth. She’s good at her job. Too good. So management sends her to fix the…
Running on Empty Gets Expensive in Ohio Most traffic infractions happen because someone did something reckless. In Youngstown, Ohio, you can get cited for something far more embarrassing: running out of gas. Section 331.44 of the city ordinances bars anyone from operating a vehicle inside the downtown congested district, bounded by Chestnut, Walnut, Boardman, and…