My name's Erik. I write a pop culture blog called You're All Sick. Our celebrity fixation is getting out of control, and we have to keep it in check. The media isn't your friend, they want you to fall into a warped pattern of caring about celebrities through exploitation and manipulation, to sell more ads. Don't play their game. And read The Wake.
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I know what you’re thinking: “Erik, what’s adventurous about eggs?” And you’re right to question me. Egg & I isn’t adventurous. But I’m a red-blooded American who happens to love a good breakfast, and Egg & I makes a damn good breakfast.
Located in a massive brick office building on University Ave. near Highway 280, the restaurant …
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“Well I just think that it is so shocking that after all this time we thought we’d seen it all with Marilyn Monroe, and… here we go,” says Lara Spencer on CBS’s The Early Show.
The Marilyn Monroe sex tape has finally surfaced, thank God. The media was almost running out of living celebrity faux news fodder.
It is still a mystery why Spencer thinks this “news” is “so shocking.” In her lifetime Monroe made a …
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I’m not Ukrainian, but I find it very easy to relate to the working-class heritage of Eastern European countries. For over 50 years, Kramarczuk’s in Northeast Minneapolis has exemplified the culinary traditions of their homeland.
Walking into the store, I was immediately struck by the expansive glass display cases containing dozens upon dozens of sausage varieties. From Andouille to Blood and Tongue, almost every imaginable classification of meat is slinked and linked for your pleasure. The …
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When I was in middle school there was a foreign exchange student named Alan. He was from Lebanon, and he was the kind of kid that invited teasing; he wore high water pants and he sang “It’s My Life” by Bon Jovi ever so gently in his falsetto voice. One of the many horrible running jokes surrounding the kid was that Lebanon’s national cuisine was hot dogs roasted over garbage fires.
This couldn’t be further from …
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So what is the true function of the press? Some argue the concept that political and social discourse can be encouraged through the simple presentation of unbiased facts. Others believe that objectivity is a farce, and the only true way to have a democratic press is through open forum debate, with the press as a facilitator.
In …
Posted in You're All Sick. | 4 Comments
Our celebrity-obsessed media has turned America into a high school full of stereotypes. There are cliques, opinion leaders, and, most of all, jealous but vicarious critics looking to bash but idolize the popular kids.
I frequent the pop culture blogs. I don’t do it because I care about the celebrities. I do it because I care about why so many people care about the celebrities. And to be honest, it seems to me like we’re carrying …
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I love Mariah Carey and I don’t care who knows it. To me, she’s an illustration of the world’s future as a single-race populace. I can picture her sleeping with someone of any ethnicity, creed, belief or religion, and for whatever reason, I take comfort in that.
But her recent video, “Touch My Body,” is unsettling to me. She plays her usual prostitute/pop star persona perfectly, tempting the tech guy (the brilliant Jack McBrayer) when …
Posted in You're All Sick. | 9 Comments
I enjoy a good piece of fiction as much as the next guy. That fiction can be historical, ahistorical, erotic, science fiction, or whatever else you can think of. But, when ahistorical fiction is framed in a historical context, I begin to have issues.
10,000 B.C., the new Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow) vehicle, is plagued with absurdity, starting and ending with its name.
Surprisingly, Emmerich is German, which is weird, because many of …
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The entertainment media has been flooding the Internet with postulations of Patrick Swayze’s imminent expiration. It has been confirmed that the man has pancreatic cancer. But in reading some of these stories one would think the ink is already dry on the poor man’s death certificate. Most of the early reports were based on an unverified report by the usual beacon of truth, the National Enquirer. It turns out he’s actually …
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The Cedar-Riverside intersection has tons of authentic ethnic restaurants to offer, so what makes K Wok stand above and beyond the others? Well, nothing in particular, except for maybe its towering blue sign that makes it an easy spot to target.
The Vietnamese/Chinese eatery is a family-owned joint that, in the spirit of its …
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Initially when someone told me there was a new restaurant on campus that only served chicken fingers I was like, “Wow, that’s ballsy.” Devoting an entire joint to a kids’ meal entrée seemed not so much like an adventure dining spot, but a foray into adventure restaurateur-ing. When I showed up and found out it was …
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I would have a hell of a time trying to find Armenia on a map. Chances are it’s near Turkey, but the whole Eurasian area is a mystery to me. The important thing is that there is a restaurant repping the region right here in Dinkytown.
Arax Armenian Cuisine (a poorly-chosen name if I’d say so myself; it evokes images of a chemical scare) is the newest addition to the pantheon of ethnic eateries that call …
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At the dawn of 2004, just as Britney Spears was marrying and annulling Jason Allen Alexander in Las Vegas, and nine US soldiers were killed in a Black Hawk helicopter crash in Falluja, President George W. Bush, hot on the re-election trail, stepped up to a blue-gray podium at NASA headquarters in Washington DC.With childlike wonder he outlined a series of ambitious space exploration projects. He compared our current thirst for discovery to that of …
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