Author: Steve DiMatteo

Three seasons in to Orange is the New Black, and I’ve determined that Piper Chapman is the worst character on the show. It’s actually a good thing, though there’s hardly any basis for anything she’s doing, and she really doesn’t make a convincing lesbian. Also, this show loves to go through stretches of making prison seem like it isn’t so bad. I have a feeling it’s pretty bad. And I doubt real female inmates allow for so many impassioned monologues from their peers without any beatdowns in response. Still, this show runs circles around most of the slop on television.

Through the mystical power of common sense, it’s not hard to see the Confederate flag for what it is: not just a redneck truck accessory, but a historically powerful symbol of hatred and racism that, beyond all comprehension, continues to be celebrated and defended by millions of people. It’s one of those things where you just feel powerless to do anything about it when you’re not busy being baffled at how this is, in fact, the world in which we live. So now that we’re able to possibly see the oncoming death of the Confederate flag as a symbol for the…

Yesterday was Father’s Day, and it continued a very disturbing trend that has only gotten worse, thanks in large part to social media. With avenues like Facebook and Twitter, everyone now has the ability to publicly claim his/her father as “the best dad in the world.” A claim like that is, of course, patently false, but the illegitimacy of these claims is going wildly unchecked. It’s reckless and, to be honest, downright dangerous. It’s simply impossible for every dad to be “the best.” You know what it means to be the best at something, don’t you? It means you are unequivocally…

HEAVEN – James Wong passed away three years ago after an unfortunate jet ski accident, and though he was granted passage into God’s eternal kingdom upon his death, the former North Carolina resident can’t help but already feel kind of bored with it all. Wong, who was a 34-year-old investment banking analyst when he died, initially found the realm of heaven to be everything he imagined: it gave him the ability to travel through space and time, access to every video game that has ever been or ever will be created, a perfectly sculpted body and unlimited pizza. Of course, it was…

Recently, there was a very righteous campaign to put a woman on the $20 bill that would have presumably bumped Andrew Jackson out of circulation (which would have been awful, because then we’d have to find a new way to honor a man who signed the Indian Removal Act). The campaign gained a whole lot of steam – especially as the call for Harriet Tubman’s presence on the $20 became a thing – as more and more people came to their senses and realized that: 1. It’s mind-boggling to still not have a woman on paper currency (at least not…

I’ve found that Bayer has the darkest commercials in the entire world, but I guess that really shouldn’t come as any surprise to anyone, especially when you consider that the company – once a part of IG Farben during World War II – participated in a wide variety of atrocious Nazi war crimes. Though Bayer split from IG Farben in 1951, it would appear that the evil ingrained in the company’s blood in the 1940’s still exists to this day. In a recent series of commercials aimed to promote Bayer aspirin’s ability to help prevent heart attacks, we are asked…

“The Way” was really where the world started to get to know Ariana Grande. Easily blessed with one of the best voices out there, Grande burst onto the scene in 2013 with a song that, if you didn’t know any better, you’d swear was a Mariah Carey jam. It’s a great pop song (and it has more than 240 million views on YouTube), except for one little hiccup: Mac Miller is a goddamn idiot on this track. As is the case with so many pop songs these days, Mac Miller’s got himself a rap verse shoehorned into what is otherwise…

Thomas R. Holtz is a very well-known and respected member of the paleontology community. His work with tyrannosaurids and other theropod dinosaurs is unparalleled, as he has made many contributions in his career that have allowed us to better understand and classify these diverse, fascinating creatures. Holtz is a senior lecturer on vertebrate paleontology in the University of Maryland’s Department of Geology and he’s been a published author many times over. He’s also a tremendous follow on Twitter (especially since he talks about Jurassic Park a lot). All in all, Holtz is a paleontology superstar, and we got the chance to interview…

A lot of the talk in the months leading up to Jurassic World centered on the fact that Chris Pratt’s character seems to have domesticated a pack of velociraptors. Many people were astonished that these vicious merchants of death were able to be trained to do one man’s bidding. It’s an amazing idea, and it definitely works for the velociraptors, but I just couldn’t see the same thing happening to, say, the Tyrannosaurus Rex. Now, you remember Barney, right? The big purple dinosaur you spent all of your time with as a toddler? Well, he was a Tyrannosaurus Rex, too, and not only…

When I was a kid, my sister and I absolutely annihilated our VHS copy of Jurassic Park. We had that thing working day and night during the summer, and we could never get enough. It’s still not hard for me to admit that it’s the greatest movie ever made. What I do have trouble with, though, is admitting to myself the failure of believing that Chilean sea bass was a meal destined for greatness. Every time we watched the movie, there it was in that weird dinner scene, offered up so prominently by one of Dr. Hammond’s chefs (who hopefully made…