The third in what will be an informal series of posts touching on life in the pre-Internet age. I miss the camaraderie, the sense of community, the feeling that you were one of a few members in a secret club that was delivered to your mailbox once a month. Getting that glossy periodical, cracking it …
Do whatever you want. I really don’t care. There is no College Board of Life mandating certain prerequisites be met for every little task. Obviously, some things require advanced training—one cannot just jump into heart surgery or commercial aviation without any sort of prior knowledge—but if you want to read a book? Knock yourself out. …
Sometimes it’s nice to bask in the warm glow of something familiar. I don’t mean old. I mean something similar to other things you’ve enjoyed, whether it be a book, a movie, or a piece of music. Very often, you want to have the same pleasure centers of your brain tickled just like they have …
I suppose yet another reason I don’t consider myself a “conservative” in the political, or other, sense is that I am not opposed to change. The status quo will never stay the same forever, nor should it, especially if said status quo is not profitable for the majority of the people. Typically, those who wish …
Look, I like video games. I grew up as a gamer. Being born in 1981, video games were unavoidable. Whether it was my maternal grandmother’s Atari (yes, she was a gamer) or the adventure games I played on my paternal grandfather’s old Leading Edge monochromatic P.C. (yes, he was a gamer too) or the NES …
I’ve been semi-obsessed with the band Black Midi lately. Black Midi is a trio of British lads barely out of high school who released their third album, Hellfire, in July of this year. Their music can be described as exactly the kind of music I wanted to make when I, too, was in my twenties, …
“Give the people what they want.” The phrase is used both as a command and a sarcastic warning. One school of thought holds that a producer of anything to be marketed and sold really needs to provide customers exactly what they’re asking for. Another holds that people don’t know what they want until someone with …
I don’t care much for jazz. This isn’t to say that I hate jazz (I don’t), that I don’t understand jazz (I do), or don’t respect jazz (I respect it very much). It is merely to note that, when I get a chance to listen to some music, jazz is not my go-to genre. If …
The first in what will be an informal series of posts touching on life in the pre-Internet age. The Internet changed everything, some things for the better and some things for the worse. Music firmly falls into the latter camp. Popular music, at least. Rock music, in particular. But the industry as a whole suffered …
Rock n’ roll isn’t dead, it just smells funny. The always insightful Rick Beato had a recent video explaining his theory as to why Gen Z doesn’t care about music. I think it’s a bit of a stretch to claim that an entire generation doesn’t care about music. I’m sure it cares about music plenty. …
Alexander Hellene is either a dilettante or a Renaissance man, depending on whom you ask. A musician, athlete, artist, and law school graduate, Alexander has always been attracted to fantastical tales, since they tend to do a better job of explaining how the world works than just about anything else. He lives in New England with his wife and children.
The exciting conclusion to Alexander Hellene’s sword-and-planet trilogy, The Swordbringer!