Many parents rely on kid-centric entertainment to get through the days, much of which involves screens and speakers. They’re the new and improved (and non-narcotic) mother’s little helpers: Sesame Street, Disney +, Kidz Bop, etc. Child-appropriate entertainment that lets mommy or daddy have a little time to relax. In fact,…
Stephanie Drenka is the communications director for Dallas Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation and a Korean adoptee. She is a 2021 Public Voices Fellow of The OpEd Project. Be careful what you wish for, the old adage warns. My wish was for more Asian American representation in media, to have…
A lack of imagination caused the ERCOT grid failure. No one imagined a weeklong extreme cold spell, despite Hollywood blockbusters imagining extreme weather events and much, much worse. Neither the regulators nor the risk managers across the bulk power system thought much about the 200-page report issued in 2011 that…
As primates, human beings are part of the most socially adept order in the entire animal kingdom, and our need for relationships and interaction is so ingrained into our being that it is the third tier of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. It’s largely for this reason that the COVID-19 lockdown…
Some may see it as a threat to American democracy (because China?), but TikTok is instead an organic platform that is bringing out the best in American creativity, activism and other cultural efforts. The truth is, we would be worse off without it. President Donald Trump signed an executive order…
There’s an old saying that’s been expressed a hundred different ways, which goes something like this: It’s not about how you fall, but how you rise back up. Or: “I get knocked down, but I get up again / You are never gonna keep me down.” No matter how you…
I’ll admit it. I’ve never been a lifelong fan of my moniker, but I damn sure wasn’t going to change the name that my dear sweet mama gave me. Lately though, it seems as if my particular tag has gone from bad to worse, and Karen has swiftly become a…
One of the most common complaints food writers get come from readers upset that they’ve been forced to think about anything else. “You’re a food writer,” they often write. “Stick to describing the food!” But in Dallas, especially, it’s impossible to understand local food culture without also understanding a long…
Even though Texas experienced a record-high 58 deaths because of coronavirus on May 14, Gov. Greg Abbott thinks it’s a good idea to start reopening the state. If willing, bars can open to limited capacity starting Friday. And even though it’s only been two months since we’ve socialized inside a…
Last week, a small band performed outside a restaurant in a Dallas suburb. The live video of the event showed that none of the members were wearing masks, unlike the small group watching. A woman, wearing a mask barely covering her nose, waved at the singer, even though they were…
If there’s one lesson we should have learned over the last four years, it’s that human behavior is unpredictable, and even our most formidable experts are capable of flawed analysis. So when The New York Times reports that concerts and other large-scale events are likely to be absent from our…
Remember when Kylie Jenner called 2016 “The year of realizing stuff”? In a now infamous scene from her solo reality show, Life With Kylie, the youngest Jenner declared that she had shifted her focus to the pursuit of emotional maturity, which she meant to acquire through a meditative reflection, allowing…
It feels like we’ve been training for prolonged periods of social distancing for years: Staring deep into our phones, driving-thru our errands and meals, hoarding online friendships while disposing of our flesh-and-bone ones, morphing into avatars who only exist online. Even phone calls became too intrusive, and we all learned…
I promise never to bring this up again. I may have said that before. I can’t remember. But this is definitely the last time. What is the etiquette for running up silently behind unfamiliar dogs on leashes and then passing them on the same sidewalk? Actually, forget etiquette. What is…
In the 1970s, we had Happy Days. In the 1980s, we had Bryan Adams’ “Summer of 69.” In the 1990s, we had That ’70s Show. In the 2000s, we had a post-punk revival. In the 2010s, ’90s nostalgia became so big that Nickelodeon started a programming block titled NickRewind, which was…
The Trump administration, in its crusade against the European Union and to bolster the bottom line of some of the world’s richest companies, wants to tax the hell out of your bottle of cheap French rosé. It has already imposed a 25% tariff on most French, Spanish, German and British…
Typically, complaints lodged against music in the mainstream would make someone look like a miserly old-timer stuck in his or her glory days, but when people take issue with artists glamorizing drug abuse, they actually raise a legitimate point. However, as much merit as these grievances have, reasonable propositions to…
There’s a war on sugar cookies, and it’s not just my keto diet, although I all but completely abandoned my sugar-free lifestyle for the yuletide season when I saw these delicious floofs of sugary dough and frosting spanning all colors of a pastel rainbow on seemingly every end-cap in grocery…
It’s Christmas. I am spending a Dallas holiday afternoon sitting cozily on the sofa in front of a cold fireplace with the air conditioning on, thumbing through the year on my phone to remember all the worst things people said about me in 2019. Carols on the stereo in the…
One crucial tenet of music criticism is being able to see a piece or performance as the multifaceted work it truly is. Seldom are songs, albums or concerts ever completely without blemish, and in that same vein, seldom are they ever irredeemably bad and devoid of any favorable characteristics. If…
If you use social media, you’ve probably by now seen one of the most popular memes of the year, “OK boomer.” The saying has become a popular response whenever someone of baby boomer age (approximately 55-75 years old) says something that younger people deem stupid or incorrect, in order to…
In June, I had the pleasure of reviewing one of Juice WRLD’s two Bomb Factory sets, and I noticed something about him that was rare. He was popular enough to do a two-night stand at a 4,300-capacity venue, but at the same time, he was everyone’s little secret. You may…
