pop culture — Happy Place — It Turns Out the Naming Rights! Membership Option Was For Real and Someone Is Now Five Hundred Bucks Poorer Presents Nat

The Star-Studded Animated Special Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue Was the "We Are the World" of Kiddie Anti-Drug Propaganda

It's your favorite cartoon characters as you've never seen them before: dourly delivering shrill anti-drug messages in a hilariously off-brand "Just Say No" extravaganza of nightmarish proportions!

Control Nathan and ClintNathan RabinApril 9, 2023Alf, cartoons, Garfield, Slimer, crossover, 1990s, pop culture, drugs, marijuana

The Big Squeeze Day Twenty-Five: "Like A Surgeon" from Dare To Be Stupid

His patients, tragically, die before they can pay!

Kanye, Louie and the Heartbreak of the Real Life Heel Turn

What happens when someone you idolize and adore becomes someone you can’t stand?

The Big WhoopNathan RabinMay 6, 2019Kanye West, Louis CK, Hulk Hogan, pop culture

The Generation Gap: Apparently a Thing

In a surprising development, it turns out NOT everybody has the same frame of reference that I do and I’ve figured out a way to be cool with that!

The Big WhoopNathan RabinMarch 7, 2019Beastie Boys, pop culture, The A.V Club

Exploiting the Archives Week preview: Is this going to work? An introduction

Hello! Welcome to the official first day of Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place! I want to make it a nice place to escape the inexorable horror of contemporary life. If everyday existence in Donald Trump’s America increasingly resembles Orwell’s description of the future as “a boot stamping on a human face - forever”, then this will hopefully be a pleasant place to enjoy a laugh, forget your troubles, geek out about semi-obscure “Weird Al” songs and not have your skull stomped on even once, let alone for eternity. And I would of course love it if you would help keep this site afloat by contributing to its Patreon page at https://www.patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace

The Big WhoopNathan RabinDecember 24, 2017Introduction, "Weird Al", movies, pop culture, Nathan Rabin, Patreon, Nathan Rabin's Happy Place

Tweets are Not News! (With One Unfortunate Exception)

In which your cranky, bitter blogger unloads on one of his biggest pop-culture media pet peeves.

The Big Whoop, Freelancer CornerNathan RabinNovember 29, 2017Twitter, Pop culture media, pop culture, Donald Trump

Day Forty-Nine: "You Make Me" from Even Worse and not from the XXX: The Return of Xander Cage soundtrack

In what is transparently not a glib ruse to trick people into reading this poorly-read, suspiciously unpopular column, we discuss "You Make Me", a song that most assuredly did not appear in the motion XXX: THE RETURN OF XANDER CAGE.