95 Picadilly

Over the weekend, I watched “Reality Check,” a documentary series revisiting the now-maligned “America’s Next Top Model.” What struck me wasn’t just the criticism of a show we once loved, but how confidently we act like society was once misguided. I have to roll my eyes at that. We like to think ourselves as evolved,…

About two weeks ago, I did the unthinkable: I downloaded TikTok. After months of friends insisting, cajoling, threatening, and guilt-tripping, I finally caved. I’ve yet to decide whether that was a good thing. I needed another social media account like I need a hole in the head, but here we are, like a moth to…

The television series Love Story, chronicling the lives of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy and John F. Kennedy Jr., recently hit on something personal – the helplessness of being public property. Recent episodes have shown Carolyn Kennedy’s struggle to deal with the incessant press intrusion and strangers commenting on her life. While she endured this on a very…

Spencer Matthews is a decade younger than me. His family own Eden Rock on the Caribbean island of St. Barts and he’s well-known for his appearances on “Made in Chelsea,” a reality television show about posh Londoners, living in the historic Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. We both speak a little French and have…

I remember July 16, 1999. No one who experienced that could forget it, or the wall of media coverage that rivaled the death of Diana, Princess of Wales two years before. For two families, it must have been a living nightmare, as helicopters hovered over familiar water and perpetual news footage looped to feed a…

Over the weekend, I watched the film Wicked: For Good. It came highly recommended by my friend, Brandon, who said it was the closest he had come to the magic of working The Polar Express. Sadly, much as I tried to like it, I found it just as mind-numbingly boring as the original. Having never…

As we approach Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent, I’ve found myself drifting back over the last few years. After all, it is a season of reflection and abstinence. My Confirmation Saint knew this all too well – and spoke of it often. I have long loved St. John Henry Newman, and that affection…

When I was in college, I began experiencing bizarre and seemingly unexplained episodes. Initially, doctors believed them to be blood pressure issues that were causing sudden spikes followed by dramatic drops in my pressure. It ultimately caused me to fall through a glass window. That frightening moment led to a million different tests trying to…

I was recently thinking about a catchphrase – or rather quotes from reviews – that I used on my now-defunct blog, back when the internet felt like a place you voluntarily went rather than a notorious entity that stalks your every move. It lived on MySpace, which dates me immediately, but for a while it…

I’ve felt a little rundown lately, the kind of fatigue you try to ignore because ignoring it seems like a good strategy. For months, friends and family have chastised me for burning my candle at both ends. (Trust me, they’re used to it). On Wednesday, after I attended Mass, I started to feel cold in…