Writing this “WTF” column each week has been the most creatively fulfilling thing I’ve ever done. It’s been a challenge and a joy to bring my own quirky journalistic style to The Lamron, a proud publication that traditionally holds itself to a more serious standard than my accusations regarding a beloved Christmas icon’s terrorist acts. At risk of sounding self-aggrandizing, this column has turned out better than I could have hoped, and I am proud of it.

I’ve noticed a fun pandemic trend: sometimes, you fall asleep and forget that reality is a nightmare. The flipside is when, approximately eight hours later, you wake up, check your phone and realize “oh wait, reality is, in fact, a nightmare.” The pendulum always swings back.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve been thinking a lot about psychological defense mechanisms. It’s utterly fascinating to see the different ways these mechanisms manifest as people try to adapt and adjust to this global nightmare.

Oscar Isaac may be the best actor that you haven’t paid much attention to. Sure, fans of Star Wars know him as the charming, reckless starfighter pilot Poe Dameron, and if you’re into awful superhero movies then you might recognize him looking like a bad “Power Rangers” monster during his turn as the titular villain in 2016’s X-Men: Apocalypse. Would those kinds of roles, however, explain why a 2017 Vanity Fair article described Isaac as “the best dang actor of his generation?”

There is perhaps no pair of words that presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders could say that would be more entertaining to hear than “Soccer Mommy.” Given this undeniable truth, the world received a gift on Sunday Feb. 23 when Sanders held a rally in Houston that was kicked off by a performance from Sophie Allison—the aforementioned “Soccer Mommy.” In his iconic, goofy 1940s-era Brooklyn accent, Sanders roared “Let me thank [sock-uh MOM-EE], for the music;” which is in equal parts delightful and proof that the Matrix just glitched.

Welcome to Dumpuary—the first quarter of every movie calendar, the post-Oscars regression where good movies have been laid to rest and there is nothing to look forward to cinematically until summer blockbusters roll around. To make matters worse, Dumpuary 2020 is an extended one due to the earliest Academy Awards in the ceremony’s history and a blockbuster season that is pushed as late as May—where the drought will end with a flood of Dev Patel-starring period pieces in The Personal History of David Copperfield and A24’s The Green Knight.

Here’s hoping that your Valentine looks at you the way Academy Award-winning director Bong Joon-Ho looks at his Oscar statue. If you’re unfamiliar, Bong is the director and co-screenwriter of Parasite, the history-making South Korean social satire that struck Oscars gold at the 92nd Academy Awards on Sunday Feb. 9.

The beauty of HBO’s iconic, zeitgeist-shaping phenomenon “Game of Thrones” is the way it subverted its audience’s expectations regarding fantasy archetypes and narrative tropes. The show’s greatest subversive act was not killing off Ned Stark in season one, or even season three’s infamous Red Wedding. No, the greatest trick “Game of Thrones” ever pulled was airing an incongruous, nigh-incomprehensible, finale that reminded the world how little impact poorly executed subversion produces.

In Greek mythology, mortals cannot look upon a god’s true form without being incinerated on the spot. A recent edition to the pop-culture lexicon, perhaps our modern equivalent to a Greek god, provokes a similar, albeit more welcome, response: a fiery parental instinct, explosive giggle fits and violent, unabashed joy. 

Finally, it’s almost Christmas—or Hanukah, or Kwanza or whatever other early-winter holiday you celebrate, but for the purposes of this column I am discussing Christmas in particular. The reason that I am talking about the Christian holiday specifically is because this article will examine a celebrated Christmas icon who perhaps does not deserve a spot on the pedestal upon which he is often placed.

Even though some people have been celebrating Christmas and the like since October, Thanksgiving is right around the corner. Oft forgotten and always underrated, the celebration fills a unique role within the holiday landscape that is often overlooked when compared to flashier, more commercialized festivities.

Like the Death Star in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, Tuesday Nov. 12 served as the day the world bore witness to the fully armed and operational battle station that is Disney+. Since Disney, the entertainment world’s evil empire, added Star Wars to its ever-increasing roster of intellectual property, the company has added four—soon to be five—films to the franchise’s storied canon. For better and for worse, the House of Mouse is responsible for taking care of the galaxy far far away.

“21 Chump Street” is a goofy 14-minute-long musical from 2014 about a high school senior named Justin Laboy who unwittingly sells weed to an undercover police officer. Written and narrated by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright-rapper-countless-other-titles-I-could-put-in-this-hyphenation Lin-Manuel Miranda, the musical is an obscure footnote in the prodigious creator’s vast and varied discography.