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Pop-Culture Ode To Fangirls

Not too long ago, geekdom was seen only as the realm of the uber-nerd; a place for overweight, under-socialized weirdos to indulge their love of comic books and video games away from the rest of the world. The essence of that is still true — fandoms are all about a shared love of fictional worlds. But we’ve come a long way from the image of the ‘Comic Book Guy’ in recent years as geek culture has become a mainstream global phenomenon.

Posted by Rose Moore

The One Where Friends is Set in 2017

[TV still from Friends, Warner Bros Television]

From The Nineties documentary on CNN, to action movies like The Mummy, to Steven Spielberg reviving the Animaniacs cartoon, to radio stations switching to all Hip Hop Throwbacks, to Netflix rebooting everything from Full House to The Gilmore Girls, nineties nostalgia is everywhere lately. But one show not likely to make its way back on air with its cast in tack is an infamously well-paid group of Friends.

Collectively bargaining for $1 million per actor per episode fifteen years ago, means Jennifer Aniston and co. would likely demand a much higher price tag than NBC could ever afford. (Only the actors of The Big Bang Theory have hit the $1 million threshold since, and that’s in current dollars.) So we may never know if Ross and Rachel, or Monica and Chandler, stay together, but that doesn’t mean we can’t daydream about what the “Must See TV” classic would look like if rebooted for the Millennial Generation.

So let’s imagine Friends set in 2017 Manhattan and all the elements that would drastically change (especially the establishing shots of the World Trade Center).

 

Posted by Diana R. Wallach

Problems in the X-Files that Could Have Been Solved with Modern Technology

[All TV stills from X-Files, 20th Century Fox Television]

When The X-Files TV show premiered in 1993, cutting-edge technology included cell phones, the computer game Doom, and the Internet (yes! The Internet!). It's been 24 years since Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully first tackled the strangest situations in the FBI caseload. Since then, we've seen the invention of the DVD, the iPhone, social networking platforms, and the Internet of Things.

But what if X-Files hadn't premiered until this year? How would the show have unfolded its complex storyline? Plenty of the scrapes Mulder and Scully landed themselves in wouldn’t have turned out the way Chris Carter intended. After all, the 2016 reboot showed us that Mulder and Scully's world would have been vastly different with modern technology.

Let's take a look at five episodes that would have ended much differently if Mulder and Scully were first cracking cases today.

 

Posted by Elizabeth Ballou

Your Wet Hot American Summer: 10 Years Later TBR

Our favorite camp counselors are back! As the Wet Hot American Summer characters return to Camp Firewood for a ten-year reunion, we can’t help but wonder what reading material they packed for those long 1991 internet-less nights. While they were catching up, we snuck into their cabins and riffled through their suitcases. Here’s what they’re reading.

 

Posted by Danielle Mohlman

Book Recommendations for The Bachelorette Gentlemen

[TV still from The Ellen DeGeneres Show, A Very Good Production Inc. and Telepictures Production]

This season of The Bachelorette started with eleven million suitors (okay, it was 31) vying for Rachel Lindsay’s attention.  Since that fateful first cocktail party, most of those men have said their goodbyes. But now that they aren’t flying off to Norway and Switzerland and Hilton Head Island every other week, they’re certain to have a lot of time on their hands. We’ve picked our favorite Bachelorette goodbyes, pairing them with some reading material to keep them company.

 

Posted by Danielle Mohlman

Shark Week: Frickin’ Laser Beams

It's Shark Week 2017! Every year, we kick up our feet and watch terrifying sharks on our TV screens—but you weren't going to the beach again this summer, were you? No? Not anymore?

But what are sharks without frickin' laser beams? Share this post if you can find the one shark without a frickin' laser beam.

 

Infographic created for Quirk Books by Mike Rogalski, eyewashweb.com.

Posted by Quirk Books Staff