See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor. I always knew something seemed suspicious about their kidnapping frequency.

Suspense horror is not my wheelhouse. I’m a naturally jumpy guy, so I avoid most horror in general, but suspense…that’s the granddaddy of all horror. Suspense sticks with me long after the experience is over thanks to its best friend unease. Thankfully, true discomfort, true unease, true terror, they’re not reliably easy things to create. Why else would garden variety horror media lean so heavily on jump scares and similarly cheap tactics? Even if you do manage to reliably create tension, how can you repeat it in the context of a movie or video game? Familiarity is the arch enemy of horror and fear. ...

After watching Inception for the sixth time this year I mentioned to my friend Jenn that I was still loving and enjoying finding all the subtleties and nuances within the film. She countered that she didn’t really like the movie and questioned why I did. It got me thinking and, naturally, inspired this piece. Inception might be this huge, bombastic summer blockbuster filled with guns, explosions, chases, and blaring music, but it’s also the story of a man’s tragedy. Dom and his wife, Mal, are the centerpieces to this story and the entire reason I love it. Sure, you’ve got this crazy dream sequence stuff going on, but the best part of it all is the way those two interact. ...

I stopped listening to hip hop back in 2003. If you asked me then, I’d probably say that it stopped being any good around then. Reality probably aligns more closely with a teenage counter-culture attitude that started to manifest not long after I hit my Junior year of high school. I’m not complaining too much; I mean, I shifted into a pure alternative rock mindset and I exposed myself to solid music from the 90s and 00s, but here I had gone and cut myself off from an entire genre of music that I deemed too mainstream. ...

One day Mike Birbiglia woke up and decided that he was going to fundamentally change his comedy and make it more personal. Who am I kidding? The guy was already shifting in that direction before his one-man show, “Sleepwalk With Me”, debuted off-Broadway. Before things got personal, he was already sharing his “Secret Public Journal” with all his fans and devotees. I can’t pretend to understand the motivations behind his transition away from a straight joke comic to what he is today, but I’m so glad it happened. ...

Risky. I’d seen The Girl twice before. Once at an Orioles game, where we chatted more than we watched baseball. She was a friend of a friend and I didn’t expect to see her again. The next time I saw her was at my own house, during my housewarming party. The friend I knew brought her along with him. While her stay at the party lasted until the next afternoon, I would have still been reluctant to say that I really knew her, yet I had invited her out to see a band. ...

It all started with Metal Gear Solid. Hideo Kojima is a pacifist. How do I know this having never spoken to him? It’s the only logical explanation behind Metal Gear Solid. Big whoop, I mean, the games themselves are about as overtly in support of pacifism and nuclear non-proliferation, but I’m not talking about the overt, obvious messages. Anyone can put hours and hours of cutscenes in a video game (although few can get away with it like he can), but Kojima is special because he emphasizes the holiest of modes of expression for a game designer: mechanics. ...

I have lived in twelve different “homes”. They range from dorm rooms to full-on apartments, row houses, and houses, but each represented a change in my lifestyle and a milestone reached in my personal development. The way I see it, moving around so much can cause two equally strong reactions in a person. If you’re like my older brother, it makes you want to stay put for as long as humanly possible. Meanwhile my younger brother finds himself seeking to never put down roots and wander the world as long as he can. ...

Wrigley Field is baseball. No other ballpark I’ve ever been to has exuded quite so much of that je ne sais quoi that makes baseball so great. You know, I think I do know what makes Wrigley so great for baseball. It’s the fact that no matter what year it is, no matter how many garish Toyota signs are up in the outfield, or how the game of baseball has changed since its inception, the Cubs show up in a Wrigley laid out almost identically to its opening day in 1914, complete with a manual scoreboard and ivy walls, and play ball in a park that has become one with Chicago. Wrigley Field is a constant. No matter what you do to it, watching a ball game feels like you’re back in the 1950s. Wrigley is comforting in that way. It immediately makes you feel like you’ve been watching baseball there forever, even during your first visit. ...

In their last show as a band, the Sex Pistols played one song and left the stage. Before leaving the stage, Johnny Rotten quipped, “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” The thing is, I don’t feel this way for the reasons everyone else might think I might. I suppose we’ll go after the biggest point of contention first. Linearity “Final Fantasy XIII is The Worst Final Fantasy Ever (TM) because all the dungeons are straight lines and there are no towns.” Guess what. The non-linearity of those Final Fantasy games you all hold so dear is an illusion. Final Fantasy XIII draws so much ire because it has the gall to tell you what you already know. ...