Pop Mythology
RMN dispatches tagged Pop Mythology.
Route 66 Turns 100: The Remaining Centennial Events Across America
Reported Feature
A coast-to-coast guide to the concerts, car celebrations, art shows, community festivals, history talks, races and holiday events still ahead.
The 1% Approach to Nostalgia
Reported Feature
Toys“R”Us figured out how to bring back the brand. It may have missed what people were actually mourning.
The Addams Family Never Lived in Westfield. That Hasn't Stopped the Town From Celebrating Them.
Reported Feature
As AddamsFest returns for its ninth year, the New Jersey hometown of Charles Addams is turning a fictional family into a very real community tradition.
Thirty Years Ago, Tamagotchi Taught Us to Love Something That Wasn’t Real
Reported Feature
The digital pets that made children worry about a few pixels are turning 30. New Jersey gets a monthlong pop-up, and Times Square gets a birthday party.
Can Anime Help People Talk About Real-Life Problems?
Event Hyatt Regency New Brunswick · New Brunswick, New Jersey
At DerpyCon 2026 in New Brunswick, a returning guest who combines clinical social work, stand-up comedy and anime fandom offers a different perspective on the emotional lives of fictional characters, and the people who connect with them.
In Maplewood, Watching Rocky Horror Still Means Performing Rocky Horror
Event Burgdorff Center for the Performing Arts · Maplewood, New Jersey
The Maplewood Strollers will bring The Rocky Horror Picture Show to the Burgdorff Center with a live Cosmic Light Cabaret shadowcast, audience participation and the ritual that turned a movie into something audiences have been rebuilding for half a century.
New Jersey ParaUnity Expo Brings Ghost Hunters, Cryptids and the Unexplained Back to Woodbridge
Event Woodbridge High School · Woodbridge, New Jersey
The 12th annual gathering returns Nov. 7 with paranormal television personalities, investigators, cryptid researchers, free lectures, exhibit rooms, vendors and a full day built around the strange corners of curiosity.
Rocky Horror at State Theatre NJ Got Weird in All the Right Ways
Reported Event State Theatre New Jersey · New Brunswick, New Jersey
Barry Bostwick, the Friday Nite Specials shadow cast, a fully committed crowd and a polished VIP after-party made Saturday night one of the best Rocky Horror experiences I have seen anywhere.
At Some Point, the Coffee Run Became an Outfit
Reported Feature
Dunkin’ and L.L.Bean’s first collaboration works because it doesn’t invent a lifestyle. It recognizes one New England has been rehearsing for decades.
Maybe the Dragons Were Never the Point
Reported Feature
New research on Dungeons & Dragons suggests the imaginary world may matter less than the very real structure around it: a table, a recurring reason to gather, and a group that expects you to come back next week.
The Monsters Are Checking In: NJ Horror Con Takes Over Iselin This Weekend
Event Delta Hotels Woodbridge · Iselin, New Jersey
The three-day convention and film festival returns Sept. 25-27 with Susan Sarandon, Kevin Smith, horror favorites, indie films, vendors, panels, cosplay and a whole lot of room for the unexpected.
Smodcastle Makes Avengers: Doomsday an Opening-Night Watch With Kev
Event SModcastle Cinemas · Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey
Marvel’s biggest 2026 movie reaches Smodcastle on Thursday, Dec. 17, with Kevin Smith in the room for a Watch with Kev screening one night before the film’s official Dec. 18 release date.
Rocky Horror Was Never Just a Movie
Culture
The many lives of a cult classic that keeps changing shape
Super Jersey Spectacular Is Already Building Its Biggest Show Yet
Reported Event Iron Peak Sports & Events · Hillsborough, New Jersey
Early-bird tickets for the April 17-18, 2027 go on sale Oct. 1. Organizers are also planning more than 400 tables, expanded family programming, a new youth ticket and continued support for the National MS Society’s NJ Metro Chapter.
The Dog Doesn’t Know It’s October 3
Reported Feature
CESAR’s pink Mean Girls tie-in is a small, silly and revealing example of what happens when an internet ritual becomes a physical object, and the family dog gets recruited into the bit.
The Goodyear Blimp Is Now a Halloween Costume. Of Course It Is.
Reported Feature
Spirit Halloween and Goodyear have turned one of America’s oldest corporate icons into an inflatable costume — which says something about the strange point at which advertising becomes nostalgia, and nostalgia becomes identity.
The Black Parade Is 20. Of Course It Comes Back on Vinyl and Cassette.
Culture
My Chemical Romance's 20th-anniversary edition arrives October 23 with expanded music, new James Jean artwork and enough gloriously physical formats to remind us that some albums were never meant to live only inside an app.
The Batmobile Is Coming to Princeton. This Time, the Mission Is Memory.
Event Brandywine Living at Princeton · Princeton, New Jersey
Brandywine Princeton is turning Batman Day and what would have been Adam West’s 98th birthday into a fundraiser for the Alzheimer’s Association New Jersey Chapter — with Batman, Catwoman, a Batmobile, live music and the kind of pop-culture memory that can still connect generations.
Gravity Falls Returns, One Artifact at a Time
Reported Feature
A new art book, a gallery exhibition and a coming WEBTOON edition of Lost Legends show how a finished series can keep growing without pretending it never ended.
We Keep Turning Pop Culture Into Mythology
Culture
Superheroes, celebrities, franchises and television characters increasingly provide the metaphors modern people use to explain morality, identity, grief, loyalty and change. That does not make entertainment a new religion. It does reveal how badly societies still need shared stories.
Eighteen Days Until the Lucas Museum Opens the Door on Narrative Art
Event Lucas Museum of Narrative Art · Exposition Park, Los Angeles
The long-awaited Los Angeles museum opens Sept. 22 with more than 1,300 works, continuous film screenings, comic art, illustration, cinema, mythology, a 13-acre park and one unusually broad argument about what belongs in an art museum.
When the Biopic Becomes a Room
Culture
David Bowie’s newest documentary does not ask an audience to sit in front of a screen. It surrounds them with photographs, music and spatial sound. Across museums, festivals and immersive venues, the life story of an artist is beginning to escape the rectangle.
William Shatner Is Bringing The Wrath of Khan to New Brunswick - Then Taking the Stage
Event State Theatre New Jersey · New Brunswick, New Jersey
State Theatre New Jersey will screen Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan on Jan. 29, 2027, followed by a live appearance and audience Q&A with William Shatner. Tickets go on sale Sept. 18 at 10 a.m.
Rocky Horror Is Ready to Do the Time Warp Again in New Brunswick
Event State Theatre New Jersey · New Brunswick, New Jersey
Barry Bostwick joins a 4K screening, live shadow cast and full audience-participation night at State Theatre New Jersey on Oct. 3.