About the Writers

Armed with humor, wit, sarcasm, and a healthy disdain for mediocrity, Charge Shot!!! offers up daily commentary on games, movies, music, books, TV, technology, and more.

Andrew Cunningham, co-editor
andrew@charge-shot.com

Andrew has been an avid consumer of all things Media for as long as he can remember which isn't very far back at all, probably because he played too many video games as a child. In 2008 he graduated from Kenyon College in Gambier, OH with a degree in Classics, which he uses every day in his work supporting computers for Kenyon’s faculty and staff.

A tech enthusiast, Andrew cut his teeth on a computer with a 20 megabyte hard drive and MS-DOS 5.0. His favorite television show is Arrested Development, his favorite video game is Super Mario Bros. 3, his favorite albums are both eponymous and identified colloquially by their colors (white, blue) and his turn-ons are, frankly, none of your business.

Craig Getting, co-editor
craig@charge-shot.com

Craig lives in King of Prussia, PA, a suburb of Philadelphia, where he is currently attempting to make a living in theatre. He, too, graduated from Kenyon College, where he received a degree in Drama which trained him to do very specific things.

He's an avid baseball fan, a competent racquetball player, and can type a mean 70 words/minute. His favorite pieces of media include: The Pillowman (play), Shadow of the Colossus (game), Forrest Gump (movie), and Kind of Blue (album). Oh yeah, and don't get him started on the whole Brontosaurus/Apatosaurus thing. You're only asking for trouble.

Alex Boivin, contributor

Alexander W. Boivin (pronounced "BO-vin") was born on the snowy fjords of Minnesota to a family of hardy Quebecer stock. He lived a promising life as a young scholar until, upon his return from university in Ohio, he accidentally killed the son of a prominent nobleman in a fight over the honor of a comely tavern maid. Since that time he has been driven into exile in the county of Breukelen where he spends his days complaining about excessive retconning in comic books.

Boivin's interests include cult cinema, medieval history, hockey, wine, women, and song.

Chris Holden, contributor

Chris Holden graduated from Kenyon College in 2008 with a degree in philosophy and music. After discovering that the professional world is not exactly begging for workers with that kind of background, he retreated back into the realm of academia. He currently resides in Tallahassee, Florida, as a graduate student in humanities at Florida State University.

Chris is a fan of "high" culture and pop culture, and firmly believes that one can appreciate both for what they are. His academic interests include intellectual history and classical music; his pop culture expertise lies with James Bond films, epic fantasy novels, and instrumental surf rock.

Chris currently has no spare time, and thus no hobbies. He plans to resume leisure activities upon the attainment of his masters degree in 2011.

Andrew Pankin, contributor

Andrew (please refer to him as Pankin, to avoid confusion) is a Philosophy major from the Los Angeles area. His background and family history have instilled in him a fascination with showbiz and all aspects of the entertainment industry.

He is a passionate fan of Baseball, enjoys the music of Rush, plays piano avidly and drums when he can, and admires Batman over and above all other historical personages, living or dead. His video game knowledge barely extends beyond the N64, as Pankin prefers the more old fashioned sit-around-the-table games, such as poker, Trivial Pursuit, Risk, Dungeons & Dragons, or Magic: The Gathering.

Stephanie Hemmingson, contributor

Stephanie currently lives in Beaverton, OR and is working as a research assistant at the Advanced Imaging Research Center at Oregon Health and Science University. Her primary research there involves data processing and study coordinating for MR imaging of breast cancer. She graduated from Kenyon College with a BA in physics and chemistry in 2008, leaving her in conflict between her love for the sciences and her liberal arts education. She plans to attend graduate school in the fall of 2010, but in the meantime she’s honing her domestic skills by learning how to garden, cooking, mothering a household of four roommates, and indulging dreams of someday writing fiction novels. In the spring and summer, she coaches high school softball in a desperate attempt to relive her glory days as a collegiate athlete. Her primary blogging interests include budget gadgets, casual gaming, using analogies to explain complex science, and rating movies based on the longstanding family tradition of comparing each one to the movie Congo.

Jordan Pedersen, contributor

Stupidly enough, Jordan wants to be a journalist. Or a TV comedy writer, just so he's got a contingency plan in case his pie-in-the-sky aspirations don't pan out. You've got pharmacy school, he's got The Daily Show.

For now, he's embracing the new-media paradigm and working for free. He maintains his own film blog, writes about heavy metal under the name "Clive Candy", and got something (e)published somewhere else.

He's currently a paid intern (they pay for his lunch) at the Better Government Association in Chicago and hopes that one day his desk won't also be the home of the microwave and the coffee maker. He lives with his mother and accepts his casual alcoholism.

He's the one on the right.

Giaco Furino, contributor 

Giaco Furino is a writer and poet living and working in Philadelphia, PA. He graduated in 2008 from the University of the Arts with a BFA in "Writing for Film and Television" and thus has vowed to never write for Film or Television.

He's been hooked on pop culture and genre fiction since he was seven, when his parents got him a VHS of From Star Wars to Jedi, a documentary about a trilogy of films he'd never seen set where? In space?!

He's currently working on a children's novel, a young adult novel, and a collection of short genre stories to distract himself from editing the final draft of his poetry manuscript. He tries to love and not just like. He loves comedy industry podcasts. He loves the poetry of H.L. Hix, Campbell McGrath and Karen Solie. He loves the music of Jonathan Richman, The Thermals, David Byrne and Morrissey (he knows, he knows). He has a little white dog named Tonto who's tough as nails.

Rob Kunzig, co-editor in absentia

Rob Kunzig is clinically addicted to flashing lights. As the DEA has yet to restrict modern media, he consumes voraciously and indiscriminately, sitting in dark rooms for hours on end. When he steps outside for a restorative jog or meditative walk, he finds it necessary to ask passersby what day it is.

Rob graduated from Kenyon College with degrees in English, Gin and Misanthropy. A reporter and editor based in Lewes, Del., he makes a hobby of loudly bemoaning the death of print media and reading The New  Yorker in public. If he could travel in time – only once, and with no exit – he’d warp to 1968, find Joan Didion and ask her for a cigarette.

Joseph Kanengiser, former contributor

As a member of the misguided youth known as artists, Joseph Kanengiser dedicated his undergraduate academic tenure, spent at Kenyon College in the rolling hills of Ohio, to the study of music. Despite intellectual passions for science, technology, philosophy, politics, and foreign language (he is a proficient speaker of Italian, and his unique and world renowned ability to pretend to be far more competent than his detractors would indicate, allows him to claim some semblance of fluency in such other languages as Spanish, French and least convincingly, English), he does not regret nurturing his creative side, even though more formal instruction in any of the aforementioned fields would have served him well in his future occupational ambitions.

Eugene Rutigliano, former contributor

Eugene Rutigliano graduated from Kenyon College in 2008 with a degree in Art History. He has braved his self-inflicted career option deficit and eked out a curatorial assistant position at MASS MoCA in North Adams, MA (if you need anything put up all great on a wall, let him know).

Growing up in NJ taught him to love the great indoors, a passion he pursues with the utmost attention. Aside from videogames, he spends his money on old records, monographs and camera equipment. Continue...