One of the immutable axioms of music: every song sounds great mashed up with the Space Jam song. I don’t know what it is about the song and its ridiculous beat and rapping by the Quad City DJ’s, most famous otherwise for the song “C’mon and Ride It.” But it’s like lead to an alchemist:…
When I put together my very first draft of the ranking of the Top 100, I had the book Spectacular Now just a few slots out of the ranking. The movie had just come out, but I figured it wouldn’t really change my opinion of The Spectacular Now as a whole. Then I finally got…
If you just watched the opening half hour of My Cousin Vinny, I’d definitely excuse you for thinking that it’s a merely average comedy. The set-up of the film is nothing special: A series of misunderstanding and farcical twists of fate leave two New Yorkers on trial for a murder they didn’t commit in Alabama.…
I’ve never seen a show quite like Enlightened. It defies simple description. Probably the most succinct description would be “dramedy about a woman’s struggle to find meaning in life while working at a soul-sucking corporation.” Sounds fun, right? In its two seasons — just eighteen half hour episodes — Enlightened tracks Amy Jellicoe (a bewilderingly…
We are now two thirds through Dan’s Top 100 Everything, which means that it’s time for the second round of Honorable Mentions! I described the first round of Honorable Mentions as “things that didn’t make the list because they placed just outside the top 100.” You may think that’s the very definition of an “honorable…
Dear readers of Earn This, I am thrilled to hit the “Publish” button on this post, because Earn This now has 500 articles in its archives! The site will turn five years old in August, and we’ve had an amazing run so far writing about everything under the sun (but mostly music and movies). When Grant and…
“SMASH!?” I shouted as I walked in the front door of my college house, affectionately known as The Batcave. It was just after midnight. Birdman, who had been working on the school paper with me, walks in behind me. My roommate C-Bag, sitting on the couch looking at his laptop, looked up at us. Barely a…
“The people you work with are people you were just throw together with. You know, you don’t know them, it wasn’t your choice, and yet you spend more time with them then you do your friends or your family. But probably all you’ve got in common is the fact that you walk around on the…
“I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are.” – Dr. Mary Malone Well, this one snuck up on me. From September 2012 through September 2013, I…
If you haven’t figured this out yet, here’s an inside scoop: There are more board games than ever, they are more varied than ever, and they are better designed than ever. You can build a galactic empire, renegotiate The Cold War, engage in epic fantasy battles, outsmart Cthulu, even relive dogfights from Star Wars. All…