Billy Joel is my favorite musical artist of all time. I’ve enjoyed his music literally longer than I can remember, and I still do. There’s a Billy Joel CD in my car’s CD player. That’s not to say he’s always been my “current favorite” — I’ve fallen in love with plenty of other bands and…
Due to my summer-heavy work cycle drastically opening up, I’ll have a lot more free time during September than I have in many months. One way I plan to take advantage of this (along with quite a bit of doing nothing, reading, and catching up on TV shows) is to write a bit more for…
Rating: 3 stars (out of 4) If you were to watch this based on the show’s premise as advertised by MTV — “a high school nerd accidentally reveals he has a long penis, and his social life turns around!” — you’d be disappointed. That one trait of the central character (despite being referenced in the…
I know we don’t write much about sports here at Earn This, but I’m going to file it under the “pop culture” part of our description. Let’s rewind a decade. A dominant Shaq-Kobe Lakers team stifled MVP Allen Iverson in the Finals to go 15-1 in the playoffs. Chris Webber and Gary Payton were still…
The office for the company I work for has a large selection of edgy, anti-authority education books. I picked up this one yesterday and read most of it last night. It’s pretty short (191 pages) and, unlike most education books I come across, has little to say about schools other than to dismiss them almost…
I’ve been on a Bruce Springsteen kick recently (I think I could write a two-thousand word analysis on Rosalita alone), but occasionallyI need something more mindless and disposable. My recent pop album of choice has been Taylor Swift’s Speak Now, which has risen considerably in my esteem the past few weeks. It has a lot…
In the past I have analyzed and criticized the Annie Awards. Here is an update on the situation. Hey, I guess someone out there is listening to me*! Less than a month after I discussed the flawed voting structure, ASIFA-Hollywood elected a new president and vice president. The outgoing president — Antran Manoogian, who, though…
In the past I have praised the Annie Awards for providing a lens into the most important animated features from each year of the past couple decades. The largest mark against the awards came in 2008, when Kung-Fu Panda won Film of the Year against Wall-E, which was by far the most recognized and important…
Over in that house is a kid who thinks you’re the greatest, and it’s not because you’re a space ranger, pal. It’s because you’re a toy. You are his toy! – Woody Rating: 4 stars (out of 4) The success of Toy Story was almost unprecedented: Critics made it the fourth best-reviewed film of all time.…
On February 3, 1986, Pixar became an independent company by LucasArts selling the organization to Steve Jobs. (Little known fact: Jobs’ first billion actually came from Pixar, not from Apple.) Pixar spent its first decade exclusively releasing shorts before it partnered with Disney to bring you Toy Story in 1995. The rest, as they say,…