This is part of my 2011 wrap-up series, A Few of My Favorite Things, in which I discuss what I enjoyed this year, regardless of when it was released. 12. Grantland Sports and pop culture web site (debuted 06/2011) When you visit www.grantland.com, you’re greeted with contrasting images: At the center, you have the elegant, classicly-styled…
This is part of my 2011 wrap-up series, A Few of My Favorite Things, in which I discuss what I enjoyed this year, regardless of when it was released. #13 Larry And His Flask Self-described “hillbilly band” I remember reading an article somewhere — maybe it was in the thought-provoking Ripped — that the role of…
This is part of my 2011 wrap-up series, A Few of My Favorite Things, in which I discuss what I enjoyed this year, regardless of when it was released. #14 Portal 2 Video game, 2011 I normally don’t buy games near their release dates, but Portal 2 was an exception for a few reasons. First, I…
This is part of my 2011 wrap-up series, A Few of My Favorite Things, in which I discuss what I enjoyed this year, regardless of when it was released. #15 LOST TV series, 2004-2010 (The soundtrack to this article) Lost is kind of a great show. It’s also kind of a terrible one. On the one…
This is part of my 2011 wrap-up series, A Few of My Favorite Things. Before I jump into my top fifteen for 2011 — read the overview here — I wanted to discuss a few items that I chose not to include on the list for one reason or another. Parks and Recreation This…
At the end of 2010, I made a post counting down my top 25 favorite things from that year. It was a fun and revelatory process to reflect on what had affected me during the previous twelve months. Now that 2011 is wrapping up, I’d like to put together another end-of-year discussion of the year’s…
Some Earnthis writers don’t quite have the time to devote to lengthy reviews that we used to, but I’d like to offer some brief thoughts (and not-so-brief thoughts, in Moneyball‘s case) on recent flicks that have been in theaters and may get Oscar play. A couple thoughts on 2011: it feels like a weak year; and who…
When was the last time you heard a band credit their breakthrough to PureVolume? It almost feels as if that site was a phase, something you love in high school and then grow out of. Nowadays we’ve got oodles of options like Spotify, Pandora, and MoonPlayer to help us find new music and Bandcamp, SoundCloud,…
In this world, nothing can said to be certain, except death and taxes. -Benjamin Franklin Faith isn’t an episode about anything important, except marriage, and uncertainty, and family, and faith (its title topic), and death, and the meaning of life. But nothing really important. It’s one of those episodes like Whose Woods Are These? that…
I guess that’s when I realized that love was going to be a lot more complicated — and a lot more simple — than I’d ever dreamed. Kevin This is exactly the type of Kevin-Winnie story the show should be telling now: slow-paced, depicting the early stages of the relationship, letting the two build chemistry,…