“Every one of Joel’s songs — including the happy ones — are ultimately about loneliness.” – Chuck Klosterman For a singer known best as a Tin Pan Alley-inspired, Broadway-loving, pop balladeer, Billy Joel has a pretty big dark streak. You may not hear it in “Just the Way You Are” or “Uptown Girl,” but Joel’s…
3/5/12, 3:02 PM – At midnight tonight, Mass Effect 3 is released. I will be sharing thoughts (and maybe screenshots) as I play through the game. On this post. If you’ve been paying close attention, you will have noted that I declared Mass Effect 2 my favorite game of all time, an assertion that still stands.…
Every now and then I browse through the archives of Earn This — and my colllege newspaper columns, and my old personal web-site, etc. — and I usually come away some combination of pleased and disgusted. Pleased, in that my writing has become progressively more readable. Disgusted, in that so much of what I’ve written…
This is part of my 2011 wrap-up series, A Few of My Favorite Things, in which I discuss what I enjoyed the past year, regardless of when it was released. #7 Europa Universalis 3 PC game, 2007 The previous entry on this list earned about $1.4 billion. This entry probably earned about 0.1% of that. It’s…
A record-setting number of people watched The Big Game yesterday, so I’m sure everyone and their grandmother has something to say about the proceedings. Nonetheless, I couldn’t resist sharing my own take on a few aspects of yesterday’s Super Bowl. The matchup Really, was there a worse possible matchup? Both teams have won Super Bowls…
Tell me if this sounds familiar: Pop/rock group makes a hit, gets unjustly labeled as a “one-hit wonder,” releases a dark and emotional masterpiece that witnesses the band crumbling, breaks up soon afterwards, disappears for years despite some generous re-appraisals of their later work, finally re-appears. Trick question! I described (at least) two bands. Weezer…
When Netflix and Amazon started offering The Wonder Years to stream, I decided to give the classic series a try. Immediately, I fell in love with the show: At its peak, it’s sentimental, poignant, and hilarious. Since then, I’ve been going through the series, episode by episode, writing a recap/review/analysis of each episode. I’ve posted…
I wrote full recaps and analyses of the The Wonder Years, seasons 1-3, but I stopped writing them when I started watching the beginning of season 4. Why? There are really two reasons: First, the beginning of the fourth season didn’t really give me much to write about. It was less that there was a…
There are, in essence, two goals for season finales: One is to conclude the season that just finished, and one is to focus on setting up the next season. The best season finales do both well. Cliffhangers can be fun, but the most satisfying finales are the ones that organically and methodically set up future…
Clearly the MVP of the the third season of The Wonder Years is Dan Lauria as Jack. He’s already had some great showcases: The Family Car, Faith, The Powers That Be, and The Tree House come to mind. Daddy’s Little Girl is one of his best showcase episodes yet. It also echoes the most resonant…