Uncategorized

The Swiftening 2: No Fear T-Shirt [Fearless (2008)]

by The Fancy Boys9 Comments on The Swiftening 2: No Fear T-Shirt [Fearless (2008)]
The Swiftening 2: No Fear T-Shirt [Fearless (2008)]

Last week, special guest contributor Jordan Holmes began what he called “The Swiftening”, in which he would listen to every Taylor Swift album in chronological order despite never having, intentionally, listened to any of her songs before. It began with Swift’s 2006 self-titled debut, which you can read here.

Against all the odds, an unemployed podcast host struggling to start writing another – god knows whatever you’d call what he did last time – has managed to craft from his vast resource of quarantine time another bitter screed against someone vastly more talented and successful. 

(I wrote that before I finished, so if you didn’t read it… I didn’t.)

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Sports

2021 NBA Preview: 30 Guys To Watch

by Michael GraceLeave a Comment on 2021 NBA Preview: 30 Guys To Watch
2021 NBA Preview: 30 Guys To Watch

Imagine being a Bulls fan in your 30s. The glory days came and went long before Hi-Def TV, DVR, and handheld-miracle supercomputers. The name Derrick Rose probably elicits more trauma than fondness, and that’s it. That’s all you know since childhood. Pain. But what if you could appreciate the league from a different perspective? Instead of basketball being a causeway between football pain and baseball pain, why not enjoy the beauty of the game through the players that make any night something special? I’m here to help. This isn’t going to be a list of stars. You know who LeBron James and Kevin Durant are. You know they’re worth watching. This is a list of 30 players, one per team, that deserve some attention this season.

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Music/Movies

The Five Best Christmas Rock Songs

by Matt DrufkeLeave a Comment on The Five Best Christmas Rock Songs
The Five Best Christmas Rock Songs

A while back, I made a list of great songs for your different Christmas mixes and I mentioned that I would make a list of the best rock songs for your holiday playlist. For a while, I’d forgotten I’d said that. However, I remember NOW. So let’s get into it. We’ll make this short and sweet so there’s not a lot of reading and a whole lot of rocking!

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Music/Movies, The Swiftening

The Swiftening, Part 1: Taylor Swift (2006)

by The Fancy Boys10 Comments on The Swiftening, Part 1: Taylor Swift (2006)
The Swiftening, Part 1: Taylor Swift (2006)

(EDITOR’S NOTE: Earlier this week, I reviewed the new album from Taylor Swift. My friend, the perfect and hilarious Jordan Holmes, responded as such:

From that tweet came great discussion. From that discussion came the idea for Jordan to review Swift’s entire discography. Here is part one, a look at the 2006 self-titled debut.)

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Advice

Brandon’s Guide to Adulting: Christmas (Covid Edition)

by Brandon AndreasenLeave a Comment on Brandon’s Guide to Adulting: Christmas (Covid Edition)
Brandon’s Guide to Adulting: Christmas (Covid Edition)

Being an adult sucks. No matter what think pieces written in large publications like The New York Times and Highlights Magazine tell you, there is no easy way to hit your post-fun-of-not-worrying-about-catching-an-STD days. Getting older involves a series of inevitable truths: 

1: You will get a gym membership you will never use, even though you tell yourself this is the month you turn it all around. 

2: You are going to develop opinions about certain craft beers you enjoy, no matter how many times you try to shake that feeling by drinking way too much Keystone Ice.

3: Stuff that you promised yourself you would never stress will come down on you like an avalanche. Examples include bills, affording diapers, and tapas.

4: You will lose your friends(more on this in a minute).

5: You are going to start to enjoy music you promised yourself you hated during their youth. You know how your dad always plays Electric Light Orchestra in his car when you are driving around with him? When he was young, he swore up and down that he would never like that shit, and that Black Sabbath was god. Keep that in mind when you are making fun of Bruno Mars, The Weeknd, and Pentatonix.

6: You know what? No. Fuck Pentatonix. They should be burned at the stake to redeem us from an angry god for all of our sins.

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Music/Movies

Lady Of The Woods: A review of Taylor Swift’s evermore

by Matt Drufke1 Comment on Lady Of The Woods: A review of Taylor Swift’s evermore
Lady Of The Woods: A review of Taylor Swift’s evermore

Guess who’s back? Back again? Taylor’s back! Tell a friend!

Let’s just get down to the nuts and bolts here and lay out everything you need to know: On Friday, Taylor Swift released evermore, her second album of 2020 and her third album in two years. According to Swift, she just enjoyed the process of working with her folklore collaborators Aaron Dessner (of indie-rock darlings The National), Jack Antonoff (longtime collaborator and Bleachers frontman), and Joe Alwyn (boyfriend who works under the pseudonym William Bowery) that the team just kept working and making music. The album, unsurprisingly, has dominated Spotify streams over the weekend while the Swift Boats (my personal name for her fans and I’m not going to stop calling them that) have lost their minds.

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Uncategorized

Miss – Won’t Miss – a list for the Prairie State

by copperwriteLeave a Comment on Miss – Won’t Miss – a list for the Prairie State

Three quick notes before I get on a roll here. One, I’ll miss a lot of people and there are so many I won’t name them. Note two? Well, COVID took a lot of what I’ll miss and that’s fucking sad. Note three – oh yeah, I moved to Colorado, hence the list.

MISS

Going to Art Galleries, especially Tony Fitzpatrick’s The Dime. Those were some nice nights and Saturdays – fuck COVID.

Driving to Rockford, etc with Steve Marshall to Open Mics even when he can’t fucking see half the time at night and he’s a prop comic who’s got an apartment full of stuff to take. Goddamn funny though.

Meeting at 6AM at Cesaroni’s Deli in Woodstock to watch the Tottenham Hotspur – the brothers Cesaroni open up, we buy lots of coffee and sammiches and yell at the TV.

Theatre and being a reviewer for the Northwest Herald – I got paid in tickets and that was perfectly fine… until COVID shit all over that. FU COVID. Speaking of theater…

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