Awesomesauce- Incredible Things

Do you need someone to help you find the coolest stuff on the interwebs (besides us, obviously?)  Your prayers have been answered!  Look no further than Incredible Things. Read More

PorchDrinking Playlist: Apocalypse Now

So the Mayans think it’s the end of the world.  Well I have news for you… that already happened back around the time when they stopped making Dunkaroos, cancelled Arrested Development, when Bob Barker retired, and Justin Timberlake stopped making music.  Yes the alleged apocalypse is upon us this Friday and so we thought we’d round up a list of tunes to help ring in the end of days.

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Five Bowl Games to Watch This Season

December is a great month for sports. You have the NFL in the home stretch and just about to start the playoffs, basketball and normally hockey are in full swing and maybe the best part of the month – college football bowl games.

Starting on the 15^th and going all the way until January 7, 35 bowl games will be played across the country. While the debate goes on if there are too many games and if many are meaningless sponsor-driven events, it’s still fun  to watch teams from different conferences play each other for nothing but pride.

This year provides a slate of great match-ups from day one until the national championship in Miami on the 7^th. Here are five games all college football fans should settle down for and watch in their entirety: Read More

Story Time With Hank | The Donnish Deviant

I’m out with a friend at a bar that I hate. I mean I’m not really, not right now, obviously, but I’m in a present tense kind of mood so bear with me, please. I’m out with a friend at a bar that I hate. I’ve never been in this bar before today, but I know immediately that I hate it. The walls are black with purple trim and purple-framed pictures of skeletons and women in torn clothing and skeleton-women in torn clothing hang every two feet exactly. The bartenders are tattooed women in bikini tops. The ceiling fans are skeletons. In every seat is a middle-aged man in a Harley Davidson t-shirt tucked into jeans; in every parking space outside is a Nissan Sentra. Read More

5 Movies to See and 5 To Skip This Holiday Season

I hate mediocre films.  I hate them so, so much.  I hate them even more than terrible movies.  Why?  Because unlike those drenched in passable mediocrity, bad films get punished.  More often than not, awful films bomb at the box-office because anyone with moderate observational talents can see them coming from a mile away (exhibit A: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-7iv6-8BRw).  Mediocre films, on the other hand, slip by, make millions, and tell studio execs, “Hey, this isn’t too shabby!  Let’s do more of this, because real talent costs money, and MONEY IS OUR GOD.”

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TV Shows You Really Should Be Watching

I know we all only have so much time in the day.  We hit the grind all the live long day and seemingly only have a few minutes to ourselves before we hit the hay and start the process all over again.  But if you find yourself in need of something to do on a certain night of the week, I suggest filling the time void with some good old fashioned television.

You might think I’m crazy with the following list of TV shows, but please hear me out on these shows you should be watching but probably aren’t. Read More

Roundtable Discussion: Eating the Same Meal or Going Vegan for a Year

This week’s roundtable was a big random but we decided to ask our staff whether they would choose to eat the same exact meal for an entire year or go vegan.  Here’s what they came up with…

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PorchDrinking Playlist: Winter Edition Sans Xmas Music

Christmas music is pretty hard to escape this time of year. At the grocery store, on the radio, on TV and, frankly, it’s kind of unfair. There are plenty of other winter related tunes that are forced to take a back seat to the merriment and jingle-jangling of this month’s carols. So I decided that I’d present a Christmas-free playlist to highlight 20 of winter’s best tunes, and don’t worry we’ll have a holly jolly playlist for you soon as well. This list includes several December themed songs and concludes with a few that just embody the feeling of winter. Feel free to share your own in the comments section below.

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I Think I’m a Lakers Fan, and I Think it’s Because They Suck

FINE, I’ll say it. In writing. On the internet.

I am a Lakers fan.

That confession weighs on me, because I have always considered myself something of a Lakers hater. Like the New York Yankees or the New England Patriots, they’re just so easy to hate—big market, big star, tons of success … it makes a small town Reds/Bengals/Packers fan like myself hate big city teams who seem to win all the time. Read More

Vote 2012

Are you voting in 2012?

Not *that* vote…you’re just a bit late for that one…

You know that paragraph all your friends have been copying and pasting on their walls, stating that they retain all their rights to the content they put on Facebook, etc, etc, blah, blah, blah?  Facebook has proposed several site changes that sparked that flurry of idiocy and they’re letting the users vote on the changes. Read More

Story Time With Hank | Late Night Sad-Time Cry-Fest

A little light from the street leaks in around the edges of the blinds over my kitchen windows, two orange-rimmed eyes looking at me over the table where I eat my breakfast and stack junk mail and presently sit, with a glass and a bottle, but otherwise it’s dark. That suits me fine. It’s that kind of night.
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Pop Culture Week in Review

Prin Kate is Pregs

I can’t even be bothered to write whole words about this as it really isn’t that interesting.  The married couple who have an obligation to an entire country to maintain the family line have conceived a child!  Who would have thought.

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Awesomesauce- CharityNavigator.org

The beginning of December usually means one of several things to most people:

1. Yes!  Great Lakes Christmas Ale season is here again!  (oops, is that just us…?)

2. Crap, now I have to think about what Great Aunt Edna wants for Christmas.

3. Ermahgerd! Menorahs! Eggnog!  Mistletoe!

4. Wow, I should squeeze that charity donation in before the end of the year…

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Roundtable Discussion- Holiday Grinch Edition

I love Christmas, I’m all about the jingle, the jangle, the cookies, the snow (please bring the snow), the churchin’ and of course the beer.  But every now and then, hearing Oh Holy Night in the local grocery store a month before Christmas can get a little old.  Oh and there are times when trying to drive within a mile of any retail store sitting bumper to bumper can start rubbing the wrong way.  And having that one awkward encounter while back home on vacation, with that guy you met once in high school, doesn’t exactly rank at the top of my Facebook interests list, especially when that one encounter involved getting chewing tobacco spat on your new shoes.  So hey the holidays aren’t entirely sugar plums and peppermint sticks.  So we asked our staff what they dreaded most about the impending holiday season.

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PorchDrinking the Playlist: November 2012 Recap

Even relative “down” months in terms of music releases still produce some pretty amazing songs. Our November 2012 Playlist features tracks from Punch Brothers, The Shins, Jason Isbell and … Read More

A Letter To The National Hockey League

Dear National Hockey League,

One of your biggest fans here.

Growing up in Chicago, I missed getting to watch legends Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita, but grew up idolizing guys like Tony Amonte, Eddie Belfour and Eric Daze. Old Chicago Stadium was deafening and full of history. It took a little bit of time to adjust to the United Center, but the fans didn’t care. We just loved our Chicago Blackhawks.

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Story Time With Hank | Uncle Pete the Samaritan

Happy (almost) December, ladies and gentlemen. May there be a crisp twenty in the linty pocket of a jacket-you-haven’t-worn-in-a-year-or-two of your life.

I meant to have a very special surprise for you today: the first ever audio Story Time. Read More

Roundtable Discussion: If I Had 500 Million Dollars

What would you do if you won the Powerball? 500 million dollars to be exact.  What would you do with 500 MILLION dollars… well more likely 250-300 million after taxes but who’s counting?  Well we decide pose this ridiculous scenario to our staff to see what would transpire.

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What to Watch This Week in College Basketball

Yes, it’s only November but it’s never too early to begin obsessing over college basketball, especially when you’re a Kentucky fan.  This week loaded with some truly epic match ups due to the ACC v Big Ten Challenge. And while it’s still quite early in the season many of these games can give you an idea of how much work will be needed for these teams to be prepped for a deep run in March.

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College Basketball Preview – Mid-Majors

Anyone who plays fantasy baseball with me knows I love creating ridiculous spreadsheets that use a combination of prior years’ statistics and current year player rankings to illustrate why my team will destroy theirs again that year. I considered doing something similar for this quick look into the best of this year’s mid-major college basketball teams. I thought that maybe by looking at the 19 teams from mid-major conferences who have reached the Sweet 16 or better in the past five years, we could see in the statistics some similar factor that made them successful—maybe turnover margin, three-point percentage, total defense, and free-throws taken and made per game—and use that knowledge to help predict which teams this year are constructed to allow for success in those same facets of the game. But considering the number of teams, number of variables, and that we really don’t need a Nate Silver-like level of precision with our predictions here, I’ll leave that up to you all, and rely on old-fashioned, always reliable gut instinct. Without further ado, here are six teams that Dickie V may be screaming are “Awesome Baby!!!” throughout the year, and especially come tournament time.
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