Pop Culture Week in Review: September 21-27

I managed to come up with a few things to recap that WEREN’T about Breaking Bad. Don’t worry. This was a week in which the LEAST exciting pop culture news was one of pop culture’s biggest awards shows. Funny, isn’t it? Let’s go ahead and get the Emmys out of the way so we can get to the other stuff. It’s the pop culture week in review for the last full week of September! Read More

Hate-Watching: When You’re Ashamed to Admit You Secretly Love TV

Back in my day, we just called watching bad TV a “guilty pleasure.”

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Pop Culture Week in Review: August 24-30

Sad news for the teachers and students out there alike: summer’s almost over. But even for those of us who never get months off of work, the end of summer marks the end of a special state of pop culture-dom. Big-budget action movies occupy our attention while regular TV programming takes a break. Here at the end of August, however, there are no superhero films or big-budget comedies. There’s no Oscar bait in August (“The Butler” notwithstanding).
What I DO have to share with you is a week of anticipation, a week of pre-occupation, a week of deals being struck in every permutation. (Thus endeth the rhymes). It’s the pop culture week in review for August 24-30th.

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Discovery’s Running Out of Ideas for Shark Week Programming

Now in its 25th season of broadcast, Discovery Channel’s Shark Week seemingly begun running out of ideas for original shark related programming. Here’s a rundown of some of the more outlandish and ridiculous programming that has been slated for this year’s Shark Week. Read More

The (2nd Annual) Universal Drinking Game

Remember last year when we presented the Universal Drinking Game? A year later, we’re back for round two. We’re tired of drinking game rules for individual movies and TV shows. We need a list that applies to ALL our entertainment.

So the rules of this game are simple: turn on ANY show or movie you want. And drink any time any of these things happen. ENJOY (responsibly)! Read More

Pop Culture Week in Review: June 30-July 6

It’s sweltering hot in parts of America, so this week you had an excuse to stay indoors and watch TV/surf the internet. So I’ll assume you’re mostly caught up on pop culture as it is. But in case you were busy splaying out under an air conditioner or sleeping off a Post-Porch-Drinking-First-Anniversary-Bottle-Share-And-Party hangover… here’s the stuff you might have missed. Quick hits, because as I type in this heat my fingers are already beginning to sweat. Not really. That’s a gross image. I apologize.

Here we go.

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Pop Culture Week in Review: May 31-June 6

This week, not a lot of great exciting stuff happened. Lindsay Lohan behaved herself, almost all big TV shows are on hiatus, no studio announced amazing movies in development, and we’ve all forgotten about “Arrested Development” season 4. Now we’re left with some viral videos, depressing news about the state of movies, and even MORE depressing news for the House of Stark.

I’ve got you covered in this week’s Pop Culture Week in Review. Let’s go.

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Golden Road Brewing | Point the Way IPA

ABV: 5.9% | IBU: 60

I have seen the light on IPA, thanks to Golden Road’s Point the Way IPA. “That stuff is [expletive] incredible,” someone told me recently. Quite a recommendation. As positive as that review is, I feared I might not feel the same way—I usually prefer mellow ambers to hoppy IPAs; I was wrong. I visited the Golden Road Brewery location here in Glendale, CA recently, and I loved their Point the Way IPA. To borrow a phrase, it’s [expletive] incredible. Read More

4 Ways to Feel About “Arrested Development” Season 4

Safe to say, we here at PorchDrinking are bona fide fans of “Arrested Development” (and four of those stories were written by me). So we were all pretty excited this week at the launch of Season 4 of the show – fifteen brand new episodes all at once! The Bluths are back!

The internet, of course, has had its say. And it hasn’t exactly been a consensus. So I present my (almost entirely) spoiler-free way of processing the complicated feelings you may have. As you ask yourself, “Did I like this? Should I watch it again? What is Netflix getting out of this?” check out the 4 very different ways to feel about season 4 of TV’s best comedy ever.

(Okay, I’ll editorialize. I’m in camp #2 here. Not to be confused with Camp Kissa-Me-Mommy.)

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Pop Culture Week In Review: May 10-16

It’s been awhile, PorchDrinkers. I have so much to share with you. And I’m not just talking about Star Trek: Into Darkness. I won’t say anything here for fear of spoiling the movie… but let’s be honest, if you haven’t had Star Trek’s “twist” spoiled for you by now, it’s because you haven’t been on the internet at all.

Anyway… some non-JJ Abrams stuff happened this week. Let’s review this week in pop culture! Read More

Is This The Name of a Kentucky Derby Horse OR an Indie Band?

The Kentucky Derby is best known for its ageless charm, style, and distinction. Every year you expect to see Derby hats, seersucker suits, mint juleps, and some good old-fashioned gambling. But there’s another tradition that seems more silly than logical – the names of all the horses are ridiculous.

Below is a list of names. 15 of these names belong to the horses running in this year’s Kentucky Derby, and the other 10 are the names of up-and-coming indie bands. See if you can correctly identify which of these are which. Good luck! Read More

Pop Culture Week In Review: April 13-19

Though I was born a full 13 years after the release of Star Wars: Episode 4, there may be no movie which influenced or defined me quite like the Star Wars franchise. When I was 5 years old, I watched the entire original trilogy over the course of a weekend at my grandma’s house. I was never the same. I’ve joked before that my parents never had to give me the birds-and-the-bees talk, because by hooking me on Star Wars, they assured I’d be abstinent forever. Even at 23, I’m confident no woman will ever measure up to the ideal that is Princess Leia.

So what does all of this have to do with this week’s pop culture week in review? Well, there’s an amazing clip that you need to see. Read More

Beer Trivia: A State Microbe for Beer?

Here’s a bit of bizarre beer trivia you can bring up the next time you’re drinking out on the porch with friends: have you ever heard of Saccharomyces cerevisiae?

It’s about to be Oregon’s new state microbe. Yes, microbe. While your state might have a state flower or bird or tree, the state of Oregon is about to officially recognize Saccharomyces cerevisiae, a yeast used in making craft beer, as the state microbe (not sure what benefits come with that).

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Pop Culture Week In Review – April 1, 2013

Time again to review the pop culture news and info that we at PorchDrinking.com love and care most about.

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Pop Culture Week In Review: March 23-29

You get a reboot! You get a reboot! Everybody gets a reboot!

Every show and movie you love is finding new life, and I’ve got news (and of course a bunch of sarcastic commentary) on all of that. Plus Ashley Judd is NOT running for Senate, Breaking Bad had a security breach, and America doesn’t know which NBC mainstay to hate more: Jay Leno or Matt Lauer. All of that in this week’s pop culture week in review for March 23-29.

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NCAA Mascot Madness – Genius Bracketology

This year, I’m trusting in the unpredictable. I’m doing something bold. I’m trusting my brackets not to expert advice or probability or whether I believe a high-scoring offense or a solid defensive core will win basketball games.

I’m making a bracket based on which mascot would win in a fight. For every game. It’s perhaps the first time someone has gone on the internet and actually advocated mascot-based bracketology. It’s NCAA Mascot Madness. It’s genius.

For safety – and science – I made a bracket that was based on my own (mostly safe) picks. And I’m stacking it up against a bracket which – by my own arbitrary determination – asks which team’s mascot could kick the other’s ass. The results are fascinating. Read More

Pop Culture Week In Review: February 23-March 1

A bunch of stars won Oscars, we lost a Pope, and Justin Bieber is 100% officially a douche. All of that and more happened in the last week of February. Let’s recap!

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Oscars 2013 Cheat Sheet

The 2013 Oscars are this Sunday. And you haven’t seen all of the movies and performances nominated. That’s okay. You can still pretend you did. This cheat sheet has all the info you’ll need! If you’re watching with friends or strangers, just spew some of these fun facts, behind-the-scenes info, and random trivia. You’ll seem like you know what you’re talking about. I did the research so you can seem like a movie savant. You’re welcome. Enjoy the show.

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The MLB Name Game: Baseball’s Best Hypothetical Matchups

DISCLAIMER: Even if you don’t like baseball, you can read this article. Believe me, it has SHOCKINGLY little to do with the actual sport.

This year, professional baseball is taking a huge step by shifting its American and National Leagues to two leagues of 15 teams each. This means that on any given day, an AL team will be playing an NL team, and interleague play will no longer be a special small stretch of the season. The Reds vs. the Angels will open the season as the first-ever Opening Day interleague game, and this season promises to create some new never-before-seen rivalries in baseball.

Looking over all the teams in baseball, something occurs to me: some teams have WAY cooler names than others. Teams are named after animals, American traditions, or in some cases just colors of socks. So in preparation for this season, I preview matchups not of actual baseball teams of players, but of team names themselves. Some matchups just make SENSE based on their names – who would win in a fight between a Cub and a Tiger? Which color Sox is the best? I will use any asinine criteria I wish to determine the outcome of these logical (and also sort of insane) hypothetical games.

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Super Bowl Commercials Recap

Aside from the epic Superdome blackout of 2013 and, y’know, that football game, February 3, 2013 was all about commercials. Whether you’re one of those people who obsessively watches the ads or a football fanatic who went to the bathroom during commercials and missed all the action, here we are to present the recap of the best (and worst) Super Bowl commercials of 2013.

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