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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(Tr)iPad

The iPad has been in the news recently for several reasons – here’s what you missed!

Here’s why you should NEVER buy an iPad at Wal-Mart

A video that four … Read More

Holiday Buyer’s Guide

Ever look around and wonder, “Man, I wish companies would market their products more.  I never know what to buy come the holidays…” Of course you haven’t!  We live in a hyper-advertised world, you hooligan!  In a capitalist society, the holiday question has become not “what” to buy, but “which” to buy.

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Awesomesauce- HOMAGE tees

Remember your favorite t-shirt from your childhood? It had been worn so many times that the shoulder seams were threadbare and threatening to burst.  You never let your mom throw it away, though, since it was so soft from one too many washings.  Read More

Roundtable Discussion: Thanksgiving Edition

Thanksgiving is the perfect excuse to eat and eat and eat and drink and eat some more. So we tasked our writers to share their favorite component of the Thanksgiving meal, as well as what they’ll be drinking at dinner this year!

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A Preview of a Live-Tweeted Thanksgiving

Tonight, I take a red-eye out of Los Angeles to go home (can I still call it home if I don’t live there?) for Thanksgiving. Many of us at PorchDrinking – and our readers and friends – will do the same. Here is a preview of what your friends will be tweeting over the holiday. It’s a preview of one man’s hypothetical live-tweeted Thanksgiving weekend, to get you into the spirit and prepare you for the updates from friends as they slowly tire of that warm feeling of being around loved ones.

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Israel vs. Palestine

Israel vs. Palestine: How it happened, what’s happening now, and why you should care.

If you’ve picked up a paper or turned on the news in the past five days, you’ve seen coverage of the recently renewed violence between Israel and Palestine.  Israeli military claims 544 rockets fired from Gaza have hit Israel since Wednesday, while Palestinians report that Israeli retaliation has devastated cities in the Gaza Strip, killing hundreds.  With the death toll mounting and violence escalating, both sides are preparing for a ground war as Israel mobilizes its troops.

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