Pop Culture Special Report: Star Wars

“The Star Wars franchise is nothing short of a generational touchstone…I literally can’t think of any comparable cultural phenom that has so pervasively shaped and galvanized viewers to the extent that Star Wars has. It’s embedded in my — and our — cultural DNA in a unique way and these are enduring strands.” – Shawn Levy*

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Story Time With Hank | At the Dentist

I’m the Customer of the Week at the Starbucks down the road. Every morning, I’ve sauntered up to the counter, been handed a free coffee and gone about my super-important business. I don’t know how they know who I am—there’s no picture that I can see and most of the staff is new—but they do, every day, without my mentioning it. Except for one day. Today, actually. Today, I ordered a double tall latte and I wasn’t told that they’d have that right up. I was told it would be $3.84.
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The Hipster Trend

It’s Wednesday. 9am. I’m walking to class hungover (Tuesday is 90s night!!) when something catches my eye. It is a pair of neon shorts worn by the ultimate f*cking hipster (hipsters don’t be offended I didn’t come up with the phrase, the Look at this F*cking Hipster tumblr did). I know, I know, I’m in no position to judge. I smell like alcohol and I’m wearing the same thing to class that I wore to bed the night before. But, I’m going to judge this girl anyway. Well, more like  comment on her (9am is too early to start judging). Read More

Roundtable Discussion: Halloween Candy Edition

Lets be real, Halloween is all about the candy. All across the U.S. tonight, kids will dump out their bounty and trade for their favorite sweets and try to unload the lesser prizes.  So we tasked our PorchDrinking staff to recount what they loved getting in their Halloween escapades, as well as what they tried to unload on their gullible friends or parents.

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News Week in Review – 10/22 – 10/29

Hurricane/Super-Storm Sandy Hits

If you’ve been watching the news at all in the last 48 hours, you’ve heard the news: New York and New Jersey are doomed. The “worst-case scenario” of perfect tide conditions and incredible amounts of rain finally brought super-storm Sandy to land, wrecking the coast with record-setting wind speeds, power outages, and flooding across the northeastern seaboard.

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Thoughts and Prayers Go Out to the Northeast

PorchDrinking.com would like to extend our thoughts and prayers to our family out on the east coast.  While many jokes have been made about Hurricane Sandy it is extremely dangerous … Read More

Pop Culture Week in Review – October 21-27, 2012

A few things we learned from this week in pop culture. Buckle up, this is a long article – almost as long as the script for “The Hobbit” or the line outside 30 Rock to see Louis CK on SNL.

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Story Time With Hank | The Aural Augur

Lady at the bar told me she could hear the future. And when a lady at the bar tells you she can hear the future, you roll with it—that’s what I believe.

So I took a moment to consider the implications of such an ability, but I was a little tipsy and it was an uphill battle. Read More

Week 8 Fantasy Football Preview

I wish a happy Thursday to all of you fantasy freaks. As we approach the halfway point of the season, some of the early season trends which we chalked up as flukes are starting to show some staying power while others are who we thought they were, to borrow a page from Denny Green’s book. I know one suspicion of mine that was confirmed this week, was to never, ever, ever draft a holdout running back. Following in Chris Johnson’s footsteps, Maurice Jones-Drew went down this week with a foot injury that could keep him out for weeks. While I don’t care for Rashad Jennings against Green Bay this week, he’s certainly someone that you should have already put in a claim for in your league. If you haven’t yet, you can check to see if he’s still around, but I highly doubt it.
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Roundtable Discussion: Halloween Costumes Edition

Halloween is just under a week away so we asked our writers what their favorite halloween memories were.  What resulted was an in depth trip down memory lane consisting of costumes and candy grabbing blunders.  What were your favorite Halloween costumes/memories growing up?  Comment below!

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PorchDrinking Playlist: Tristan’s Top Picks

In honor of my forthcoming birthday this Thursday, I decided to hijack this week’s PorchDrinking Playlist to highlight some of my favorite jams. This mix of my top playlist picks includes a melange of favorites both old and new. It starts with my all time favorite, Paul Simon’s Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard, then transitions from slower mellower tunes to those that are a bit more upbeat.  Let me know if you like what you hear! Read More

News Week in Review- 10/15-10/21

Binders Full of Women

With a new, increasingly plugged-in generation coming of voting age, this election is arguably the first where social media has played a substantial role in the race. While most voters were simply happy that Tuesday night’s Presidential Debate was actually watchable, the internet took particular delight in some of the candidates’ more colorful slips of the tongue. Case in point: within minutes of Mitt Romney’s now infamous “binders full of women” comment, there were new Facebook pages, Tumblrs, and several Twitter hashtags and handles poking fun at the gaffe. Read More

Story Time With Hank | Story Time Mail Time!

Buenos dias, chicas. I did a learn-Spanish-by-tape thing once and the guy would say that at the beginning of every lesson. Or maybe it was one lesson, and it just really stuck with me. Either way, you could hear this dude winking and throwing up finger-guns and having a mustache and not wearing a shirt and it was wonderful. Changed my life. My Spanish is still awful.

You know, I wasn’t one-hundred-percent certain what to do with this space this week. Coming off an entire month of pretty intense reminiscences by special guest-writer Coyote—who is a genuine saint to whom I’m certainly very grateful—it seems we might all benefit from a change of pace and a chance to catch our breath. So I opened up the ol’ inbox and whaddayaknow, it’s Story Time with Hank | Story Time Mail Time.

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Pop Culture Week in Review 10/12-10/19

Walking? Dead

Any concerns of this season being boring (the main complaint from last season) were totally erased in the first episode. VAGUE SPOILER ALERT: I’m going to try to not go into specifics, but there will be hints of what happened in Sunday’s season premiere so if you really don’t want to know- skip ahead. First and foremost, all children are accounted for and now bear arms. That’s enough to improve this season leaps and bounds over where were last year. Goddamn Sophia. Any way, the last five minutes of the premiere had me in convulsions. I needed my smelling salts because I nearly went into full on lady vapors. I wouldn’t say I screamed per se, but sounds of shock and horror were emitted from my mouth. This episode was one of, if not the best episode of the series. Holy leg hack, batman. If you fell off last season, watch this premiere and get back on board. It’s a fun ship. I mean, I’m there. Read More

Week 7 Fantasy Football Preview

Now that all of us at Porchdrinking.com have recovered from the insanity otherwise known as the Great American Beer Festival, it’s time to get back into our regular routines. That means it’s time for us to take a look at this week’s match-ups and identify who’s primed for a breakout performance and who else might be ready to take a breather from your team’s lineup for the week. Here’s the Week 7 Fantasy Football Preview!
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Drink Like A Fictional Character

Goodness gracious, people from movies and TV love alcohol. I’m one of those nerds who scrutinizes any scene with drinking to figure out what specifically characters ordered (my friends got angry when we went to see “Friends With Benefits” because I was the guy saying “Oh, they’re drinking Shiner Bock. I like that beer!”). But you don’t always have to study beer labels or examine a cocktail glass to deduce what characters are drinking; sometimes they order stuff so often, their drink becomes a character trait. Here’s a look at what some of our favorite on-screen heroes drink over and over and over again. Hit up the comments section to let us know what drinks of choice we missed. Read More

Favorite Fall Songs Playlist

One of the reasons I love music is because it has the power to take you back to a specific time or place, just with a few chords and notes. This fall playlist is a collection of songs, new and old, that remind me of fall for some reason or another. For example: Regina Spektor’s “Fidelity” will always remind me of walking to class in the fall of my freshman year at Miami University, listening to her album on my first generation iPod (RIP). Chris Brown’s “Don’t Wake Me Up” on the other hand, is a song that I kind of hate myself for loving, but I still blast it whenever it comes on the radio. Read More

Pop Culture Week in Review 10/5-10/12

Bad News Human Beings

NBC has announced the premiere of Community has been postponed.  The network has actually been doing well this season (which is a change for them) and they said they want to continue heavily advertising their shows they still believe in new shows.  I know this isn’t the case as they would be insane to pay for shows they have no intention of airing, but if I were to sneakily cancel a show this is how I would do it.  And to be fair, in saying they want to continue to support their new shows, they also said that the postponement will allow them to focus on Community if/when they decide to do that. Read More

PorchDrinking Playlist: Songs White People Love

There are certain songs that, to put in bluntly, white people absolutely love. Not to be racist or anything… well, maybe a tad racist. These songs are so completely catchy, dance-y and universally beloved by white people, that one could simply walk into any bar, throw down a few bucks into the jukebox, select any of these songs and within no time, you’ll have a crowd singing off-key, awkwardly dancing, high-fiving and embracing each other shoulder to shoulder, as if they had just won the World Cup… Read More

PorchDrinking.com Redesign: Letter from Chris Knost

PorchDrinking.com Redesign

When Tristan asked me to redesign the site, I knew I’d have my hands full. How could I transform an already great content driven site and redesign the aesthetics to reflect the culture, community and enthusiasts that both read and write it’s content?

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