Deadspin's Tommy Craggs, with a great takedown of the odious Skip Bayless:
You know what Skip Bayless is? Skip Bayless is a hockey goon. He can't skate or pass or defend or score. His sole job is to go out and start a fight with someone. Not because he has a grievance or cares, but because he is a fight-starter, and fans cheer whenever he starts a fight. And now ESPN is skating him on the first line.It's hard to have any respect for someone who's such a professional troll.
My son blogs about his new favorite holiday here.
Ranking all of the 2011 films I saw in 2011:
1. The Artist
2. Certified Copy
3. Drive
4. Melancholia
5. The Muppets
6. Hugo
7. Shame
8. The Tree of Life
9. Moneyball
10. Midnight in Paris
11. The Descendants
12. Margin Call
13. Warrior
14. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
15. Mission:Impossible- Ghost Protocol
16. Bridesmaids
17. Source Code
18. Tabloid
19. Page One: A Year Inside the New York Times
20. Pearl Jam Twenty
21. 50/50
22. Crazy, Stupid, Love
23. Cedar Rapids
24. X-Men: First Class
25. Beginners
26. Attack the Block
27. Win Win
28. Fast Five
29. Another Earth
30. War Horse
31. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
32. The Adventures of Tintin
33. Super 8
34. Hot Coffee
35. Senna
36. Horrible Bosses
37. Friends With Benefits
38. Rango
39. Carnage
40. Conan O'Brien Can't Stop
41. The Ides of March
42. 30 Minutes or Less
43. Young Adult
44. The Help
45. Hanna
46. Meek's Cutoff
47. The Lincoln Lawyer
48. Unknown
49. Contagion
50. Killer Elite
51. The Rum Diary
52. Happythankyoumoreplease
53. The Cave of Forgotten Dreams
54. The Adjustment Bureau
55. Captain America: The First Avenger
56. Rubber
57. Drive Angry 3D
58. Like Crazy
59. Limitless
60. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
61. The Debt
62. Sanctum
63. Hall Pass
64. No Strings Attached
65. The Mechanic
66. The Big Year
67. Thor
68. The Mighty Macs
69. Conan the Barbarian
70. Something Borrowed
71. The Change Up
72. The Green Lantern
73. The Smurfs
74. Red State
75. Tower Heist
76. The Dilemma
77. Larry Crowne
78. The Greatest Movie Ever Sold
79. The Hangover Part 2
80. Paul
81. Bad Teacher
82. The Conspirator
83. Arthur
84. Red Riding Hood
85. Cowboys and Aliens
86. Cars 2
87. J. Edgar
88. The Green Hornet
89. Our Idiot Brother
91. The Sitter
92. Sucker Punch
93. Just Go With It
Didn't see (reputedly good): Martha Marsha May Marlene, A Separation, Take Shelter, We Need to Talk About Kevin
Didn't see: (reputedly bad): Jack and Jill, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, The Human Centipede: Full Sequence, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Your Highness, Zookeeper, The Beaver, Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star, Atlas Shrugged, Abduction, Battle: Los Angeles or Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked
See reviews on Rotten Tomatoes here.
From Eagles writer Jordan Ranaan, who writes about his daughter's first Hanukkah.
There's plenty of blame to go around- 800 percent worth, apparently.
I review five movies for the holidays- "The Adventures of Tintin," "War Horse," "Carnage," "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" and "The Artist"- at Patch.
This piece asks a question I've been asking for awhile- why does Roman Polanski get a pass that Jerry Sandusky does not? Why aren't people like Polanski and R. Kelly permanent pariahs the way Sandusky is? The answer, I think, is obvious- molesting girls is somehow treated as just a bit more forgivable than molesting boys.
Here's my latest Week in Electronics Retail Crime column for Dealerscope.
This awful Vikings season hit another new low Sunday when Adrian Peterson injured both his ACL and MCL. He'll hopefully be back for the start of 2011, but who knows if he'll still be the same player.
Then there's the weird report from Peter King, on NBC Sunday night, that a Vikings stadium is all but a done deal in Minnesota. There was nothing about it the next day in either Twin Cities paper, and there are numerous details missing- site? Funding source? Roof or no roof?
It wouldn't surprise me if it got done this year, but I just don't see how it's any closer now than it was last week.
Neal Pollack dusts off his old fake-self-aggrandizing-journalist schtick to eulogize Christopher Hitchens. Brilliant stuff.
For some reason, it appears, the AV Club Chicago has dusted off an old college newspaper review of mine of a campus improv show, for the reason that one member of the improv group (Josh Dibb) later became a member of the group Animal Collective. Was certainly not expecting that.
Happy Hanukkah from Conan:
I review the Steve Jobs book in one of the last articles on E-Gear.com before it becomes Technology Tell.
Where's Coach Taylor?
I review "Young Adult" and "Mission:Impossible Ghost Protocol" at Patch.
I discuss "Like Crazy" in my latest appearance on the Sensitive Nice Guy show, which was interrupted near the end when a tree crashed into the host's building.
Very sad to hear the news about Christopher Hitchens, who died last night at the age of 62. He was not only a brilliant writer, speaker and debater, but he was one of the last of a dying breed- the hard-drinking, chain-smoking, globetrotting journalist.
I met Hitch one time, outside a speech he gave in New York in 2004 or so, and I have a signed book from him somewhere. I read probably ten of his books, and his memoir has been in my to-read pile for a few months.
And yes, I was once a member of the Christopher Hitchens Drinking Club...
The Onion's PTI parody never disappoints:
Tim Tebow Becomes First Christian To Play In NFL - Sports Year in Review
A supercut:
FYI, my Top Ten, Bottom Ten and 2011 movie rankings will be released, on Facebook and right here, next Wednesday.
Seriously. Everyone who works there can die in a fire, as far as I'm concerned.
Jeffrey Goldberg:
Though I don't always subscribe to the view that philo-Semites are simply anti-Semites who like Jews, I do think philo-Semitism, which is rooted in the idea that Jews are somehow different than everyone else, can curdle and become its opposite rather quickly. In this particular case, that of evangelical Christians, I think that this could happen. Remember that evangelical Christians don't often know Jews; what they do know of Jews in America -- that they are mainly liberal -- is not something they like; remember that evangelical leaders have sometimes expressed themselves in crudely anti-Semitic ways (the late Rev. Falwell comes to mind) and remember that before Christian evangelicals decided to like Jews (rather recently) they didn't like Jews at all.
Drew Magary, after Peter King recommended that the Coen Brothers direct a movie about Tim Tebow:
Peter has almost certainly never watched a Coen Brothers movie. HOWEVER, I welcome the idea of a Coen Brothers Tebow film, in which God forsakes Tebow and sends a devastating tornado right at Tebow’s hometown. And then John Goodman sets Tebow’s hotel on fire. And then that no good sheeny Bernie Bernbaum betrays Tebow’s trust by trying to bribe him. And then Javier Bardem shoots Tebow in the head with a fucking cattle gun and Peter Stormare feeds his corpse into a wood chipper.
As the movement peters out, I think Roger Ebert has the best take I've read on it.
Yes, it's the Onion's annual Year in Band Names list.
I review "The Sitter" and "Shame" at Patch.
My review of Vizio's surprisingly good Android tablet is online at E-Gear.com.
My son has a new blog post here.
I review the underwhelming "Like Crazy" at Patch.
News Item: Vikings waive McNabb
A sad end to his time with the Vikes and probably his career as well. I, of course, advocated the Vikings get him for years, but clearly it was too late. He'll do TV now, and probably write a highly readable, score-settling autobiography at some point too.
A map of celebrities and how they fit into Steve Miller's "The Joker."
An anti-Newt diatribe from Ron Paul, of all people:
The Republicans have done a lot of stupid, indefensible things in the Obama years, but nominating Newt would be the stupidest of all.
Sorry to hear about the death last week of Patrice O'Neal; I saw him do standup once in New York and always thought he was funny. Here he is riffing on Radiohead's "Creep":
