Archive for December, 2009
31
Dec
Posted by John S in Culture. Tagged: Arbor Day, barney stinson, bashing holidays, christmas, equinox, Gregorian calendar, How I Met Your Mother, Leap years, legen-dary, letdowns, New Year's Eve, perfect new year's, resolutions, solstice. 1 Comment
I don’t mean to make a habit out of posts that bash beloved holidays (watch out, Arbor Day!), but I feel the need to address tonight’s celebration of the New Year. It’s not that I hate New Year’s like I hate Christmas—I don’t. I just think New Year’s Eve is a poorly conceived holiday. New [...]
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31
Dec
Posted by John S in Aught Lang Syne, Culture, Film, Literature. Tagged: Alex Rodriguez, Arrested Development, Aught Lang Syne, Avatar, Barack Obama, Curb Your Enthusiasm, david foster wallace, Elin Nordegren, Freedom, Glenn Beck, good and bad decade names, jerry seinfeld, Jonathan Franzen, juno, Larry David, Lauren Conrad, Lost, mariano rivera, Mark Teixeira, michael cera, new york yankees, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist, Paper Heart, Quentin Tarantino, Radiohead, Sarah Palin, social networking, the Aughts, the Coen brothers, the death of journalism, the great american novel, The New Yorker, The Pale King, the Teens, TV on the Radio, Twitter, Yankees dynasty, Youth in Revolt. Leave a Comment
In this final installment Aught Lang Syne’s conclusion, John S presents what he is looking forward to in the coming decade. In case you missed it, Josh posted what he is anticipating here, and Tim posted his here. We at NPI hope you’ve enjoyed our retrospective on the Aughts. In the Teens, I’m looking forward [...]
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31
Dec
Posted by Tim in Aught Lang Syne, Culture, Film, Literature, Politics, Sports, TV. Tagged: 16 seeds winning, a lot of authors have the first name jonathan these days, alan moore adaptations, Avatar, barack obama and hope, barenaked ladies, chad ochocinco and the hall of fame, dwyane wade, j.d. salinger, James Cameron, kevin durant, lebron james, lebron's free agency, nba rivalries, nfl strike/lockout, nolan brothers v. coen brothers, philip roth, rickey henderson's hall of fame speech, Sarah Palin, soarin, st. louis rams as team of the teens, the arrested development movie, the demise of the simpsons, the end of the bcs, the end of the simpsons, the expansion of the youtube canon, the great american novel, the iraq war, the serial novel, tim tebow, tyler hansbrough, yankees' comuppance. 8 Comments
In the Teens, I’m looking forward to… …the career arc of LeBron James. As of right now, the basketball populace seems more sure that LeBron James is the Player of the Next Decade than that Kobe Bryant or Tim Duncan or Shaquille O’Neal is the Player of This One. We know that LeBron James is [...]
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31
Dec
Posted by Josh in Aught Lang Syne, Comedy, Culture, Law, Politics. Tagged: 9/11 jokes, automation, cars driving themselves, cass sunstein, charlie kaufman, facebook, larry king's retirement, lifeday, the future of the supreme court, tom brady retirement, Twitter. 4 Comments
In a three part conclusion to Aught Lang Syne, we at NPI turn our attention away from the past and towards the future. Josh presents what he’s looking forward to in the Teens. Tim and John S’s posts on the matter will follow this afternoon. In the Teens, I am looking forward to… …The Next [...]
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30
Dec
Posted by Tim in Aught Lang Syne, Culture, Politics. Tagged: Aught Lang Syne, bush as the worst president ever?, george w. bush, inarticulate rhetoric, muntadhar al-zaidi, so what if the guy threw a shoe at me?, the shoe toss, the thought of fdr dodging a shoe is potentially humorous, yalta. Leave a Comment
After John S wrote what, in blog terms, amounts to a thesis on the presidency of George W. Bush earlier today, I figured I’d be a bit more visceral. In my older less vulnerable years, when I consider our 43rd president, my first thought will be of his physical reflexes, of the moment when George [...]
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30
Dec
Posted by John S in Aught Lang Syne, Politics. Tagged: 9/11, a hypothetical Gore Administration, Al Gore, Aught Lang Syne, Barack Obama, Bush = Hitler, Bush is evil, Bush is incompetent, Bush is stupid, Bush with a megaphone, Bush's failure, Bush's mistakes, common knowledge, deficit, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, evil-doers, george w. bush, george w. bush was the worst president in history, Ground Zero, HBO, Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, Paul Wolfowitz, Pinky and the Brain, Recount, Taliban, Thank God George Bush is our president, the 2000 election, the Aughts, the Surge, the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq. 2 Comments
Thus far, our retrospective on the 2000s has focused mainly on “trivial” pop culture issues: things like what books we liked, which movies were good, whose album was the best, what sports team was the most memorable, etc. We’ve completely ignored things like 9/11, the war in Iraq, and the recession. Part of this is [...]
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29
Dec
Posted by NPI in Aught Lang Syne, Sports. Tagged: 2008 wimbledon, aaron boone, colts patriots rivalry, federer nadal rivalry, Fenway Park, greatest tennis match ever, greatest tennis player ever, mike mussina, pedro zimmer, peyton manning, team rivalries v. individual ones, the significance of adam vinatieri, Tom Brady, Yankee Stadium, Yankees-Red Sox rivalry. 9 Comments
Here’s what makes rivalries so great: There will come a time in the moments before the game starts where you as a fan will feel internally a contradiction between the overwhelming excitement at the thought of beating your rival and the crippling fear at the idea that you might lose to them. It will be [...]
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29
Dec
Posted by Tim in Unabated to the Quarterback. Tagged: airplane!, bill polian, caldwell cowardly, colts benching, colts quitting, dr. strangelove, fwj schelling, james walker, jets bash of the week, jim caldwell, mike tomlin, mike wilbon, new york jets, onside kick, peyton manning, pittsburgh steelers, sbcs, super bcs, the integrity of the game, the putridity of the jaguars, the significance of 16-0, the undulations of the seahawks, tim smith. 5 Comments
“For where there is no battle there is no life.” —F.W.J. Schelling I had that quote all set up to use at halftime of the Giants-Panthers debacle (which we’ll get to later) before realizing that it would work even better for what transpired in that other New York football team’s game. For many, the signature [...]
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28
Dec
Posted by John S in Aught Lang Syne, Film, Rankings. Tagged: A Serious Man, Anton Chigurh, Aught Lang Syne, Bill Murray, Brick, Christopher Nolan, City of God, Cormac McCarthy, Fernando Meirelles, great fight scenes, Harvey Dent, Heath Ledger, High Fidelity, Jack Black, Japan, Javier Bardem, Jewish humor, John Cusack, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Josh Brolin, Kill Bill, Korean cinema, Lost in Translation, Lucy Liu, movies, Natalie Portman, No Country for Old Men, Oldboy, Quentin Tarantino, Rian Johnson, Scarlett Johansson, Sofia Coppola, Suntory whiskey, the Aughts, the Coen brothers, The Dark Knight, the Joker, the Wachowski brothers, The Wire, tommy lee jones, Uma Thurman, V for Vendetta. 7 Comments
Despite my general negativity about movies of the Aughts, there were still plenty of great films released this decade (although I think a Top Ten list of 90s movies would probably omit films that could be #1 on this list). I’ve already provided a list of the ten funniest films of the decade, and there [...]
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28
Dec
Posted by John S in Aught Lang Syne, Film. Tagged: a bad decade for movies, Aught Lang Syne, Avatar, Babel, big blockbusters, Box Office Mojo, box office numbers, creative stagnation, Extras, Film, Focus Features, Fox Searchlight, Good Night and Good Luck, Holocaust films, juno, Kate Winslet, Little Miss Sunshine, Martin Scorcese, New Moon, Paul Thomas Anderson, predictability, Quentin Tarantino, record-setting opening weekends, Ricky Gervais, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, the Aughts, the Coen brothers, Transformers. 2 Comments
Commercially speaking, the Aughts were an excellent decade for film. Even in poor economic conditions, box office records continued—and still continue as we speak—to be broken. Box Office Mojo’s list of highest grossing films is littered with movies from the Aughts. Much of this is due to inflation, of course, but even on an inflation-adjusted [...]
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Tim
John S
Pierre Menard
Josh
NPI
Jake
