Scarlett Johansson, Daniel Defense, and how the banned Super Bowl ad culture seems to work

The above ad features ScarJo hawking SodaStream. It was targeted as a Super Bowl ad — considering it features a highly-paid movie actress — but was banned from airing by FOX, who’s televising the game. Go ahead and watch the… Continue Reading

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This season of Girls is basically completely about Hannah (Lena Dunham) and that’s making it be pretty awful

I watch Girls and I do so semi-religiously, despite being a 33 year-old guy who doesn’t live in New York anymore and looks like a cross between a sub-par college football player and a character from Of Mice and Men. I doubt I’m really… Continue Reading

What will Obama discuss in the State of the Union address tonight?

Logically you’d assume some of the following things need to come up: gay rights, privacy, marijuana, inequality, job creation, student loan debt, and ObamaCare. On the last one, he needs to showcase its recent successes while also taking credit for… Continue Reading

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Who’s really going No. 1 in the 2014 NFL Draft: Jadeveon Clowney, Johnny Manziel, Teddy Bridgewater or someone else?

I just Googled “NFL mock draft” for the hell of it and got about 33.5 million results — almost all of which, somehow, are about 2014 (as opposed to previous years that are stuck in the Google Cache somewhere). Here’s… Continue Reading

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Year Up, fresh off the 60 Minutes profile, could be a hugely positive thing — or maybe it’s just a calculated media play

Last night, 60 Minutes profiled Year Up, a non-profit organization that basically takes disadvantaged, poverty-stricken students and gives them an intense career boot camp experience in either IT or financial operations. Ultimately, many of the graduates of the program — right now… Continue Reading

What’s up with Daft Punk and the helmets anyway?

Couple of big themes from the Grammys last night — Macklemore had a nice performance in which 33 couples were married, Beyonce and Jay-Z proved once again that they own the world, Pharrell Williams’ hat, Lorde winning a bunch of… Continue Reading

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Interested in social mobility? Move to Salt Lake City, San Jose, or Pittsburgh. Don’t move to Atlanta or Charlotte.

Salt Lake City has already been recognized for having way-above-expectations public transportation, and the Milken Institute called it out as a great place to live and work, but now … it might be the city most representative of the American… Continue Reading

There was a 20th Anniversary screening of Kevin Smith’s Clerks last night at Sundance. I still sometimes call it the funniest movie ever made.

The actual release date of Clerks was in October 1994 — an insane fall for films, because Pulp Fiction was out at the same time, as was Forrest Gump (and Shawshank) — so the actual 20th anniversary will be this October, which times out with the potential release… Continue Reading