Due to some last-minute freelance writing and a doctor’s appointment I had to take my granddad to today’s post will be going up late. Here’s a bit of filler in the meantime, a TV promos piece I did for The Magazine website:
Oh, and here’s what I stayed up working on, two recaps for the ceaselessly entertaining Total Drama All-Stars for the same site:
Posted in blog news, television
Tagged blog news, dancing Fry, Friday, late, The Magazine, Total Drama All-Stars, What's On TV
GORDON: Brothers and sisters, we are gathered together today in the eyes of…
well, nothing. Today’s discussion will cover the growing number of atheist churches in the West.
EVAN: That may seem like a ludicrous concept to any and all of you, so I think before the two of us really begin discussing this movement that originated in the UK [of course] I think it would be good for us to share what our first impressions were of that term.
So, Gordon, what did you imagine an atheist church was, or would be like?
GORDON: Well, my immediate reaction to the concept was that it’d all be some kind of satire, like Pastafarianism, though the more I thought about how one would actually function, the more I kept returning to some kind of a cross between a support group and a study group.
Posted in bizarreness, Culture War Correspondence, Europe, morality, religion
Tagged Atheist, atheist church, Britain, church, Community, congregation, Culture War Correspondence, godless, humanist, Pippa Evans, religion, Sanderson Jones, secular, Sunday Assemblies, Sunday Assembly, togetherness, UK, worship
Writing the first Shame Day of 2014 is a difficult position to be in. The topic must be the source of some terrible wrongdoing, but must also have committed that wrongdoing in a way that truly incenses us as decent human beings. All that being said, let me present today’s subject, Mr. Shia Saide LaBeouf.
Now rest assured, dear readers, I have reasons for targeting the former child star and lead in Disney’s Even Stevens and repopularizer of the word “no.” Believe me, I wouldn’t willingly put myself through having to check and recheck that I’m spelling his surname correctly otherwise. To begin with, midway through December of last year he released a short film titled Howard Cantour.com.
The film follows the titular Cantour, an internet film critic, and received a pretty hefty amount of critical acclaim. Not only that, but it starred my number one favourite stand-up comedian who almost exclusively jokes about food, Jim Gaffigan. It was also a near shot-for-shot adaptation of the comic Justin M. Damiano, by Daniel Clowes.
Posted in art, bizarreness, comics, film, media, morality, Shame Day, writing
Tagged apology, Bleeding Cool, copying, Daniel Clowes, Howard Cantour.com, Jim Gaffigan, Justin M. Damiano, plagiarism, Rich Johnston, shame day, Shia LaBeouf, short film, skywriting, stealing, tweets
It’s been one long year readers, and I’m not gonna lie, probably the toughest in at least my life so far. In spite of (heck, because of) all the blood, sweat, and strings of profanity, I think we down at Culture War Reporters have really knocked it out of the park.
Let me break it down so that you may properly bask in our glory.
The Shame Day/Fame Day cycle and our midweek discussions were implemented late last year, so we’re only really seeing the full fruits of our labor as 2013 draws to a close. Along with Evan’s reviews of 2 Broke Girls (yes, that still pains me), our relentless salvos of biting-yet-undeniable truth have all helped us pass 100,000 views (and then some).
Our daily viewer average has also grown and is currently hovering at around what our all-time high was last year (that’s roughly 200), and speaking of all-time highs, we have utterly and wholly smashed our previous most-views-record with September 6th’s 3,081 hits. Of course I want us to continue our by-now-normal habit of vanquishing our old records and dragging them behind our chariots, but I’d also like to see us pass 15,000 for total views in a month (our current recording being about 13,000).
I also want to direct your tearful, nay, hysterical applause to Evan, who continues to outdo himself as an editor and Kat, who has really come in swinging.
And of course, audience, what end-of-the-year review would this be if it didn’t include a saccharine bow to you guys for making it all happen? You guys keep coming back, we’ll keep pumping it out. See you in 2014.
-Gordon
I was pretty excited when a childhood friend (Chris, that means you) contacted me this summer to let me know that his cousin was looking for a female writer to contribute to his blog. He thought I might be a good fit and, lucky for me, Evan and Gordon agreed. Joining the guys on CWR has really been a great time. It’s been a good discipline for me to write so regularly, plus it’s fun to get to write about the things that really interest me. Even though I’ve only been at CWR for about 6 months, it’s been exciting to see how our readership has increased even within that time.
Whenever someone asks me what would be the end goal of pursuing a degree in English I usually end up telling them, “pretty much what I’m already doing on the blog right now.” So you should probably go tell all your friends about this blog so that we can all just live the dream and write for a living. Or at least so that we can get their feedback on our posts, because we LOVE hearing back from you.
-Kat
Up above we have Gordon doing some number crunching and Kat sharing what her experience has been like so far, and I’m going to try as hard as I can not to overlap too much with their year-end blurbs.
2013 has definitely been a year of expansion for CWR. We wrote roughly twice as many posts this year and brought on a new writer. That’s all well and good, but in the immortal words of Tony Stark to Steve Rogers in Issue #1 of Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers when discussing their titular group:
But not just bigger, like the expansion of their roster to 18 heroes, but also better, like adding Shang-Chi, Master of Kung-Fu, to the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. My dream is for Culture War Reporters to one day be a place where you can consistently drop in to read what others think about today’s culture, from comic books (of course) to race issues to television to music, but in such a way that it forces you to think about it as well.
We’ve got a long ways to go, that’s clear, but just know that we’re always aiming to improve ourselves and the site as a whole. This is our third year on the internet, and as far as I’m concerned our fourth can only be better. Huge thanks to all our readers who’ve helped us get where we are today.
And yes, I’m going to finally be getting to writing those posts I promised.
-Evan
Below we have something about some sort of WordPress.com stats helper monkeys preparing a 2013 annual report for this blog:
Click the image above to gaze upon statistics for a site we hope you frequent regularly.
I’m not a dad. I probably won’t be a dad for a good number of years, seeing as the last “serious” relationship I was in was the latter end of high school. Even still, I find myself thinking about how I’m going to raise people who are 50% me, and one particular area is in imparting my personal beliefs.
Yes, I’m a Christian, and yes, I do believe that Christ is the son of God sent to die for our sins and that scripture is inerrant and so on and so forth, but regardless of how true all of that is for me I still struggle with how I ought to impart, at bare minimum, the knowledge of those beliefs to the kids I don’t have yet. Continue reading
Posted in Christianity, family, morality, religion
Tagged Arrested Development, Christianity, Christmas, church, cross, Culture, faith, Krampus, Losing My Religion, Malcolm in the Middle, Moses, myth, Noah, parenting, raising, religion, Santa Claus
First of all, I’d like to personally thank CBS for not uploading any teaser pictures, which made creating the image above equal parts difficult and frustrating. This is the first time it’s ever happened, and for their mid-season finale, too. Which, pleas hold the applause for my effortless segue, are a fairly recent invention.
I more or less blame AMC’s The Walking Dead for hyping the last episode of the year as the “midseason finale”, a solid block of programming which would leave its audience with mouths agape, begging for more [I’m so sorry, I’m not sure where that came from] hyped for the show’s return. It makes perfect sense from a business standpoint, because every network wants viewers to remember to tune back in to the show after the three weeks of holiday specials. Mid-season finales have become big, which is probably why this week’s episode felt, well, small. Continue reading
Posted in Comedy, review, television
Tagged 2 Broke Girls, And the French Kiss, Bebe, Beth Behrs, Caroline, Cast, CBS, characters, croque-en-bouche, croquembouche, Current Total, Dame Judes, Deke, Earl, Eric Andre, Han, Jennifer Coolidge, Kat Dennings, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Matthew Moy, Max, midseason finale, Oleg, review, S3E12, salad, Sophie, television, TV
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