cliches

Hamilton Nolan · 09/17/14 04:36PM

"The Equalizer" is a new gangster movie set in Boston. "Boston is a city of venerable neighborhoods, rich cultural history and academic distinction... So how did the meditative crime drama become the most consistent motif for Boston in the movies?" Probably because of boring wack people.

At the End of the Day, Here Is a Love & Hip Hop Atlanta Supercut

Rich Juzwiak · 09/10/14 12:25PM

At the end of the day, Love & Hip Hop Atlanta's third season finale aired this week. At the end of the day, the people on this show say, "At the end of the day" a lot. At the end of the day, I counted over 140 utterances. At the end of the day, "at the end of the day" is supposed to notate definitive statements and sentiments. At the end of the day, here is all you really need to know about this show and its characters:

Don Draper Weighs in on Ferguson: "Bad Situation"

Leah Finnegan · 08/20/14 10:09AM

Jon Hamm, perhaps the most famous graduate of the The Olde St. Louie Dinner Theater Academy of Dramatic Arts, returned to his hometown last night to throw out the first pitch at a Cardinals game (it was also Bobblehead night).

56 Things Writers Have Predicted 2014 Will Be "the Year of"

Sarah Hedgecock · 01/01/14 09:30AM

Happy new year! Now that 2013 is out of the way, it's time to get cracking on deciding the what next year is. The Year of the Winter Olympics? The Year of World Peace? Or maybe one of these 56 other options, predicted by writers all over?

61 Things 2013 Was "the Year of"

Sarah Hedgecock · 12/31/13 04:00PM

As another year comes to a close, we must determine how it will be remembered by all of the generations who will come after us. Will 2013 be commemorated, as we predicted last year, as the Year of Meh? Far from it. We found at least 61 better options.

All 226 Clichés Uttered by Katy Perry on Her New Album, Listed

Rich Juzwiak · 10/24/13 04:33PM

Katy Perry is one of the most bankable contemporary pop singers—"Roar," the first single from her new album Prism, became her eighth No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in August. Prism is expected to sell about 300,000 copies its first week in stores. It is a dreadful album, way too concerned with preserving Perry's star than using said star to push sonically. It is also dreadful because Perry has absolutely nothing to say.

58 Things 2012 Was 'the Year of'

Max Read · 12/31/12 12:30PM

As 2012 draws to a close, it's very important to figure out what, exactly, 2012 was the year of. The dragon? The election? The Olympics? New practical thermoelectric power generators? To help figure it out we've assembled 58 articles explaining why 2012 was the year of...

Hero Portlanders Live to Tell of Journey Through America's Savage South

Hamilton Nolan · 01/16/12 05:35PM

Remember how last week we were talking about the "post-pointless" era of journalism, in which any and all experiences no matter how banal can be packaged as journeys of discovery and wonder, and sold to superficially pop-intellectual sites like Slate and Salon as something that appears just meaningful enough for a bored office worker with an advanced degree to justify wasting ten minutes of her life reading it, only to be left with the mental equivalent of the junk food hangover we get from feasting on an entire bag of unadorned Tostitos™ brand white corn chips?

Bill Keller Writes Provocative Media Column From 1997

Hamilton Nolan · 03/10/11 03:34PM

When we learned that New York Times editor Bill Keller was getting his very own column in the New York Times Magazine, our keen media instinct—honed by years of reading the Twitter and writing juvenile jokes on the internet while never doing any "real reporting"—told us that sooner or later, this column would become an institutional embarrassment. Spoiler: sooner!

Another Alleged Russian Spy Caught, Deported from US

Jeff Neumann · 07/14/10 05:08AM

The Russian spy story continues: A mid-twenties software tester at Microsoft, Alexey Karetnikov, has been deported on immigration charges and is said to be the 12th member of the spy ring. Last chance for reporters to overuse Cold War clichés!

L.E.S. Celebudogs in Twee Clash

Hamilton Nolan · 04/15/09 09:47AM

Let's say an angry pit bull has a Menace Factor of 10. But make it a Japanese DJ's dog facing off against a "Celebrity facialist's" Yorkie on the L.E.S., and the Menace is, like, three.

British Geraldo Meets British Tony Soprano

Hamilton Nolan · 07/18/08 10:01AM

Can there ever be too many British gangster movies? The answer is no. So we fully support the new documentary A Very British Gangster, which is being released in the US today. Not only has the filmmaker, Donal McIntyre, been described as "the British answer to Geraldo Rivera," but the subject of the film, Manchester crime boss Dominic Noonan (pictured), has been compared to Tony Soprano, and his English thugs are accused of having bad teeth and being reminiscent of Trainspotting. It's satisfying to see every single English crime journalism cliche in one place. But the film itself sounds entertaining; anything starring a guy who gets his point across by chopping off the heads of rivals' pets can't be all boring. The trailer is after the jump.

The Wind Beneath Our Wings: Poetry Clichés Will Get You Published

Sheila · 03/17/08 01:10PM

August literary magazine Virginia Quarterly Review's blog did a survey, discovering that cliché-ridden poetry submissions get published more often than not. They thought they were above that, avoiding clichés like the plague, but alas: "This was supposed to be a blog entry about how authors submit poetry to us covering clichéd topics that there's just no way we're going to print. But then I did the math... and found that precisely the opposite is true." Let's take a look at the cliché-roundup, by percentage: