These next three are irrevocably connected in my mind, so I'm just going to go through them all in one go. They're actually sister sites, and there's links on each to the other, so it's hard to not traverse between them.
The first, the best, The Onion.
Technically, this page is from Our Dumb Century, which is worth buying a thousand times over, so it's not what the average day at The Onion looks like, but it is one of the best things ever written in all the tongues of men so I thought it deserved a post. The bar is not set this high all the time, and nothing is as funny as history, but the site updates with at least two stories a day and at least one of them usually makes me laugh out loud.I've also become unexpectedly fond of the two newest parts of the website, both of which I at first dismissed as newfangled stunts. But I stand corrected by The Onion Radio News and The Onion News Network. I still don't always click over to them, since I usually get on The Onion to, you know, read, but every once in awhile the headlines are so good that they demand my immediate attention. The Radio News, in particular, read by Doyle Redland, hits a perfect note of radio-style seriousness and is usually short and sweet. A few examples (sorry, can't embed):
Vanquished Foe's Skull Makes Surprisingly Bad Drinking Goblet
Report: Dolphins Have Evolved Opposable Thumbs
and the best of all time, although for some reason I can't find it it on The Onion site:
Fight On Top Of Moving Train Not Looking Good For Area Villain
The Onion News Network is still coming into its own, but it has also hit gold a couple of times (and surprisingly enough, it doesn't feel like a stale copy of The Daily Show as I at first feared)
Poll: Bullshit Is Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters
In The Know: Are We Giving The Robots That Run Our Society Too Much Power?
Report: Dolphins Have Evolved Opposable Thumbs
and the best of all time, although for some reason I can't find it it on The Onion site:
Fight On Top Of Moving Train Not Looking Good For Area Villain
The Onion News Network is still coming into its own, but it has also hit gold a couple of times (and surprisingly enough, it doesn't feel like a stale copy of The Daily Show as I at first feared)
Poll: Bullshit Is Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters
In The Know: Are We Giving The Robots That Run Our Society Too Much Power?
Second: The AV Club
The AV Club is actually the back few pages of the paper copy of The Onion, and they are described as functioning like two sections of a newspaper, neither more dominant than the other. The AV Club is a little different, however, and it took me a long time to warm up to it. All of the satire of The Onion is traded in for a kind of sarcastic hipster snark. At first this bothered me quite a bit, as I'm just not used to people sniping at each other, but now I've embraced the weirdness of it. It's not snark for snark's sake, (the spellchecker can die now) but rather a kind of self-aware snark that is snarky about being snarky.
Now that I've completely assured that no one will ever willingly visit the AV Club again, let me try to patch up that wound a little. I don't agree with all of the articles or the posters here, and since I don't live on a coast nor in Chicago or Austin, I don't know most of the bands they profile, etc. But I have gotten into it because there are many good writers, the comment boards are extremely sharp and witty (and unmerciful, so don't post unless you're prepared to duel someone to the death), and because they choose interesting things to write about.
One of my favorite ongoing columns is Nathan Rabin's My Year Of Flops, during which the writer spent a year watching and reviewing commercial flops and deciding why they failed and if they should get more credit than they do. One that certainly didn't deserve any more credit but is fun to write and read about anyway: Batman and Robin. And, Waterworld (which I hear takes a lot of flak but is really not that bad of a movie). There are many more nuanced entries as well. The Year of Flops is over, but he's still continuing to review one once in awhile, which I am very happy about.
My other favorite column is The Box of Paperbacks Book Club. Writer Keith Phipps bought a box of old paperbacks (including a lot of the James Bond novels and a lot of old sci-fi/fantasy) and is going through the box from top to bottom, reflecting and reviewing on each. It's this kind of novel (...heh...) topic for a column that finally made me fond of The AV Club.
Third, and finally: Slate.
I would never have found Slate if it weren't a sister site of The Onion and didn't list a few daily headlines in a box at the bottom of the page. The headlines were intriguing enough that I clicked over a few times, and finally have made Slate one of the sites I frequent on purpose. It's a web magazine, for lack of a better term, which follows everything from campaign news to home and garden (having neither, though, I tend to go for the campaign coverage). For the most part, the writers at Slate are smart, self-aware, critical, and good to read, even though I don't always agree with them. (For the least part, Christopher Hitchens shows up once in awhile to scream on the street corner like a crazy person. I can't the only person who thinks he's just a little off his rocker, because now when he has an article, they make sure his name is in the headline blurb so I can avoid it.) Slate follows the news pretty well, does a regular compilation of major news source's leading headlines and stories, and mercilessly fact-checks. My two favorite features are The Explainer, in which someone answers questions that we curious have about the news (how much space is left in the broadcast spectrum? what's in a passport file?), and The XX Factor, a shared blog by Slate's women writers in which they discuss feminism and the female experience in connection with the news. It is not nearly as off-putting as that description or any contact with The Doiley Woman would have you believe. They are all very considerate, thoughtful, and frequently fun.
So there's the Medium-Sized Three: one for the morning when you just need something happy to get going, one for the afternoon when you just want a relaxing break, and one for the evening, when you want to find out what happened while you were out living.
The AV Club is actually the back few pages of the paper copy of The Onion, and they are described as functioning like two sections of a newspaper, neither more dominant than the other. The AV Club is a little different, however, and it took me a long time to warm up to it. All of the satire of The Onion is traded in for a kind of sarcastic hipster snark. At first this bothered me quite a bit, as I'm just not used to people sniping at each other, but now I've embraced the weirdness of it. It's not snark for snark's sake, (the spellchecker can die now) but rather a kind of self-aware snark that is snarky about being snarky.
Now that I've completely assured that no one will ever willingly visit the AV Club again, let me try to patch up that wound a little. I don't agree with all of the articles or the posters here, and since I don't live on a coast nor in Chicago or Austin, I don't know most of the bands they profile, etc. But I have gotten into it because there are many good writers, the comment boards are extremely sharp and witty (and unmerciful, so don't post unless you're prepared to duel someone to the death), and because they choose interesting things to write about.
One of my favorite ongoing columns is Nathan Rabin's My Year Of Flops, during which the writer spent a year watching and reviewing commercial flops and deciding why they failed and if they should get more credit than they do. One that certainly didn't deserve any more credit but is fun to write and read about anyway: Batman and Robin. And, Waterworld (which I hear takes a lot of flak but is really not that bad of a movie). There are many more nuanced entries as well. The Year of Flops is over, but he's still continuing to review one once in awhile, which I am very happy about.
My other favorite column is The Box of Paperbacks Book Club. Writer Keith Phipps bought a box of old paperbacks (including a lot of the James Bond novels and a lot of old sci-fi/fantasy) and is going through the box from top to bottom, reflecting and reviewing on each. It's this kind of novel (...heh...) topic for a column that finally made me fond of The AV Club.
Third, and finally: Slate.
I would never have found Slate if it weren't a sister site of The Onion and didn't list a few daily headlines in a box at the bottom of the page. The headlines were intriguing enough that I clicked over a few times, and finally have made Slate one of the sites I frequent on purpose. It's a web magazine, for lack of a better term, which follows everything from campaign news to home and garden (having neither, though, I tend to go for the campaign coverage). For the most part, the writers at Slate are smart, self-aware, critical, and good to read, even though I don't always agree with them. (For the least part, Christopher Hitchens shows up once in awhile to scream on the street corner like a crazy person. I can't the only person who thinks he's just a little off his rocker, because now when he has an article, they make sure his name is in the headline blurb so I can avoid it.) Slate follows the news pretty well, does a regular compilation of major news source's leading headlines and stories, and mercilessly fact-checks. My two favorite features are The Explainer, in which someone answers questions that we curious have about the news (how much space is left in the broadcast spectrum? what's in a passport file?), and The XX Factor, a shared blog by Slate's women writers in which they discuss feminism and the female experience in connection with the news. It is not nearly as off-putting as that description or any contact with The Doiley Woman would have you believe. They are all very considerate, thoughtful, and frequently fun.
So there's the Medium-Sized Three: one for the morning when you just need something happy to get going, one for the afternoon when you just want a relaxing break, and one for the evening, when you want to find out what happened while you were out living.
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