IT *WAS* OUR THREE YEAR BLOGAVERSARY!
Hello loyal readers! It was three years ago at the beginning of this month that we launched The Couch, with goals of being: a chance for friends to participate in collaborative creativity, a great outlet for input from your peers regarding sports and pop culture, and becoming so expertly crafted and well-renowned that we catch the eye of investors and become the next Grantland. 1,126 days on, I'm happy to report that all but one of those things are true!
Our third year has been our most stop-start yet in terms of the content, as you loyal fans will surely have noticed. Probably the most telling sign of this is the fact that our last piece was a preview of the Women's World Cup. Yes, that tournament that concluded July 4th weekend. In short, the nonstop responsibilities of adult life made steady content a bit harder to come by, and a significant move by this Editor-In-Chief rendered the last couple months low on creative inspiration.
Still, we were able to unleash over 100 pieces of Couch fury this past year, and with awards season, Premier League season, college football season, and critically-acclaimed cinema season upon us, we are ready to jump back on the horse. Year 3 of The Couch may have been less steady than its previous two, but it truly was a ton of fun, and it wouldn't have really been that fun if it weren't for your continued interest, so I thought it might be fun to reward all of you by telling you our Top 10 most-read posts since this blog's last anniversary! There are, of course, hyperlinks on each listing in case you want to revisit its glory. Enjoy, and thank you!
(And a begrudging congratulations to Michael, who makes it three years out of three that the Editor-in-Chief is denied the crown.)
10. "Re-Seeding The Sweet 16"
Author: Daniel Woodiwiss
(Mar. 2019)
"I wrote this very piece last year, and boldly proclaimed the early stages of the 2018 tournament the wildest in history, which seemed fitting given the general season-long madness that year in basketball was. One year later, we once again have a tournament that is transpiring much the way the preceding season did; unfortunately, this time it's just a lot less fun for the everyday viewer."
Authors: Sierra Slaughter, Micah Veldkamp, and Daniel Woodiwiss
(Nov. 2018)
"On this, the most delicious and controversial holiday there is (I like to call it Yummy Columbus Day), a few of us wanted to honor the spirit of gratefulness and talk about what we are thankful for from the world of sports and entertainment."
Author: Michael Rondello
(Mar. 2019)
"Most importantly, while the Grammys seem to reward the most popular albums of the year, sometimes without consideration of the quality of music, the Oscars tend to reward films that adhere to its unwritten formula. Films like The King’s Speech, Argo, Spotlight, and Green Book serve as prime examples of scenarios in which 'the formula' won out over films with a larger cultural impact. Counteracting this trend was one of my main focuses as I revised the nominee list for each year."
Authors: Daniel Baas, Christian Becker, Sierra Slaughter and Daniel Woodiwiss
(Feb. 2019)
"In preparation for tonight's Oscars, we Couch film critics have provided a rundown of the major awards. Do not take this to mean we don't think highly of the nominees for the likes of Best Short Film and Best Sound Editing (#allcategoriesmatter), but rather that they will likely receive less attention, and also that we are-- or at least a few of us are (me) --considerably less informed about those nominees than we are for the following 9 categories."
Author: Daniel Woodiwiss
(Dec. 2018)
"For the 3rd straight year, I felt there was no shortage of great individual songs, but for the second consecutive year, found only a few albums that wowed me. There was a clear-cut Top 3 for me this time around, and I went back and forth on which ones should be ranked where. As for the rest of the list, though, it was a lot of 'good, but not great.'"
Author: Sierra Slaughter
(Oct. 2018)
"Many unimportant, useless scenes filled the two hours plus. Tons of montages, tons of one-liners never expounded upon, many random characters there for no reason. With a sloppy story and poor editing, the entire film felt clunky and long. At the end of the day, it was a simple story we’ve watched three times before, and somehow it still left something to be desired."
Author: Daniel Woodiwiss
(Jan. 2019)
"2018 was an interesting year for the show: the tail-end of Season 43 and first half of Season 44 have been short on phenomenal episodes, but have been jampacked with phenomenal skits. Honestly, I can probably count the A/A+ episodes from the calendar year on one hand, but trimming the list to even 25 skits for this article was one of the toughest elimination processes I've had in a long time."
Author: Micah Veldkamp
(Jan. 2019)
"I write this because I feel like there are manymanymanymany incredibly talented artists that just don’t get the coverage they deserve. They could either be young unsigned artists that just don’t have the reach to get their music out there yet, or they could be a star on the verge of breaking out (S/O my bae Alessia Cara, who was featured on my 2016 article and won Best New Artist at the Grammys last year. Ya welcome <3). Regardless, the caveat remains the same: there’s way too much music out there for me to listen to. So, I apologize if your favorite indie artist isn’t given their due. My bad."
Author: Sierra Slaughter
(Dec. 2018)
"Since the dawn of time, cranky old film critics like myself complain how the year had a few great movies, but to name a Top 10 is too much of an ask from a mediocre year. For once in recent memory, the times have changed: 2018 was the year for outstanding cinema. In fact, narrowing it down to 10 this year is a near-impossible task. . . from the 150+ 2018 movies I’ve seen and jumped through hoops to see, here are my favorite films of 2018: . . ."
Author: Michael Rondello
(Feb. 2019)
"There have been odd winners for Album of the Year this decade, such as Beck in 2015, which has resulted in heated debates over the winner, like Taylor Swift vs. Kendrick Lamar in 2016. Nearly every year, I leave the awards with some qualm over the voters’ picks for the winners; thus, at the cusp of the end of the decade, and on the eve of the 61st Grammys, it’s time to look over the last nine years of the Grammy Awards, and revise the nominees and winners of the most prestigious award."