Online overkill – week of April 6

Good, bad, unnerving and tragic, these are some of the topics that made frequent appearances in my RSS feed this week.

The Palin family circus. File under: stories that should be left to the tabloids and Jerry Springer.

Nick Adenhart. The Angels pitcher and three others were killed by a drunk driver in an accident shortly after the rookie pitched six shutout innings. Utterly senseless and sympathetically commented on in just about every corner of the Web I frequent this week.

Everybody poops trailer. A clever take on the massively popular trailer for a real film adaptation of a popular children’s book. I don’t know about you, but it hasn’t gotten old for me yet.

Billy Bob’s Interview. There’s really only one word to describe this: asshole.

Arrgh. Like I’ve said before: non-Disney pirates really aren’t very cool.

Online overkill – week of March 30

Good, bad, annoying or overhyped, these are the items that set my RSS reader on fire this week.

John Calipari. Living in Kentucky, you’d think a different JC had shown up this week to replace the Messiah from two years ago who was tarred, feathered and run out of town by the most obnoxious college basketball fans in America.

Lance Stephenson. Haven’t you heard? He’s born ready. For way too much media hype. This New Republic article cuts through a lot of the crap.

Glenn Beck admits he’s wrong. Whatever. What are Rush and Sean up to these days?

C Me Dance trailer. Boy, does this movie look awesome or what? I stayed away the first five times it popped up in my RSS feed, but I sure am glad I finally took the time to watch it.

Sarah Palin calling for a Senate re-election. As annoying as the liberal hatred of her can be, she deserves it for advocating that a guy she previously said should drop out of the race get a do-over in a race he lost fair and square.  An Economist.com blog appropriately called the move a “new frontier in sore loserdom.”

The hug heard round the world. The first-lady hugged the Queen of England.  Awesome. I hug my wife every day when I get home from work.

Online overkill – week of March 23

Good, bad, annoying or shady, these were the items that made frequent appearances in my RSS reader this week.

Obama’s Teleprompter. The right-wing teleprompter meme has been played up so much lately, the electronic note card machine has its own blog. The blog is kind of funny, even if making fun of a president for having prepared remarks seems a bit strange.  If the great communicator Ronald Reagan used a teleprompter, why can’t Obama?

Where The Wild Things Are trailer. Part movie tease. Part Arcade Fire music video. Spike Jonze’s worlds colliding, the video was everywhere this week for good reason.

UConn in hot water. A Yahoo! Sports story Jim Calhoun flippantly dismissed as a blog entry couldn’t have hit at a better time – for maximum exposure’s sake. It’s not something you wouldn’t actually want to read in a RSS feed though – way too long for that.

John 3:16 sign snagged.  The original Bannerman, Rollen Stewart is in jail for doing for holding a maid hostage in a hotel room, but his famed John 3:16 sign antics live on. Not if this security guard has anything to say about it though.

The death of Culture11. Culture11 was a short-lived conservative Web site modeled off of Slate Magazine. It received a thoughtful eulogy in the Washington Monthly recently and sparked some interesting conversation about conservative media in places like Patrol Magazine.

Online Overkill – week of March 8

Good, bad, annoying or indifferent, these are the stories that got the most play or not enough in my blog reader this week.

The coming evangelical collapse. As much as I enjoy Michael Spencer’s Internet Monk blog, I thought he went a little thick with the sensationalism on his evangelical collapse posts back in January. This week, thanks to a condensed essay based on the blog series in the Christian Science Monitor, it was everywhere I looked.

Twitter. I’m with Helen Popkin. Shut up about it already.

Bristol Palin. A story about the Alaskan governor’s daughter and her grandbaby’s daddy splitting was the top news item on the Web site for my local newspaper Thursday morning. And we wonder why newspapers are dying?

Michael Steele. If I were a Republican I’d be furious; If I were a Democrat I’d be thrilled. Since I’m neither, I’m bored with the endless coverage of the foot-in-mouth prone GOP leader.

Cramer vs. Stewart. I have to agree with Megan Garber. Jon Stewart’s battle with cable business news network CNBC shouldn’t be front page news but there’s a reason why everyone’s been talking about it: it’s good craic.

The Netherlands. I realize the World Baseball Classic isn’t as important as the latest scoop on Terrell Owens, Alex Rodriguez or the places Roger Clemens had steroids injected into his rear-end, but The Netherlands beating the mighty Dominican Republic twice should have been beaten to death. Save for some scattered AP headlines, an SI.com column I linked and a post three days after the fact on First Things, it was mostly ignored by many blogs, sports-focused ones included, I read.

Online Overkill – week of March 1

Good, bad, annoying or indifferent, these were the topics that were played out on my Google Reader this week.

Rush Limbaugh. Dude has a big mouth. Michael Steele is still figuring how to speak into such a large microphone. We get it. Next issue.

U2. The Irish band, which I’ve always appreciated, released a new album and played on Letterman all week. Awesome. Wait. What’s that? They already have another album coming out later this year? Even cooler. Got it. Now, can you stop filling my RSS reader with U2 news and videos?

Watchmen. If I see that smiley face with the blood splotch show up in my RSS reader one more time…  File under news about new Star Trek and Terminator movies.

Company of Thieves – “Oscar Wilde” video. It’s one thing to ape Wes Anderson’s style. It’s another thing to re-enact a humorous sequence from Rushmore and repeat it over and over again in a music video. I think the YouTube commenter named Powerpill said it best in the comment section: “I don’t know, the song is not bad, really, but the way this is hyped, it’s kind of ridiculous.”

Christian hipsters. Brett McCracken’s post defining (though not exhaustively) Christian hipsters, a subject on which he is writing a book, set fire this week. Andrew Sullivan, Crunchy Con, Andy Whitman, RNS Blog and dozens more in my RSS reader linked to it or had something to say. Unlike some of the mean-spirited commentors on the post, I’m looking forward to the book and think this is the one example I’ve seen this week of good online overkill.