R.I.P. David Berman

This one’s particularly hard for me to process.

As you may have noticed, I just reviewed Purple Mountains, the fantastic self-titled debut from David Berman’s new band earlier this week. The album’s only been out for about a month, but it’s already become one of my most listened to albums of the year as well as one of my favorites. I’ve just been listening to it constantly, because the lyrics are so god damn funny and wise and raw, where you know that the person writing them was clearly brilliant but also in a lot of pain (hence, my not-so-subtle review title). Continue reading →

R.I.P. Harlan Ellison

Harlan Ellison died this week and it’s a drag. Harlan Ellison was a mad genius. We hear the word “Genius” thrown around a lot when great artists and entertainers die but I want to emphasize the “mad” part for Ellison. Harlan Ellison was one of the most gifted speculative fiction writers of the 20th century. He was also batshit insane. This was a guy who mailed bricks and dead gophers to editors that pissed him off. A guy who belittled fans that asked him dumb questions and a guy who would sue at the drop of a hat.

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T3: John’s Top 10 Favorite Posts

Continuing our site’s 10th-anniversary extravaganza, I bring you my Top Ten favorite John Posts. It wasn’t easy going through ten years of reviews, which is why I stopped looking after I found ten I at least liked. Whether or not any of the following posts were actually good is debatable. All I know is they are posts I liked at the time and am not too embarrassed by today. Without further ado…

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T3: Colin’s Top Ten Reviews of Mildly Pleased

I think it’s now becoming apparent why we don’t write as many posts as we used to. It’s just hard to get up the will to post something when you’re no longer a college student with a bunch of free time on your hands. And it’s especially hard when you have to write something with a restrictive, but also demanding structure, as was the case with Top Ten Thursdays. Which is why of course we ended up turning it into the much more fun to do podcast. But here we’ll return back to our original format of ten items ranked in order of personal greatness.

This time, however, I’m just going to order these things in chronological order. As I said, it’s been kind of a long week, and it’s really hard to rank items that aren’t from the same medium, as I’ll be including TV, music, movies, and even aural comedy on this list. Also, some of these may have some sort of personal significance to me or more related to the posts themselves, rather than being what I think are the best of their era. But I suppose that’s what these subjective top tens have always been about. So without further ado, here are my favorite things that I ever had the pleasure of reviewing on Mildly Pleased… Continue reading →

Worst Wednesday: John

I try not to look back at too much I’ve written on this site, but because it’s our tenth anniversary I agreed it would be fun to reflect on our less than spectacular moments. If anything writing this post was a learning experience. What was it that Batman’s dad said? Something about how we fall so we can learn to pick ourselves up? Yeah, that’s the stuff. Here are all the times I fell.

P.S. I’m not going to provide links to my posts like Colin did because I’m lazy and tired.

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Worst Wednesday: Colin

I don’t know how much effort I’ll put into this post, since here I’ll be looking back at the worst posts I’ve ever written, or just the moments in Mildly Pleased’s history that I’m not super proud of. But that’s the risk you run when you start writing stuff online when you’re 18 and haven’t had anyone read your prose outside of that one creative writing class you took in high school. Which, makes me all the more thankful that I came of age when there was a pretty modest amount of social media available for teens to document the most embarrassing years of their lives on.

But at the same time, I think there is a positive aspect to this era in which creative people can use the internet as a kind of training ground. It makes me think of comedy people uploading their sketches online and honing their looney craft, or today’s major indie artists, many of whom have cut their teeth as teenagers uploading their music to bandcamp. The internet is both a wonderful and terrible place, but more than anything, it’s a great place to waste time in. Here are the moments from this blog that truly felt like a waste, even if they did (hopefully) make me a little bit better at writing for whatever the hell this blog is. Continue reading →

The Big Ten

February 2008. The U.S. stock market indices plunge more than 3% after a report shows signs of economic recession. Amy Winehouse takes home Record of the Year for her hit song “Rehab” at the 50th Annual Grammy Awards. Fool’s Gold starring Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson is the #1 movie at the Box Office, and a fresh-faced junior Senator from Illinois captures the hearts and minds of a nation. This was the world Mildly Pleased was born into.

February 2018. The Dow Jones share index closes down at its biggest drop since 2008. Bruno Mars takes home Record of the Year for his hit song “24K Magic” at the 60th Annual Grammy Awards. Fifty Shades Freed is the top movie at the Box Office. Also, the president is a racist grandpa and some guy launched his car into space. Needless to say, a lot has changed, but one thing has remained the same. MildlyPleased.com and today is our 10th Anniversary.

Yes, for ten years now we have delivered some of the most mildly pleasing movie, music, and video game reviews. We’ve recorded podcasts and made controversial videos about Brendan Fraser being fat. Take it from our good friend Adolfuis on YouTube “You Guys are scum.” Well, we’re always trying to better ourselves Adolfuis, and I like to think after ten years we’re a little closer.

To commemorate this milestone we’ve put together a week of themed posts. Here’s the breakdown:

Tuesday – Classic Album Tuesdays – Revisited: We revisit our first ever selections for “Classic Album Tuesday”.

Wednesday – Worst Wednesday: We reflect on our less than stellar musings.

Thursday – Top Ten Favorite Reviews: We discuss our favorite pieces of pop culture we’ve reviewed on the site.

Friday: We announce our first inductee into the “Mildly Pleased Hall of Fame”

We hope you enjoy our celebration and would like to thank every writer, reader and spam bot who has ever crossed paths with this blog. Now let’s see how much longer we can keep this dream alive.

Thanks, everybody!