Yorkton This Week’s editorial staff takes readers on an explorative journey around the Internet, searching out the best in videos, podcasts, webcomics, music and anything else that catches their collective eyes which might interest our readers.
This April, Major League Rugby launches in North America and as a fan of 15s rugby, that is huge news for me.
The MLR loop is a new try at professional league here after PRO Rugby had a one-year run and then folded into oblivion a while ago. This group seems to be building on a better foundation with most of the inaugural seven teams emerging out of a strong club base in their communities. That should mean connections to local fans, players, volunteers, and sponsors to draw upon.
So you wonder how I am keeping abreast of this new league?
Well in large part it is thanks to stumbling upon the Earful of Dirt podcast some time ago.
Earful of Dirt is termed The Major League Rugby Fancast by its originators.
“We’re just four guys trying to hype the game we love and the league we admire most. Join us weekly for everything MLR. Featuring recaps, commentary, breaking news, and all the rumors you can handle,” is a snippet from www.soundcloud.com/earfulofdirt, where you can listen to not just their most current show, but an archive of previous episodes.
This is a show coming from a group of rugby fans who are obviously pretty well-connected to the sport, especially in the United States. With MLR kicking off with seven US-based teams, that gives them some pretty good insights.
It should be noted a team, the Ontario Arrows are launching this year with plans to play exhibition games in 2018, with an eye to joining the MLR in 2019, which is huge news for the sport in our country. Again, information gleaned from Earful of Dirt primarily.
The show takes a conversational approach to the topics covered, which generally works, although admittedly there are occasions they stay on a topic to the point it overstays my attention span.
And being focused on US rugby, aside from MLR, there are times talk turns to their national team, which has little interest for me, but you can of course jump ahead on a podcast, so that is not a serious drawback.
While there are a couple of little bumps with Earful of Dirt, it is excellent in terms of letting listeners inside the developing MLR, and when the season arrives in about 90-days I foresee more in terms of match-up previews, game analysis and player and coach interviews.
So if you are a rugby fan check out Earful of Dirt with a search on Facebook, or Soundcloud.
— Calvin Daniels
Bizarre but fun
In high school, I spent a lot of time watching television with a friend. We’d watch terrible movies and awful game shows. We were connoisseurs of trash.
But one night, we decided to watch something that was actually...good. Crazy, right? My friend suggested this YouTube comedy series he’d found. We hooked up his computer to the TV, put on a playlist of the show, and got comfortable.
It was comedy nirvana. Every episode was funnier than the last. I could not stop laughing. It was a watershed moment for me, something that has definitely influenced my comic sensibilities ever since.
The night was soured somewhat when my friend told me I couldn’t stay the night, so I had to drive home in the dark during the middle of a snow storm. Not the best experience for someone who’d gotten their driver’s license the month before.
But that night is still a fond memory for me. It was my introduction to one of my favourite web series of all time: “Jake and Amir.”
Created by and starring Jake Hurwitz and Amir Blumenfeld, “Jake and Amir” began as a low-res project between the two friends. They were picked up by the comedy site CollegeHumor in 2008, where they produced weekly content until 2015.
The show has an incredibly basic premise. Jake plays the “straight man,” an everyday office worker who tries to cope with his obsessive, deranged, and morally bankrupt co-worker Amir. It’s the standard odd-couple pairing seen in countless sitcoms and buddy-cop movies.
But “Jake and Amir” is its own beast. The creators fill each episode with bizarre one-liners, non-sequiturs, and memorable conversations. Here’s a typically strange exchange from the “March Madness Pt. 2” episode:
Amir: Is it too late to change my Final Four?
Jake: Uh, no.
Amir: Okay, good. I wanna make it a Final Six.
Jake: Oh, it’s too late to change the format of the tournament, though.
Amir: Sheesh. When was that due?
I find myself quoting “Jake and Amir” lines a lot in my daily life. If you enjoy sharp, clever writing with a raunchy edge, “Jake and Amir” is the series for you.
If you want to dip your toe in the show, check out the “Screenplay,” “Ransom,” and “Barbershop Quartet” episodes. You can find “Jake and Amir” on the CollegeHumor YouTube channel.
— Sean Mott
Cheap weddings
If you’re planning a wedding you’re bound to hear lots of advice, suggestions, ideas and so on about how best to get married. You need this, you need that, a wedding won’t be perfect unless you do this thing this way. It’s one of the most stressful experiences for a couple, partially because of all the money involved, partially because everyone has their own idea about what a wedding should be.
Which is naturally why my fiancee and I have had a great time watching Cheapest Weddings on Netflix, a show from Australia about cut price weddings. Because as we are on the path to marriage, it’s very liberating to have a show that both has cost saving tips and bad choices which we can loudly declare we never, ever want to do at our own wedding. It is strangely liberating to shout “I hate that!” when a couple has a particularly ugly centerpiece, or when someone buys a wedding dress that looks like something you would bury a baby in.
Now, naturally, you get some good advice in these shows – slipcovers on chairs make things look classy – and as someone hoping to have a cheap wedding we did go into this intending to find good advice for saving money and keeping a wedding budget in check.
Instead it’s much more fun to point out all of the things these couples are doing that we would never dare, and since they’re all Australian, they’ll never know that we think their bridesmaids’ dresses look like 1996 exploded.
We can project all of our wedding stress onto these Australian couples and it helps us forget that we also don’t really know what we’re doing when we’re planning this thing. There’s no wedding stress reliever better than seeing someone else’s wedding stress and agreeing that they’re doing it all wrong and also the groom’s shirt is too thin so he’s making everyone uncomfortable.
— Devin Wilger
