Flavorwire

Today at Flavorpill, we enjoyed Ann Powers’ thoughtful analysis of the growing popularity of the word “swag.” We watched the pilot episode of Showtime’s new big business dark comedy, House of Lies, which stars Don Cheadle and Kristen Bell and makes its official debut on January 8. We were sad to learn of former SNL writer Joe Bodolai’s apparent suicide. We got a look at the tracklist for Glee’s forthcoming Michael Jackson tribute episode. We revisited some of the best TV lines of 2011. We got a look at a few new pieces of concept art for The Wachowskis’ film adaptation of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas. We listened to what famed filmmaker Errol Morris had to say about the issue of truth in photography. We imagined that getting this epic Lord of the Rings back tattoo inked was pretty painful. We were fascinated by the stories behind the picks in Mental Floss’ roundup of the 25 most powerful songs of the past 25 years. We were impressed by this sculptural time-lapse of artist Katie Grinnan doing yoga. We wished that a red panda would randomly decide to move into our house. We weren’t surprised to hear that AMC has decided to renew its popular new Western series Hell on Wheels for another season. And finally, we wanted to take a shower with Dave Eggers — or rather, a monologue told to Dave Eggers by his shower curtain.