For Your Consideration

Moves, Arctic Monkeys and John Oliver's new show

APP | There are plenty of fitness tracking apps out there, but most of them either need an expensive gadget to accompany them or require you to manually log all your activity each day. Not going to happen. Enter Moves. It runs in the background (with a battery-saving option), working like a pedometer, but using GPS to know when you're walking, running or cycling. It'll log movement at the gym too, but you will have to help it know what exactly you're doing while you're there. The process lets you know how much exercise you're really getting each day and where you need to step it up. One disclaimer: Facebook recently bought the app, and as with all things the mammoth social media site acquires, that could mean future data sharing. You've been warned.


MUSIC | Arctic Monkeys' newest album, released last year, is full of simmering, frantic songs about lust and lost love. It's great for windows-down driving, late-night drinking or meeting deadlines. Pretty typical for the British rock/pop band. But make those same songs acoustic and you've got a completely different vibe in your headphones. New on the band's YouTube channel (youtube.com/arcticmonkeys or just search "Arctic Monkeys live at Avatar Studios) are three acoustic versions of songs from the new album, AM. Stripped down, the melancholy lyrics come through in a whole new way, making these the songs for the morning after instead of the night of.


TV | You can't really be faulted for being skeptical about Last Week Tonight, the newest comedy show built on mocking mainstream media. Don't we already have The Daily Show and The Colbert Report for that? Indeed. But just a few weeks in, HBO's Last Week Tonight with John Oliver is already distinguishing itself with more international stories, segments like "John McCain Tells the Same Joke Six Different Times" and snappier take-downs. (This is a commercial-free, expletive-allowing network, remember.) Oliver proved an engaging and funny host during his time subbing for Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, but with more time between episodes and his own distinct voice for the show, this is even better.

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Heidi Groover

Heidi Groover is a staff writer at the Inlander, where she covers city government and drug policy. On the job, she's spent time with prostitutes, "street kids," marriage equality advocates and the family of a 16-year-old organ donor...