Isn't that normal? These days I notice a lot of 'this-is-way-too-wide-and-full-of-images,-tricky-css-and-little-useful-information' sites everywhere. And they drive me crazy, but that's another story.
The idea is to be aesthetically pleasing and bait people into viewing their site versus throwing stuff out there. Supposedly it works better, but I'm not 100% sure