Remember when Diesel was charismatic in Saving Private Ryan, menacing in the surprise win Pitch Black, endearing for his D&D love, and declining to contradict speculation that he was gay? Man. We had it so good.

With you there. It's been a cheap way to inject energy into your trailer for decades now, it seems like. Usually dishonest energy, an empty tough swagger. I'm looking at you, Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

It's a song that kicks fucking ass—about Vikings coming to kick your fucking ass. If it's become a movie cliche, that's only because those other movies were renting it from Thor until he needed it for his own thing. If someone else thinks they more thoroughly come from the land of the ice and snow, from the midnight…

This is our concern, Dude.

Meanwhile, Looper ruled, Brothers Bloom was an underrated (if wonky) gem, and I thought Brick was the most exciting, original new entry in cinema since Memento. We're in impossibly good hands for the present.

Right there with you. This is a huge Hollywood problem—equating financial success with skill—but I'm just shy of nerd-devastated that it's probably going to ruin Episode IX. I believe that a good script can outshine a bad director (look at Tombstone), but 'the mind that brought us Monster Trucks' is unlikely to rescue…

That was a fuckin good one. Shame we never saw it. But I heard they were going to use that footage for the rollout of a different product—the sugar-free, zero-dye, state-sponsored, military- and police-mess hall-standard, opaquely white soda of a new era, Pepsi FINAL.

SICHUAN PEPPER. It's more bracing than my other entry below, but holy fuckity is it magical. Nothing else on earth tastes remotely like it. Get some, lightly toast a small quantity dry, grind it coarsely, sprinkle it on seared pork or eel or fucking eggs or in a broth, and get a sense of how wild it is.

CORIANDER. Dude. What happened? Coriander used to rule the school, but now it's so exotic, most people don't know it's the seed of the cilantro plant. Name another plant that gives you delicious leaves that taste like no other, and then, when it goes to seed and you can't really use the leaves anymore, it gives you a…

What's the problem? It moved me. And showed great restraint: the way it cuts away before the other cops concur with their pal's silent suggestion and cheerfully mow down all those rich international boarding students in Brooklyn is so much more effective than merely watching it unfold.

National Review is tough. I fuckin hate David French, and can't abide NR's defenses of Jeff Sessions. I'm not sure when conservatism exclusively came to mean 'blind to the mass devastation of the last twenty-five years of prosecutor culture' but damn.

Count me among those who'd be happy to see sound, contemplative, gutsy conservative faces in the national media. I'm fairly radical but I think the country's healthiest when there are good people on all sides and I don't mind proper conservative thinkers.

Okay, not my best syntax. What I mean is that I found the book's DANGEROUS, MISBEHAVED, FILTHY WILDNESS contrived. Unconvincing. Neither titillating nor disturbing nor playful. I felt Ennis was trying to trick me or show off. (I have a far higher opinion of his work on Crossed.)

I kinda hated the comics, which marked the end of the indy comics boom to me at the time—but I loved the shit out of this first season. Where Ennis came off as a contrived wildman, I though the show had a buoyant sense of play, a dark and wry joy. Anyone?

I flinched and thought maybe EMF's 'Unbelievable,' but went back to listen to it again to confirm—and found it flaccid. That song fucking sucks. We were tricked. Groove and Back, though, are both still pumping like buffalo hearts.

Very helpful. What was disappointing about The OA? (He asks, having not seen it.) I'll certainly sing Wild Turkey's praises of Voice to them!

I'm not moved to fight you. But it's a narcissist move to equate the fact that your opponent refutes your claim with evidence that you were right.

How many of us think Timber Timbre is one of the best fucking things in twenty years?
I run this nerdy roleplaying sorta thing, and man, for soundtrack moments, I have to force myself *not* to use them yet again.

Oh, go fuck yourself. People have friends. It was an honest question, punk.

They're smart, good-hearted, and exceptionally hard-working. They're hardly geniuses. If you don't have friends in show business, lemme tell you—they're mostly like anyone else. Will the successful ones, their rarest quality is often their grit for the '90% perspiration' part.