By 1989 I was a fan of most of this "college rock"…but in 1985 I had never even heard of it. I was listening to Twisted Sister, Duran Duran, and Weird Al. This is what happens when you don't have a cool older brother (or the internet) to tell you what's what.

I was turned off by the monotone environment. Spent hours unlocking the next island…which turned out to be exactly the same as the previous one. I got lost every two minutes because everything looked the same. San Andreas was a much more colorful/varied sandbox.

I've been listening to a lot of RH's podcasts lately…great stuff, though half the time I have no idea who the guest is, or what they're talking about (since my knowledge of British TV only goes so far).

Richard Herring vs. heckler…

My good old flip phone finally died on me, so I got my first smartphone a few months ago. The smartphone is better than the flip phone in every conceivable way, of course…except that it complicates my life a bit (the flip phone could do one thing…the smartphone does 1,000 things)…and I worry about losing it or…

Ca. 2001, I tried Limewire and Bearshare…they were so chockfull of malware and fake files that I gave up instantly. Then I discovered Audiogalaxy, which blew my mind. With my modem connection, I could download maybe 4-5 songs in six hours. Awesome!

Ah, Soulseek. I discovered it when I was exploring the prewar blues/country/gospel rabbit hole. (I don't feel too bad about downloading stuff by artists who have been dead for 50 years.) I still haven't listened to all the stuff I downloaded from Soulseek ten years ago.

I just checked…I've got 31,000 files…half as many as you, but it still feels like a completely crazy amount of music to own. I already waste a good portion of each day just deciding which album to listen to…if I had 200,000 mp3s, I'd have to hire an intern to help me manage the collection.

I'm not a fetishist when it comes to listening to records/CDs vs. mp3s, but I still feel a weird, neurotic desire to OWN stuff. Hence, streaming services don't interest me…I need to have my own copy of the album/movie/whatever. Hard to explain…because it's totally irrational.

If you ask me, the "album" died somewhere in the CD reissue era, when artists felt compelled to add 20 minutes of filler to the original collection of 10 songs. When I first started buying CDs, it was just a better quality version of the record/tape…but over the years, the albums expanded to include every conceivable…

Sorta like the difference between investing time (and risk) into having real friends who you can actually talk to, versus having 10,000 virtual friends and followers on Facebook (or the AV Club). Sorta.

There are two issues tangled together here. On the one hand, the dawning of the MP3 era means the death of physical media (no need to go to the record store, etc.). On the other hand, the dawning of the Napster era means a superabundance of digital amusements…everything available (free) forever, enough music for ten…

Also lame: Angel. He can fly…big fucking deal, everyone can fly in comics.

It's kitsch. It's the opposite of art. It destroys art. It destroys souls.

Obviously, the real prize is the Heisenberg hat. Or the Kenny Rogers T-shirts.

I'm surprised the Make-Up version wasn't mentioned, since (a) it rocks, and (b) it re-boots the story in an interesting, almost romantic way, as a duet between Joe and the woman.

Fudge waster.

Better things to do, like hang out with a potty-mouthed ex-coke addict in his garage? (That's the voice of fake outrage talking).

True, his presence is pretty useless, but if he didn't show up, imagine the deluge of fake outrage.

It's also grounded in a weird romantic view of JFK as a radical peacenik, who needed to be eliminated by establishment warmongers…which is patently ridiculous.