If the announcements were actually sanctioned by the other guys in the band, I wouldn't describe it so much as a "hoax" as I would "a really awkward way of kicking this guy out of the band." (I would probably replace him with Matt Skiba too, though, if I could.)

You do if you live in Minnesota.

The immigration-to-another-country thing is kind of the root behind America's obsession with heritage, though. Our ancestors came to a country that was bent on assimilating them to the general culture, and those ancestors fought to hold onto some of the old country's traditions, sometimes when it was a big sacrifice…

Yeah—the problem with the Republican party right now is that in order to win the primaries, you need to impress the voters with your right-wing street cred by coming down hard on social issues like abortion, immigration, and gay rights . . . but in order to win the general election, you have to compromise on either…

They are, just barely, but the studios have done pretty much everything they possibly could to ignore that. I think their standard operating assumption is that women will go to the movies their husbands/boyfriends pick out but that men won't go to their girlfriends' choices—an assumption that has been proven wrong…

I don't think that's completely fair. While the wife/mother/ingenue roles were certainly rampant, filmmakers of that era often worked really hard at making the wife and mother roles complex and interesting. Stuff like Mildred Pierce, The Women, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Imitation of Life, Adam's Rib, His Girl…

One factor was women's introduction to the workplace en masse. In the '40s and '50s, a lot of housewives would go to the movies during the day if they had some spare time, so women were a hugely powerful group that spent a lot of money and were worth catering to.The entire mid-century genre of the "women's picture"…

He has domestic violence charges, too, no? (Or was that just a rumor?)

I think most people are rightfully skeptical of both. The difference is that Adnan has been mostly consistent with his "I dunno"s, so there isn't much to poke apart in his stories. Whereas Jay's stories have changed so many times—even in the version he gave in his most recent interview which was supposed to be the…

I can't even read the phrase without hearing it in that terrible voice.

I think the implication at this point is that the cops gave Jay enough information about Adnan's activities that day that it wouldn't necessarily be a stretch for him to come up with a story that fit the cops' timeline. Plus, his story changed multiple times—and still continues to. The earliest versions of Jay's story…

You're right, that was Aisha, not Asia. I guess the problem with real-life crime stories as opposed to television is that they don't go out of the way to give all the characters distinct, un-confuse-able names.

Nisha was almost definitely remembering a different phone call, right? There was the whole thing about how she talked to Jay about his job at the porn shop, but he didn't have that job until a few weeks later. I don't think we can put a ton of stock in the Nisha call.

Was Asia McClain the same girl that was good friends with Hae and told Koenig that, contrary to what Adnan's other friends were telling her, Adnan could get really overbearing with Hae and was always showing up when they were hanging out together? I never really put that together until now, that they were the same…

I'm trying to remember what the podcast actually said. I know that I was left with the impression that she never really changed her mind—I thought the only person that said she did was the prosecutor, and he seemed like he was full of shit, so I assumed that we weren't supposed to trust that particular piece of…

Yeah, Audible took over around the New Year, I think. I listened to the podcast around Christmastime and got Mail Kimp, but my friend who downloaded it a week later got Audible.

I do think that racism played a role here, but I also can very
easily see an alternate universe where DuVernay and Oyelowo were
nominated for their respective awards, and in that universe we're all
arguing that Selma is really just Oscarbait of the worst kind—a
middlebrow historical drama with biopic tendencies and an
uncon…

But Selma wasn't made under Weinstein. There are many reasons for that; some of them have to do with racism. (Not necessarily saying that those guys are racist—maybe they know their audience is and aren't going to make something that won't make them X amount of money. Or maybe they weren't willing to work with a…

I think there are two arguments wrapped up in that, the first being "Should historical inaccuracies in a film automatically diminish its value?" and the second being "Should we give filmmakers a free pass on their historical inaccuracies?" The first one is an obvious no—historical inaccuracies almost to make it a…

Definitely, but I think they could work out a system where shows could have a "farewell performance" during the last week of their run and air them in movie theaters or something. My local theaters all show live theater/ballet/opera performances now and manage to charge $15-20 apiece for them. I'd pay that much to see…