Schon & Hammer! You can't 80s more or worse than that.

and also John Waite, wearing the worst wig of the 1980s

Thing is, 'poptimism' isn't the only alternative to 'rockism', and arguably it's a very bad one for the reasons you outline. Simon Frith (I believe) places 'rockism' against 'romanticism', which in concept is more amenable than 'poptimism' to, say, the innovations of post-punk.

Why does Tim Mueller miss the irony of ending a paragraph-long rant with 'someone is overcompensating'?

Well, that depends on what you mean by 'crisis'.

Why does Tim Mueller take great, disproportional offense at conversations in comments sections instead of, say, just ignoring conversations that upset his delicate sensibilities? All this and more on next week's MYSTERIES OF THE UNIVERSE

Why must everything turn into some dude complaining?

'Mia Farrow dumped champagne on her.'

Not by much.

I'd say something similar about the entirely of reality competitions. There were no strategies for the first Survivor, and it was interesting seeing the alliance emerge against the other contestants who were oblivious to the concept of strategic voting. After Richard won, the strategy was codified; people were…

Sean was too goddamn stupid to take part in a ruse like that.

Even more accurately, it explains why Kerry didn't respond to the Swift Boat attacks right away. He was playing a gentlemen's game–it's undemocratic to call your opponent a liar!–while Karl Rove was channelling Richard.

I'm pretty sure Cupp is mostly republican for pay. She used to try to be a 'cool conservative', doing stuff like wearing a leather jacket and Public Enemy tshirt on tv. She had an 'I'm an atheist but I admire religion' schtick for awhile. I think she's trying to be more of a morning-show host now.

That's classic TVDW. Good stuff. Reading that bit above about how the younger survivors didn't want to align against Richard because it didn't follow some supposedly agreed-upon social norms reminds me of the Democratic Party in the early 2000s

I think occasionally in reviews and comments there's some impulse to find depth in Selina's character by looking for moments where she reveals some shred of humanity. I think this is a mistake. One of the many great things about Veep is that Selina's pretty transparently odious, and she's not ashamed of this.

Stop dissing Dante on records y'all.

In general Out of Time deserves more credit than Nevermind for making indie mainstream. If OOT doesn't sell big Geffen doesn't put as much marketing muscle behind Nevermind.

Part of this IIRC was that Soundscan started tracking sales in 1991 so it was harder to fudge sales numbers. There were a lot of course corrections that started that year: one of the reasons 'alternative' broke big in 1991 was that Soundscan revealed that 'alternative' acts actually sold better than what had been…

Freakonomics tends to lean towards TED-esque woo with a hint of contrarianism; Planet Money addresses real economic issues with carefully contextualized examples. Planet Money is a brilliant podcast (and their 2008/9 podcasts on the housing bubble are still the best starter course for understanding what happened…

Like Snakes on A Plane, the title and premise of Hell Goes to Frogtown are inspired, but the film itself is a slog.