I really felt like this episode had a lot of half-formed ideas that kept if from ever really getting going. At first, I thought they were going to do another zombie-type episode, with the Dawn-of-the-Dead-type opening scene. The Grapes of Wrath thing was funny, but kind of petered out after a few minutes. Then, the…

I've gotta second the Violent Femmes. I loved that album when I picked it for $5 when I was 16, and still thinks it holds up as an expression of a certain type of teenage experience. I listened to two other albums, and other than the song "American Music" everything else is terrible, not just bad, but embarrassing.…

I coundn't resist
You can't even compare Walkers chips to Frito Lay. Sure, they might look similar but Walkers are so much darker and realistic in their flavors, while Lays relies on broad, obvious flavors and just rips off the best parts of Walkers. They probably thought Americans were too dumb to appreciate the…

Responsiblity
I think Meltzer comes off pretty bad in his letter when he complains about how his books haven't been reviewed, and then commits one of my personal pet peeves of complaining about how nobody reads anymore. I think he wants to be tongue and cheek about it, but it just reinforces the lame stereotype that…

Haneke's Critique
I brought this up at the end of comments for the movie review, and I don't meant to be repetitive, but I think that in order to understand why it seems like haneke fails in his critique of highly stylized violent movies films like Die Hard is the fundamental difference between violence and pain.…

Is Violence the issue?
I haven't seen this movie and I'm not sure if I will, so take my comments with that in mind, but I've been pretty interested in it since I read a profile of Haenke because he seems to address the prominence of an aesthetic in a lot of horror movies. While a lot of people are getting caught up in…

Vanity Fair Article
Vanity Fair, source of a brewing controversy elsewhere around here, had a great article about this guy a couple months ago. The guy's whole life has been one big Ponzi scheme and he's a real creep, but there is deeply pathetic about his life. The equivelent of an estate sale while you're still…

Mendelian Mondays
BIll Nye,
You're right, I hoped I wasn't the only one who realized that John couldn't possibly have AB+ if Sarah is O-. Any quick Punnett square will tell you that, and who doesn't love those. Also, I thought it was kind of ridiculous that "He needed three units of his own blood type." While I'm no…

I don't think the new zippy zombies have anything to do with the damn kids with their rock music and fancy shoes, but its just a variation on a standard trope. Romero's slow shambly zombies have been around for about 40 years, and while there's something to be said for the unstoppable trudge of his monsters, it seems…

Cynical
What really pissed me off about the episode was not so much that they fudged the time line, albeit by a decade, but the cynicism with which the did it. Look, its a cartoon, and they have to churn out a couple dozen episodes a year, so I understand not reverently adhering to a strict back story, but to dismiss…

Isn't part of what makes this show so creepy is that it doesn't create any sort of artificial space for the humiliation and lying to take place? When watching people expose their worst tendencies on an island, you always know that they are performing a role and all the degradation is ultimately happening within the…