Weirdly, I found myself thinking a lot about both the Breaking Bad and HIMYM endings, and how I liked them both for undermining simple expectations. Walt doesn't get some final comeuppance; in a way he gets a little redemption, and maybe that wasn't deserved, but then evil doesn't always get what it deserves. …

Y'know, I agree with people who say the pacing and execution of the ending were off, but for some reason it doesn't offend me as much as it does a lot of people. It knocks the grade down a couple of notches. Yes, I have to fill in some of the blanks myself because everything was so hurried, but it doesn't take a lot…

As a kid I started to get the sense something was fishy in Patriot Games, when his "Goshdarnit, military people are the BEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD, and they're so serious-minded and know exactly what to do" shtick started to get really heavy handed.  The exact tipping point may have been when Charles and Diana show up…

That site is pretty hilarious with its claims to "rediscovery".  Evidently Luke's house is actually a theme hotel now: http://en.rocketnews24.com/…

Brilliant song.  I love the constantly shifting perspective.  In the lines quoted, it goes from someone being threatening "go on, go on" to description to plea.  Then, there's all that stuff about the Falcon sedan 1969 (the papers said '75), and "we can go to my sister's if we say we'll watch the baby."  Brilliant,…

Yes, actually, that's what came instantly to my mind, too.  It seemed weird even when I was 11.

Yes, actually, that's what came instantly to my mind, too.  It seemed weird even when I was 11.

Dawes has been getting a lot of attention and high praise in Minneapolis recently.  On account of these boards, I keep waiting for some kind of punchline, but apparently there is a world where Dawes is more than a cult A. V. Club reference.

"Tut tut, gentle Marge, for here in the boudoir the gourmand metamorphosizes into… the voluptuary!"

Just noticed for the first time that when Louie's eating the pizza in the title sequence, one of the passers-by flicks off the camera, and Louie gives the guy this brief look that never actually quite breaks into outright annoyance before he goes back to the pizza. I don't know why, but on top of that look he has on…

I don't know if Nathan quite drove home enough the importance of Homer and Moe's co-dependent relationship in his appreciation of this episode. Not being sarcastic, though, like the softball episode, or the space episode, Flaming Moe's has something to it that makes it one of the defining Simpsons episodes for me. …

i and 1 makes a good point here. It seems to be one of these accepted things that Oasis was simply a rip-off of the Beatles. I've always thought the Beatles comparison was a way for lazy people who didn't like Oasis to give a reason for not liking Oasis. Yes, they stole some lyrics/song titles, yes they stole the…

If you're listening to Oasis lyrics and trying to take them seriously, then you're doing it wrong. The same does not apply to Coldplay.

OK, I'm going to defend Be Here Now. I think the fact that it was swinging for the fences, and its failure to rise to its ambitions, is held against it too much. If Oasis has its charms, it is in the fact that the band was wildly, obnoxiously bold beyond any claim that the band could legitimately make. Be Here Now…

If we're allowing that "Let Down" fits the criteria, because it seems to break out of its artificiality and alienation funk, then I think you have to put "Fake Plastic Trees" in that category, too. Especially if you include the video, where they rebel against the homogenization of the modernist supermarket. Thom…

There is little room in Yee Yee's heart for anyone but Yee Yee.

I agree, Green Day would be very good to look at in this context. Having been in the middle of high school in 1995, it was easy to see them, like Live, as an extension of what had come just before if, like most high schoolers, you weren't well versed in the history of music, and weren't very discerning. There did…

Looking at it from a contemporary observer's standpoint rather than a strict historical perspective (e.g, '80s underground/indie -> grunge/alt) brings out a lot. The thing that stands out to me is the aesthetic sensibility of the early '90s, which has little to do with any necessary roots in punk and is, in fact,…