Big Star wasn't the biggest band of the '70s for much the same reason Noel gives for Sloan not being the biggest band of the '90s: The masses just don't seem to dig power pop. That, and Big Star had a horrible distribution deal, so even people who wanted to buy their records couldn't get their hands on them.

It's like we share a CD collection; I came here to mention Beulah and the Delgados (and always liked Grandaddy, although I don't think their sound was ever radio-friendly enough that they should have been bigger than they were). For Beulah in particular, it probably didn't help that their best album was released on…

Well, another authentic oddball would be the other Brian Wilson. "I Went to Sleep" would make a great weird intro song for a closer.

There's probably quite a few Monster Magnet songs that would work well, since Dave Wyndorf seems to often work with that template of a slow-burning intro that suddenly really kicks things into overdrive. Ones that would work well would "Space Lord", "Melt", and that theme song Matt Hardy used to use in the WWE (with…

Gosling was a black hole of charisma in "Crazy, Stupid, Love". The audience was asked to believe he was charming, but his love-guru advice basically boiled down to "look as good as me in a suit, and have abs this photoshopped-looking". He was a good-looking — but not charming — cipher, and he was not one of the few…

If they'd stuck with their original concept of a Federation/Maquis alliance, he could been more of a "shadow captain" and a maverick who doesn't play by the rules, but gets results, dammit. There ought to have been more of a power struggle, or at the very least, a Lethal Weapon-style partnership between him and…

So, three previous seasons of Jersey Shore have already aired. Who exactly did Jionni think he was getting involved with when he decided to date Snooki? How did he think this was someone who wouldn't get drunk and do embarrassing things?

I didn't think it was particularly ironic (at least, not unintentionally). When season one of the show was announced, I expected the cast to look like the hall-of-famers from the Hot Chicks with Douchebags site. What we ended up getting was a surprisingly normal-looking cast (expect for their orangeness), only one…

She also played Paul Reiser's wife in his short-lived, watered-down rip-off of Curb, so the casting of a Cheryl Hines type in the Cheryl Hones role made it seem even more blatantly like a rip-off.

After a full season of Sammi being the worst person on earth, we're back to the out-of-control Party Ronnie of season two, and so far, the drama is completely his fault.

She's too young for you, bro!
The very first time they said this, I thought it had a very Foxyworthy-esque "you might be a redneck" type of cadence. So I was pleased when they then followed it up with about a half-dozen variations. After this season, it might be time for them to go on the road with the Original Kings…

It didn't take much time of touring together for them to remember that they hated each other.

More time has now passed between the brief reunion with Roth in 1996 (15 years) and now than between his original departure and that reunion (12 years). I don't hold out much hope for this new album ever materializing or being any good if it does.

Archer definitely came off as Space Dubya, especially when he furrowed his brow into that same confused/angry squint. (That, and he was fighting the Space Taliban, or "Suliban.)

Well, it was rumoured for years that The Joshua Tree was conceived as a double album, so it was fun to speculate what that might have sounded like. Then U2 took most of the fun out of that with their 20th anniversary edition, which is basically exactly that; the second disc has all the B-sides and some unreleased…

I only ever listen to my own assembled version of Rattle and Hum. Basically, start with Hallelujah, Here She Comes, delete all the live tracks, and put A Room at the Heartbreak Hotel in the penultimate spot. Either swap the studio version of Silver and Gold in place of the live one or save that for a resequenced…

He was great as Big Bird's camp counselor on Sesame Street too.

And REM's Monster.

And REM's Monster.

A friend of mine used to live in the same apartment building as Bellini. Any time I visited, I secretly hoped to run into a towel-clad Bellini in the elevator. No luck there, though I did get to push the fourth-floor button for Scott Thompson once.