Yeah, I'd never heard of "The Lord of the Rings", "The Great Gatsby", "Blood Meridian", "Charlotte's Web", The Who, Radiohead, or  the U.K version of "The Office" before I read this article today.  It really bothered me, because I hate learning about previously unknown pieces of pop culture, for fear that someone's…

God, Animal Life is fucking great.  The first few songs off that album in general were pretty great.

@avclub-f121d09285898f1c66d66f1e6f0455a6:disqus Ha, thanks.  Yeah, I've been considering reading some Faulkner recently, and he's a pretty obvious influence on McCarthy, so I think I just made a weird careless name inversion there.

@avclub-f08b7ac8aa30a2a9ab34394e200e1a71:disqus Gollum was a pretty complex…whatever he was.  And there's quite a few human characters with some subtle depth.  The Rohirrim and Gondor were all "good guys" but they were at odds with each other at times, IIRC.  I felt like Aragorn had a bit of depth to him, and Denethor…

Ah, yes, I suppose I should have paid more attention.  Sorry about that, seriously.  I didn't mean to falsely accuse you of falsely accusing F. Scott Fitzgerald of racism.  My bad!

But seriously, who (if anyone) would be a good choice to play The Judge if they made a movie of "Blood Meridian"?

Or as being one of the most unequivocally evil characters ever written.

Ocarina of Time was pretty perfect as well.  And Wind Waker, though not quite as good, is possibly even more fun to play.

@avclub-173af0430bc192b8a027af7cdba82cd7:disqus  You have a good point there.  I guess I just feel like Tolkien understood mythology, how to create an entire fantasy world, and how to properly utilize the basic tropes and features of fantasy and mythology better than any other author I've ever read (although Gaiman…

I'm responding to both of your comments on the subject here, and I'd say that you've done a pretty good job of summing it up as far as I can tell. I'd forgotten all about Wolfshiem.  He definitely was probably a bit of a caricature.  I was thinking more of the depictions of African Americans when writing my original…

The first six Led Zeppelin albums (I, II, III, IV, Houses of the Holy, Physical Graffiti).  There's not a song there that's bad, and they're all incredibly brilliant, innovative albums that diversified and helped to define what rock music is.  They're also diverse enough (ranging from white guys covering/writing blues…

And Metroid Prime was essentially the perfect game of the GameCube, in my opinion.

Counter-counterpoint:  No.  Biff was an essential part of the movie.

But every bit of incredible violence is described in gory detail throughout the whole book, except for that last moment where The Kid has been killed, which implies that out of all the horrifically violent acts committed throughout the novel, that this one is the only one too terrible to be described. That's pretty…

The Judge is possibly the most terrifying villain of all time.  At least, he's the best villain in anything I've ever read/seen.

Tom Bombadil was definitely one of the worst things about the book, although he's almost worth it for the quote where Gandalf talks about how he would just throw the ring away if he were given it to take to Mordor.

Hahaha, what a story @avclub-022199896b1f52952c180b60caa681bd:disqus .

It is truly the most watchable film that is utterly devoid of any intentional merit that I have (or probably will) ever see.  Although the awkward five minute sex scenes with really cheesy generic love songs are beyond humorously excessive in duration, in my opinion. But overall, it's a delightful combination of…

Was "The Great Gatsby" truly racist?  It's been a little while since I read it, but I always felt like any of the brief moments of racism were Fitzgerald projecting Nick's snobbish elitism (and any attendant racism) into the narration rather than his own racial prejudices.  Or am I just off on this?

Yeah, I 've never read "The Reivers", but from what I know it seems a more accessbile starting point.