Farmer John, I think you're at least partly right — to my read, there was definitely a lot of reflection of the fact that so many early manifestations of civil rights, like the "black improvement associations" of the early 1900s and the various pre-war black groups like Marcus Garvey's Afrocentricism and the Black…

I doubt it will do anything to derail this conversation, but "Earth: The Book" is very, very light on any political content of any kind. It doesn't really even do much political humor, much less slant left (or right). As I said, if it weren't for the cover, you'd have a hard time telling it was by TDS at all.

Yep. I'm that dork.

I'll also re-recommend Sungod, covered last month in this space.

Just like my last Christmas party.

1. Apparently you and I are different people.

One of many records I didn't get to this month because there were so many other major and/or good releases. I'll try to pick it up next month.

We've dipped in a few times, but the audience isn't really there to do weekly coverage. We'll probably do the season finale, at least, though.

That's right. I'm your daddy now. Come give daddy a kiss.

Yeah, the rule was, a song has to not only mention another performer, but another song, by name.

I thought the creepy Ligeti-ish music was a direct lift from "The Shining, as was the fact that he just stood there menacingly, not saying anything.

Yeah, none of those things in the intro really happened (later in the episode, PL refers to Girl Hitler as if she's still alive), and probably represent wild overspeculation on his part. I serious doubt Prof. Impossible has the money to buy a major financial institution, or that even the Monarch is dumb enough to…

Yeah, those burners are called "crowns" or "KKK crowns". They were everywhere in the '90s, and a bizarre rumor started that they were manufactured and sold by the Klan, so just as quickly as everyone started buying them, they stopped buying them.

I saw it at SxSW (where it won the best documentary award) and loved it. I'd largely agree with Noel's critique, though I rated it higher than he did.

Don't sweat it, Myles. One of the first lessons you'll learn around here is that no matter what letter grade you assign to any given episode (or movie, or album, or book, or…), a significant portion of the readers will be furious with you about it. Stay strong, brother.

Yeah, "which in my view was a very serviceable comedy". Way to set that bar high, Dan.

I could qualify my statement by saying "American" or "console-based" or something, but then I would have to admit that I didn't even know "Pokemon" started out as a video game. I thought it was a card game first.

Well, they're already making a "Mafia Wars" movie and an "Angry Birds" movie, so you might wanna start pricing real estate in Unst just in case.

Apparently, it's "Pokemon".

The Mario series has sold more units, I know, but I think Halo has made more money.