It was the full joint articulation that made Micronauts so much better than Star Wars action figures. There's only so much you can do with arms and legs that can't bend their knees and elbows.

Oh yeah! The three glow-brained aliens! Those were my favorites, especially the flying lizard and the four armed purple skull beetle. Mine were in great condition but disappeared into a box after I left for college. They were no doubt destroyed along with my comic book collection … now I haz a sad.

Personally, I don't think the Abercrombie books are in the same league as ASOIAF. They're decent, with some great dialogue—they remind of me sometimes of the Flashman books. But by the end of the trilogy, I started to feel kind of underwhelmed by the story. Somehow it ends up being less than the sum of its parts.

I love Screaming Life, it's still my favorite. I'll almost always prefer the scrappy, hyperactive puppy phase of a young band—once they grow up, they're different animals—not worse, just different. Ultramega OK was half of a great album. Of the later ones, I'd have to give the nod to Superunknown—it's pretty damn…

@DV: I wonder about "NO CLUE who the original artists were" factor. At least based on my 13 yr old niece, she's very savvy about knowing both the covers and the originals. She doesn't seem as tied to the here and now as you might think, with the entire history of pop music one click away. But she might not reflect the…

Oh it's out there. Somewhere. It's as inevitable as the tides.

That was my problem with them as well. It IS watered down black/death metal, not nearly as transgressive as it seemed to think it was.

It's comments like your dad's that send me into nerd rage—Fringe is SO much better than those alphabet soup procedurals. I'd much rather watch a show that wears its absurdity on its sleeves, then sneaks in profound messages about identity and life in general, than a show that pretends to be about "real" crimes but…

Re: Adam and the Ants. Hey, up until Strip he/they totally rocked. Don't know if they were huge in the UK, but they definitely had a few great albums going until Mr. Ant disappeared up his own ass after New Wave faded.

I'm in love with the idea that Fringe exists in the same universe as Twin Peaks. And the X-Files, given their earlier nod to that series!

Heard it from my girlfriend when I was teaching English in Shanghai. Used it as lesson material with my Chinese students the next day.

My ranking is In Utero/Bleach tied for first, followed by Unplugged and Nevermind. It's on the bottom not because I don't like the music, but because it provokes very strange emotions when I listen to it—it's like watching home movies of myself at 12 or 13 or something, and that younger me still feels angry and…

I don't know, there's room for Sleep (On tour! Whoo hoo!) and the Sword in my heart. They're far from bad, just not earth shattering. A +1 Sword, not a Vorpal Blade.

It's hard to say whether or not it would have been better. But it definitely would have been much more like a Kurosawa movie—the most awesome of the Seven Samurai bit it, and it' s not like the film's any worse for it.

Silver Spring. Like it here, but I still miss the West Coast. I'm just more used to West Coast douchiness than I am to East Coast douchiness. Plus there's no decent Chinese food here.

idiotking—I'm not claiming it's an ironclad rule or anything. I know lots of REM fans that like all the different periods. I just think someone who came of age during the early years will still have a tendency to put albums like Murmur or Lifes Rich Pageant at the very top of their lists, if forced to put them in…

First few listens I could barely get past Radio Song, but it grew on me. S

REMiniscince, your experience echoes mine pretty closely. I think you can track roughly how old each lister here is by how heavily they weigh the early years vs. the latter.

Boise High
My one chance to celebrity name drop, and here it is!

Uh, yeah. So there!