Isn't that sort of the point of him, and the point of Batman as well? Batman's biggest battle is against the mental illness that drives people into disenfranchisement and crime, hence his patronage of the Arkham Asylum and unshakeable belief in the power of rehabilitation and psychiatry. Almost all of his villains are…

I remember Digimon Adventure 1 and 2 being essentially the unholy hybrid of Pokémon and a gag-dub of Evangelion for kids. They would explore absentee parents, the need to conform in a success-based society, implications of high-functioning autism, and cosmic reality-warping pseudo-deities… but this all sat next to…

I get that Fall Out Boy and Missy Elliot probably cost less, but who dropped the ball and failed to hire Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars to do the theme song reboot?

Oingo Boingo's "Flesh and Blood" is one of those rare songs about "let's have sex because we're probably about to die."

Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him to the Greek are better remembered as movies, but their biggest contribution is the "Infant Sorrow" CD soundtrack Russell Brand recorded with actual alternative and Britpop musicians and songwriters.
It's all deliriously skewed and over-the-top lyrically, but not so much that it…

The Hanna-Barbera company had pursued a few darker but heartfelt reboots of The Flintstones over the past decade or so. They put the kibosh on a Seth MacFarlane version that allegedly turned into "American Dad" (with near-magical Roger Smith being a stand-in for the alcoholic Great Gazoo in the initial pitch), but…

I've commented this a few times, but it always seems to be relevant: there are two ways to read Superman. Superman the demigod, or Superman the god.
Is he a man of action and catchphrases, defined by super strength and inhuman power in the service of Capital Letter Greater Ideals? Fine, you've made Superman into…

I love his Vincent Price, but at the same time I admit that it's less an impersonation of Price and more of an eccentric character with a funny voice vaguely based on Vincent Price. He's really more going into his own thing there, playing up the Midwestern side of Price's persona and downplaying the effete New…

I had a disturbing dream two weeks ago that there was a political campaign in which millions of people pledged that, should Trump win, they would calmly and peacefully take their own lives. Immediately a countercampaign against Clinton emerged, and the world waited to see who would die on Election Night.

As much as a punchline as they've become, I have to admit to loving "Scenes from a Memory" as maybe the only album they did where they accomplished exactly what they set out to accomplish: an old-school concept album combining their prog-metal leanings with stylistic homages to their inspirations, mostly Pink Floyd…

Every time I think of "TV Eye," I think of Ewan McGregor inexplicably beginning his distortion-drenched cover of the song with screaming "Doo-dah!" instead of "Lawd!"

Pop with an ethos probably does make more of an impact than underground agitprop, because the people who hear that already have that ideology, or would get it inevitably. Preach to the masses, not to the converts.

I like the Pogues more in theory than in practice. It took the completely non-punk Ronan Keating cover of "Fairytale of New York" for me to realize that the song is actually a pretty well-done pastiche of the early, pseudo folk-punk Tom Waits before his reinvention as evil hobo.

A dear friend of mine used to be a Reddit porn star whose "gimmick" was disappearing and reappearing unexpectedly with new usernames, then deleting everything until she resurfaces. Her posts could be… troubling.
One of her more notorious posts was posing naked with a gas mask on as she baked cupcakes filled with period…

THROW THE SNACKS IN THE BAG AND I'M GHOST LIKE SWAYZE

True Showbiz Tales #6: After getting the sheet music found in the back of "Over the Garden Wall" comics, I actually used "I'm the Highwayman" to audition for Rocky Horror.

This explains a comedy reference I never got: in the Martin Short live cabaret show which played Broadway and LA, he would do a Jiminy Glick bit and interview a celebrity in attendance every night (this took place after Martin Short's "death" at the hands of the Guardian Angel of Show Business). If the celebrity guest…

Everyone but Adam Goldberg.

"And the cat eats the baby with a silver spoon…"

The real rudest city in the world is the same as the nicest city in the world: Pittsburgh, PA. 360 days a year it's a beautiful place. But when there's a bro-country concert, the city gets destroyed. Rolling Stone magazine just covered Chesney's latest visit, citing that 70 people were arrested, 36 injured in brawls,…