It helps that the first Floyd you hear is almost ALWAYS straight up psychedelic blues or prog-pop. You have to want to dig deeper to discover their stylistic evolution.

I like the fact that the subjective truths of The Simpsons remain the same, but the objective facts are completely malleable. Homer came of age in the seventies- or the eighties- or the early nineties, but it was the same story: good-hearted burnout finds love to give his useless life meaning.

South Park doesn't use a ton of licensed music, and when they do it's usually for a serious moment rather than a funny one. Their use of "Landslide" in the montage of Stan accepting his depression and the "age" of the show was masterful (as was Peter Gabriel's cover of "The Book of Love" in an episode about…

I was born the day the show premiered.

The Simpsons eventually established the rules and the tempo for an animated sitcom. They hadn't had the time or influence at the beginning to do such a thing- I watch those opening episodes and the quiet, slow pace is more reminiscent of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" than anything else.

Ryan Lochte was born
On the planet of Kryluck
He came to earth to save us all
From war and death and such!

More than the hair and skin color, they've got white-shaped faces. Your standard European facial structure is somewhat oval, somewhat rounded. You'll never see a major Hollywood lead that isn't a "piece ABOUT race" go to a woman of color with the more squared-off facial structure common in many traditionally nonwhite…

Katniss wasn't white either (if I recall, she's that caramelly "all races so no race" blend that I always just call the Nicole Scherzinger Race), but counterpoint: she IS the lead in a young-adult dystopian series, which is about the whitest thing there is.

Remember the first few season of the rebooted Doctor Who? Every major couple we came across was "diverse" in some way. I don't remember ever seeing a pair of present day white men and women, or even black men and women, together- they were all portrayed as interracial, gay, etc. I remembered wondering- is the UK a…

Frampton, like Todd Rudngren, is an anomaly: a shredding, genre-bending session player legend, who nonetheless prefers "lite and smooth" as his default setting when a solo artist.

I've actually wondered about this- the ride has a clever conceit, blasting speed combined with classic road-trip music to simulate the wildest drive possible. They'll likely replace Aerosmith with some other band eventually (particularly if one of them dies), and I wonder if they'll replace it with another classic…

There's a quotation I've heard attributed to Hulk Hogan after his alleged gay sex scandal- it sounds spurious, but it stuck in my mind as useful, if reductive.

No, that term is "carny."

Is using Todd as the biggest open asexual character on TV that big of a step forward? I worry that making the character a kindhearted but simpleminded man-child with clear arrested development issues may put across the subtext that asexuality is a "lack of emotional maturity and development." I mean, everyone on…

My best friend is probably what you'd call a gray asexual- she personally refers to herself as a Vulcan-sexual. Like Mr. Spock, she is capable of sexual pleasure, but to her sex is just cardio. Just another fun physical activity. When she's in a relationship she will have sex at an amount which feels adequate and…

A brief story about my family: my mother has allergies, so we never had a pet at home. As a result, the few permanent plushie additions to the family became surrogate pets, and gradually imbued with a personality over the years. A stuffed original-style Fat Pikachu, which is known as Chuchi (popular Hispanic nickname)…

Steven Seagal IS: The End of a Gun.

No, that's his appearance on James Corden.

Can you PROMISE that stuffed sloth will be there to comfort me after my hardest days at work? Because the last person who promised that… well, not so much.

They did Exorcist as a straight play on Broadway a year or two ago. Teller, of Penn and Teller, designed the stunts and illusions (apparently he's built a strong cottage industry for himself as a stage effect designer).