Dating myself again, but I first noticed this trend in movies after Pulp Fiction blew up- suddenly there was this glut of glib, "humorously" violent crime movies with names like "8 Heads in a Duffel Bag."

Yeah that's a really useful, interesting way to describe this phenomenon. Dating myself a bit here, but the first time I remember noticing it was in the mid-90s, when all the bullshit second-wave "grunge" bands like Bush started getting played on the radio. I was only, like, 17, but I remember grasping intuitively…

Yes! I was thinking about this as I was writing my comment. I was surprised by how cold "One Mississippi" left me in part because of how much I love when Tig Notaro is on the Comedy Bang Bang podcast. That show obviously blurs the line between the stand-up and improv worlds; I think improv is still considered…

Very true. The phenomenon of people copying the superficial style of something great without actually really understanding, or being able to themselves recreate, the thing that made it great is of course not specific to this, or to TV, or even to art… I guess I just wouldn't have thought in 2010 that that was going to…

It's amazing and kind of sad to me that we've already managed to hit a saturation point on over-sharing, personal, not-actually-that-funny "comedy" shows on TV. My personal saturation point came just a few weeks ago when I watched the first episode of Tig Notaro's "One Mississippi." As much as I love her (and as much…

Just bought a PS4, starting to play Witcher 3 after playing hundreds of hours of Skyrim on PS3 for the last four years… It feels like I've started dating someone new after getting out of a long-term relationship.

The "clever Spoonerism name" race has two contestants: you and Queef Latina. Well done.

At least now we know the account Ken Kratz uses when he comments on the AV Club.

I was just thinking about that because of the veto of Obama's decision to not let 9/11 victims sue Saudi Arabia. I mean, he did that at least in part because allowing that kind of suit to go forward would indeed open that whole can of worms about US troops basically being immune to international law…

Almost all songs on mainstream US radio these days sound like they were made for a commercial. Radio music is nearly all pure kitsch at this point. Whenever I'm in a movie theater or other place where I have to hear this shit, I'm amazed at how much of a formless vanilla lump it is. The meaningless crescendos and…

Kether Donohue is hilarious and amazing and needs to win an Emmy. I knew her punchline about the shrimp in the hat was coming, and it still made me laugh so hard I had to rewind it and watch it again.

I realized while reading this article that #1 I listened to the radio a lot in 1996 and #2 that was the last year I really listened to the radio with any regularity, just after I had graduated high school but before I left home and joined the military.

The theme and opening credits sequence of this show are so wonderfully evocative… Any other musicians (or non-) just slightly bothered by the way the main arpeggio/melody of the theme song doesn't resolve?

Book readers (or someone) please tell me why the whole Arya Faceless Men story wasn't a ludicrous waste of time. When, in the last episode, she was somehow dumb enough to get caught and gutted by the waif, and when she somehow didn't die from all that stabbing and twisting, I was hoping there would be some sort of…

My current theory is that the people who really are assholes about enforcing the use of the preferred nomenclature, etc. (not a straw man argument; they do exist) is that they’re an interesting/frustrating combination of liberal and conservative: liberal in terms of “the issues,” but conservative in their…

The KGB will kill Martha by leaving the door open with the air conditioning on.

I visited SLC in 2012 (I even went to this theater, which was near the hotel I stayed in). My impression after being there for about a month was basically, "This city is a lot cooler than people might think, but the laws related to alcohol are bat-shit insane and seem like more trouble than they could possibly be…

I'm already listening to it again… As much as I normally think this kind of thing is lame and pointless, part of me would love to know where this album "came from," from PJ Harvey's viewpoint. It really does seem like she just transformed into a jilted Victorian ghost for one album.

I couldn't agree more. One of the things that grabbed me from the album almost immediately was the chorus of "The Piano," which mostly just consists of the line "Oh God, I miss you" repeated over and over again.

I'm probably in the minority, but White Chalk is my favorite PJ Harvey album.