You're obligated to like her, and to insist that you have always liked her, without interruption, until such time as she is accused of insensitivity or appropriation by a Twitter user with at least 100k followers. At that point, you will be required to take part in a nationwide dialogue about Taylor Swift, race,…

See… We can all quibble about the entire Star Wars universe being strip-mined, with every single mystery and tossed-off line and minor character getting its own full-length treatment. But at least Han Solo and Boba Fett and Obi Wan are characters that people actually enjoy watching onscreen. I feel like Jabba the Hutt…

Also cool. And my mom used to play the hell out of the 10,000 Maniacs one when I was little, and I secretly quite liked it.

Favorite Unplugged sets:

Gold leaf is where fine dining really jumps the shark. A flavorless, indigestible, nutritionally void garnish that does nothing but add $20 to your bill and allow you to literally shit gold.

Get Me Away From Here, It's Walmart

Oh Christ, you’re describing my sister-in-law. Has three kids, has never held down a job for more than 6 months at a time, and consistently manages to lose/misfile/forget everything even remotely important. We’ll loan her money, I’ll drive three hours to bring her the wallet she left at a Denny’s, or I’ll take the day…

I know a lot of people on the spectrum, including my own child, so I'm particularly sensitive to this. I know people on the spectrum who've had nightmarishly rough and abusive upbringings with shitty parents who did nothing to help with their autism. It's an unimaginable amount to deal with. And yet, none of these…

Any burrito that you consider eating/are forced to eat with utensils is a failure of culinary engineering. And what's with all the rice, man?

I am pleasantly shocked that both Pattinson and Kristen Stewart have over the years turned into very interesting actors with daring, intelligent tastes in projects and collaborators. But that doesn't mean they weren't both pretty terrible in Twilight. Embrace it! Celebrate the improvement.

LA's Mexican food is very hit-and-miss — and I say this as an Angeleno who prefers LA to SF in nearly every conceivable way. LA has incredible Oaxacan food, better than any I've personally had in Mexico. LA has excellent torta trucks, and I challenge you to find a bad birria place anywhere on the east side. But LA…

I live in LA. My wife's family lives in Tijuana, and we go down there a lot. I also travel to Texas for work several times a year. It never ceases to amaze me that ordering a simple asada taco in each of those three places will get you something noticeably different.

In retrospect, "Rushmore" dealt with the class difference between Max and the rest of the characters in a mostly superficial way. But just the simple fact that they gave his dad a blue-collar job and didn't give him limitless spending money honestly made me like that film so much more.

Broadly speaking, the public-facing side of the music business has three general classes of people: the executives, who are absolute sharks; the high-level stars, who are essentially politicians; and the low-level ecosystem of radio doofuses, publicists, marketing strategists, music journalists, etc. who are…

In retrospect, my formative musical years were pretty much perfectly laid out: Elementary school was capped off by Nirvana and the alt-rock explosion; middle school came right in time for the real golden age of hip-hop; and high school was largely such a barren era for pop music that I had little choice but to be the…

Replacing Katie Holmes in Batman Begins with Maggie Gyllenhaal in The Dark Knight is the greatest immediate jump in actorly quality since this scene: https://www.youtube.com/wat…

To date, the only time I've technically been to a professional basketball game was the time my dad took me to see the Globetrotters at age 9 in the then-crumbling remnants of the Fabulous Forum in Inglewood. Still one of the greatest shows I've ever seen. That is all.

Even as a conservative Republican, Glen Campbell hired a young Steve Martin and let him write sketches making fun of Nixon on his variety show.

That sequence is incredible. The workings of the mind are fascinating beyond measure.

Based on Trump's recent statements, we may all be joining Glen sooner than expected.