Can someone explain to me what Hero's "mastery of rope tricks" is supposed to mean? Does he just lasso the fake Oracles and the wild boys? Lynch them? I feel like this statement could do with some explanation.

I regret to say I finished both, but then again, I've always had a weird fascination for slogging through endless minutiae and pointless details. I find it sort of soothing.

I absolutely adore John Wayne Gacy Jr., especially the way all the instrumentation builds up to that "Oh my God" and then suddenly dies down. Honestly, you can't go wrong with anything on Illinoise. As someone who remembers going to Lincoln museums and celebrating Casimir Pulaski Day every year, that whole album hits…

Yeah, I've always kind of hated that mindset in punk. I can only listen to unfiltered aggression without good music backing it up for so long, and I think that's why I've never been able to get that deeply into the genre (excluding the obvious bands, of course).

Oh, no doubt. But I was seeing the episode long after the fact, and what I'd heard about Marlo offing the security guard was pretty prominent in my mind. Still, I agree it's one of the show's strengths that it portrayed the violence as so compartmentalized; really put the thing a cut above the normal, "anyone can be a…

I'm just relieved nothing bad happened to him. I remember feeling really tense throughout that whole scene, like "the only reason they're spending so much time on this guy is that he's going to die horribly."

Hell, Vonnegut created a completely fictional religion based on forced couplets and one-liners, and it still makes more sense as something people would devote their lives to than Scientology.

Yeah, that's an underrated album if ever there was one. The only song I think I prefer from Stop Making Sense is "Crosseyed and Painless," and even then it's pretty close.

Agreed. Hell, you could remove "Live" from the sentence entirely, and it would still be true.

My Venture Bros. marathon finally came to an end, with "All This and Gargantua-2." Unabashed praise probably gets a little boring after a while, but that said, this season was goddamn amazing. Even the bizarre filler episodes (looking at you, Spanakopita) were better than in previous years. Obviously, I would have…

It's kind of alarming to think that Doris was his 'upbeat' album, but I have to say, compared to this single, it sounds positively sunny.

Yeah. I find bad comedies are always the worst kind of "bad movie" to watch, since there's really no good way to enjoy them. I can only imagine how bad a comedy that's trying to look unintentionally funny and failing would be.

Finished Season 4 of Venture Bros., and loved it. Just, completely loved it. Pound for pound, it might well be my favorite season of the series so far—more focused than 1 and 2, but looser and funnier than 3. You get rebellious Hank, Phantom Limb's return, the Monarch approaching actual competence, and all of it…

And, of course, you can't forget his explanation of what causes wind. (It's apparently trees sneezing.)

I'm always torn about this kind of thing—whether the possibility of seeing a good director salvage a godawful premise like this one is worth the risk of seeing someone whose work I like crash and burn utterly.

Oh, sure. Considering the season 3 finale disrupted some of the central character dynamics on the show, I'm definitely interested to see how its repercussions are going to play out.

I finished Season 3 of Venture Bros. this week, and while I didn't like it quite as much as Season 2, it was definitely still pretty great. I can see what people mean about this being the point where the continuity really starts to dominate everything, but I didn't mind that as much—maybe because I saw the episodes in…

Wait, so does this exhibit center around Post, then? I'm a little confused why the article title refers to it as a retrospective of that album specifically, and then never once mentions it in the article itself.

Many thanks.

God damn it. That sounds amazing.