So many shows make characters behave unrealistically because it serves the story they'd like to tell, or for other outside motives. In that light, Mick's heel-turn is kind of a "man bites dog" plotline: it makes perfect sense for the character, but seems like a bad decision on the meta-level. Mick's just more fun on…

And the impeccably Catholic Tolkien would've been the first guy to point that out.

"It's an omen … I shall become a bat! And date a Hot Topic manager."

I don't know. Countless pre-modern civilizations (Rome, Imperial China, mediaeval European & Renaissance kingdoms) would meet the popular modern definition of "fascist." And yet, there was no want of artistic significance—hell, we moderns aren't obviously their artistic superiors, and one could plausibly argue that…

Three cheers for Eugene. He guessed exactly how well planned any mission of Rosita's was likely to be … and correctly decided that for now, he'd be safer biding his time with the Saviors.

I caught The Green Hornet over the weekend, and I'm pretty sure that Britt Reid is the Trump of superheroes:
* He inherited everything he's got going for him.
* He's publically reviled as a bad guy.
* He relies WAY more on immigrant labor than he'd care to have known.

Well, I might as well have a go. God knows, that ship has already sailed.

It doesn't seem so tough. Don't you just throw out your hands, stick out your tush, hands on your hips, and give them a push?

I think someone could make a reasonable case that Gomez isn't a particularly gifted musician or actress, that her celebrity is founded on a kind of creepyish, baby-doll prurience. I'm not insisting that's so … but it's not a facially ridiculous argument either.

Sure. But I'd argue that though there's room for varying opinions, literary/academic quality isn't merely in the eye of the untutored beholder either. (For example, a Barzun or a Bagehot is simply our better in such areas, and it's unrealistic to maintain otherwise.) And to the extent that such quality is more than…

The élites are inescapably men of letters (some linguists, some not), who run the gamut from descriptivism to prescriptivism. In actual practice, however, their example is far more stringent than the ordinary demotic. And whatever their published opinions of the demotic standard, it is a speaker's prerogative to…

If only. Back then, all you had to do was tweet the sleeper's trigger phrase. Oh, by the way:

Even if she's sincerely okay with it, that doesn't make Haskell one iota more professional, or more mature. I object to magazines' dealing in this sort of drooling crap because of what it is, and an excuse note from this month's droolee wouldn't change that.

Well, yes. And there's excellent cause for deferring to an élite when it comes to language.

I'm fine with descriptivism, in the sense of documenting that a word or a usage exists. However, it's also part of a dictionary's job to identify solecisms or regionally/socially marked locutions as such. Unsurprising that Merriam-Webster employs the author; yet another reason to insist on the OED.

There might be some small area—some minor, fugitive detail—in which the musical world is the better for the existence of Robert Christgau, Lester Bangs, and their ilk. But as God's my witness, I can't point to one.

The article makes a good point, in that several of the best things about Beauty and the Beast have either been run into the ground since, or were uniquely striking at the time of its release. I'm not sure I know how to translate the experience of a young-adult viewer whose childhood Disney experiences had been more…

Well, I'm not exactly saying that occasion would've made her list.

Well, I'm not exactly saying that occasion would've made her list.

The Super Mario Bros. 2 menu music, blaring from my NES. Felt bizarrely transgressive, somehow.