I've always given him the benefit of the doubt, but "Red State" was awful. It was the moment I realized that he wasn't just a slacker limiting his abilities, but rather a genuinely terrible writer and director.

This fits with the character, though, and seems the most natural way to insert a gay character into the story. It's just making subtext text. I mean, it'd be weird if they did something like add a straight acting gay cook or something who just hung out in the background as a pillar of the community, but had zero…

The EP of songs from the upcoming album they released last year was pretty good. There was only one terrible song on it that sounded like something from their last album ("Be True to your Bar," which sounds like some kind of beer commercial parody outtake from "The Man Show" circa 2003).

The radio here is playing her new song and I can't say I'm a fan. It's all built around extending single syllable words out for 30 seconds straight, which coupled with the listless melody that doesn't really go anywhere, just makes it seem terribly half assed. Like she wrote the whole thing 5 minutes before…

I agree. He can legit sing, but he also often adopts an overwrought, breathy, guttural singing voice that I've never been a fan of. He sang the entire Nina Simone cover album in that voice and it ruined what was an otherwise interesting album musically.

I watched a couple on TCM when they were showing them a few months back, and yeah they are definitely more interesting for historical reasons than as films in themselves. One had the devil trying to corrupt a good man via money. The devil lets the guy win the lottery and then he proceeds to leave his wife for a Jazz…

Fabulous Muscles, definitely. It's their most accessible and arguably their best.

That's what I think of whenever I see "Nashville." I forget the TV show even exists. Plus, that song always comes up on my random play all. Not sure why as I have like 6,000 songs on it.

Me too! It reminds me a lot of Angel Olson, especially her first two albums before she went more pop rock. It slots well into that genre of newer female indie rockers (e.g. Waxahatchee, Mitski, EMA, Torres, etc, etc) who to me sound like throwbacks to the Kim Deal/Tanya Donelly/PJ Harvey era of indie rock in the…

Yeah. People not familiar with her see her as a one-hit wonder, but I see her more as an incredibly good singer-songwriter (although, she tends to do covers as much as she writes) who's been releasing solid material for years and just had one fluke smash hit. She's never released a bad album, though.

That's more like 1998.

5 of their top 10 albums of 2016 fit my Kanye + Beyonce formula for Pitchfork success, though (Chance, Frank Ocean, Solange, Kanye, Beyonce). And 4 of their top 5 albums of 2016.

I like Bon Iver, but there needs to be a moratorium declared on his guest starring on hip hop albums. Last year it seemed like you couldn't release a hip-hop album without Bon Iver singing noodly falsetto in the back ground on at least one track.

Pitchfork only likes hiphop and R&B now. And by that I don't mean that they are heavily into it, as they really aren't (there are way better websites if you want to delve heavily into the indie scene in those genres). They just like the mainstream stuff. If you are either Kanye or Beyonce or are a hip hop/R&B act…

This is exciting. I love Xiu Xiu, but I confess that I tend to skip the songs that are just Jamie Stewart breathing heavily into the microphone over the sounds of an industrial saw and some wind chimes. Pop Xiu Xiu is the best Xiu Xiu, although the vast majority of their albums have mixed pop and rock equally with…

It's true. My parents watch Fox News, Judge Judy, and they voted for Trump. They are also fond of Hallmark Movies, reruns of Cops, Discovery Channel reality shows about blue collar workers who have to get things done lest they don't get paid, and Duck Dynasty.

I use prime for shipping constantly. My area also has Prime Now grocery delivery, which I use at least once a week (they have a tiny selection, but are insanely cheap, so I just get the same essentials from them). Plus, alcohol. You don't know how cool it is to order alcohol on a Saturday night and have it at your…

A few weeks ago I said I couldn't wait until the time when the Onion runs the headline, "Milo Yiannopoulos Now Going Door to Door Trying to Shock People." That time arrived way quicker than I thought it would.

John Stewart had the clout before he left that I think a Trump presidency might have made him politically relevant again, just as he was for a brief period under GW Bush when he was getting tons of big guests, right and left. But, yeah, the media landscape is too divided and there are just too many shows and venues…

Politically incorrect was great because the format was so new back then (there was literally nothing else like it on TV at the time) that he'd get a wider variety of guests. Partly due to novelty, partly because there weren't a lot of venues for pundits to sound off outside talk radio, and partly because probably…