I had a coworker from India who was chatting about pesky animals (monkeys, maybe?) back home. I compared them to possums, which she had never encountered before. So I googled "possum," and the first picture that came up was kind of a cute, cuddly picture of a possum. She said it looked like a good pet.

He'd scramble to put it back on, but by then… you've seen everything.

For my money, the top five would be in the songs "Clap Hands" by Tom Waits, "Run Run Run" by the Velvet Underground, "Last" by Nine Inch Nails, "Adam Raised a Cain" by Bruce Springsteen, and the Cradle of Filth cover of "Hallowed Be Thy Name."

I'd say the guitar solo from Adam Raised a Cain tops all comers. It helps that it's embedded within one of the best songs ever written.

I would put "Sappy" at the absolute top of the pile in terms of what Kurt Cobain could do with a guitar. Probably "School" right underneath it.

It's a great song, but nobody in the bloated Hall of Fame cover band adds anything to it. Then Prince shows up with a wanky solo that's stylistically out of sync with the sleepy, "reverent" cover the rest of the band is performing. It's a testament to Prince's chops that the whole thing doesn't fall apart, but as…

The production probably made a difference. Ozzie solo albums remind me of that old Onion article about a producer demanding "more midrange."

Hot take: Everything about Blade Runner, from the music to the production design to the effects, is resolutely 80s. It doesn't feel dated because talented people can make good art in any decade, but the movie is really defined by its 80s aesthetic.

I saw it probably five times before it clicked. For me the version made a difference - the "Final Cut" is more satisfyingly edited, in subtle but significant ways. Once I started watching it as a movie about a child who's terrified of his own mortality (which is basically how Roy Batty [stupid, stupid name, BTW]…

Starts out with a ghost, progresses through a murder scene straight out of Dario Argento, ends up with more ghosts.

I remember seeing Pan's Labyrinth one week and Children of Men the next week. I will happily call that the best month of moviegoing I've ever experienced (though the stretch of 2012 that included Cabin in the Woods, the Avengers, and Skyfall was also pretty gratifying).

I haven't watched Pan's Labyrinth in ages, and looking at that screengrab I'm thinking that's a problem that needs to be addressed. Also I suddenly find myself with $30 that I have absolutely no use for*. Might as well kill two birds with one stone.

Armageddon: The Yes, You Can Find Criterion Movies in the Bargain Bin Edition is one of my favorite things to see in a store, usually right alongside Chasing Amy: The This Might Be an Elaborate Prank by Criterion Edition.

I recently saw Crimson Peak, and the production design can't quite compensate for the lackluster plot (it comes close, but the climactic "chase that goes on forever" just goes on forever).

Because I went to Catholic schools with very poor sex education, I understood that there was a connection between fertility and periods but wasn't clear on how exactly it worked. Up until about age 16 I thought that women could only pregnant if they had sex during their periods, and in the pre-internet era I had no…

I thought "oral sex" meant the same thing as "phone sex" up until I was about 15. I ended up making jokes that were a LOT filthier than intended.

Like many of the people writing to Dan Savage, he does come across as unfortunately young and naive. I think when he talks about monogamy he's talking about staying in a relationship with his current girlfriend forever, which isn't exactly the same thing.

… and then die when they realized they were writing sex puns as dialog for their dead parents.

What words, I wonder, would he use to express this denial?

When ILM has a director with a clear sense of what the movie should look like, their work is absolutely peerless - the CGI in Minority Report or even AI can hold its own against anything released in 2017. Even when their movies are drowning in CGI (looking your way, MCU), they look polished.