Please don't think for a minute that I'm one of those white genocide/"anti-racist is code for anti-white" idiots, because those people are garbage. But I find it "problematic" that every work of art has to be filtered through the social justice purity test. Where is there a requirement that a film has to be a certain…

That is just some horrible writing. If the rest of the book is as bad as that…how did this sell ten copies, much less 238952 million?

I like the latest Prince album a lot, but he's pretty blatant in biting a couple of Zeppelin riffs. Of course, Zeppelin were pretty blatant in biting music from everyone, so it all works out.

All those Starbucks lovers are gonna get slapped with an injunction.

I guess I don't understand the point of this piece. I mean, other then content's gotta content. That's the point of everything on the internet. Was DIVERGENT a bad film because the director used a lot of closeups of hands? Would it have been better if those shots had been cut out, but everything else was the same?

Didn't have a ton of time this week. Did get caught up on Downton Abbey (which is deep into another round of Who Did Bates Kill This Time??) and knocked off a few more new SVU episodes. The show has actually gotten good again, which is astonishing.

This is for the whole week…

Watched this last night, and I was fairly underwhelmed. If this was mean to be the story of how Enigma was broken, it's woefully
inaccurate and surface-level. The script botched a lot of basic stuff, such as certain characters being slapped together despite never having met. Cairncross is especially screwed up, as the…

Other than the ridiculous, brain dead nonsense with Edith (I'm sorry, how is that woman not going to figure out this kid is hers?) and the return of John Bates: Wanted Man, this was pretty solid. I love any time anyone on Downton talks about the monarchy or British politics. And the whole crew standing for the King's…

I didn't feel Robert was rude to her, at least not at first. Maybe snobbish and smug, but not rude. I think he thinks Tom can do better, and quite frankly, he hasn't let go of Sybil yet. She was incredibly disrespectful of him, the house and the family way of life. The last straw was questioning the war memorial.…

I think the problem with Downton at this point is that individual episodes are almost always excellent and entertaining. But taken as a whole, the series is madly repetitive and illogical. Whatever a character does at that exact time seems to make sense, but added up over time what they do makes almost no sense.

I listened to "How Did This Get Made" for the first time when it did a crossover with James Bonding. Is it always so…screamy?

The Sound Opinions holiday mix was terrific this year. If there was any justice in the world, "Snow Bunny" would be ringing out of every shopping mall and Target, with Christmas consumers spurred on by its mix of lascivious lyrics, beatnik-esque sax and marvelous oversinging. Melt your heaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaart!

Nothing about this story has even the slightest ring of truth about it.

Mystery to Me and Bare Trees are great records. Just full of fine pop craftsmanship and tinged with a bit of 70's weirdness. But there's also a lot of crap and filler in those early records. I couldn't make it all the way through one listen of Kiln House, for example.

If Surf's Up and Sunflower had been one record, trimmed down to 14-15 tracks, it would have been ranked up there with Pet Sounds as a masterpiece. As it stands, both have some beautiful songs (Day in the Life of a Tree is the saddest song anyone has ever recorded) surrounded by some unfathomably bad crap.

Pop is far from U2's best album, but it's probably my favorite, and the one I always come back to. It peters out a little in the second half, but the first seven tracks are right up there with anything the band has done. It's also got a couple of great B-sides, including a duet with Willie Nelson that's really worth…

Finally got a chance to see this last night. For the most part, I don't care about the MCU, but this felt really different. It didn't have the ponderous weight of 50 years of backstory and mythology to shove in, and felt new and fresh, despite wearing its influences about as clearly as possible.

I've never had the courage to look up the lyrics, so I also thought it was "steak house/french fries" - like he's so broke and wasted he shows up at some nice restaurant and leaves with a bag of old fries.

Having a newborn at home weirdly means I get a chance to watch a lot more TV, since he falls asleep in my arms and I can't move him.