Contributor, The A.V. Club. Reid's a writer and editor who has appeared at GQ, Playboy, and Paste. He also co-created and writes for videogame sites Bullet Points Monthly and Digital Love Child.
The royal wedding went just fine. Planned and run with the considerable resources of a monarchy gleefully rubbing its hands at the opportunity for some good, tradition-reinforcing publicity, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry tied the old Windsor knot without a hitch. As anyone who’s sat through summers of less…
It’s 3 p.m.! Let The A.V. Club briefly make use of the waning hours of your productivity with some pop culture ephemera pulled from the depths of YouTube.
The internet has been having some fun lately, debating whether a little audio clip sounds more like it’s saying “yanny” or “laurel.” The split between what people hear, reminiscent of the good old days of The Dress, has inspired the kind of universal humor and gentle fun that too rarely fills our timelines these days.…
The weather’s warming up, the beaches are ready for visitors, and your psyche is all set to misinterpret every bit of seaweed lightly brushing against your leg as the first moments of your impending death by killer shark. This is thanks, in large part, to Hollywood, whose helpful filmmakers have primed our…
Iron Man, being a superhero and all, is best known for saving lives. He’s notable for repelling alien invasions and punching out world-threatening bad guys. This is impressive and all, but let’s consider his actual best accomplishment: the superpower of getting dressed by having bits of high-tech metal plates fly onto…
Harrison Ford, star of the movies from which our modern day sequels stem, has ushered in a new generation of stars in the best way possible: by goofing on them relentlessly. Taking cues from his own history of ceaselessly owning Ryan Gosling in the lead-up to Blade Runner 2049's release, Ford has now set his sights on…
Solo: A Star Wars Story is out in just a hair over two weeks from today, but that’s no reason not to watch a presumably key scene from the movie right now. In fact, the fine folks looking down upon us from their gold thrones at Disney Megacorp have seen fit to provide eager viewers with one less reason to go see the…
With conservative ideology in political and cultural ascendancy, there’s no better time to be worried about whether conservatives are being given their dues. So says “Meet The Renegades Of The Intellectual Dark Web,” a baffling New York Times article in which Bari Weiss, defender of the downtrodden, highlights key…
Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb is both one of Stanley Kubrick’s most terrifying films and, simultaneously, his absolute funniest. The tale of a bunch of all-powerful maniacs, plunging the world into nuclear destruction through a mix of paranoia, patriotism, and plain stupidity,…
Ted Cruz, failed presidential candidate, prime suspect for the Zodiac murders, and noted fan of the Texas Longporns, is desperate to remind you he’s just a regular person. Like the rest of us, whose retrograde views on everything from women’s rights and gun violence to climate change also affect public policy, Cruz is…
Human sexuality is incredibly complicated and, as long as everything’s consensual and between adults, it’s nobody’s place to cast aspersions on its many complex, surprising expressions. Nothing tests this belief more thoroughly or often than the internet, an incredible invention that has not only forever changed how…
Bob Dylan, giant of postwar Americana that he is, is still an easy target for parody. He has a funny singing voice that you can emulate by plugging your nose; a lot of his most famous tracks are filled with abstract lyrics sung in rambling verses; sometimes he wears a harmonica on a neck holder—any jackass can work…
The yodelin’ Walmart boy has had a whirlwind month. After a-yelpin’ and a-foot tappin’ his way into the nation’s heart earlier this month through a viral video that combined the inspiring purity of a young talent with the bottomless discomfort of using a retail chain’s aisles as a busking sidewalk, Mason Ramsey…
Right now, even if you haven’t heard it yet, Zedd, Maren Morris, and Grey’s “The Middle” is barreling toward becoming the next song that will never leave your head. It doesn’t matter if it burrows its way inside your ear canal as the result of you listening to it on purpose or as the byproduct of simply existing in…
Though your parents, yanking the power cord from the Nintendo 64 until you’d “finish your damn homework,” couldn’t tell the difference between Super Mario 64 and The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time, everyone with an ounce of goddamn sense in their heads knows there’s no comparison between the two video games. In one,…
The audacity of Illuminati celebrities knows no bounds. Even after they’ve been caught making triangle hands and eating babies or whatever, they just keep going, revealing the darkest secrets of their notoriously secretive order by constantly referencing it in public performances. No current…
The audience question and answer period is obligatory. Nobody likes it, everybody dreads its arrival, but the rough beast slouches toward the end of every book reading and celebrity panel with the inevitability of some sacrificial ritual. It has to be done because it has always been done. We must all fidget in our…
Though it doesn’t come up much in casual conversations about “the best Bond movie,” 007 diehards will parachute from airplanes, somersault off ski jumps, and fly into you with goofy little jetpacks to defend On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. The 1969 entry is most often remembered as a footnote in decades of spy…
The worst thing you can do in a mainstream movie is swear so fucking much that the rating gets bumped to a hard R, thereby limiting your audience. Getting around these guidelines—ensuring that as many motherfuckers of all ages come out to the theater as possible—requires some real ingenuity on the part of Hollywood…
A lot has changed in the nearly quarter of a century since Dumb and Dumber’s 1994 release. Jim Carrey, for instance, has studiously worked at erasing years of unshakeable goodwill with a never-ending self-serious phase that runs from goofy political protest paintings to the aimless philosophizing that fills his…
