I had a stepbrother named Max. He once held my head under a pool until I nearly blacked out, hit me in the head with a hardcover textbook (when I was 6 years old), and called me such memorable insults (screamed loudly and in public) “pissdrinker” and “whore” (again, I was less than 10 years old). His abuse eventually…

I’ll ask if I can’t decide, which really paid off at Big Orange in Little Rock when my server told me that, believe it or not, the staff favorite was the Farmer’s Burger but with a turkey patty. It’s still one of the most amazing burgers I’ve ever had. The writer makes it sound like her friend is really grilling (ha)…

Slightly different versions of the saying have been credibly attributed to both of them, actually. (Also, somewhat less credibly, Oscar Wilde, who would be the originator if true.)

Looking at photos of Mitch McConnell lately (turkey jowls, caved-in mouth, rheumy eyes) reminds me of that aphorism attributed to Coco Chanel, that at some point in life we wind up with the face that we deserve.

I recently started buying vinyl, although I’m old enough so that I remember when it was just how you listened to music at home. (I was about 10 when the Walkman really took off, I think.) It was more or less accidental, a friend who collects turntables gave me one he wasn’t using, and I’m the kind of person who if you…

I recently started buying vinyl, although I’m old enough so that I remember when it was just how you listened to…

I liked the first season, but it went off the rails pretty quickly. Jake Brennan presents as fact thoughts and feelings he couldn’t possibly know about, and I find the glee he takes in describing violence (usually being perpetrated against women) creepy and distasteful.

As great as Rami Malek is in Blackout, no one else in the show even comes close to the bar he’s set. They all sound like they’re doing a caricatured accent from a different region of New England (Boston, Maine, New Hampshire, it’s a free-for-all).

I’m slogging my way through 2013's trendiest book, aka Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch. (That sounds like I’m slagging it but actually I quite like it, although not as much as The Secret History.) It’s been on my list for a while and I decided to tackle it when I saw the movie trailer. I don’t know how well that’s going…

At one point, a woman looks into a mirror for minutes on end, while the camera zooms in...then out...then in...then out...then in...and so on.

I mean, the shining was also referred to as the shining in the King novel The Shining and not just the Kubrick movie The Shining, but okay, the overall point is fairly made.

I knew I was Too Old For This Shit when I saw a preview for this show before GoT, where one of the characters says “This is the feeling I’ve been looking for all my life”. Me: “What are you, 16? Calm down.”

Hey, I’ve actually heard of Piers Anthony, wasn’t he a kiddy-diddler or something? Also I believe he occasionally wrote fantasy novels.

Eh, “disaster tourism” in Pripyat has been a thing for several years. It makes a lot of money for Ukraine. Getting spun out over it now just sounds like more tired Millennial-bashing. And there are people who have been living within the zone of exclusion, mostly on the Belarusian side, as early as 1990 who so far…

Oh, sorry. Pick-up artist, I thought that was more widely known. Those idiots from about 10 years back who charged 4 figures to tell unfuckable losers that they should wear stupid-looking hats and insult women about their earrings to get laid. Most of them have since morphed into just straight up women-hating…

I felt like he showed his ass a little bit in King Dork Approximately. It’s been too long since I read it to recall any specifics, but I remember thinking that Tom and Sam both came across like teenage libertarian PUAs. The first book and Andromeda Klein hold up, though.

Yikes. The only disappointment I’ve had about following a celebrity I like on social media is finding out that Frank Portman of The Mr. T Experience is a libertarian who thinks grocery stores refusing to use plastic bags is a civil rights infringement on par with the Mississippi Burning case.

Is it canon that He Who Walks Behind the Rows was Flagg? Seems kind of small stakes for him. Maybe he was between world conquests and got bored.

Oh, I thought it was going to be another video of a sorority being disgustingly racist. This is pretty bad too, though, I guess.

I wish I had a dime for every AV Club review that griped about the music choices in a series being “too on the nose”. The first season Mindhunter reviews alone could have insured my comfortable retirement.

You don’t see how being raised in a repressive, insular religion could affect your realization, coming out, and transitioning as trans? Okay.