My father really wanted a Laserdisc player when I was really young, so he bought 'Strong Kids, Safe Kids' to try to justify it as "oh, it'll be good for Adam and Nicky". Made for a heckuva double feature with the other disc he bought, 'MetalStorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn'.

Anyone remember Fox's other "Second Chance" back in 1987? The one with the dead guy who goes back in time to be his younger self's guardian angel? Anyone? No?

I like the remote quite a bit, but it’s a little annoying that button presses don’t just register the way they do with the PS3 remote. I can’t simply press Play as I could before; I have to hold down the PS gem to sign in first. The remote also goes to sleep after a little while (ignoring the timeout settings used for…

He wrote the song based on Internet leaks and caught a charity screening juuuust before the final mix to button up any necessary details. The song was recorded before that charity screening. Here's the whole thing in Al's own words:

I'm working from long, distant memories here, but I think they said when interviewed on 120 Minutes that they recorded (or at least demoed?) a bunch of '80s tunes. A million years ago, Jeff Lin replied to a post of mine on alt.music.devo about it and said (I think?) that they covered "Beautiful World".

The first CD that was ever *mine* (rather than appropriated from my parents) was the UHF soundtrack. In the next week or so, I'll have had that album for twenty years.

I agree, although for my money, the obscene overuse of "Rise of…" is even worse. Pretty much nothing with "Rise of" in its title winds up being worthwhile, so at least it serves well as a warning.

Yeah, the AV Club had me at "overcaffeinated Velocity Girl" too.

I've had a tougher time discovering new music post-college. Part of it's because the music communities I was a part of — online and with my circle of actually-in-front-of-me friends — have largely faded away. (I mean, I still have quite a few friends who are obsessed with music, but their tastes and mine don't…

I dunno, as much as I love I've Got a Match, "funny" isn't the first word that comes to mind, and I don't think "I want you to die" comes through in that song so much as intense dislike / antagonism.

"When Will You Die?" - https://www.youtube.com/wat…

Right there with you! TMBG were the first band I ever saw live (well, that my parents didn't drag me to, anyway), and that was as a college freshman in 1996, just a couple of weeks before Factory Showroom came out. I even waited outside the record store — in a line of one! — to get that CD in my grubby little hands…

I was a little worried, I have to admit. When Mink Car first came out in 2001, I didn't think much of the album since I'd already heard those songs for months on TMBG Unlimited, and I thought it might be the same deal with Dial-a-Song Direct and Glean. Nope!

Katie Nehra, yeah.

My two favorite Chopped cues are:

Because it's early and I'm dumb, I read this as:

I used to really love this series, but the endless delays have stomped all over my enthusiasm.

I get what you mean. I'd probably point to "Between the Bridges" as their last start-to-finish fantastic album. I like "Action Pact" and "The Double Cross" a lot but wouldn't put them in quite that same league. There are several really terrific songs on "Parallel Play", although I find the album as a whole kind of…

The liner notes in that sprawling vinyl reissue of Twice Removed were impressively honest, detailing how tense things got and why the band broke up (although they obviously got back together!).

One of my earliest memories is seeing the video for "Ricky". I didn't realize that was a parody for something like 13 years, until I was in high school and finally picked up Al's first album. All through my childhood, I thought "Ricky" was the real version and that "Mickey" was the spoof. Had no clue that was Al at…