Kind of a strawman. You're assuming he's hassling you for reading a Batman comic at the end of a long day of acting like an adult and Simon Pegg is really the last guy who could or would hassle you for that.

I can imagine Tom Hardy's Bane listening to Adore on repeat.

Yeah, that's the kicker. Knowing everything you can about Batman just makes you an expert in Batman, which is mostly trivial. It doesn't mean you're stupid but it certainly doesn't make you smart, either.

I think his basic point isn't so much about the depth of knowledge genre fans have about the history of genre fiction. I think it's more about not settling for stuff that doesn't really challenge your real-world thinking in any way. If you leave a movie only thinking "Hulk smashed robot and it was awesome", that can…

Happy to see AV Club is mostly having a reasonable discussion about this.

Hmmm… Interesting. I never knew the existence of anti-choice groups in 2015 was all David Letterman's fault.

Yeah. It's strange because it's so clearly calculated and yet I know sensible people who buy into that schtick. "Oh, James Franco is just like you and me because he played Connect Four with Jimmy Fallon once."

To be honest with you, the AV Club staff is so upbeat about Fallon and modern SNL that I sometimes wonder if Lorne Michaels cuts them 3000 dollar checks every now and again.

I first saw Letterman on TV during the summer after 4th grade - so 1989, I guess, near the end of Late Night. I was still a kid, but I'd just gotten my parents' hand-me-down portable TV in my room and I'd stay up late, with headphones plugged in, and watch his show while I was supposed to be sleeping. I did that all…

You mean stuff from the old show that's owned by a different network?

I'm not actively rooting for this new Muppet series to fail or anything, but I'm not sure why they don't just bring back The Muppet Show as it was, more or less. You have basically two generations of new stars and music to draw from and the best clips would almost be guaranteed to go viral every week.

No way Hakuna Matata is a better song than Under the Sea. If anything, it's a try-hard imitation.

When everybody loves you, son, that's just about as funky as you can be.

Bought 13 on the day it came out. Had to drive 45 minutes to another town that had it in stock that day - the collector's box. I was in college at the time and had an old beater car without a CD player. So I packed my boom box in the back seat, stuffed with 6 enormous D batteries, and an unsuspecting girl I'd just met…

If that was a parody of American Rock circa 1997, then they really failed, because nothing else sounded like Song 2. It really stuck out on radio next to warmed-over crap like Matchbox 20, Sugar Ray and those guys who could not believe they'd ever die for these sins because they were merely freshmen.

Is that Graham doing the ridiculous American accent on Red Necks? If so… this Texan is well impressed.

Drop a couple of the Leisure tracks, add Beetlebum and something from Think Tank, switch Turn it Up for Chemical World and it's not a bad list.

Only trouble is, Caramel is over 7 minutes long and it's on the same album as Tender, which is also over 7 minutes long and nearly impossible to leave off. That's a quarter of the runtime of the project taken up by two songs off of 13 - and that's before you realize you're neglecting Trimm Trabb and No Distance Left…

Agreed. If we're looking for a single from MLiR that prefigures Britpop, that's probably the one to go with. Though I'd favor Colin Zeal or For Tomorrow, since they represent the character of that album better. And it's a great album that deserves a little repping on the list.

And, just to be further contrary, I got into them via "Girls and Boys" and my favorite album by them is 13.