I'm pretty sure "Joe Blevins" is the collective nom de plume used when AV Club staffers get stuck with GJI duty.

It seems like the music I associate most strongly with '96 was released in '95 (Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, Jagged Little Pill, Tragic Kingdom), but for stuff released in '96, because I'm not much of a hipster, I would probably go with Evil Empire, Tiny Music, or the album of the summer, at least here in…

Not exactly: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzep…. Plus, I think it was more the opium den scene that he disapproved of. I think it's kind of like a cocaine user looking down on a crack user, although you could argue they are essentially the same thing.

Jeremy Brett is the living embodiment of Holmes for me. I've rewatched some of the Granada TV series, and it isn't as good as I remember. A little bit quaint by today's standards. But still, never has an actor so precisely matched my mental image of a character.

Mainly cocaine, a little bit of morphine. He was famously disgusted by opium users.

I was going to say, even for corporate doublespeak, that is some of the most stilted, unnatural-sounding "praise" I have ever heard.

I was at a "performance" of 4'33" once, and something like that actually happened. I was an undergrad in a Humanities 101 type class with a few hundred people, and the professor was trying to expand our horizons I guess, so we all had to go to an extracurricular avant-garde music recital. 4'33" was on the program.

Mom doesn't let them wear shoes in the house.

I think the Come to Daddy EP from one year later might be an even better distillation of James at the height of his powers, but this album is also a masterpiece. As far as the insane breakbeats + ephemeral floating synth formula goes, mid-90s Aphex Twin is as good as it gets.

Thank you Mr. Vishnevetsky, for digging so deep. I think 1996 might be the year I paid more attention to popular culture than any other, and yet I've never even heard of most of these. Articles like this are the reasons I like the A.V. Club. I will now click on every single ad on this page to show my support.

Yes, but damn, you look good while you're doin' it.

I don't know about that. For one thing, it's kind of hard to hate this McCheese guy and his life of quiet desperation. Maybe I'm reading with insufficient levels of ironic detachment, but it seems like it's developing into a reasonably sincere, heartfelt story.

I drove past a Circle K a few days ago. I haven't seen one of those in decades, and I thought the whole chain must have gone out of business years ago. Anyway, what line pops into my head the instant I see it?

But it's not a chore when it's sex magik insulin.

If you like the groove at the end of "Vorel," you might like the newish Godflesh - A World Lit Only by Fire. I guess it's more industrial than doom or prog, but if drum machines don't scare you, it is some ferociously heavy metal, and is pretty much pulverizing me right now, in the best possible way.

Probably be funnier to take footage from House of Cards and overdub it with dialogue from this movie.

Agreed. Lord of the Rings is a great (if not the best) example of "have to do your homework" entertainment. Like a good nerd, I read the books when I was young, and I actually hated them for precisely that reason. You literally need footnotes to keep everything straight.

Good article. That really nails my own D3 experience from a few months ago, when I finally played through after buying it on some kind of Blizzard sale.

I think Stephanie Seymour ruined every other woman for me, permanently.

Ummm, yes. Still am. She was a sexy nerd way before that was a thing, or at least way before Liz Lemon.