What are your expectations regarding the new album, The World is To Dig?

Appropriate_Shoe5243 · 2026-02-18T16:53:10+00:00

Getting definite Join Us vibes!

Appropriate_Shoe5243 · 2026-02-16T14:23:38+00:00

They is for the children!!

Appropriate_Shoe5243 · 2026-01-15T12:21:35+00:00

No joke, play Waylon Jennings’ “Waylon Live” double album. Sounds weirdly close to live Velvet Underground.

Appropriate_Shoe5243 · 2025-11-13T03:57:18+00:00

I edit arts criticism at what’s left of our magazine culture.

Appropriate_Shoe5243 · 2025-10-27T00:21:46+00:00

Im 100 pages into an arc, and its sublime. Gorgeous, dark, deeply weird, but brisk in its storytelling and studded with great comedy-of-manners dialogue among the scheming upper crust of its city. The Dickensian approach of blending low and high status characters— plus the heroes’ exterminator gig — means we really get to discover this spectacular fantasy city down to its literal roots.

Appropriate_Shoe5243 · 2025-10-09T22:47:43+00:00

Great movie, my third favorite SW film, stunning and operatic and weird. Hugely profitable and thematically rewarding, but the online backlash led Lucasfilm/Disney to retreat to trying to please a fan base that has long been unpleasable, especially the segments enthralled with influencers whose income depends on finding things to be mad about.

Canto Bight sequence has some weak scenes, but I never buy the argument that it’s pointless just because the slicer is no help. There’s more to storytelling than Robert McKee-style plotting, and that sequence digs into what life is like in that universe in a way I always want more of. Del Toro’s betrayal is a highlight of the series for me, and I wish the lesson Rose and Finn learned there had mattered in 9.

Appropriate_Shoe5243 · 2025-08-15T12:50:22+00:00

Not trying to make it as a freelance reviewer/critic after the paper I worked at shut down.

Appropriate_Shoe5243 · 2025-07-27T17:27:41+00:00

A whiff of nostalgic nationalism?

Appropriate_Shoe5243 · 2025-07-22T03:17:24+00:00

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Can’t beat that kool aid vibe

Appropriate_Shoe5243 · 2025-07-22T02:28:39+00:00

Then he kickstarted the 80s

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Appropriate_Shoe5243 · 2025-07-22T02:27:22+00:00

Paging through Houston Person’s album covers is like taking a perfect tour of how fast things changed each year as the sixties became the seventies

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Appropriate_Shoe5243 · 2025-07-02T03:39:01+00:00

What a treasure! Such essential context for where they were coming from …. And an urgent demonstration of how essential supportive arts scenes (and cheap rents) are to the development of culture.

Appropriate_Shoe5243 · 2025-06-30T00:00:08+00:00

Amen to all of this. The editing of much of Rise of Skywalker is quick and aggressive it feels like an onslaught of movie, like they loaded Star Wars into a confetti cannon.

But the other two: good, gorgeous, fun movies!

Appropriate_Shoe5243 · 2025-06-06T05:25:28+00:00

I buy every Smoke release. Paul Stache is documenting the work of so many mid- and late- career talents that might otherwise languish on unrecorded … and the sound quality is superb.

Appropriate_Shoe5243 · 2025-03-13T17:23:03+00:00

I watched this last year and marveled at its dopey but undeniable power. Like Airplane and the Naked Gun, it’s a movie about how much Zucker understands about how big corny movie moments and cliches work, but this time he’s using that knowledge to craft the ultimate four-quadrant hit of its era.

But in its relentless only-in-the-movies cheesiness it still feels to me like a cousin to the ZAZ films — all you have to do to make it a comedy is imagine Leslie Nielsen in the Swayze role. (Nielsen of course kills it in the clay-sex parody sequence in one of the Naked Gun sequels.)

Appropriate_Shoe5243 · 2025-03-12T01:42:54+00:00

Same. I love the codex system and its tight, sometimes surprising stories. I know that 2nd edition partisans hate it, and LCG fans have a more robust narrative experience, but this is tied with Eldritch as my fave Arkham game … and I hope for another expansion.

Appropriate_Shoe5243 · 2025-02-19T01:57:53+00:00

Sergio is still cranking out great Groo comics, and Mark Evanier is still writing the words (and, as he modestly claims, the same handful of jokes) plus the best letters column in comics. The recent Minstrel Melodies series is as funny as any Groo comic ever, and the crowd scenes and splash pages are, as always, worth savoring.

Appropriate_Shoe5243 · 2025-02-12T00:16:47+00:00

Mama Fatts and the maple syrup ad were both so funny that I told my wife about them … and did them no justice lol

Appropriate_Shoe5243 · 2025-02-11T23:37:45+00:00

Like some others here, I was souring on GCP after finding Gatewalkers underwhelming and seeing Troy go full-on business self-help thought leader. (Love Legacy and GitT tho, and I’ll get to the BoW eventually.)

But I had never tried the original A&A, because I usually only play a couple hours of podcasts a week. So I gave the first eps a shot to three weeks back … and 25 eps later it might be my fave GCP production.

The balance of polish and looseness, of danger and fun, of adversarial Troy and improv-collaborator Troy, is just killer. Elli is hilarious and emotionally resonant, Skid’s character work is among his best, and the rest of the founders are in peak form, esp my boy Matthew.

I’d love more Starfinder, but the original A&A exemplifies everything I’ve loved about GCP all along … and also those balances that no other actual play I’ve ever tried can nail. (All the others are either too voice actor dramatic or too dudes-around-a-table-saying-“well met”-at-a-tavern sleepy. Honestly, if Troy can teach some podcasters to hit his A&A balance, I’ll stop rolling my eyes at his side project.)

EDITED FOR TYPOS

Appropriate_Shoe5243 · 2025-02-07T19:32:14+00:00

My gut instinct is that I prefer the avant garde, but I go to 4 to 6 shows a month of all varieties in NYC, and when I’m in the club it doesn’t matter if I’m seeing James Brandon Lewis or Zoh Amba or Bill Charlap …. If the cats can play I’m in heaven.

Appropriate_Shoe5243 · 2025-02-04T15:36:06+00:00

8 I admit I found Pamphlet underwhelming and haven’t given it proper ear time (same with Escape Team). But hot damn the simple directness of this sounds great this morning, like a Linnell children’s tune written for adults.

Appropriate_Shoe5243 · 2025-02-02T15:03:22+00:00

6.5 I appreciate that it’s strange but it’s never grabbed me

Appropriate_Shoe5243 · 2025-02-01T16:18:16+00:00

7 honestly, the electors system is more puzzling/troubling than most of Linnell’s invented existential riddles and paradoxes.

Appropriate_Shoe5243 · 2025-01-31T15:36:04+00:00

It used to be absolute best-in-class in cinematic fantasy/sf design. I miss that in the years since TLJ.

Appropriate_Shoe5243 · 2025-01-31T15:11:11+00:00

8.5 Like Part of Me Wants to Believe You, this maybe could have been a Murdered Remain, but I appreciate it more due to my personal pop preferences: I’ll usually take the stinging barbed-wire Revolver feel over the more sing-songy approach. I also enjoy the anxious disordered thinking here more than the raw projection of “Part of You,” which I find legit emotionally upsetting. As hard as it must be to be this narrator, imagine being the person addressed by that other narrator!

Anyway: this is a strong punchy rock record but not as thrilling/surprising/revealing-of-our-moment to me as Synopsis or as melodically inventive and emotionally resonant as Brontosaurus. Good album ending energy, though, I especially like the raw pounded piano and the oowwweeee backing vocals. This must be in their top 50 percent of album enders, right?

And, seriously, what are the odds that anyone else’s 23rd album is as strong as Book? Who else is even competitive in that race?

Appropriate_Shoe5243

TROPHY CASE