A love letter to ‘Almost Famous’ on its 20th anniversary. — There are songs that attach themselves to us with a sticky, uncomfortable permanence. They stick to us like splotches of chewing gum along a sidewalk you once vandalized with chalk. They play on repeat like a ballad you once slow-danced to. For a generation aimlessly searching for meaning in the…

One writer’s attempt to explain Lana Del Rey’s “question for the culture.” — “A bad woman’s got something a good woman ain’t, and a good woman’s jealous of that something…afraid of it.” — Dangerous (1935) Lana Del Rey is the kind of pop star (and feminist) who Liz Phair said she had hoped to inspire. Del Rey would define her feminism as, “a…

A study of the racial humor contained in one of America’s most compelling family sitcoms. — Every character in F is for Family occupies a room inside America’s tragicomic psych ward of gap-toothed bullies, racist pancake houses, chauvinistic action stars, and dads with enough emotional baggage to crash airplanes. The result is absurdist humor that revisits the sewage that once spewed across suburbia’s fumigated landscapes. Like…

In his new special, the comedian speaks up and draws the ire of his critics. — According to Nietzsche, maximum nihilism is reached in the overthrow of old systems by actions that amount to total destruction; to be nihilistic, one must lack the capacity to go beyond obliteration. This is one interpretation of Nietzsche (a slightly messy one). But at least since Lenny Bruce’s obscenity trial…