Beetlejuice Beetlejuice I’ve always known about Beetlejuice but I never sat down and actually got to know it. That changed last year when I watched (or rewatched? I can’t remember) the first movie and truly hung out with it for a coffee. What struck me was its personality: it was fun going back to a time when Tim Burton was (arguably) more creative and where all this stuff was fresh. The first Beetlejuice is just perfectly cast and as engaging...

WHO: Kim Deal WHAT: Nobody Loves You More WHY: Who could have guessed an album with horns could actually rock? I guess we should know better, because Kim Deal is running the show here. Nobody Loves You More is a deep and fresh sounding rock album that knows how to keep things interesting. That’s reason enough to listen to it. It gets heavy, fragile, and playful over the course of 35 minutes. You just wanna hang out with it. Both...

Joker: Folie a Deux Does anyone with brains actually like the first Joker movie? I remember watching it, being compelled by Juaquin Phoenix’s performance but just found the whole thing to be equal parts awkward and inelegant. It’s basically a movie about a guy, down on his luck, who snaps and takes matters into his own hands by resorting to violence. It’s a reflection on the audience on whether Joker’s acts were misguided or admirable. I don’t know if Todd...

Watchmen Chapter 2 Did you think Watchmen Chapter 1 was going to be that good? Shocking, wasn’t it? Everything adapted from Alan Moore is almost doomed to fail, either because the person adapting it doesn’t understand the source (*cough* Snyder! *cough*), or because they simply arbitrarily disagree with Moore’s details of the story (*cough* Wachowskis! *cough*). So, for some bizarre, inexplicable reason, DC decided to flog a dead horse, bring us Watchmen again, but this time, faithfully adapt it....

It’s my first week back at work since the break and my hatred for it has been restoked. And now it’s Friday and there’s not much to do in Boston because it’s been such an infuriatingly cold week. Do I even want to leave the house? To go see Mike Hanford perform his comedy hour at a venue I’d never been to before that’s only 10 minutes away, sure I do. After all, of all the Birthday Boys, him and...

X Smoke & Fiction (Fat Possum Records)Smoke & Fiction was one of the most important records of 2024. How? Let me count the ways. For one it was, just plainly on the surface, a record that did many things and did them well. Compared to both rock and punk music it sounded fresh, yet undeniably familiar. It also managed to be both fun and urgent, and musically it was catchy as hell. Blame that on guitarist Billy Zoom’s rockabilly tendencies...

Empowered: Volume 12by Adam Warren Adam Warren is one of the true unsung heroes of comic-dom. I’ll spare you the cliché of the “something about his work truly spoke to me as a teen” bit when I first started reading him, and instead I’ll just say that his comics ain’t for dummies. You want comics with phony dynamic art and predictable storytelling, please look to the thousands of boring comics being published today. I’ve been hooked to Warren’s stories and...

Did you see those other “best of” lists? Cringe-worthy, right? They either missed the mark entirely, or picked obvious boring choices, or just simply have shit taste. Not here, though. We might not have listened to EVERYTHING this year, but we listened to a lot, and as always we have the cream of the crop here for your enjoyment. So, do yourself a favor, uninstall your Spotify, un-favorite your mainstream music website and check out some true highlights of the...

The Hilken Mancini Band I wasn’t expecting to have drinks with Hilken Mancini two days before Thanksgiving, but there we were. I’m not name-dropping, it happens. We were there because she insisted on meeting me in person to give me a copy of her excellent new record by the Hilken Mancini Band. She’s still looking for a better name, by the way, if you happen to have one. And she was giving me a copy because I needed to review...

WHO: Tim Heidecker WHAT: Slipping Away WHY: Sure, you don’t start your album by telling your listener to lower their expectations, and Slipping Away does have some half-cooked ideas at the beginning, but it ends with a rich, compelling and beautiful set of songs that make the rocky start worth it. In the end, this album is a fuzzy and remarkably relatable experience, especially to a dad like me. Yeah, it’s easy listening, but it’s good warm easy listening. Listen...