I also did a review of the rerelease of Drive-By Truckers seminal album Decoration Day. This is an incredible album, but a lot of it is also really dark, lyrically, even for these guys. It’s also the debut of Jason Isbell, which is definitely noteworthy. www.popmatters.com/drive-by-tru...

It’s been a while since I posted a music review, so here we go. I’d never heard of The Brook and the Bluff before listening to their fourth album, Werewolf, but I like them. They’re doing classic rock that kind of fits in between Tom Petty and the Eagles, but they’re doing it really well.

When Stubhub lets AI generate Facebook ads for them, it gives us things like this.

It’s great to see Phil Lord and Chris Miller score a huge hit with an original movie this weekend. Project Hail Mary is a space drama with a great sense of humor. But remember that Lord & Miller were fired by Lucasfilm with a couple weeks to go filming Solo for making the exact same type of movie.

I don’t ride public transportation in Houston hardly ever. But today I had jury duty downtown and Harris County provides free rides for that. 20-minute drive to the Park & Ride first thing this morning, hopped right on the bus, 20-minute ride downtown, and a 4-block walk to the courthouse.

My solution to the mess of having the execrable Adam Baldwin back in the potential animated #Firefly : Just hire Alan Tudyk to do a note-perfect Adam Baldwin impersonation and have him play Jayne.

Boooo, Sinners all the way!

If you ever wondered how things actually work in Iran in terms of power and history, spend 75 minutes listening to Rex’s Aslan break it down. This episode is super informative and it made the announcement that Iran is appointing Khameni’s son as the new Supreme Leader hit very, very differently.

New edible version of a toy just dropped.

I’m not usually a conspiracy guy, but on these close votes I’ve really come around to thinking this is all performative. Dem leadership has determined they don’t really want to fight this battle, so they let Cuellar and Golden and a couple other shitheads sink the vote. thehill.com/homenews/hou...

@adamconover.net Relevant to today’s episode. Shamwow guy finished 6th in his U.S. House Republican Primary.

Gas prices here in Houston are up roughly 50 cents from 2 weeks ago. I dunno what caused the 20-cent jump last week, but I for sure know what caused the 30-cent jump this week. The end result, when combined with my lack of a Kroger discount this time, is that I just paid $10 more for gas today.

Next para: "A regime of secret policing has no place in our society. Here, the Government’s power is derived by the People, and the People must be able to identify the Government when it acts to infringe on their liberty."

Went to see @adamconover.net do stand-up in Houston last night (early show), and we had a great time! But my wife was feeling gross all day and almost sent our 19-year old daughter instead. Turns out his current set is 2/3 dating and sex-related, and I am SO glad my wife decided to go after all.

My wife while I have USA vs. Japan Women’s Curling on: “I feel like you’re watching anime. Just women shouting in Japanese.”

Good job on the part of the Fox News location producer to capture Leavitt with that halo of light behind her head. Speaking directly to the evangelical audience with that visual cue.

Wasn’t @jamellebouie.net just talking about this a week or two ago? Greg Abbott on elections: "Listen, my understanding of the United States Constitution, uh, and that is elections for state positions are to be conducted by states, and I don’t think we should deviate from that," Abbott said.

Gotta say I don’t love the new development in this Olympics of always hearing the annoying camera drone whir as athletes go down the hill or sliding track.

So we're clear (because the press is apparently incapable) this is a fake competition investigation designed to help local right wing propaganda broadcasters consolidate and increase their power over whatever's left of local U.S. news

Apropos of nothing, just perusing the list of biggest second weekend box office dropoffs of all time this morning. www.boxofficemojo.com/chart/bigges...

Josh Boak and Christopher Rugaber of the AP giving Trump the most credit ever for his nonexistent real estate acumen. “And not least Trump, a former real estate developer with an exquisite sense of just how much difference a cut or increase in interest rates can make for those with large debts.”

January 31 is my arbitrary cutoff date for making my Best Movies of the year list. So here we go: 10. Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning 9. Dust Bunny 8. Listers 7. Weapons 6. Novocaine 5. One Battle After Another 4. Zootopia 2 3. Superman 2. Wake Up, Dead Man! 1. Sinners

If you’re running in a Democratic Primary in 2026 and THEY DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH GUYS is not part of your platform, you need to revise your platform.

If you’re a Democratic candidate who has to get through a primary in ‘26 or ‘28 and you don’t have “Abolish ICE” as your baseline position by now, you are making your campaign exponentially harder to win.

An easy way to tell that Greg Bovino is a piece of crap and not an empathetic person is that an empathetic person would say, “We are experts in caring for children.” Bovino considers children a problem to be dealt with.

The New York Times will print a passionate on-the-ground column about what ICE is doing, and then two days later run some bullshit by Ross Douthat essentially saying, “Calm down, libs, this isn’t happening. At least not quite in this way.” www.nytimes.com/2026/01/19/o...

I don’t think “The election will be canceled” Doomers really think about the difficult logistics of cancelling nationwide elections. That’s understandable! A lot of people find logistics boring. But they are super important, especially when you’re talking about how granular U.S. elections are.

Things seem to be going about as well for Bari Weiss as they did for Megyn Kelly during her 14 months at NBC.

If anyone in the current Trump Administration had ever opened a National Geographic, this level of pedantry would be infuriating to them. Nat Geo essentially says, “Sure, you can rename your own waters The Gulf of America, but the rest of it is still The Gulf of Mexico whether you like it or not.”

So you’re telling me that U.S. law enforcement officials kidnapped a man from Latin America to bring him to the United States? Guess we’re doing it backwards in 2026.

Evan Gorelick in the New York Times morning newsletter reduces the Writers’ Strike and Nurses protesting against AI to mere “freakouts”.

Similarly, the Americana list is full of bangers. I can vouch for The Devil Makes Three, Jason Isbell, Molly Tuttle, and Neko Case, which are all so, so good. Which means if you like this kind of studd you should be giving these other recods a shot, too. www.popmatters.com/best-america...

This came out last week but I’m a bit late. The Popmatters Best Albums list is always filled with interesting records, as well as the ones you’d expect. I wrote about albums by Molly Tuttle, Deafheaven, and The Beths, which can all be found in the 60-40 range. www.popmatters.com/best-albums-...

Pepsi has tried numerous times to compete with Sprite and 7 Up. Currently they have Starry, and before that it was Sierra Mist. But before Sierra Mist there was Slice. They’ve revived that brand name as a competitor in the “healthy” soda area, going up against fruity stuff like Oli Pop and Poppi.

I’m an advocate for a 16-team college football playoff. But I want every conference champion to get a spot, just like NCAA basketball and every other level of college football. Sure this would mean a lot of first round blowouts, but when an upset happened it would be magical.

Kill Bill vol. 2 plays so much better as part of the same movie with vol. 1, rather than separated by 6 months or however long it was originally.

Great piece by @elijahgonzalez.bsky.social at the AV Club about Amazon’s AI anime dubbing fiasco that also spins out into Crunchyroll’s anti-union stance and how it hurts the whole industry. www.avclub.com/amazon-ai-an...

Trump, handing a full clip of ammunition to anyone who wants to try to primary Cuellar again from the left.

@msu--football.bsky.social It’s been 2 years since Mel Tucker. Now MSU is set to hire Pat Fitzgerald, who allowed and encouraged a culture of hazing so pervasive that Northwestern had no choice but to fire him despite the fact that he was the school’s most successful football coach of all time.

Seems like a decent theory, since even after two movies and billions of box office dollars, there’s very little conversation about them, still. However, “No one aspires to be or have sex with a giant cat alien,” I mean, maybe the Na’vi specifically but the monsterf**ker genre is pretty huge.

When I looked last week I was worried that I wouldn’t have the chance to see this one in a theater, because there were no Houston locations listed. But @robsaucedo.bsky.social has come through, and The River Oaks Theater will have it this weekend.

Sisu: Road to Revenge gets way more ridiculous than the first one, at least from what I remember of the first one. Having Steven Lang onboard as a real antagonist to react to and torment Sisu is an asset to the movie, though. (I know his name isn’t Sisu)

In case people forgot why MBS-funded efforts like LIV Golf and the Riyadh Comedy Festival invoke such scorn towards their participants, this is the inciting incident. Saudi Arabia forced a WaPo journalist to come to a Saudi embassy for procedural reasons, then brutally murdered him right there.

Nov. 4 - First store playing Christmas music of 2025 Nov. 5. - First Paul McCartney, “Wonderful Christmastime” Nov. 5 - First store playing exclusively Christmas music Nov. 12 - First “Christmas Wrapping” horn riff

15-20 Democratic Senators: “I know what we said about health care subsidies, but that was before I knew I might have to fucking DRIVE HOME for Thanksgiving and even Christmas! Find the 8 of us who are least vulnerable in ‘26 and get this deal done.”

If you’ve ever thought, “Eggo Waffles are pretty tasty, especially with syrup,” but also thought what they needed was to be smaller, crunchier, had the maple syrup flavoring already included, and to be covered in milk, well, have I got a Limited Edition cereal for you to try! Also, marshmallows.

As a @michiganstateu.bsky.social alum, if J Batt hasn’t already called Brian Kelly to get him to come back to the Midwest and coach the Spartans, then I don’t know what we’re doing with the @michiganstatefb.bsky.social program.

Kind of amazed that the NYT found a couple people willing to go on the record and say, “Yeah, the ballroom is needed and the East Wing probably had to go.” Yet, having watched Netflix’s The Residence this summer, which spends considerable time on the logistics of a State Dinner, I kind of get it.

Serious question: Do you think Trump knows how to play chess? Not metaphorically. Can he actually play a game of chess?

Apparently this is the week where @volts.wtf and @adamconover.net finally line up their podcasts. @sgoodyear.bsky.social and @brooklynspoke.bsky.social on both shows promoting their book Life After Cars.