The blessed college football season is nearly upon us, and after the touches have been downed and the light beer similarly drowned, it’ll be easy to forget the real reason for the season. So before the first whistle blows, gain your bearings and pour one out for those unheralded gridiron heroes: the…

I read every installment of Daniel Clowes’ graphic novella Ghost World when it was originally serialized in Clowes’ comic book Eightball back in the mid-1990s, so when I heard Clowes had collaborated with Crumb director Terry Zwigoff on a movie version of Ghost World —and read some of the early…

“We cannot win this World Cup, because we are not at that level yet.” –Jürgen Klinsmann, December 2013 While the United States men’s national team coach could have been more tactful in his choice of words, the sentiment he expressed to the New York Times was anything but false. The American squad…

A graph of Saturday Night Live ’s household ratings creates a shape like the Matterhorn over the show’s first five years, followed by a sheer rock face in the early ’80s that flattens into a long alluvial plain gently sloping down to the present, with modest hillocks and troughs along the way. It…

On Friday, I had three wisdom teeth pulled out of my skull and was subsequently prescribed Vicodin for the pain. A few days later, I decided to revisit The Brown Bunny, Vincent Gallo’s hugely divisive, deeply weird, and conspicuously bugs-splattered road movie. You could say these things were…

Last year, Hip-Hop turned 40 years old —as far as we know. In truth, part of the culture’s beauty comes from the fact that there is no genesis moment. From the ancient cave-side hieroglyphics to the late ‘60s tags of TAKI 183 , graffiti existed as a fascinating balance of expression and rebellion at…

Jane Fonda hands me the Palme d’Or and I stand there for a moment, waiting for the applause to stop and trying to figure out what to say and trying not to fall apart. I looked out and said “Well, I guess it’s all downhill from here.” —Steven Soderbergh’s journal, 5/23/89 Over the near-decade that…

Superman is not exactly the funniest dude on Krypton. He has never been known for his wit, and he’s got so many other skills, he doesn’t really need to be. But it turns out the decision for DC heroes to be humorless on film wasn’t just a stylistic choice put forth by Christopher Nolan and copied by…

Swing Copters is not the mobile game we wanted, but it is the mobile game we deserve. Released last week by Dong Nguyen, Swing Copters is everything that fans loved to hate about his controversial breakout success Flappy Bird . Its Super Mario aesthetic hides a brutally difficult gameplay mechanic…

Another Groundling has made it to center stage. Phil Hartman, an 11-year veteran of the Groundlings, the L.A.-based improvisational comedy troupe, will join the cast of NBC's "Saturday Night Live" this season, producer Lorne Michaels announced Monday. The other new cast members are Dana Carvey, a…

D avid Mandel, a former Saturday Night Live writer, was asked to name the favorite characters he created for Phil Hartman. Mandel rummaged through his memory banks. “He’s probably in every sketch I ever wrote,” he said. “Yet at the same time, I’m trying to think, What is a specific thing ?” He…

A round the halfway point of WWE’s Greatest Rivalries: Bret Hart vs. Shawn Michaels , Jim Ross says, “We’ve just seen some clips of things between you two guys that became very personal.” Released in late October, the DVD recounts the two iconic wrestlers’ late-1990s feud. Ross’ quote comes just…

IN recent days, I’ve been bombarded by requests to comment on my relationship with President Gerald Ford. Until now, I’ve tried to say nothing — any remarks from me during the Ford family’s private time of grief would have been inappropriate. The requests were understandable, I guess. You see, I…

“Why has Hollywood had such trouble doing right by Elmore Leonard?” critic Ty Burr lamented in Entertainment Weekly in 1996, at the top of a piece reviewing six Leonard adaptations. “The man has churned out books for more than 40 years… and none of the many movies adapted from his work have quite…

I’ve been watching Saturday Night Live since before I had a proper Saturday night. I also watched Saturday Night Live before I had a proper grasp of race. It was just the show with the guy (Garrett Morris) who looked like one of my father’s brothers, and the one (Eddie Murphy) who looked like my…

Impressionists have second-class-citizen status in comedy. Even Steve Coogan once dismissively compared his and Rob Brydon’s spectacular Michael Caine–off in The Trip to watching a juggler: impressive but meaningless . Yet, maybe precisely because impressions delight so readily and so broadly,…

In the piece, I said there are some things I obviously don’t get. So I would like to thank you for taking the time to let me know where you’re coming from. None of it was lost upon me. I cannot defend the views I expressed. I think that would be taking an easy out. I put them out there plainly and…

After 30 years, the introduction to the 10th season of Saturday Night Live still manages to mystify. Though there’s the familiar blast of Don Pardo and the sax, the visuals stray from the usual playbook: There’s no nightlife snatched from a streaking car or crowded crosswalk. Instead, a continuous…

Record Store Day 2014 is the biggest yet, with hundreds of exclusive new releases and reissues in shops this weekend. But as vinyl pressing plants struggle to keep up with demand, is the event's success in danger of harming independent labels - and even RSD itself? Phil Hebblethwaite investigates…

“I moved here the day this place opened,” Bill Hader says as he walks into the film haven Cinefile Video in West L.A. “I didn’t have a lot of friends. I didn’t have a job. So I just kind of hung out, trying to talk to the movie nerds.” Fresh off the set of his first romantic leading role, in Judd…

An Onion article titled “ New Law Enforcement Robot Can Wield Excessive Force Of 5 Human Officers ” includes a remarkable bit of artwork, which you can see above: a muscled, armored tank-like robot armed with guns and probes and sprays and hammers, using all its weaponry to attack the…

Photos by Heather Marie Photography N ash Grier has a tendency to wreak havoc on malls. One time in Iceland, a single tweet about his whereabouts brought 5,000 girls to a shopping center in search of Nash and his sidekick, Jerome Jarre. “The mayor of Reykjavik said they’d never seen that, even when…

W hen I started watching wrestling, my favorite part of the week was the Saturday-morning Continental Wrestling Association show that aired out of Memphis, and Jerry “The King” Lawler was CWA wrestling. They had a handful of enduring characters — Dutch Mantell, 1 Bill Dundee, Austin Idol — but…

A demonstrator holds up a sign in Ferguson, Missouri. Scott Olson The protests in Ferguson, Missouri , have captivated the nation in the past week and a half. Much of that, some experts argue, is because the small town's problems represent racial tensions that are rippling through the nation as a…

Last Friday, six days after Michael Brown was shot and killed in Ferguson, J. Cole released a song in response to the tragedy, called “Be Free.” “That coulda been me, easily,” he said in a corresponding statement. “It could have been my best friend. I’m tired of being desensitized to the murder of…

Al Bell at the Stax offices. Photos courtesy of Stax Records. “Show us the master tapes,” a steely voice said, stealing all the air from the room. Al Bell walked with measured steps toward studio “A,” where $67 million dollars of the Stax catalog master tapes were housed. Bell’s face was flushed as…

There were still 10 hours left on Thursday for Kenan Thompson to catch up. But I knew it was too late. Because the people were speaking. And, per usual, my idea of democracy did not prevail. It’s hard out here for an SNL -era Kenan Thompson. Because the court of public opinion doesn’t think very…

On July 27, a brave robot named hitchBOT bid goodbye to its creators on the shoulder of a highway in Halifax, Nova Scotia. With limbs made from pool noodles , a beer-cooler body, and legs clad in Wellington rain boots, this adorable hodgepodge of a robot was ready to embark on the adventure of a…

Please, God — or whatever swirling chaos tornado the Coens worship — grant John Turturro’s wish. For years now he’s been kicking the tires on a Big Lebowski spinoff for his iconic character Jesus. 1 He’s even got a title picked out — 100 Minutes With Jesus — and although the brothers have shown less…

Style/Storytelling Matt: The original MacGruber sketches on Saturday Night Live were laughably cheap-looking—and reused the same three-walled “control room” set over and over—but the MacGruber movie has an impressive visual polish, particularly for its $10 million budget. The film’s cinematographer,…

I agonized over which trailer to choose this week because there are just that many movies that I feel could use a little love. But in my heart of hearts doodled in my little notebook, I was always going to pick Josie and the Pussycats . It fits the bill because when I tell people I love this movie,…

The more you think about it, the more you remember one great performance after another. Good Morning Vietnam is a favorite of mine. When someone with this level of exposure dies in this way, it is confusing. An Oscar-winning actor, well-paid, with a career that most performers could only dream of —…

Taylor Swift fans were bowled over this week when the singer debuted the music video for her new, previously unannounced single "Shake It Off," but fans of the format were doubly surprised by who directed it: Mark Romanek, the helmer of some of the most iconic music videos ever made, including…

This morning I went to install Swing Copters , Dong Nguyen's latest iOS game, and the follow-up to Flappy Bird . I put the words "swing copters" into the search field on my iPhone, and the first hit was Tube Revenge - Swing Copters . This is how quickly individuals and companies now jump on games…

When I was 25 I got a job with the Coen brothers. I'd worked on three movies as an apprentice film editor and got a gig with them as a personal assistant when they made The Big Lebowski . I was with them for a year, from before pre-production through post-production (when they edited the movie, I…

Shayne Bushfield, right, of Seattle, oversees the LearnedLeague. Here he competes at a trivia night at Kate’s Pub in Seattle with LearnedLeague member Bill Penrose, left. (Scott Eklund/Red Box Pictures for The Washington Post) Shayne Bushfield hunkers over a printout, labeling black geometric…

N ews is inherently viral. It is information that is meant to be spread. The epoch of Upworthy can make it hard to remember this, but the virality of the news predates the Internet — Paul Revere was both America’s first newscaster and its first retweet request. 1 What the Internet has done is simply…