For every argument that Wes Borland is an innovative guitarist or that Limp Bizkit had some songs that weren’t that awful, there’s the requisite acknowledgement that Fred Durst is terrible at writing lyrics, even worse at rapping them, and is, in general, a monumental douchebag whose emotional repertoire is more…

A long time ago, back in ancient Judea, there was a group of sanctimonious turds called Pharisees whose mission, as the moral authority, was to cram their oppressive values down the throats of everyone else. If you’re familiar with the Bible, you’ll know these guys; they were the ones who…

From a medical standpoint, it wasn’t immediately clear what caused Whitney Houston’s untimely death at the age of 49 in her room at the Beverly Hilton a couple of weeks ago. But who cares about facts, amiright? Lack of a toxicology report notwithstanding, it took the media less than 45…

In the theological canon, there’s probably no sect quite as unwaveringly dour as Calvinism. Predicated mostly on the idea that human beings are fundamentally bad, Calvinism sums up its doctrine with five main points: total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace and perseverance of the saints. Just the fact…

Unless there’s some kind of cruel Carrie-style joke going on, every high-school kid pretty much knows what to expect from the senior prom: The weird alienated kids will be absent, the male and female establishment favorites will be coronated in a quickly forgotten ceremony, and everyone else will just be…

In grossly oversimplified terms, here’s how semiotics works: A unit of language is known as a “signifier,” and it functions as a symbol for the concept it represents, the “signified.” This interchange of meaning works on two levels: denotation, in which a signifier like the word “rock” simply represents the…

Point of fact: I am a hipster and a poseur. Initially, I was skeptical. True, I wear tight pants, ride a fixed-gear bicycle and listen to a lot of “underground music,” but there’s a reason for that: I wear tight pants because they highlight my ripped butt cheeks, which resemble…

A couple of years ago, as part of my mom’s ongoing quest to relieve her basement of all the shit that spontaneously piles up because she might actually, you know, use it one day, she made me spend an afternoon sifting through the boxes of crap that I’d left behind…

There’s a subversive genius at work beneath the surface of John Lennon’s “Imagine.” At first glance, it’s an instantly approachable bit of lite-rock fluff that peddles an equally pleasant message: “Hey, guys, wouldn’t it be great if we could all, like, just get along?” Pretty universal. But that was never…

When crazy people do crazy things — especially if those crazy things are violent or harmful — there is an unfortunate tendency to look for some external impetus for the craziness. Like when Drowning Pool got scapegoated for the Tucson killings last year, or when the Colorado Springs police openly…

Last week, Adele ate an apple. She also watched Gladiator. If you did Adele’s bidding, these facts were your reward. Confused? Let’s back up a little: Adele has had an official Twitter account for a little over a year, but she’s never really used it; up until now, the tweets…

The last time I tripped mushrooms, it went down exactly the way you might imagine it: I was sitting on a patio nursing a beer when an elfin bearded dude — wearing, I shit you not, a stovepipe hat — bounded up and told me to open my hand. I…