The last major sequence of “Girls” second season is only unrealistic for one reason: Adam, a destitute carpenter who can barely rub together two nickels, apparently has enough cash to pay for the astronomically high fees that come along with keeping someone on FaceTime away from a wireless connection. So… Read more »

Before going into any further detail about the Badger Aviators, a group of University of Wisconsin students with a unique fascination for flying, I should make one thing clear: I wrote most of this piece within the confines of an Airbus A321 flying above North Carolina. A man wearing an… Read more »

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Next month marks the 10-year anniversary of the official release of Wilco’s classic and era-defining album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. For the last several years, critics have cited the record as one of the most important works of 21st century music. Pitchfork ranked it as the fourth-best album of the decade, probably… Read more »

Just a day before Lana del Rey performed her now-infamous two-song set on Saturday Night Live, I sat down with my roommates to watch “That Thing You Do,” the 1996 film about a 1960s one-hit-wonder called “The Oneders.” Their story seems oddly parallel to del Rey’s quick rise and her… Read more »

Yesterday, Twitter released a list of its most-prominent hashtags for 2011. The two most popular, #egypt and #tigerblood, were a testament to the contradictions of one of the world’s most popular social network websites. Unless you use TMZ as a primary news source, it goes without saying that the story… Read more »

For the last five years, I have had a tough time understanding just why people love to hate Facebook so much. Mark Zuckerberg and Co. consistently reinvent the way we communicate with each other, and they do it without inflicting a monetary cost. Yes, Facebook might participate in data mining,… Read more »

M83, the pseudonym of French electronic musician Anthony Gonzalez, takes the name of a spiral galaxy 15 million light-years from your nearest Spotify-playing device. That’s a pretty ambitious out-of-this-world name fitting for the artist’s equally ambitious album Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming. To promote the album, Gonzalez repeatedly has emphasized how Hurry… Read more »

Forgiveness works in mysterious ways. Some people “forgive” others for minor offenses, like the inevitable juvenile case of forgiving a middle school boyfriend or girlfriend for making eyes with that other person at the lunch table. In more serious cases, public officials or ex-lovers beg for forgiveness after their… Read more »