Via the Journal’s Speakeasy blog, here’s the first trailer for Ridley Scott’s forthcoming Robin Hood. It is hard to tell from this brief clip whether the movie will be any good or not, but it did remind me that Russell Crowe still exists. Have I been in some merciful void where all news of him was filtered out of my consciousness, or did that guy just totally disappear for awhile? I am not complaining either way.

by Seth Colter Walls

30. Increase The Pressure, Conflict

29. Umbrella, All Time Low

28. Suck My Left One, Bikini Kill

27. Do What You Want, Bad Religion

26. Bad Penny, Big Black

25. Frustration Rock, Tyvek

24. The Scratch, 7 Year Bitch

23. Flame!, Heatmiser

22. All Gone Dead, Subhumans

21. Ashtray Dirt, Subhumans

20. Shove, L7

19. Boys In The Brigade, Youth Brigade

18. Sleeper Hold, No Age

17. The World Looks Red, Sonic Youth

16. McCarthy, Avail

15. State Violence, State Control, Discharge

14. No Survivors, Charged G.B.H.

13. Holiday In Cambodia, Dead Kennedys

12. Riot City, Total Chaos

11. Super Are, Boredoms

10. Fagetarian and Dyke, Team Dresch

9. Where Next Columbus?, CRASS

8. Rise Above, Black Flag

7. Betray, Minor Threat

6. Boilermaker, The Jesus Lizard

5. Pink Turns to Blue, Husker Du

4. Modern Kicks, The Exploding Hearts

3. Radio, Rancid

2. Pay To Cum, Bad Brains

1. Dig Me Out, Sleater-Kinney

Previously:

The 50 States, In Order

The 94 Best Philip Larkin Poems, In Order

The 85 Best Morrissey Solo Songs, In Order

Seth Colter Walls is a culture reporter at Newsweek. Previously, he wrote about U.S. and Middle East politics for a variety of outlets.

This tale about Ski magazine, and the Summit Daily News, and how reporters have run afoul of The Big Scary Ski Industry, and how their publishers have tossed them under the snowdrift (hmm, eh, sorry), is really amazing. Including, one editor at Ski wrote an unhappy note to the staff, while agreeing to remove a published story, that said: “My understanding is that we’re not in a position to stand up for free speech at the expense of dough right now….”

The Washington Independent notes a session with reporters miserable prick Joe Lieberman just held at the Capitol, where the Senator “seemed surprised by his own endorsement three months ago of a Medicare buy-in proposal he now opposes — saying that he finally saw the video ‘last night,’ as if it were someone else who granted the now-infamous interview to the Connecticut Post in September. Stuck in a corner, he offered two explanations.” The first one was “Fuck you,” and the second one was pretty much the same as the first.

So in episode two of The Wire, our heroes in the police department-and the non-heroes among the bunch, because some of these cops really are the bottom of the barrel!-get their very own office space, in the basement of the police department. Which is “dank,” at best. We learn very quickly about the loser cops, because the kind of hot white one with the bad attitude and his dumb friends go into the projects at 2 a.m. all drunk and start shaking people down, and then the awesomeness happens, which is that the people in the projects start pelting them from above with bottles and old TVs and stuff. That is excellent and reminds me of various trips to the projects from my youth! And then the really terrible thing happens.

In the aftermath of this ridiculously ill-advised incident-which ends in some kid from the projects losing an eye and which was entirely motivated by an unearned, macho sense of self-worth (“Who does that dyke think she is, bossing us around?” is basically what the dumb hot white one, named Herc, says of his coworker, who is actually busy doing policework while he picks his fat nose)-the leader of the squad, Lieutenant Daniels, who is black, has to come in and tell them how to lie about what happened so they get off. This is a truly horrible moment!

And the show spends some time examining how he made this decision, with his awesome wife Marla, who is the perfect, perfect, perfect character: this African-American woman of a certain age and education, who is a realist and yet still an idealist, who understands things in a very clear, very 1970s-black-liberation way; she has everything figured out as a system, with an endgame, as a historical process, as an interaction with the artifacts of a superstructure. I have met this woman (of various ethnicities, but nearly always of the same age) in real life repeatedly, and she is always completely right and clear-eyed. But it seems near-impossible to put her counsel into practice in the complicated day-to-day, as I think Lieutenant Daniels agrees.

And this incident is where you first get a sense of the great, sucking-in force that is so famous about The Wire. I started to understand, a bit, the insane devotion that verges on addiction among people who’ve written about watching the show. Like, a week went by between watching episodes one and two because I was like, “Oh I don’t know, I bet this gets pretty good, but the first episode seemed so long….” And now I am like “Oh hey, this show is in it to win it.”

Though you know, we’ll see. Life is busy, due to the artifacts of The Man’s capitalist superstructures, and there’s only so much time to watch TV.

Previously: Episode 1.

Are firstborn children more selfish and less trusting than those born in lesser positions? That’s one interpretation of this study, in which subjects were given a “monetary unit” and asked to give some away with the understanding that they might get some back. The results? “On average, eldest siblings gave 25 per cent less ‘money’ than non-firstborns or only children.” I’m not sure what exactly this shows, but as a firstborn myself, I can offer pretty solid scientific evidence in the shape of my own personage that firstborns RULE.

It’s the only category at awards season that anyone cares about-Best Mini-Series Or Motion Picture Made for Television at the Golden Globes! Now, if you feel as I do, you understand entirely that these should be two separate categories, as they are completely different undertakings! (The Emmys understands this.) And while I have a lot of respect for Michael Sucsy’s Grey Gardens for HBO, it is so obvious that the hearts and minds of America are all behind the BBC/WGBH Boston co-production of Little Dorrit, the values of which we have noted here previously. I SAID “OBVIOUSLY,” so GET IN LINE, PEOPLE. What’s his name, the Hot Mr. Darcy, should clinch the winningness. Also there are some other categories at the Golden Globes but we weren’t really paying attention. Who cares.

Related! Now seems as good as any moment to mention Time magazine’s list of the ten best movies of the year, by the way!

WHAT? The Princess and the WHAT?

This rather enjoyable little essay/art review by Colm Tóibín begins, “From an early age, I have missed the point of things. I noticed this first when the entire class at school seemed to understand that Animal Farm was about something other than animals. I alone sat there believing otherwise. I simply couldn’t see who or what the book was about if not about farm animals. I had enjoyed it for that.” What’s great about it is I think it speaks to a secret worry we all have about not seeing something that seems so clear to everyone else, that nagging feeling that we’re not understanding the whole story. Or at least it’s a secret worry of mine. I bet you guys get everything.

British retailer Tesco has apologized after one of its Christmas cards, which reads “SANTA loves all kids. Even GINGER ones,” unsurprisingly provoked fury in people with red hair, who tend to be the quickest to fly off the handle in explosive rage. “It is never our intention to offend any customer and we are sorry if this card caused any upset,” said a spokeswoman for the company, which has withdrawn the card.

“I was really surprised when my customer told me it was Mr Murdoch. He seemed like such a nice man.”
-London newsagent Daxa Solanki, whose shop was visited earlier this year by News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch toured several different newsstands because he “wanted to know what was happening on the ground.”