Alan Pyke

Rozay’s “U.O.E.N.O.” line boasting about date rape was bad. His half-assed attempt to put out the ensuing online fire is worse. At the 4:20 mark in the radio interview below (via Potholes), Ross tries to deflect criticism for bragging about drugging a woman and having his way ...read more

At some point when I wasn't looking, music journalism died. It was bitten by a zombie, it seems, and now the corpse stalks the internet, applying its old techniques to its new fixation: “BRAAAAAAANDING.” How else to explain the bewildering response to Justin Timberlake's The ...read more

Jason Molina is dead. “Organ failure brought on by alcohol,” it seems. Molina was the animating force behind the brilliant, meditative bleakness of Magnolia Electric Co. and Songs Ohia and a number of solo records, spanning over a dozen years. His voice could hover and float ...read more

I’ve never been a particularly serious gamer, but video games have been a throughline of my entertainment and media life since the old black-and-white Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego? game on the Apple that sat in a corner of my childhood dining room. That means that ...read more

Pop culture representations of ideas and group identities have power to affect public perception. And in a democracy, those perceptions matter when it comes to creating public policy. That's the thesis for what you'll see in my writing here at The Daily Banter. It's a fairly ...read more