IT’S FINALLY HAPPENING AND I’M SO EXCITED

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! At this point, I'd settle for these ghouls pitching a use for AI that actually replaces something I don't/wouldn't want to do. It's always, "It'll play fantasy football so you don't have to! It'll read to your kids so you don't have to!" I WANT TO READ TO MY KIDS

You walked (it back) so Stephen A could run

Edgerrin Cooper's torn Achilles' is a total gut-punch. But Kristian Welch is a rootable guy from my teeny-tiny hometown (Iola, Wis., population 1,236), so this is about the best news I could have hoped for, once it was clear that Cooper is out for the season.

Those are six minutes I could have spent wealthmaxxing!

Also... managing a fantasy-football team (or, in my case, three of them) takes me like six minutes a week! You're like, "Oop! This guy's hurt. Better swap in that guy." Bloop! You're done! It would take me infinitely longer to figure out how to use some dumb AI prompt to run a team.

HE IS SO HANDSOME

[Carrie Underwood steps up to the mic to kick off Sunday Night Football] 🎵 "A red-hot matchup in the NFC Mike and Chris are two guys on TV Car'lina Panthers are one of the teams You know what, this is dumb, never mind" 🎵

I put two of her last five albums in my year-end top 10 lists! I've raved about her records on the show! Assessing her work on a case-by-case basis -- praising great, thoughtful albums like Folklore and Midnights while panning lazy, spiteful junk like "Cleveland!" -- is my literal job.

"Nails it" is right. Truly excellent work -- I hung on every word of it and nodded along the whole way. Even the factors I thought might get skipped (the stagnation of the post-election pop marketplace, for example) was smartly and deftly explored! Fantastic job.

I love this for you, bud.

It's like when something happens involving a guy who was a camp body for one NFL preseason and the headlines are like, "Ex-NFL star..."

After "Lose Control" had been on the charts for a little while, I sought it out, like, "How have I never heard this song?" And, like you, I had; I'd just thought it was Chris Stapleton!

Wow, "Choosin' Texas" discourse is really popping off today. If you could use a refresher, last week I wrote up an explainer to contextualize the song's (momentarily) record-setting Billboard run:

And part of what made it so great was that EVERYONE sang along, to basically every word. They definitely understand the unifying power of early-'00s classics!

Every time I see MUNA, they somehow get better! They didn't do "Mr. Brightside," but the previous time I'd seen them, they did a thing where they were like, "We wrote this song backstage and think it's good and want to try it out," then played a STELLAR cover of Vanessa Carlton's "A Thousand Miles."

Just saw MUNA live at All Things Go *and* the Badgers mounted a huge comeback to beat a ranked Penn State team on the road? I feel like I could throw a building right now.

If you had told me, like, eight years ago that there'd be a list like this in 2026 and it wouldn't include Orange Is The New Black, Transparent, or Master Of None, I'd have been baffled beyond words

Just one of my picks made the final list -- and you'll NEVER guess which one

Trip, there's simple math at work here. You can't say I should have included something without suggesting which pick has to be cut from the list. YOU CAN'T DO IT! MY LIST IS UNIMPEACHABLE