Rating: ★★★★★ (out of 5) With Turnstiles, Billy Joel experienced a creative breakthrough. One album later, with The Stranger, he experienced a commercial breakthrough to match it. Peaking at #2 and ultimately going 10× platinum, his 1977 smash catapulted him to stardom he’s maintained for 35 years. From the first listen, it’s not hard to see…
Rating: ★★½ (out of 4) I bought High Fidelity about a year ago on the recommendation of fellow Earn This writer Grant. Earlier this week, my computer crashed. I was too lazy to fix it that night, so I grabbed the first book I saw on my bookshelf and started reading. It happened to be Fidelity. I…
Last week, I found the script for the pilot of Aaron Sorkin’s upcoming new HBO show The Newsroom; the day after I finished reading it, Dan sent me the new series’ trailer. Unfortunately, the show’s genesis has twisted my mind into a cognitively-dissonant pretzel that’s harder to untangle than recent Gossip Girl plotlines. The freight train that is my…