I think most of us, even those of us who shoot their TVs, want to have a vague sense of what's going on in pop culture.

When I was a kid, my indispensible source of pop culture knowledge was Mad Magazine. I didn't have to watch all those TV shows or all those movies to know what was what. Nowadays, I've got Alec to keep me up to date on movies, and Bill Simmons to keep me in the loop on everything else. His column is ostensibly about sports, but that's like saying Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is about motorcycle maintenance. It's about TV, lowbrow culture, gambling, and everything else in this guy's twisted little head...and it's about ten times funnier than any other column I'm aware of since Dave Barry retired.