About two years ago I wrote an article on the Japanese indies band Omokage Lucky Hole. It’s not a great article–it’s written alright, but the translations of the titles and my understanding of the songs’ contents are pretty poor. I haven’t gotten that much better over the past two...

As we roll into 2012, it looks all but inevitable that video media in general will slowly and irrevocably shift into a fundamentally intangible commodity. The disks and cartridges imprinted with our favorite movies and TV shows, once a necessity, are now walking the line between luxury and liability....

So last time there was a new season, I was on a plane crossing the Pacific and preparing for a new life in a foreign land. Things being as they were, I couldn’t really ’round up the troops and do a season review. This time I was also on...