[Note: In this discussion, I refer to Guardians Of The Galaxy, Vol. 2 as the third-highest-grossing movie of 2017, after Beauty And The Beast and Wonder Woman. We recorded this episode before the holidays, and Star Wars: The Last Jedi has since surpassed all three.]
It's become a Pop Culture Happy Hour tradition to open each year with four great big chewy opportunities to embarrass ourselves. First, we introduce our pop-cultural New Year's resolutions (opportunity #1) by revisiting our resolutions from last year (opportunity #2); then, we revisit the previous year's oft-misbegotten pop-culture predictions (opportunity #3) before announcing what we're pretty sure is going to happen in the year to come (opportunity #4). You've heard us be wrong before, but rarely in such sustained and concentrated doses!
For the third year in a row, Code Switch's Kat Chow joins Linda Holmes, Glen Weldon and me for a rollicking roundup of wrongness and accountability. Linda gets to crow about actually having written her novel, Glen promises to relearn a skill he'd inexplicably unlearned, Kat tries to get out into the world ( here, by the way, is the Instagram feed she mentions), I attempt to combine parenting with pop-culture blind spots, and so, so much more.
Finally, as always, we close with what's making us happy this week. Because I am nothing if not a fount of high-culture insight, I'm smitten with a years-old dog meme. Glen loves a new and absurd parody of homemaking TV shows. Speaking of parodies, Kat loves a series of book-cover parodies on Instagram — scroll down a bit to see the ones she describes. And Linda is very worked up over the promise of a certain Idris Elba tweet.
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