This past summer, Beck began a new music project — Record Club. He spends a day in the studio with his ever-so-cool musician friends and they cover entire albums (they’ve finished The Velvet Underground & Nico and have moved on to Songs of Leonard Cohen) releasing one track every Thursday; unrehearsed, unplanned and sometimes unwell. While some of the covers are quite good — “Sunday Morning” and “Winter Lady” — the product itself is nothing too remarkable. However, the actual success of the individual covers is irrelevant. What makes this musical experiment valuable is the prevailing notion. When it comes down to it, it is a nice idea.

Hundreds of students flooded Uris Auditorium Wednesday night for the sneak preview of Observe and Report anticipating some of the lovable Seth Rogen unfiltered and inappropriate humor. He did not disappoint. Any hopes of vulgarity, crudeness or indecency were fulfilled; as far as substance, meaning or refinement, not so much. Although the movie isn’t entirely overboard, as many students exiting the movie indicated, it absolutely crosses the line on so many levels.

Sex, drugs and tasers — one thing is for sure about Observe and Report (the second mall cop movie of 2009) Ronnie Barhardt would kick Paul Blart’s roly-poly ass.

I was but 11 years young that night when five wholesome hooligans first sung and danced their way into my heart, or when I first saw the Disney Channel special where ’N Sync performed at Disney World. I was immediately enchanted, and when my mom took me to Target the next day to buy some socks to send me in future care packages at camp or boarding school, I made her buy me the tape of ’N Sync’s eponymous album. She protested, mostly because people didn’t buy tapes by the year 1998, but I came out of the store victorious, anachronistic audiocassette in toe-thumbed hand.

I don’t intend to rant about our hooking up culture, the idea of “friends with benefits” (has anyone besides parents actually ever used that term?), or how nobody dates anymore. All I want to do is point out that the music we listen to endorses this culture — a culture in which when two people are attracted to each other, they are expected to hook up, not go on a date. Please don’t be like, “What! I don’t do that.” I’m not saying that everyone does it. I’m also not saying that people didn’t randomly hook up in the ’80s, or the ’60s, or the 1800s for that matter. I’m just saying that today, the music we listen to adds to this culture.

It’s been almost two weeks since the Grammy’s. In fact, it’s been exactly 12 days since I sat in front of my television in awe of three presenters. Mark Hoppus, Tom DeLonge and Travis Barker –– the members of the pop-punk sensation, Blink 182 –– stood on stage together to announce their reunion.

As someone who owns pretty much everything Radiohead has ever recorded and reads a lot of David Foster Wallace and owns an unnecessary number of plain black t-shirts I feel obligated to roll my eyes at MTV with that same hipster condescension that makes the disinterested smokers outside Rand Hall so insufferable. This column should be 900 words of such eye rolling at the cable giant. The words “shallow,” “superficial,” and “lacking substance” should figure prominently. There should be a significant amount of whining. A healthy helping of nostalgia for the good ol’ days when the network was anti-establishment and cutting-edge and all those attractive little fictions associated with the golden age of MTV.

Like snowflakes and unhappy families, every hit summer single is a unique entity. Though they each share that ineffable quality that garners radio play and drives people onto the dance floor, “Umbrella” is an entirely different animal from “Gold Digger,” which isn’t at all the same as “A Milli.” But one song this summer, Kid Rock’s latest hit single (a phrase I thought I’d never have to write again) breaks with this tradition by taking a popular song and recycling it without bothering with any emendation.