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It has been my position for a number of years now that the opening 30 minutes of the original Top Gun are about as good as you can possibly do from a filmmaking standpoint. The rest of the movie is pretty great, too. There’s a scene around the midpoint of the movie where Tom Cruise shows up at Kelly McGillis’s house for some sort of date/debriefing situation after playing beach volleyball with jeans on in 95-degree San Diego sunshine and asks if he can take a shower. That’s… I mean, it’s kind of funny. But also kind of perfect. The movie does such a good job of telling you exactly who this character is and what he’s about that huge chunks of the back half can just be planes going WHOOOOOSH and missiles going VRRRSHH and pilots going WHOAAA and it still advances the plot in a meaningful way. It’s cool.

The key to that is the foundation laid down in the first 30 minutes, which stretches out over five scenes. Each of these scenes attempts to drive home two very important points about Pete “Maverick” Mitchell in different ways. These points are:

• He’s a loose cannon
• But dammit, he gets results and/or is the best there is

You’ve seen this kind of character before. A lot, probably. But there’s a good reason for that: these characters, when done correctly, are freaking awesome. Top Gun does it correctly. It structures the entire movie around it. It structures an entire legacy sequel around it, too. And it all comes back to that opening 30 minutes of the original, which, again, are basically perfect. I would stop here to say a word or two about director Tony Scott and how sometimes his work on the movie gets lost in the Tom Cruise of it all, but he put this shot in the opening of the whole thing…

… so I think he knows he did something special. You don’t put your own name over an image of a firing jet engine if you’re not proud of what’s ahead. Good for him.

The point I’m getting at: Let’s take a few minutes to go through this half-hour of movie magic scene-by-scene. It’s informative and fun and it allowed me to make a GIF of Tom Cruise doing a fist pump at an airplane. There is no bad news here. Away we go.

I. The Cougar Situation

The action, summarized

Maverick and Goose are up flying around with a few other pilots, one of whom is named Cougar. They encounter an enemy plane — a MiG — and things get dicey. Cougar has a panic attack in the sky. It’s not ideal.

Is Maverick a loose cannon?

Consider:

• While zipping and zooming through the sky with an enemy in a possibly superior aircraft, Maverick and Goose take the opportunity to go upside down and inverted to give the MiG’s pilot the middle finger and snap a picture of it
• Maverick disregards a direct order to land his plane so he can go back up and help the frazzled Cougar get back to the aircraft carrier

Yes. An extremely loose cannon. One of the loosest you’ll ever see.

Does he get results, dammit?

Does he ever. Everyone gets home safely and he got to show off some of his fancy flying skills. And we got to see that, while he has the reputation of being a hotshot flyboy, he also cares and will not leave anyone behind, no matter what some cigar-chomping superior in a sweaty control room says. This brings us to…

II. The Best Scene In Any Movie Ever

The action, summarized

A few things are happening here:

• Cougar is still skittish after the encounter and turns in his wings, which is… like, not something I’m sure you can just do in the military
• Maverick and Goose are called in next to get yelled at for various stunts and shenanigans and also to be informed that, with Cougar out, they get to go to Top Gun in his place
• The whole thing is maybe the best version of the “I’m sick of your live wire antics”/“The mayor is gonna have my ass for this” scene in any movie ever, complete with shouting and smirking and sweating and, at one point, as I have screencapped above, the sentence “Your ego is writing checks your body can’t cash”

It’s a perfect scene. I could watch it every day.

Is Maverick a loose cannon?

YOUR
EGO
IS
WRITING
CHECKS
YOUR
BODY
CAN’T
CASH

Does he get results, dammit?

Let’s just straight to the screencaps for this one.

I am not joking even a little when I tell you I let out an involuntary and audible “yesssss” when these lines were delivered during my 500th rewatch last week. The lessons here are as follows: Top Gun rules; James Tolkan, the actor who plays the shouting authority figure, was extremely good at this particular thing, and Jon Hamm is pretty good at it in the sequel; and I am kind of an idiot.

Moving on.

III. Iceman, Viper, Etc.

The action, summarized

We are now at Top Gun. A guy named Viper, who is one of the best to ever do it and is played by Tom Skerritt and his immaculate mustache, is handling the introductions. Maverick is being kind of a wiseass the whole time. We get our first glimpse of Iceman, which I have GIFed above, in part because it’s such a cool way to introduce a semi-antagonist and in part because Val Kilmer is awesome. It’s a really fun scene, way more fun than any classroom scene in an airplane movie has any right to be.

Is Maverick a loose cannon?

Does he get results, dammit?

So, yes, that’s settled. And I’m glad I was able to settle it so quickly because it gives me more room to plop in the GIF I mentioned earlier where Tom Cruise pumps his first at an airplane.

The point of this, as far as I can tell, is to add a brief but important third character trait to Maverick, in addition to being a loose cannon who gets results: He freaking loves airplanes so much. Holy crap. Look at him. I like to picture him doing this every time he sees an airplane take off anywhere. I kind of wonder if Tom Cruise does it, too. Every time. In real life. Even today.

You could see it. Don’t lie.

IV. Shoutout To The Righteous Brothers

The action, summarized

Maverick and the other pilots go to a bar in their fancy Navy uniforms. Maverick sees a pretty lady and leads the entire establishment in serenading her with the song “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling” by The Righteous Brothers. It’s a famous scene. You know all of this.

Is Maverick a loose cannon?

Well, when the singing does not immediately provide the resolution he wanted, he follows her into the women’s bathroom, which is a risky move that I would not advise anyone to do, ever, unless you are a hotshot fighter pilot in a movie that came out in 1986. And even then… maybe not.

Does he get results, dammit?

I mean, sure, eventually. There’s a whole scene set to the song “Take My Breath Away” after the volleyball thing. Which you are free to talk about on your own. I can’t concentrate on anything right now. I’m stuck on this except from the Wikipedia page for The Righteous Brothers, who are two unrelated white guys named Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield.

According to Medley, they then adopted the name The Righteous Brothers for the duo because black Marines from the El Toro Marine base started calling them “righteous brothers”. At the end of a performance, a black U.S. Marine in the audience would shout, “That was righteous, brothers!”, and would greet them with “Hey righteous brothers, how you doin’?” on meeting them.

I have been thinking about this anecdote for about three days now. I can’t stop thinking about it. And the main reason I can’t stop thinking about is because I…

… like…

I do not think that actually happened.

Zero chance.

Which is extremely funny to me.

The Righteous Brothers.

Try to hear any song by then without thinking about this.

I’m sorry.

Kind of.

V. “So You’re The One”

The action, summarized

Everyone is back in another class-type session, this time outside, which allows Maverick to wear his sunglasses for a little bit, which is important. Their instructor is introduced and she walks in and turns around and yuuuuuuup it’s Kelly McGillis from the bar. Perfect. Incredible. Look at Maverick’s face in that GIF. It’s almost like this isn’t the first time this exact thing has happened to him.

Is Maverick a loose cannon?

One last round of bullet points to lay this out:

• Maverick continues being a wiseass
• He interrupts to point out that her information on the MiG is inaccurate
• They have a little semi-playful back and forth over who has more information to what specific classified information
• Maverick tells her the thing about flipping the bird to the pilot while upside-down

Which brings us to…

Does he get results, dammit?

This is just a powerfully efficient piece of business. The Matrix took longer to establish Keanu Reeves as The One and that’s the entire point of that trilogy. Add it to everything else we’ve seen and it creates a sturdy framework to build everything else in the movie around. And it’s a blast. And Tom Cruise pumps his fist at an airplane.

Top Gun is a good movie.

My editor, Steve, has a lot of hare-brained ideas — from having me taste every Cheesecake Factory cheesecake to ranking all the grocery store alfredo sauces. Thus it’s with good reason that I approach most ideas he pitches me with a certain amount of trepidation. What new gut trauma will this week bring?

But when he laid out his latest pitch — blind tasting and ranking every supermarket peanut butter I could find — I was cautiously optimistic. Unlike jarred alfredo sauce (which, I will reiterate once again, is both a revolting and altogether unnecessary product that I would never purchase nor consume of my own accord), peanut butter is an American pantry staple that I both consume and enjoy. Not just the fancy stuff either. To me, peanut butter is kind of like ketchup — I don’t need or want it to taste more like the main ingredient. There’s an ideal balance to the processed stuff that I’ve come to know and love that’s hard beat.

In any case, I was pleasantly surprised by the assignment. And then I actually went to the grocery store. Mother of God, do you know how many different brands of peanut butter there are? Creamy, crunchy, all-natural, unsalted, unsugared, dark roasted, unblanched… who knew such a simple product could spawn such endless variation? Is there some health benefit to an unblanched peanut I was not aware of? I didn’t even know peanuts in peanut butter were blanched. (And for that matter, who is Blanche!?)

There are dozens of types of peanut butter. Maybe hundreds. Not even including all the almond, cashew, sunflower seed, and other nut butters. Just keeping track of which ones I’d already bought or still needed to buy turned into a game of “Guess Who?”

Almost immediately, I decided to limit this tasting to creamy rather than crunchy. This would lower my PB load from something like 60+ peanut butters to more like 30. My reasoning here, beyond basic laziness, was that most people either like creamy or crunchy — pitting them against each other wouldn’t tell us much beyond the personal preference of the taster. I generally like creamy, so I chose creamy. Even so, one or two crunchy style jars snuck in here, for the simple reason that trying to read this many peanut butter labels and their seemingly infinite modifiers tends to make one go a little crazy.

A Note On My Method:

For this tasting, I simply put each peanut butter (or more accurately, had my wife, generously volunteering her time to assist me with this, put them all) on a small spoon and tasted each. I had milk and water to try to refresh my palate between tastes, but peanut butter is so sticky that a true cleanse wasn’t really possible. Still, I made my best effort.

There are a handful of different considerations for peanut butter, all depending how you like to eat it. Do you normally spread it on toast? Eat it in a classic (untoasted) peanut butter and jelly sandwich? Or something else, like scooped onto some slices of apple (the most common peanut butter use in my house) or celery, ants-on-a-log style? There are so many peanut butter uses (smoothies, on a finger Ted Lasso-style, etc.) that we just figured straight peanut butter on a spoon was the fairest way to judge.

RANKINGS

31. Natural Way Peanut Butter With Olive Oil

Price: $4.99 from Sprouts

Original Notes (tasted blind):

Looks: This one slid off the spoon though it didn’t settle much. It looks more like chunk-style even though it isn’t.

Smells: Decent peanutty smell on the nose.

Tastes: Like unsweetened vegetable oil? What the hell. I actually went “blegh” and wanted to spit it out. What the f*ck even is this? I hope it doesn’t get worse than this.

Score: 0/10

Bottom Line:

I assume there are some health/environmental benefits to eating this disgustingly oily, near-flavorless “peanut butter” that has no sugar and loudly proclaims that it’s made from olive oil on the jar. Because there sure aren’t any taste benefits. True, this one doesn’t have palm oil, so the orangutans are safe, but… at what cost??

This was more like bad, partially congealed oil than peanut butter.

This one makes me feel like Jerry Seinfeld’s bit about dry cleaning. “Hey, you know that non-hydrogenated oil you used? What if we, I dunno, hydrogenated it a little, just to see how it feels.”

30. Trader Joe’s Creamy Unsalted Peanut Butter Made From Unblanched Peanuts (Sample 31)

Price: $2.29 at Trader Joe’s

Original Notes:

Looks: Soupy, light-colored, loose, and dripping. Sort of a brindle pattern.

Smells: Roasty/pasty on the nose, something vaguely artificial in there.

Tastes: Woof, another glue trap, as bad the last one but with even worse flavor. God this one sucks so bad. It tastes like they ground up a bunch of those papery sacks around the peanut rather than the peanut itself. This is like the “oops, all shells!” of peanut butters.

Score: 0/10.

Bottom Line:

Again, I suppose there’s some health benefit to eating unsalted, oily, goopy, flavorless peanut butter. But it’s not enough to justify eating this. Maybe in stew? A smoothie? Whatever you add this to is going to have to provide the sugar and salt. I dunno.

It’s a mess, has no body to it, and tastes bad.

29. Once Again Unsweetened Creamy Peanut Butter (Sample 30)

Price: $9.49 at Whole Foods

Original Notes:

Looks: Soupy, light-colored, loose, and dripping. A little darker, like coppery brown, and uniform in color.

Smells: A little more roasty than the last, but pretty mild on the nose.

Tastes: Super roasty taste, but sticks to my mouth to an almost insane degree. This is like the ultimate glue trap. I don’t understand how the soupiest, loosest ones also stick to your mouth the most (…in bed).

Score: 1/10.

Bottom Line:

True, I’m biased by the fact that my conception of “peanut butter” was formed by eating the sweetened, salted, homogenized version of it, but I also don’t know what the upside of this version is. It has the taste and texture of partially digested peanuts, which doesn’t really equal “peanut butter” in my mind.

28. Sprouts Organic Unsweetened And Unsalted (Sample 17)

Price: $2.69 at Sprouts

Original Notes:

Looks: Texturally this one is a disaster. It’s like pure oil, almost like peanut-infused olive oil. Very light in color too.

Smells: Doesn’t smell that strong either.

Tastes: It’s weirdly super sweet, and as thin as it is it kind of just sticks to my mouth. It’s like eating sweet tahini.

Score: 2/10.

Bottom Line:

This one definitely won the award for worst texture, it wouldn’t even stay on a spoon. Its ingredients list consists of just one ingredient: organic peanuts. Which is… good, I guess? Points for simplicity, certainly, but I feel like maybe I could just chew up some peanuts for a better effect.

27. Trader Joe’s Organic Peanut Butter No Salt (Sample 29)

Price: $3.99

Original Notes:

Looks: Soupy, light-colored, loose, and dripping. Some darker colored flecks in there. No body.

Smells: Doesn’t really smell like much.

Tastes: There’s a little sweetness in there, but mostly bland with mild roastiness. Sticks to my mouth, Texture is a disaster.

Score: 2.5/10

Bottom Line:

Again, I know I’m biased by having grown up on the processed form of peanut butter, but I don’t know what the purpose of this product is. It’s an oily disaster that coats your entire mouth.

From my notes: “I would rather use this as a household lubricant than eat it.”

26. Peanut Butter & Co, No Sugar Added Peanut Butter (Sample 4)

Price: $3.99 from Sprouts

Original Notes:

Looks: Appears to be non-homogenized, but still has some body to it, which is nice. Otherwise, shiny, medium brown.

Smells: Maybe my senses are blown out, but I can hardly smell this one.

Tastes: Woof, this must be one of the no sugar added ones? Awful. It’s just texture in my mouth and nothing else. Maybe in hummus? No thanks.

Score: 3/10

Bottom Line:

If you’re on some kind of no-sodium diet, how long does it take before things like this taste like anything? That’s a no from me, dog. For the record, this one and the next two entries had the same score so they’re all technically tied.

Score: 3/10

25. Full Circle Market Organic No Stir Peanut Butter (Sample 10)

Price: $4.99 at SaveMart

Original Notes:

Looks: Kind of a… cow pie texture? Like it’s homogenized, but also slightly aerated.

Smells: Like peanuts, not strong in any direction.

Tastes: There’s a grittiness to this that cuts the creaminess of the homogenization somewhat. It’s like there are whole crystals in there (salt? sugar?). It’s more of a cookie dough texture. Yet It’s not sweet enough, or creamy enough, or roasty enough. And there’s an artificial aftertaste, like fake sugar or something. More “off” than bland.

No, thank you.

Score: 3/10

Bottom Line:

At least you don’t have to stir this one (I refuse to stir my peanut butter, that’s just where I draw the line) but that’s about all I can say for it.

24. Trader Joe’s Creamy Salted Peanut Butter from Unblanched Peanuts (Sample 24)

Price: $2.29 at Trader Joe’s

Original Notes:

Looks: Darker, but also loose to the point that it’s coming off the spoon and pooling on the plate.

Smells: I get a bit more roast from this one than standard.

Tastes: Maximum roast, maximum salt, no sweetness, and the texture sucks. This one is a salt bomb.

Score: 3/10

Bottom Line:

The most shocking thing about this one is that the addition of salt only scored it half a point higher. But just because something has salt doesn’t mean it’s the right amount of salt. For the record, it has the same amount of sodium as standard Jif and a little less than standard Skippy, but it definitely tasted saltier.

23. Sprouts Creamy Unsweetened Peanut Butter (Sample 27)

Price: $2.69 at Sprouts

Bottom Line:

Looks: Super, super loose and light, barely any stayed on the spoon.

Smells: Doesn’t smell like much.

Tastes: This one doesn’t stay on the spoon and it’s kind of a huge mess, but at least it’s seasoned okay and tastes like roasty peanuts. Maybe a bit much on the salt. What a mess.

Score: 3.5/10

Bottom Line:

Is there a person out there who enjoys peanut butter with this texture? Who hurt you?

22. Jif No Added Sugar Creamy (Sample 9)

Price: $3.99 at SaveMart

Original Notes:

Looks: Very smooth, tight homogenized look, almost plasticky.

Smells: Barely anything to smell.

Tastes: Nice mouthfeel but missing… everything? This is more like the idea of peanut butter.

Score: 3.5/10

Bottom Line:

Texturally, this one is pretty close to ideal for me, but the lack of sugar kills it. Taking sugar away from Jif is sort of like that scene in Superman where he gives up his powers to marry Lois Lane and gets his ass kicked by some trucker in a diner. Oops, he’s just some nerd now.

21. Santa Cruz Organic No Stir Crunchy Dark Roasted Peanut Butter (Sample 5)

Price: $7.49 at Sprouts

Original Notes:

Looks: Shiny, homogenized texture. It looks plasticky, somehow. Pretty tight consistency.

Smells: Heavily roasty smell on this one.

Tastes: Accidentally bought a crunchy one, I guess? This tastes like peanuts, which is nice, but I sorta wish it was sweeter.

Score: 4/10.

Bottom Line:

This was one of the crunchy ones that accidentally snuck in there. I doubt the smooth variety would’ve fared any better in the taste test though — the issue was seasoning. Texturally it was fine.

20. Laura Scudder’s Old Fashioned Peanut Butter (Sample 20)

Price: $5.69 at Von’s.

Original Notes:

Looks: Super oily and spilling off the spoon. Loose. Rarely a positive adjective.

Smells: Nice roasty peanut smell.

Taste: I sort of only taste the roast and it sticks to my mouth without dissolving. Tastes like health food.

Score: 4/10

Bottom Line:

“Laura Scudder” sounds like the name of a lady who would make a tasty, homecooked meal, and maybe have a pie gently cooling on her windowsill. And then you look at the actual product and it looks less like actual peanut butter than what happens when a mama bird eats some peanut butter and tries to feed it to her chicks.

19. 365 Organic Creamy Peanut Butter No Sugar Added (Sample 21)

Price: $6.89 at Whole Foods

Original Notes:

Looks: Light-colored, very homogeneous. Stays on the spoon even if I turn it upside down — passes the anti-gravity test!

Smells: Sweet, somehow? Not a strong peanut smell.

Tastes: Very melt in your mouth, and tastes much more roasty than it looks or smells. But it has something artificial tasting about it, like fake sugar or something. This one somehow tastes both too natural and too processed. Weird in a way I haven’t experienced yet.

Score: 4/10

Bottom Line:

This one lists only peanuts, palm oil, and sea salt as its ingredients, so I’m not sure why I thought it tasted artificial. Texturally it was pretty ideal. My suggestion? Add some sugar next time.

18. Peanut Butter & Co, Smooth Operator (Sample 26)

Price: $3.99 at Sprouts

Original Notes:

Looks: Tight texture, passes the zero G test, but looks wetter than normal homogenized peanut butter, somehow. A little plasticky. Blonder color.

Smells: Like unroasted peanuts.

Tastes: Sweet, very buttery texture, but there is something weird and artificial in there. Is that fake sugar? Something weird about it, but I can’t put my finger on it.

Score: 4.5/10

Bottom Line:

The ingredients list doesn’t reveal anything weird, but sometimes the salt/sugar/fat balance is just off.

17. Santa Cruz Organic Creamy Peanut Butter (Sample 25)

Price: $7.49 at Whole Foods

Original Notes:

Looks: Light and loose, no body at all, flat on the spoon and sliding off.

Smells: Very roasty on the nose, maybe too roasty.

Tastes: Loose but doesn’t really dissolve in my mouth, kinda just coats. Very roasty. Tastes like peanuts, but otherwise pretty plain.

Score: 4.5/10

Bottom Line:

I hate peanut butter you have to stir, but somehow I rated this one higher than the no-stir version. Go figure. Anyway, it’s still bad.

16. 365 Creamy Peanut Butter (Sample 13)

Price: $2.29 at Whole Foods (on sale)

Original Notes:

Looks: Super oily and sliding off the spoon. Lighter colored, medium body, very shiny.

Smells: Very strong peanutty smell, with medium roast.

Tastes: Too salty and very roasty, it tastes like ballpark peanuts after you chew them up a bit, not to mention it really sticks to your mouth.

Score: 4.5/10

Bottom Line:

This one had the rare distinction of managing to be both clumpy and sliding off the spoon. And you’re not seeing things, the label really was that oily after a single use and about three days in the pantry. Even if this peanut butter was delicious that much mess alone would prevent me from buying it. Luckily it’s not very good either.

Oddly, it rated a half-point higher than the organic version, but I think a simple thumb’s down for both is probably the more accurate grade.

15. Natural Jif Low Sodium Creamy Peanut Butter (Sample 3)

Price: $3.99 at SaveMart

Original Notes:

Looks: Much tighter paste on this one, lighter color, clearly homogenized.

Smells: Not a strong smell, but peanutty.

Tastes: Taste… fine? Kinda plain. Not too sweet, not very roasty… more pasty than anything. It’s not terrible, just lacking.

Score: 5/10

Bottom Line:

From here on out I’d say the peanut butters are “mostly okay” — though still far from “the best.”

14. Trader Joe’s Organic Creamy Salted Peanut Butter (Sample 7)

Price: $3.99 at Trader Joe’s

Original Notes:

Looks: Lighter and looser with dark specks in it. One of the looser, oilier samples so far, not a great texture.

Smells: Very strong peanutty smell, one of the stronger ones.

Tastes: Very “natural,” aka like peanuts, but the mouthfeel is kind of gritty and it could use some more sugar. Feels like “good for natural style,” which I would probably never buy.

Score: 5/10.

Bottom Line:

This one was, not surprisingly, much better than its unsalted cousin. It tasted a lot better than I expected, but that half-inch of oil on the top of the jar is probably going to keep me from buying one of these.

13. Adams 100% Natural (Sample 8)

Price: $4.89 at Save Mart

Original Notes:

Looks: Non-homogenized, and kind of slides off the spoon. Let’s call it a “rustic” texture. The paste is thicker/tighter than most of the stir kind. Constipated, say.

Smells: Very strong good roasty aroma.

Tastes: The taste itself is nicely roasted, giving it layers of flavor, but it’s also kind of gritty. Again, I would call this “good for natural.”

Score: 5/10.

Bottom Line:

This one advertises an extra gram of protein than most of the others that advertise their protein content on the jar. I’m assuming they squeeze that extra gram in there by making it extra dense. Not a great trade off, in my opinion.

12. Justin’s Classic Peanut Butter (sample 15)

Price: $5.49 at Whole Foods

Original Notes:

Looks: So loose that it’s no longer in the spoon. My wife assures me that this jar didn’t say chunky, but it looks almost chunky. Light colored, a few dark flecks here and there.

Smells: Very strong roasted peanut aroma, nice.

Tastes: After the last sugar bomb, this one is distinctly unsweet. It’s very peanutty, but not very buttery. A few crunches here and there. But not too artificial tasting or overly salty. Very roasty.

Score: 5.5/10

Bottom Line:

Again, a pretty good-tasting “natural” option, if you’re dead set on avoiding hydrogenated oils. Which, personally, I am not (the partially hydrogenated oils, which contained trans fats, have mostly been done away with, in peanut butters and elsewhere).

11. Fix and Fogg Super Crunchy (Sample 11)

Price: $7.99 at Whole Foods

Original Notes:

Looks: Oops, another crunchy one must’ve snuck in there. This one is light in color, non-homogenized, very loose.

Smells: Very roasty on the nose.

Tastes: Very sweet for a non-homogenized style, which I don’t mind. It tastes very peanutty. Not bad.

Score: 6/10.

Bottom Line:

Six out of 10 starts to get into what I would call the “above-average” range of peanut butters. This one tasted pretty good and wasn’t too oily/goopy as compared to a lot of the non-homogenized/non-hydrogenated styles.

10. Skippy Natural 1/3 Less Sodium and Sugar (Sample 16)

Price: $2.99 at Save Mart (on sale)

Original Notes:

Looks: Sort of a loose, yet plasticky paste. It looks wet, can’t tell if this one is homogenized or not.

Smells: Exactly what I imagine peanut butter smells like – is that palm oil? Like not super roasty but light peanutty.

Tastes: Very creamy texture, but not as sweet as some of the sweeter ones, which I miss a little. It’s just okay.

Score: 6/10

Bottom Line:

This one scored pretty well for a reduced sugar/salt option. It couldn’t really compete with its own sweeter and saltier incarnation, but this one is good enough that you could probably sub it in and not feel like you were missing much. Reveal: The ingredient I smelled was indeed palm oil.

9. Earth Balance Creamy Peanut and Flaxseed Spread (Sample 19)

Price: $5.79 at Sprouts

Original Notes:

Looks: Very loose, but kind of plasticky on the surface. Somehow more homogenized than not.

Smells: Smells very roasty.

Tastes: Very sweet, very roasty. There’s an aftertaste that comes on salty — probably too salty for my tastes. It’s also a little thinner than I like, but not bad overall.

Score: 6/10

Bottom Line:

This actually has less sodium than standard Jif and a little less sugar too, despite what I thought was a salty taste. Anyway, I probably still wouldn’t buy this, but it tasted a lot better than what I imagined a “peanut and flaxseed spread” would taste like.

8. Maranatha Organic No Stir Peanut Butter (Sample 22)

Price: $8.79

Original Notes:

Looks: Light, loose, shiny, kinda plasticky looking on the surface.

Smells: It smells, well… very peanutty. Which is good, if not surprising.

Tastes: Very creamy texture, homogenized… ish. There’s much less body than I’m used to for peanut butter — clearly, it lies flat on the spoon, rather than making a little hillock, but it also doesn’t ooze off the spoon so it’s not bad. It has some mild sweetness. I’m not used to this because of the texture, but I don’t hate it.

Score: 6/10.

Bottom Line:

This one has less than half the sodium of Skippy, which I never would’ve guessed based on the taste. It’s a much lighter color and looser texture than what I think of when I think of “peanut butter,” but I think I could get used to it.

7. Earth Balance Creamy PB & Coconut Oil Spread (Sample 12)

Price: $5.59

Original Notes:

Looks: Very toothpaste texture, much more dry on the spoon than most of the others, and super thick. Mostly light with darker flecks.

Smells: Like chocolate? What is that smell? This one is different than all the rest I’ve had so far, it smells like dessert.

Tastes: Ohhh, coconut, that’s what I was smelling. It’s not unpleasant, just kind of weird. It’s growing on me. Kinda good if you like coconut. It was weird at first but I ended up eating all of it.

Score: 6.5/10

Bottom Line:

This one might’ve been the biggest surprise of the bunch. Using coconut oil both looks and sounds weird (that coconut oil is solid at room temperature probably accounts for the dry look) but it also kind of melts in your mouth and that coconut flavor — which is admittedly pretty weird at first when you’re expecting standard peanut butter — really grew on me.

All that being said, this has the same amount of sugar as Jif/Skippy, and about a third less sodium, so I don’t know how much it’s accomplishing, health-wise.

6. Sunny Select Creamy Peanut Butter (Sample 1)

Price: $2.99 at SaveMart (on sale)

Original Notes:

Looks: Darker brown, a little shiny. Call it medium loose? Looks homogenized.

Smells: Roasty, peanutty. Pretty standard.

Tastes: Has a nice, creamy mouthfeel, where it has some body to it but melts in your mouth without coating everything. This one is on the sweeter side. Good? Feels like a good, standard PB.

Score: 7/10.

Bottom Line:

Sunny Select is Save Mart’s in-store brand, and the nutritional facts are identical to Skippy’s (which has 10 more milligrams of sodium than Jif and the same amount of sugar). It also has rapeseed, cottonseed, and soybean oil, same as Skippy (Jif doesn’t have the cottonseed, but is otherwise identical). For whatever that’s worth.

5. Jif Creamy (Sample 6)

Price: $4.29 at Save Mart.

Original Notes:

Looks: A very tight but smooth paste, clearly one of the homogenized options. Lighter brown in color.

Smells: Not much smell on the nose, oddly.

Tastes: This is definitely one of the sweeter ones, but it’s tasty, and the texture is melt-in-your mouth creamy. It’s not super peanutty and doesn’t have much roast, but I like it. Like comfort peanut butter.

Score: 7/10.

Bottom Line:

I remember doing a blind peanut butter tasting when I was a little kid, which was basically Jif vs. Skippy, because we didn’t have all those health food brands back then, and at the time I chose Jif. I’ve been predisposed to favor Jif packaging ever since. So it’s a little surprising to rank Jif (ever so slightly) behind Skippy in these rankings. Though I would call a half point within the margin of error when you’re tasting 31 types of peanut butter in a row.

Nutritionally, they’re nearly identical, though Skippy has 10 mg more sodium.

4. Skippy Creamy (Sample 28)

Price: $3.49 at Vons

Original Notes:

Looks: Looks like what I imagine hydrogenated old-school peanut butter to look like. A little sweaty on the surface, medium brown in color.

Smells: Smells roasty, but also of maybe something artificial in there?

Tastes: Tastes sweet-to-roasty with a very melts-in-your-mouth texture, and a decent amount of salt on the back end. I would call this above-average old school PB.

Score: 7.5/10

Bottom Line:

Standard label Skippy and standard label Jif (the Coke and Pepsi of peanut butters) are so similar as to be moot, but if forced to identify a difference, Skippy seems to have a slightly darker roast and slightly saltier flavor.

3. Trader Joe’s Creamy No Stir Peanut Butter (Sample 23)

Price: $1.99 at Trader Joe’s

Original Notes:

First note from my wife: “This one is a lie, it said ‘no stir’ but I still had to stir.”

Looks: Loose textured, light in color, and shiny on the surface.

Smells: This one has a nice, peanutty nose, that smells strongly of peanuts but not too dark a roast.

Tastes: Comes on very sweet, building into a nice roasty flavor. Maybe a touch salty. It’s thinner than I like but good flavor.

7.5/10.

Bottom Line:

I was surprised how well this one did, given how badly most of the Trader Joe’s brands did, and have done in my other rankings. I don’t generally have a super high opinion of Trader Joe’s brand products, considering how many tasty looking cookies of theirs I’ve ended up throwing away because they didn’t taste near as good as they looked (virtually every bag — I don’t know that I’ve ever finished one). Their beers are surprisingly good though.

Aaaanyway, this one turned out to be a legitimate challenger to Skippy and Jif, which is downright shocking. Nutritionally speaking, it has the same amount of sugar and slightly less sodium. It does have palm oil, though the label specifies that it is sustainable palm oil. Which is a good, I ain’t tryna kill orangutans just for a snack.

2. Reduced Fat Jif (Sample 14)

Price: $4.29

Original Notes:

Looks: Super smooth, almost catalogue texture. It’s no as shiny or plasticky on the surface as some of the other hydrogenated options.

Smells: Mild peanutty smell, not too roasty.

Tastes: Aw yeah, this is the good old processed sweet shit. It’s not super peanutty and it’s definitely packed with sugar but I love it. it’s not super creamy creamy, more dissolves in your mouth with some crystallization. I licked the spoon.

Score: 8.5/10

Bottom Line:

I’m as shocked as you are that I chose a reduced-fat option as one of my top choices. But less so when I read the label and discovered that it’s actually 60% peanuts with some other random shit thrown in there like pea protein and corn syrup solids. It also has significantly more sodium (190 milligrams) and a bit more sugar (4g) than standard Jif and Skippy. This is to say that I would actually consider this the least healthy option. Now me choosing it makes sense. Read those labels, folks.

I should also note that I actually had to throw this jar out after I sampled it when I discovered that it was part of a salmonella recall. Everyone on Twitter claiming that Steve is secretly trying to kill me now has a new data point.

1. Pacific Coast Selections Creamy Peanut Butter (Sample 2)

Price: $3.09 at SaveMart

>Original Notes:

Looks: Clearly non-homogenized, a little lighter than previous, pools kinda flat. It’s oilier than the major brands, but not sliding off the spoon or dripping on the cutting board.

Smells: Very strong peanut smell, nothing too artificial about it, not a ton of roast either.

Tastes: Really roasty, deep peanutty flavor. I didn’t think I was going to like this one but it’s pretty dang good.

Score: 8.5/10.

Bottom Line:

I did not expect to like a non-hydrogenated version as much as I did, but the taste on this one was really good. Despite that, I’d probably still avoid this one just on account of how messy it ended up being. A half-point step down in taste is worth it not to have to wash my hands every time I pick up a peanut butter jar, in my opinion.

This one has a third less sodium than Skippy and the same amount of sugar as the majors, though it also contains palm oil with no asterisk for sustainability. Which is to say… this probably wouldn’t be the one I’d buy, even if I do give it the slight edge in taste. All things considered, I think I’d probably go with Trader Joe’s no-stir as my “buy it” choice, or standard Skippy or Jif if you hate orangutans.

Ahead of his upcoming fourth studio album, Twelve Carat Toothache, Post Malone sat down with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe for an interview. This year is shaping up to be a big one for Malone, as he is dropping the album, which he said is his favorite, and is also expecting a baby.

When speaking to Lowe, Malone revealed that he’s looking forward to being a father, and that he has been waiting for this day since he was a child. He even shared stories of carrying a baby doll when he was a child.

“I would take him around everywhere,” Malone said. “And I don’t know how long that lasted. But my mom still has it. And I guess, Zane, I’m so pumped up. I’m going to be a hot dad.”

There’s another term for that,” Lowe replied.

“DILF?” said Malone.

While fans and Malone himself are eager for new music, it’s safe to assume the Dallas-bred rapper won’t have this record in heavy rotation. Malone admitted that it’s difficult to listen to his own music, as he isn’t fond of the way he sounds.

“I am so shy. I’m so shy listening to any of my songs, unless I’m sitting down and I’m like, ‘I’m going to listen to these records now,’” Malone said. “This interview, I probably won’t even watch unless I’m hammered because I cannot stand the sound of my own voice.”

Check out the full interview above.

Twelve Carat Toothache is out 6/3 via Republic Records. Pre-order it here.

Well, ladies and gentlemen … court is no longer in session. The Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard trial is over. The gavel has officially been struck.

The verdict fell largely in favor of Depp, who was technically awarded a total of $15 million (the total amount was lowered based on state lawsuit limits) after the jury voted “yes” to all three of his defamation claims against Heard, which primarily focused on her 2018 Washington Post op-ed alluding to being the victim of domestic violence.

The embattled star, who was not present in court during the final ruling, released a statement saying “I hope that my quest to have the truth be told will have helped others, men or women, who have found themselves in my situation.”

Meanwhile, Amber Heard, who was awarded a comparatively small $2 million for one of her three defamation claims, lamented that the verdict “sets back the idea that violence against women is to be taken seriously.”

The virality of this trial has certainly brought out a lot of toxic behavior online. The countless hot takes and tawdry video reenactments paint a concerning picture of our culture. Monica Lewinsky recently described the trial as a “celebrity circus” in a Vanity Fair op-ed, with the general public being the “guilty” party.

And yet—as with any widespread cultural phenomenon—there have also been positive, socially impactful conversations taking place across social media. Peering past the dizzying, disheartening effects of tabloid overload, our collective understanding of toxic relationships has adapted to be more nuanced and empathetic.

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For one thing, it could help empower men to speak out as victims of domestic abuse.

During the trial, a video was played in the courtroom where Heard said, “Tell people it was a fair fight and see what the jury and judge think. Tell the world, Johnny. Tell them, ‘I, Johnny Depp, a man, I’m a victim, too, of domestic violence, and it was a fair fight,’ and see if people believe or side with you.”

Regardless of who’s right or wrong in this case specifically, that audio recording alludes to the very real obstacles many male victims of domestic abuse face. According to Psychology Today, even asking for help often elicits “gender-stereotyped treatment” which leads to “denial, fear, shame, embarrassment, and stigmatization.” So many don’t report abuse for fear of humiliation.

When an arguably powerful man like Depp takes the stand and tells the world that yes, he is a domestic violence survivor, it can not only encourage other men to share their story, it can help broaden our perspective around what abuse actually looks like. It’s definitely not one-size-fits-all.

There’s also the very vital roles that mental health and substance abuse play in a relationship.

Early on, Amber Heard was diagnosed by clinical and forensic psychologist Dr. Shannon Curry with borderline personality disorder (BPD). As with any mental condition, those with BPD can experience extreme challenges in relationships without proper treatment and support. As Healthline states, those with BPD may be affectionate in one moment and suddenly switch emotions without notice. But again, that doesn’t make romantic relationships impossible, nor does it make those with BPD villains. The trial has made BPD an unsavory buzzword, but with more awareness hopefully comes more empathy.

Both Heard and Depp had their fair share of addictions. This can be a particularly dangerous catalyst for violence. Addiction Center reports that 80% of domestic violence crimes are related to drugs and the risk increases when both parties abuse a substance. I think most of us understand that domestic violence and substance abuse are closely linked on an intuitive level.

And then, there’s perhaps the most potentially toxic relationship of all, which the trial illuminated perfectly—that between social media and the public.

The internet is a valuable resource for spreading awareness, having conversations and peer educating ourselves. But without discernment, that resource quickly becomes a black hole threatening to suck away all our compassion into the void. If ever there was a doubt in our mind about just how brazen humanity can be at times, this trial has provided hearty proof. The internet isn’t going anywhere. It’s up to us to use it wisely.

Abuse of all kinds should be taken seriously. No amount of fame or fortune can withstand its damage long-term. The trial may be over, but because of it, we will probably be rethinking our views on abuse for a long time to come. And that, in the very least, is a win for humanity.

Rick Ross is quite the entertaining man to follow on social media, especially on Instagram. He often uses to platform to show his laid-back side and share what he hopes are motivating words with his fans. An example of the former came earlier this year when he decided that $10,000 was too much to pay to have ten oak trees cut down, so instead, he put on a cowboy hat and got to work. As for the latter, an example of that came more recently and it’s caused a bit of controversy among his followers. In a video he shared on his Instagram Story, Rick Ross said that begging for something in life is not worth it and he explained why.

“I already know how it go. That’s why I go hard, because I know how it go,” Ross says in the video. “You could be in a room full of the wealthiest mutherf*ckas in the world and tell them, ‘I have nothing, I’m hungry.’ And they’re going to look at you and say, ‘Well what the f*ck are you doing standing next to me begging? Why the f*ck aren’t you working?’”

Ross continued, “‘What the f*ck have you established? What have you done with yourself since the f*cking beginning of time? Where’s your brother, where’s your mother, where’s your father, where’s your f*ckin’ kinfolk? You don’t have any friends? You don’t have anything to establish yourself or worth something in anyone’s life?’ That’s what they’re going to tell you. So, if you think begging is going to get you something, you f*cked up.”

It appears that Ross is alluding to the harsh realities of life, at least in the way that he sees it, but some noted that it doesn’t and shouldn’t have to be this way.

You can watch Rick Ross’ video, reposted by DJ Akademiks, above.

It’s been a little while since we’ve heard from Desiigner. Unfortunately for him, the “Panda” rapper was recently stopped by cops in Los Angeles for allegedly driving without a license and for his tinted windows.

Footage obtained by TMZ shows Desiigner yelling at the cop who stopped him. The audio is rather unclear, but at one point, the rapper can be heard calling the cop a “racist b*tch.” He can also be heard saying, “I got money all f*cking day.”

When he catches someone filming him, Desiigner approaches them, saying, “You know who I am right? Desiigner. Panda.”

Desiigner was once signed to G.O.O.D Music and Def Jam before being released in 2019. During his time under the tutelage of Kanye West, his song, “Panda” reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Last year, Desiigner released a song called “Letter To Ye,” on which he reflected on his time as a G.O.O.D. Music artist.

“Madison Square Garden it first started, I’m up on the big screen and I’m 17,” he raps. “I’m livin’ that life, seem like a movie scene. Standing next to Kanye, next to Pusha-T, 2016. We was a big team, performance at Summer Jam, we was the dream team.”

While he seems to recall these times pleasantly, this may not have been the case in 2019, when he tweeted, “FREE ME FROM THIS LABLE.”

What is a really good burger, a next-level chicken sandwich, a bucket of fried chicken, or a fresh sandwich without a side order? Whether you’re all-in on mashed potatoes and gravy, craving a four-piece order of nuggets, or go for biscuits, onion rings, or a side of beans, everybody loves sides. They are that special something extra you can order that can single-handedly transform the experience of eating fast food from good to great.

Side orders are the stuff good food comas are made of!

In celebration of our favorite side pieces — er, dishes — we’re listing the best items from our favorite big fast food chains.

A couple of rules here:

1. The item must be from each chain’s designated “sides” menu. If they don’t have a sides menu we’ll defer to the value menu, if they don’t have a value menu, they don’t qualify for this ranking because they probably aren’t a fast food chain.
2. All French fries, curly fries, and dressed fries are disqualified. If we included fries in this ranking then our list would end up being mostly French fries. We have a French fry ranking for that.

Let’s eat!

Arby’s — Jalapeño Bites

Tasting Notes:

My go-to Arby’s side order has always been mozzarella sticks because I hold the belief that every fast food chain’s menu would instantly improve by just having a mozzarella stick option. But for this ranking, I knew I had to give the other options a fair shot and you know what? The Jalapeño Bites are better.

Both are very inconsistent though. Sometimes the cheese inside just isn’t as hot as you want it to be. But unlike the mozzarella sticks — which are nearly inedible when cold — the Jalapeño Bites still offer heat and a pleasing crispy crunch with every bite, and since they’re filled with cream cheese, it doesn’t matter if the cheese isn’t fresh out of the fryer.

I use to think cheddar was the best option for a jalapeño popper but Arby’s has changed my mind, the cream cheese filling imparts a sweet and tangy counterbalance to the heat from the jalapeño.

The Bottom Line:

Creamy, cheese, crispy, crunchy, and spicy! What more can you ask for?

Find your nearest Arby’s here.

Burger King — Onion Rings

Tasting Notes:

I first discovered that I love (that’s right, I’m using “love” to describe a food from Burger King!) Burger King’s Onion Rings when I received a few spare rings in my order of French fries. Unlike most things from Burger King, the Onion Rings are great — they’re salty, with a powerful onion flavor and a crispy mouthfeel.

Using the phrase “onion flavor” might come across as weird when talking about a food that is made entirely of a ring of onion but that’s the thing about BK’s onion rings… I’m not sure that they are onions. Don’t get me wrong, onion is definitely involved, but it’s some sort of weird onion paste, rather than an actual whole piece of onion, which explains how Burger King gets them to be so damn small.

That sounds… bad. I get it and we certainly have a lot of questions about these onion rings, but they taste pretty damn good. Not as good as an appetizer of onion rings from a restaurant, but good enough to make a very solid fast food side.

The Bottom Line:

I think Burger King’s Onion Rings are best enjoyed in moderation, so ask for an order of “Frings” and you’ll get a serving of half French fries and half onion rings — which is the best way to do it but didn’t meet our “no fries” policy for this ranking.

Find your nearest Burger King here.

Carl’s Jr. — Fried Zucchini

Tasting Notes:

Greasy and bite-sized, Carl’s Jr’s Fried Zucchini offers a unique grassy, slightly sweet, and salty snack that instantly adds a pleasing vegetal quality to a meal dominated by fried and fatty foods. My favorite way of enjoying Carl’s Jr’s Fried Zucchinis is by throwing an order into whatever burger or sandwich I’m ordering. Think a Western Bacon Cheeseburger, but less heavy and salty, and more refreshing.

It’s not often that a fried snack can be described as “refreshing,” but these fried zucchs provide that, while still offering that salty indulgent quality that you want out of a good side.

The Bottom Line:

It offers the best of two worlds. You get to enjoy a greasy salty snack while pretending you’re picking something healthier.

Find your nearest Carl’s Jr. here.

Chick-fil-A — Mac & Cheese

Tasting Notes:

Fast food mac and cheese, in general, doesn’t taste great — full stop. You might enjoy it from a few chains, but most establishments tend to overcook the noodles until they are mush and rarely rise above a well-prepared boxed from the grocery store. Chick-Fil-A’s Mac is a step in the right direction.

It still isn’t perfect — the noodles are never al dente like we want them to be — but this packs a lot of flavor and it’s baked in-store, ensuring a crispy crust of cheese on every order. The Mac & Cheese is made with a three cheese blend, combining parmesan, cheddar, and Romano cheeses, giving you pronounced nutty flavors with a bit of sharpness and the subtlest tinge of sweetness.

It’s pretty complex for fast food mac.

The Bottom Line:

Not perfect but probably the best mac and cheese in the entire fast food universe.

Find your nearest Chick-fil-A here.

Chipotle — Chips and Guac

Tasting Notes:

Chipotle’s Chips & Guac are like McDonald’s French Fries, you don’t walk into the fast casual restaurant without adding an order to your meal. So it’s inclusion here shouldn’t come as a surprise.

While I think this is Chipotle’s best side, I have a lot of thoughts about both the chips and guacamole. First let’s start with the chips: too much f*cking lime. I get it, “Lime and salt are a winning flavor combination!” but Chipotle adds too much of both, and it’s probably to hide the remarkable flavorlessness of the fried tortilla, which tastes more like oil than corn.

Then there is the guacamole — too much onion. I love the inclusion of Serrano peppers and cilantro, but this guacamole tastes like it has onion powder in it in addition to the chopped purple onion. Onions in guacamole aren’t a sin, but when you taste more onion than avocado, I kind of think it’s a problem.

The Bottom Line:

Chipotle’s best side order. If you don’t feel like shelling out a few extra bucks for guacamole, chips and salsa make a great alternate.

Find your nearest Chipotle here.

El Pollo Loco — Pinto Beans

Tasting Notes:

Fast food pinto beans are like mac and cheese, they absolutely pale in comparison to what you can make at home (pretty damn easily). But El Pollo Loco’s Pinto Beans are legit. They’re tender, fluffy, and well seasoned with earthy notes of oregano, cumin, and a spicy bite on the backend.

Take two spoonfuls, add it to a flour tortilla, shred some of your chicken on top, and apply a generous amount of avocado salsa and prepare for one of the most flavorful bites of food you’ll find at any fast food establishment.

The Bottom Line:

El Pollo Loco gets sides. They understand that the best way to enjoy them are to incorporate them fully into your meal rather than eating them on the side like most chains, and their pinto beans are their best and most flexible option.

Find your nearest El Pollo Loco here.

KFC — Mashed Potatoes & Gravy

Tasting Notes:

KFC needs to revamp its entire menu of sides. They are all pretty mid-tier additions to an already mid-tier chicken establishment. The Mac & Cheese is terrible, it’s radioactive in appearance, salty, and mushy. The Secret Recipe Fries will never taste as good as the potato wedges that had to die so they could live. The biscuit is fluffy but too dry. The corn is too sweet. The coleslaw is… coleslaw.

This leaves us with our only other option — Mashed Potatoes & Gravy.

They’re certainly edible, the potatoes are buttery (if a bit… I want to say, soapy?) and the gravy adds some rich savory notes and together make for a great dip for your chicken or simply your fried chicken skin. Still, we wouldn’t be mad if KFC took these back to the lab and reformulated the recipe.

The Bottom Line:

Your options here aren’t great,but the best choice is Mashed Potatoes & Gravy, hands down. No order of KFC is complete without it.

Find your nearest KFC here.

Jack in the Box — Two Tacos

Tasting Notes:

I know, I know, these are awful. We even gave them the last spot and the harshest words in our ranking of fast food taco meat — if you can call this substance “meat” to begin with. But there is something magical about adding an order of Two Tacos to your meal for 99¢. They’re greasy, crunchy, and full of flavor, while still being light enough on the stomach (if you can keep them down) to not make you feel like you’re eating too much, no matter how big your main order is.

Also, few things hit the spot when you’re drunk (or high as fuck) during those late-night weekends and need some food to help sober you up and get you ready for bed.

The Bottom Line:

If fries weren’t banned from this ranking we’d go with the curly fries, duh, but given the parameters were going with the second-best choice, these weird faux-meat tacos.

I know fans of the Egg Rolls will come for me in the comments but… I don’t like those egg rolls, what can I say?

Find your nearest Jack in the Box here.

McDonald’s — 4-Piece Chicken McNuggets

Tasting Notes:

McDonald’s has, I kid you not, two sides — French fries and apple slices — and we certainly aren’t going to choose apple slices. So we had to defer to the value menu for this one. It’s not that we think apple slices are a bad side, it’s just that McDonald’s apples are awful. The Granny Smith comes pre-sliced in a plastic bag, which might lead you to assume that they’d be brown from oxidation. They aren’t, and that actually worries us more than it inspires confidence. They have this weird unappetizing slimy film that surrounds the entire apple slice. It’s gross.

So we went with nuggets, and the four-piece order is the perfect way to enjoy them. Any order exceeding four and you start to zero in on the weird pasty consistency of this chicken. The nuggets are lightly battered in a crispy and airy batter that is perfect for dipping in any of McDonald’s six dipping sauces.

The Bottom Line:

Fries already come with your meal so if you’re looking for something extra there isn’t a better choice than this simple four-piece order of nuggets.

Find your nearest McDonald’s here.

Popeyes — Biscuits

Tasting Notes:

Popeyes biscuits are f*cking intense. They somehow manage to taste more like fried butter than they do baked bread, but in a way, this is the only biscuit that doesn’t want for anything. You don’t need gravy to make it delicious, and it doesn’t require any buttering on your part. It’s fast food’s best biscuit.

Popeyes has some other very good sides, namely the new homestyle mac and cheese, the cajun fries, and the red beans and rice, but none feel as essential as the biscuits.

The Bottom Line:

It has a crunchy exterior, and a buttery finish, and pairs wonderfully with honey.

Find your nearest Popeyes here.

Raising Cane’s — Texas Toast (BOB Style)

Tasting Notes:

Raising Cane’s has exactly three sides — French fries (disqualified), coleslaw (it’s coleslaw, it’s never gonna make a list other than one specifically about coleslaw), and Texas toast. The latter is by far the best. This bread is so versatile, that you can add an extra piece to your chicken finger order and create a makeshift sandwich that rivals the sandwich on the menu.

Just insert a single tender between the two pieces of bread, and smear (or dip) Cane’s sauce on it. If you want to enjoy this buttery and garlicky bread on its own ask for it ‘BOB style,’ the Texas Toast will come buttered on both sides offering a buttery crunch on both sides with a soft spongey center.

The Bottom Line:

Raising Cane’s most essential and versatile side. It’s second only to the chain’s chicken tenders.

Find your nearest Raising Cane’s here.

Sonic — Pickle Fries

Tasting Notes:

Despite my love for mozzarella sticks, you won’t find a single order on here, and that’s because fast food mozzarella sticks kind of suck. Sonics are by far the best, but unfortunately for fans of mozzarella, Sonic has an even better side, the briny and flavor-packed Pickle Fries. A dill pickle is cut into fry-shaped spears, battered and fried, offering a crispy and flavorful side order that actually manages to surpass an order of fries.

This is Sonic’s essential side, they’re vegetal, tangy, and sour, with an onion, garlic, and black pepper flavor that pairs well with Sonic’s ranch dressing.

The Bottom Line:

More essential than the fries. No Sonic order is complete without Pickle Fries.

Find your nearest Sonic here.

Taco Bell — Cinnamon Twists

Tasting Notes:

Taco Bell doesn’t have a great sides menu. It’s so sad that they actually include each iteration of their sauce packets on the menu. That’s like putting ketchup packets on a sides menu at McDonald’s. So I’m just going to go ahead and pick my Taco Bell guilty pleasure — Cinnamon Twists.

I’ve loved these things since I was a kid and I fully admit the choice to include them here is completely governed by nostalgia. Do I actually think Cinnamon Twists make for a better addition to your meal than an order of Cheesy Fiesta Potatoes? Maaaaaaaaybe, it depends on what you’re ordering, I guess.

I’m not even sure what these things are, they’re like fried air. They taste like cinnamon and sugar, which is what they’re seasoned with. I’ve had a batch that was poorly seasoned before and they tasted like nothing, just texture. But I love them, and I’ll take them over those disgusting Cinnabon Delights, an order of flavorless black beans, and those awful nacho cheese-topped potato wedges.

The Bottom Line:

I’m not happy about this choice. Get better sides, Taco Bell!

Find your nearest Taco Bell here.

Wendy’s — Chili

Tasting Notes:

This was a hard choice. Wendy’s offers a variety of baked potatoes (from nicely dressed to fully loaded) and I think that’s a great novelty for a fast food restaurant. Unfortunately, those baked potatoes are definitely microwaved, resulting in a weird leathery skin that fails to capture what makes a good baked potato so enjoyable.

So I’m going with the chili. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not that the quality of Wendy’s chili is much higher than the microwaved potato, they make it using leftover ground beef chunks from their burger patties, but at least Wendy’s burgers are delicious. The meat is fresh, never frozen, and while you aren’t getting the best chili you’ll ever eat, for fast food it’s pretty damn good.

It has a rich savory flavor with a pronounced spicy bite to the broth joining flavors of onion and garlic powder. In the chili itself, you have bits of onion, green peppers, kidney beans, and celery. For a bit more texture (the broth is a bit watery) ask for some crackles and crumble them in.

The Bottom Line:

It’s not homemade chili, but it’s you’re getting chili from a drive-thru and it’s better than you’d expect. If Wendy’s put just a little bit more effort into this chili they’d really have something. As is, it’s very good and worth ordering at least once for the novelty alone.

Find your nearest Wendy’s here.

Toxic fandom, particularly in the form of racist comments, has become a sad reality for major entertainment franchises, including “Star Wars.” This isn’t always the case. Billy Dee Williams and Donald Glover—who both play Lando Calrissian—are fairly universally adored. But it still happens and when it does it casts a negative light on a universe George Lucas created nearly 50 years ago that has brought joy into the lives of millions of people from all corners of life. For example, Ahmed Best (the actor who played Jar Jar Binks) became so dispirited by racist backlash that he contemplated taking his own life.

Moses Ingram, who plays Inquisitor Reva Sevander in the new “Obi-Wan Kenobi” series on Disney+, is the latest actor of color to be on the receiving end of online vitriol. Again, she’s not the first. Ingram’s experience is very similar to that of John Boyega and Kelly Marie Tran. This was so expected that Ingram told the Independent she was preemptively warned to “brace herself” by Lucasfilm.

Some comments were directed at Ingram’s acting ability. Considering she earned an Emmy nomination for her work on the critically acclaimed Netflix miniseries “The Queen’s Gambit,” those insults don’t seem to hold much merit. Plus, even the greatest actor can only do so much with a poorly written character. Criticism is a part of being an actor on the public stage. But the comments Ingram faced had nothing to do with creative differences and instead included threats of violence and racist comments.

Still, Ingram was ready with her own Jedi-worthy response.

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Ingram posted a series of Instagram stories following the show’s premiere, at first recognizing the fact that, well, haters gonna hate. “There’s nothing anybody can do about this,” she said with a shrug and a smile. Where she admitted that “what bothers me is that there’s this feeling that I should shut up and take it,” she chooses to instead focus on the many, many fans who do support her.

Moses Ingram posted an instagram story about the racist comments she’s been receiving from Star Wars fans pic.twitter.com/NUe7aB0UQo

— sleemo (@sleemo) May 31, 2022

And to the fans that do react poorly, Ingram has a simple message.

“Y’all weird.”

It’s a funny quip and really a great way to handle an otherwise disheartening situation. Sometimes humor is better than a lightsaber.

Ingram certainly wasn’t alone in standing up for herself. Obi-Wan himself came to fight against the dark side.

Actor Ewan McGregor also posted a video, which was shared by the official “Star Wars” Twitter account. In it, McGregor praises Ingram, calling her a “brilliant actor and amazing in the series,” adding that it “sickened” him to hear what had been happening.

A personal message from Ewan McGregor. pic.twitter.com/rJSDmj663K

— Star Wars (@starwars) June 1, 2022

He also clapped back a bit, kindly reminding everyone that as “the leading actor in the series” and as “the executive producer on the series” he stood with Ingram, arguing that those who send bullying messages are “no Star Wars fans.”

Yes, the ever-expanding “Star Wars” universe is not without hate. But perhaps the best approach is to do as Ingram has done—not taking on others’ shortcomings of character and instead placing them where they belong … in a galaxy far, far away.

Ahead of her upcoming third album, Sometimes, Forever, singer and instrumentalist Soccer Mommy spoke with Rolling Stone about her journey as an artist. During her interview, she offered advice to other independent artists, broke down her creative process, and discussed her relationship with the internet and fame.

Introverted by nature, Soccer Mommy revealed that she doesn’t care to use social media.

“I’m not on it,” she said. “Any of it. I’ll log on Instagram every once in a while to check my messages and respond to friends. That’s it. It’s honestly great. I just replaced it with solitaire and word games.”

Though having built a considerable fanbase over the years, Soccer Mommy also admitted she has qualms with her fame. She never imagined she’d become famous and admits that having become more prominent as an artist has made her more reserved.

“I do not enjoy [fame],” she said.” But I also never thought that I would particularly enjoy it, either. I never was like, ‘When I’m famous … ’ I’m just not very comfortable with strangers. I’m a Gemini. I’ve become more reclusive, for sure, but I’m fine with it. I can still go out to a show in Nashville. I don’t think I’m some celebrity that can’t go out.”

Sometimes, Forever is out 6/24 via Loma Vista. Pre-save it here.

This fall, the Smashing Pumpkins will tour arenas with Jane’s Addiction, and I will be there along with tens of thousands of other 44-year-olds.

For people of my vintage, there are few alt-rock records that loom larger over our adolescent memories than 1993’s Siamese Dream and 1995’s Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness. The Smashing Pumpkins made good music outside of those albums, but those two releases in particular made it possible for this band to plot an arena tour nearly 30 years after their artistic and commercial peaks.

The head Pumpkin, Billy Corgan, has had his ups and downs over the years. Even when he was selling millions of albums, he felt excluded from the rock star cool club. “I wish from Day 1, people would have looked at me and said, ‘You’re all right, come on, join the team,’ but it’s never been that way with me,” he said after the release of Siamese Dream. “I don’t know why. Maybe I’m a dick, maybe it shows. I don’t know.”

Decades later, when he made the questionable decision to go on Alex Jones, there was less ambiguity around the “maybe I’m a dick” question. But for those of us who love him, Billy’s dickishness is part of the equation, a delectable heel turn by a born troll. The fact that he’s also one of the greatest and most prolific rock songwriters of his generation is also part of the deal; at his best, few of his peers in the ’90s were as good at combining melody with gut-level riffage.

Today is truly the greatest day to count down the 50 greatest Smashing Pumpkins songs.

50. “Pastichio Medley” (1996)

Confession: I don’t think I’ve ever listened to all 23 minutes of this B-side from beginning to end. I’m not sure it’s actually meant to be heard, as opposed to witnessed. If you think of it as a performance art bit — which I think it absolutely is — it’s a resounding success. Because I’ve thought about the idea of this song for many hours of my life. I see you, Billy Corgan.

There was no question in my mind that this survey of the Pumpkins had to begin here, as “Pastichio Medley” explains who this band is more accurately than any of their many hits. Let’s be clear right away about what I mean by “band” — I’m really talking about Billy Corgan. No disrespect to James Iha, D’arcy, or especially Jimmy Chamberlin, the second most important Pumpkin. (I’m not about to run down all the hired guns who have passed through Casa de Smashing.) Corgan is the focal point, in the best and worst possible senses. A true Midwestern rock demigod, he has fascinated me to no end for most of my life. I’ve analyzed him endlessly in columns, books, and podcasts. Why? Because I recognize in him my own best and worst selves. I think all Smashing Pumpkins fans do, particularly the ones who grew up in down-market Middle American towns and never managed to fit in once they moved to the big city. Billy shows all of us how we can transcend that prison of perpetual insecurity, and also become consumed by it to the point of self-destruction. Like the man himself once sang, “The killer in me is the the killer in you.”

Back to “Pastichio Medley.” It’s the final track on the “Zero” CD single. This EP includes five other B-sides, several of which are also on this list. I originally bought it as a stand-alone release when it came out during the spring of my senior year of high school. But most people likely heard it as part of The Aeroplane Flies High, the five-disc box set that compiled all of the Pumpkins’ Mellon Collie era singles, which came out later that fall. There are 28 non-album tracks in all in this set, which equals the mammoth size of the Mellon Collie mothership. Even accounting for the smattering of covers of songs like The Cure’s “A Night Like This” and The Cars’ “You’re All I’ve Got Tonight” (also heard on the immortal Batman Forever soundtrack!), that’s an incredible amount of output from one band over the course of a few years. And it wasn’t just about quantity, either — if Billy had saved some of these songs rather than release them en masse, he could’ve extended the Pumpkins’ golden years of quality radio hits several more years.

And then there’s “Pastichio Medley,” which manages to pack about as many songs as Mellon Collie and The Aeroplane Flies High and The Aeroplane Flies High COMBINED into a single song. A spliced-together litany of more than 50 guitar riffs and jams recorded in the space between Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie, it unfolds like side two of Abbey Road if Paul McCartney had grown up listening to Bauhaus and Judas Priest. Even here, the quality control is shockingly high — I can’t tell exactly which clips are “Hell Bent for Hell” or “The Streets Are Hot Tonite” or “Me Rock You Snow” or “Make It Fungus,” but I know that most of the excerpts sound like potential barn burners.

Not that the point of “Pastichio Medley” is primarily musical. It is, first and foremost, a demonstration of extreme skill, an act of showboating, a flex. The point is that Billy Corgan had an ass-load of magnetic alt-rock hooks at his disposal in the mid-’90s, and he wanted the world — and the competition — to know it. “As long as I can remember, since I was a little kid, I wanted to be famous,” he once said. “It was the mythological means of escape. My myth was rock-god-dom. I saw that as a means to become one who has no pain.”

In the small space between the dissolution of Nirvana and the rise of rap-rock, he absolutely ruled the world. And rulers of the world are entitled to waste their riches in the form of a 23-minute medley of unused outtakes. Plenty more where this came from, was the message. “Pastichio Medley” is evidence of Billy Corgan’s genius, and it’s also an example of his arrogance. It’s self-indulgent and ridiculous, and also awe-inspiring and, well, incredibly rawk. And that is the territory in which the Smashing Pumpkins live and breathe.

49. “Daphne Descends” (1998)

Billy Corgan was such a genius that, years in advance, he could foresee his own artistic and commercial decline, sort of. “You can only be this high-powered mojo rock band for so long,” Corgan told Spin in 1996. “And then you just can’t look people in the eye. So toward that end, we’ve projected our own demise. We’re thinking, three years from now, are we going to want to do the same thing? No way. We couldn’t do it with conviction, so why bother?”

During the album cycle for Mellon Collie, Corgan repeated many times this same grandiose claim about the double album being his farewell to so-called “high-powered mojo rock.” In his mind, however, I don’t think he believed that this would lead to his own downfall. Billy had another flex in mind — he was going to push the Pumpkins past rock and toward electro-pop and symphonic folk, and put himself in the company of other masters of self-reinvention like Bowie and Lou Reed and U2.

As predicted, Smashing Pumpkins emerged three years after Mellon Collie with a much different record, 1998’s Adore. Artistically, it was a step down from the standard of the previous two records, though Adore is still better than its reputation. The ballads seriously drag, but the electro-pop numbers rip, as we’ll see as this list unfolds. “Daphne Descends” is the rare Adore track that mixes the ballad and electro-pop sides successfully.

48. “Cash Car Star” (2000)

Pumpkins-ologists will inevitably chart the beginning of the band’s decline slightly before Adore, with the firing of drummer Jimmy Chamberlin in 1996. The persistent narrative about Corgan playing most of the guitar and bass parts on the records ensured that Jimmy was the only other member not viewed as expendable, given the prominence of his energetic and bruisingly physical drum rolls, which matched the Wagnerian power of Billy’s guitar and vocals.

In the wake of Adore barely going platinum — after Mellon Collie moved 10 million units, making it one of the best-selling double albums of all time — Chamberlin was swiftly welcomed back into the fold. The Pumpkins then desperately tried to reboot as a high-powered mojo rock band on two sprawling albums, the second of which, Machina II/The Friends And Enemies Of Modern Music, was given away for free and included this punchy showcase for Jimmy Chamberlin playing extremely Jimmy Chamberlin drums.

47. “Stand Inside Your Love” (2000)

The other LP, of course, was the proper release Machina/The Machines Of God. Whereas the bulk of Adore uses the wistful “1979” as a starting point, “Stand Inside Your Love” evokes a Frankenstein monster of the Pumpkins’ guitar-dominated hits — the melodic crunch of “Today,” the soaring chorus of “Tonight, Tonight,” the romantic alienation of “Disarm.” It’s a good tune, but it mostly makes me think about how much the rock world changed from the peak of the Pumpkins to the dawn of the new century, when Limp Bizkit and then Linkin Park ruled rock radio and made alternative music a distant memory. In just five short years, the Pumpkins became classic rock, and “Stand Inside Your Love” (as nice as it is) had all of the contemporary relevance of a late-period Grand Funk Railroad single. It was that quick, in the same-sized gap between the two most recent Kendrick Lamar albums. The Pumpkins broke up for the first time just 10 months later.

46. “Panopticon” (2012)

Tune into the local rock radio station in your town — assuming there is one — and you’ll hear that the Smashing Pumpkins are still treated as a classic rock band. Those warhorses released between 1993 and ’95, along with the greatest hits of the Chili Peppers and Green Day, represent the most durable oldies to get regular spins between the modern-day sludge turned out by Twenty One Pilots and Five Finger Death Punch. This has the effect of keeping the Pumpkins’ music alive, but in a weird, cryogenically frozen state. They remain present, but not of the present.

For a committed megalomaniac like Billy Corgan, this state of affairs obviously rankles. In a way, he’s spent the past quarter-century trying to live up to the boasts he made on the Mellon Collie press cycle, the ones about fearlessly pushing his music (and the culture) forward. But even as he’s pushed his music — he’s supposedly, at the moment, hard at work on a new triple-album rock opera (!) — the culture hasn’t been moved to follow.

To what degree he’s made peace with this is hard to say. But it’s clear that the aughts were terrible for him. I saw his post-Pumpkins sorta-supergroup Zwan play a half-empty gym at a college outside of Green Bay, Wis. in 2003 and felt intense secondhand embarrassment. (Though I do remember Zwan’s only album, Many Star Of The Sea, being pretty good. Unfortunately, I lost the CD and it’s not available on streaming platforms.) Then, a few years after releasing the single most unlistenable Smashing Pumpkins album ever, Zeitgeist, he gave a bitter interview to Rolling Stone in 2010 in which he ripped his long-gone bandmates Chamberlin and Iha and complained about how poorly the industry had treated him.

“If I had gotten the accolades that I deserved, if I wasn’t treated like some sort of pariah by my own musical country, if I wasn’t sort of caught between pop land and alternative land, if I had a country, then maybe I would have a greater confidence in those systems supporting me, but they haven’t,” he lamented. “So at some point, I have to go in business for myself.”

After that, something incredible happened: Corgan made the best Smashing Pumpkins music of the 21st century. Culled from a suitably ambitious 44-song online project dubbed Teargarden By Kaleidyscope, 2012’s Oceania found him once again operating in songwriting factory mode, and his penchant for over-imbibing musically once again fueled his talent for writing pummeling pop-metal ear candy. With “Panopticon,” it was as if he snuck one of those riffs from the pile he threw away in “Pastichio Medley” and fashioned another should-be hit single.

45. “One Diamond, One Heart” (2012)

Another Oceania deep cut. This time it’s Billy nodding to the Adore era, only now he doesn’t have that “wearing a black cowboy hat on Charlie Rose“-level of bravado. “One Diamond, One Heart” is him operating in pure pop tunesmith mode, which is the least appreciated of all the Billy Corgan modes. In 2020, he did a joint Rolling Stone interview with Kevin Parker of Tame Impala, presumably because Parker wanted to fanboy about the guitar tones on Siamese Dream. (“Whenever I listen to Siamese Dream, it’s like a big hug,” Parker gushes at one point. On this point, we agree.) But Corgan would probably be Kevin Parker if he had been born about 20 years later. Crafting pretty synth-pop anthems that a billion people blast on their laptops is a skill perched firmly within his wheelhouse.

44. “The Boy” (1996)

In that 2010 Rolling Stone interview, Corgan says his band’s classic lineup was composed of “two drug addicts and one guy who hated me, and I hated him.” The “one guy who hated me, and I hated him” was Iha, the mostly silent rhythm guitarist who looks fantastic in a dress in the “Today” video. Iha’s response was characteristically charitable, if also cryptic: “In our band there were always four divergent opinions and perspectives. I choose to remember the good times.”

For the record, Corgan and Iha later made up, and Iha is now currently back to being the mostly silent rhythm guitarist in Smashing Pumpkins. His songwriting contributions over the years are minimal but not unimportant — his co-writes on two of Siamese Dream‘s dreamiest tracks, “Soma” and “Mayonnaise,” will get their shout-outs later on this list. For now, I want to highlight this “1979” B-side, a minor-key strummer that might have impressed Sonic Youth if Sonic Youth ever bothered to listen to Smashing Pumpkins.

43. “Siva” (1991)

So much of the early coverage of this band revolved around the high number of indie artists that despised them. In Chicago, they were resented in the late ’80s and early ’90s, in part, due to their close relationship with the important local club The Metro, who put the Pumpkins on so many high-profile bills that it became a source of contention among the likes of area scenesters like Steve Albini. “Smashing Pumpkins are REO Speedwagon,” he later sniffed. “Stylistically appropriate for the current college party scene, but ultimately insignificant.”

Now, the fact that I’m here now writing way too many words about the Pumpkins disproves Albini. (Then again, I once also wrote a couple thousand words about REO Speedwagon’s Hi Infidelity.) But all you have to do is look at a band photo circa their 1991 album Gish to see how unfashionable they were. It’s all paisley shirts and mullets and blank, pouty looks. They really do look like the “nature kids” that Stephen Malkmus describes in Pavement’s infamous diss song “Range Life.” (Or, as Husker Du’s Bob Mould once said of the Pumpkins, like “the grunge Monkees.”)

But maybe what really bothered these people is how metal the Pumpkins were early on. This song from Gish sounds like a bubblegum redux of Black Sabbath’s Vol. 4, which is exactly the zone that Corgan aimed for. “I was never into punk rock,” he told Rolling Stone around this time. “I liked Blondie, but all that other New York stuff like Talking Heads never rang true for me. I grew up on ’70s radio. Cheap Trick were the ultimate band. I think the Pumpkins just picked up from where that left off.”

42. “Crush” (1991)

If you love this band, their un-punk, “picking up from where Cheap Trick left off” quality is what’s so great about them. But on Gish, they also veered deep into vibe-y psych rock, doubling down on their dorky “stoned suburban kids” image. (As a former stoned suburban kid myself, I use “dorky” in this context with the utmost respect and affection.) Like on this song, where they sound like the Brian Jonestown Massacre re-enacting the non-concert scenes from The Song Remains The Same.

41. “Ugly” (1996)

I could go on about how Billy represents so much about the Midwestern inferiority complex, but I already wrote a book chapter about it. Nevertheless, he has struggled with his outsider status over the years in very public ways. The most infamous example has to come from Jonathan Gold’s iconic Soundgarden profile from Spin in 1994, which includes the following scene between Corgan and Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil backstage at Lollapolooza.

(I wish I could quote all of it, but for the sake of time, here’s a partial excerpt):

A minute later, Corgan, still probing, finally finds the key to Thayil’s heart: “I hate how in magazine pictures, they always stick me somewhere in the back.”

Thayil explodes: “What do you mean? You write all the songs, and you do all the interviews. You play the instruments on the album. You control the band to the extent that most people think of Smashing Pumpkins as the Billy Corgan Experience, and all you care about is some photography?”

“But I hate it,” Corgan says, “it means they don’t think I’m the cute one.”

Remember that Kim Thayil is a burly mountain man who was once in a band with Chris Cornell. A less sympathetic audience for not being “the cute one” in a band is impossible to find.

On the bright side, Corgan was always able to harness his insecurity over his looks in his songs, like this smoldering B-side to “1979.”

40. “Daydream” (1991)

What Gold doesn’t note in his Spin article — because it wasn’t as obvious in the mid-’90s as it is now — is that Corgan has long relished playing the heel, a role that seems both forced upon him by all his early skeptics and a product of his naturally combative personality. He said something that was bound to annoy Kim Thayil, and it worked. (Which does not discount the idea that Billy also genuinely resented not being considered cute by magazine photographers.) Corgan’s innate heel-ness didn’t become readily apparent until he started running his own wrestling league in the 2010s, which is sort of like Liam Gallagher deciding in middle age to open a cocaine factory. It was a comical and yet strangely logical progression for him.

Inside the Pumpkins, however, Billy is not the heel. Because he’s firmly installed as the band’s protagonist, the antagonist role in the ’90s fell to the blonde-haired and dead-eyed bass player, D’arcy. According to band lore, they met in 1987 outside of a Chicago club and immediately got into an argument. And that argument lasted for the next 30 years. In 2018, on the eve of a reunion tour, she leaked text messages that Billy had sent her, in which he hinted (probably correctly) that D’arcy (who was retired from music and living in rural Michigan) wouldn’t be able to do more than a brief cameo in which she sang this song from Gish.

This, among other offenses, annoyed her, and she was eventually 86’ed from the tour. Which is a shame, because I would’ve liked to hear “Daydream.”

39. “God” (1996)

Here’s something that seems like an example of Billy Corgan trolling us but (I think) is actually a sincere project: The mammoth “spiritual memoir” he’s presumably still writing, and was reported to be more than 1,000 pages long back in 2016. (Which means it’s probably 3,000 pages by now.) A treatise on Corgan’s concept of “mind-body-soul integration,” the book is supposedly about how “most of what I have experienced in my life isn’t real,” which sounds amazing. Though I suspect that Billy’s spiritual perspective is better summed up by this song: “God know I’m restless and weak and full of piss and vinegar.”

38. “Hello Kitty Kat” (1994)

A fine example of the Pumpkins building a wall of guitars and laying a sparkling guitar line on top of it, a trick that Corgan learned from listening to ’70s six-string technicians like Queen’s Brian May and Boston’s Tom Scholz, who paved the way for Billy to become an overdub fiend two decades later. Fun fact: I started listening to Boston seriously as a teenager because a snarky rock critic disparagingly compared Siamese Dream to “More Than A Feeling.” I took the putdown as a compliment, because it absolutely deserved to be taken that way.

37. “Frail And Bedazzled” (1994)

Given that I’ve already listed six B-sides out of the first 14 songs on this list — including the last three songs in a row — I must acknowledge two obvious truths: 1) I am biased in favor of B-sides; 2) The Smashing Pumpkins are the best B-sides band of the ’90s. This is hard for me to admit as a committed fan of Radiohead and Oasis, the two other strongest contenders. But as we’ve established, the Pumpkins have the numbers on their side. They also have Jimmy Chamberlin, who beats this song frail with bedazzling speed and dexterity.

36. “Tristessa” (1991)

The first Smashing Pumpkins single, which goes to show that Corgan had the formula down from the start of their career — the wall of sound cut with a sparkling guitar, Jimmy Chamberlin’s jazzy drum rolls, the poppy chorus, Billy’s insistent whine. Later re-recorded for Gish, the original single predates Nevermind, and sounds more like a rougher version of Queensryche than grunge. This, too, sounds like a putdown but is actually a compliment.

Twenty years after this song was released, Corgan claimed, “I can’t think of any people outside of Weird Al Yankovic who have both embraced and pissed on rock more than I have. Obviously there’s a level of reverence, but there’s also a level of intelligence to even know what to piss on. ‘Cause I’m not pissing on Rainbow. I’m not pissing on Deep Purple. But I’ll piss on fuckin’ Radiohead, because of all this pomposity. This value system that says Jonny Greenwood is more valuable than Ritchie Blackmore. Not in the world I grew up in, buddy. Not in the world I grew up in.” Radiohead wasn’t famous yet when this song dropped, but Billy was definitely already worshipping Ritchie Blackmore.

35. “Snail” (1991)

Because of what came after, Gish is typically regarded as a dry run for the heights of Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie. I don’t think it deserves to be overshadowed in that way — if the Pumpkins had dissolved after their debut, Gish would be looked at as an all-time classic one-off — but it is true that this song sounds like a rough draft for future tracks like “Mayonnaise” and especially “Muzzle,” both of which we’ll revisit later on.

Respect must also be paid to Butch Vig, who made this album before working on Nevermind, and then returned to the Pumpkins fold to make Siamese Dream. A product of the Midwest indie rock scene, Vig proved to be the ultimate wizard of magically transforming uncommercial rock bands stuck playing bars into arena-rock behemoths. In that respect, more than any other band, the Smashing Pumpkins were his ultimate canvas.

34. “XYU” (1995)

Our first Mellon Collie track! As you would expect, there will be many more from here on out. Looking ahead, I’ve chosen more songs from the blue “night” disc than the pink “day” disc, which I suppose reflects my preference for the ragers on Mellon Collie as opposed to the ballads. The blue disc is generally harder rocking, along with being proggier, less hits-oriented, and generally weirder. (In that way Mellon Collie echoes the similarly color-themed Use Your Illusion albums from four years prior.) As for this song, I guess it also means that I like songs where Corgan slips belligerently into a sing-song rendition of “Mary Had A Little Lamb” and changes the lyrics to show how “Mary’s got some deep shit.”

33. “Thirty-Three” (1995)

A song I considered for the list and left off was the cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide,” from Pisces Iscariot. I ultimately excluded it because it is a cover, even though it’s a great and (I would argue) important cover. In the early ’90s, Fleetwood Mac had not yet been rehabilitated as an eternally hip legacy act, so putting a Stevie Nicks ballad on your alt-rock record was another example of Billy embracing and pissing on rock history. But instead of “Landslide,” I went with the softest single from Mellon Collie, which has a slightly wasted, spacey, and wistful vibe that’s reminiscent of the Mac’s own double-album opus, Tusk. Though instead of evoking the coke-fueled exhaustion of Los Angeles in the late ’70s, Corgan captures the simple joy of settling down as a newly minted rock star in mid-’90s Chicago: “I’ll make the effort, love can last forever.” That the love didn’t last forever in this case only makes the song prettier and more Mac-like.

32. “Quiet” (1993)

Siamese Dream finally enters the picture. I’ll hold off on the inevitable Siamese Dream vs. Mellon Collie conversation for now and instead revel in the stoner-rock riff that anchors this album’s second track, which gets my vote for the most underrated song on Siamese Dream. I particularly love the part that kicks in around the two-minute mark where Jimmy does one of his atomic drum rolls and the music zooms into Billy’s wicked Eddie Van Halen-style guitar solo. Speaking of Eddie Van Halen …

31. “Pug” (1998)

“I recently interviewed Eddie Van Halen for Guitar World,” Corgan told Rolling Stone in 1996. “And I told him that I liked the fact that his music has never been elitist. Even though they were fucking cool and looked good and everybody wanted to be them, there was still that element of, hey, everybody can join the party.” He contrasted that attitude with Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth, who Corgan claimed “once said some horrible thing about having to play to the jock in Iowa”

“I always think about that quote,” he said, “because that jock in Iowa needs someone like Kim Gordon to say there’s a better world out there, that just because you’ve grown up with this mentality doesn’t mean you have to be this mentality.” The Smashing Pumpkins lost a lot of the jock audience they earned with Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie in the wake of Adore, though I wonder if things might have turned out differently if they had put out this evil goth stomper as a single. It’s the one song on Adore that could’ve been remixed for MTV to include a verse from Jonathan Davis spitting out animal noises over Billy’s spooky-guy croon.

30. “Ava Adore” (1998)

This was the actual first single from Adore, and in the video we see the band in full-on decadent Halloween mode, with Corgan reaching the peak of his undead Nosferatu phase. While the actual song is a muscular synth-rock banger that adds considerable oomph to the “1979” template, the iconography here was overblown and out-of-touch in the context of all the Adidas-wearing rap-rock mooks storming the MTV castle in the summer of 1998. By the time the Pumpkins released the second and final single from Adore that fall — on my 21st birthday, no less! — Billy had de-glammed considerably, adopting his black cowboy hat look in the video for “Perfect.” But in the long run, the vampiric frock of the “Ava Adore” clip has proven to be an enduring fit for Billy, who’s been wearing similar get-ups on stage for years.

29. “Bury Me”

The best bass line in the Pumpkins canon, and I doubt D’arcy played it. Which is a shame, because I’d like to give her credit for how hard this song grooves. But in reality, this is likely just Billy and Jimmy going into one of their musical mind-melds. On this song they’re like the White Stripes as produced by Roy Thomas Baker.

28. “Mouths Of Babes” (1996)

Yet another classic B-side from the “Zero” CD single, which in the annals of ’90s alt-rock history has only two rivals when it comes to CD singles: 1) Oasis’ “Cigarettes And Alcohol,” which includes the incredible B-sides “Listen Up,” “Fadeaway,” and the tripped-out cover of The Beatles’ “I Am The Walrus”; 2) Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy,” which has the radio remix of the title song that stomps the album cut, “Footsteps,” and, of course, “Yellow Ledbetter.” Pearl Jam might have the edge because “Yellow Ledbetter” is the best B-side by anybody from this era, but Smashing Pumpkins really piled on the neo-glam stompers on “Zero,” of which “Mouths Of Babes” is one of the very best.

27. “Geek U.S.A.” (1993)

All right, let’s begin the Siamese Dream vs. Mellon Collie debate. I vote Siamese Dream. It’s very close, because I love double albums, and Mellon Collie is one of the six or seven best double LPs ever. And Mellon Collie, as we’ve already established, has an exceptionally high batting average for a record with 28 songs. Mellon Collie is also the peak of the Pumpkins’ mountain in terms of their popularity, their productivity, and their prominence in music culture. You could even argue that no rock band since can touch them in those specific areas.

And yet … I must go with Siamese Dream. It’s their most perfect album, and one of the most perfect guitar rock albums of the decade. The guitar tones are ideal. The drum sound is ideal. It has their very best songs, as we’ll see. Ten of the first 11 tracks from that record — two of which we’ve already mentioned — are on this list. And people will be mad about the one from that opening 11 that I didn’t include. Siamese Dream is just that stacked.

Maybe the best way to judge each album is by the weaker numbers. “Geek U.S.A.” is in the lower half of Siamese Dream‘s power rankings — like I said, I put eight songs from that album ahead of it, and it still absolutely rips. The part at the end where it slows down to molten lava-tempo is a true “oh shit!” moment on Siamese Dream. But the album is so great that the “oh shit!” moments only get more intense from here.

26. “Jellybelly” (1996)

You know what comes close to opening as well as Siamese Dream? The pink disc of Mellon Collie. Pure fire on the first six songs, including this one, which holds its own in a field that also includes “Tonight, Tonight,” “Zero” and “Bullet With Butterfly Wings.” Another example of Billy Corgan tossing away potential hits in this era like he was hurling $100 bills at a strip club.

INTERMISSION

Please enjoy this awkward band interview from a recent episode of The Late Late Show With James Corden.

25. “Thru The Eyes Of Ruby” (1995)

I shared the clip above because 1) I’m genuinely curious if James Corden has ever listened to an entire Smashing Pumpkins song and 2) I think it illustrates an essential truth of this band, which is that the members are not friends. Chamberlin’s suggestion that he and Billy were ever cozy while bunking on the road comes across as forced talk-show patter, because that’s exactly what it is. Iha, meanwhile, looks like a guy who’s been forced to show up at a work function during off-the-clock hours.

Corgan has admitted that this dynamic troubled him during the Siamese Dream sessions, when he gave his bandmates a year and a half to prepare and they failed to step up. “I’m surrounded by these people who I care about very much yet they continue to keep failing me,” he said at the time. Nearly 25 years later, however, he seemed to have accepted it, telling The Ringer, “I think one of the great mistakes I made was asking my band to be my family when my family wasn’t my family. And that put a pressure on them that just wasn’t realistic.”

What matters is the musical chemistry that occurs when they plug in and blast away together in a room, which is one of the strengths of the relatively collaborative Mellon Collie. Even on a prog epic like this song, there’s a brutal efficiency to the Pumpkins that functions about as well as any dysfunctional small business.

24. “Bodies” (1995)

Billy is no punk fan, so it’s possible that he didn’t know that this song shares a title with the most venomous track from the Sex Pistols’ iconic 1977 debut, Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols. The heaviest number from Mellon Collie‘s blue disc, “Bodies” also has a sentiment at its core worthy of Johnny Rotten: “Love is suicide.” Clearly, Billy had not yet embraced the “mind-body-soul integration” concept in the mid-’90s.

23. “Where Boys Fear To Tread” (1995)

This song comes before “Bodies” at the start of the blue disc on Mellon Collie, but it comes after on this list because of that stuttering guitar lick that stumbles around ominously for 30 seconds before coalescing into one of Corgan’s finest doom-metal riffs. It’s like the best bits of “Pastichio Medley” were melted down and poured like liquid iron across the chassis of this surly number. With Jimmy providing a subtle swing, “Where Boys Fear To Tread” also has a glam-rock bounce. If Tony Iommi had quit Black Sabbath to join Sweet, it would sound like this song.

22. “Zero”

The thing about listening to Mellon Collie so much as I wrote this list is that it reminded me how relatively few bands actually write riffs anymore. In the annals of great riff-makers, Corgan doesn’t really get his due. But at his peak, he really was a bottomless well of kinetic guitar parts that could leap out of songs and immediately grab your attention. (And — not to belabor this point — he threw away riffs willy-nilly on songs that were never going to reach a lot of ears, even though they potentially could have.)

“Zero” is yet another supersonic riff machine from Mellon Collie. Though the song’s greatest legacy is providing Corgan with his first iconic rock-star costume, the Zero shirt. He introduced the guise in the “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” video, which kicked off the massive Mellon Collie album cycle. In the mid-’90s, you would actually see people wearing their own black-and-white Zero shirts, as it was an era of fashionable nihilism. However, by the time of the “Zero” video, Billy paradoxically had shed the “Zero” shirt and headed into his Nosferatu phase. “Bullet” was also the final video of the “Billy has hair” years, so there seems to be a connection between wearing an on-the-nose shirt and actually resembling a full-on pale and bald-headed zero.

21. “Appels And Oranjes” (1998)

I’ve come to believe via anecdotal evidence that Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie have translated as well to younger generations as any music from the alt-rock era. I suspect this is due to how good and timeless those records sound, as well as Corgan’s underrated pop sense, which can put those songs over even for audiences who don’t normally listen to a lot of guitar music. An album that still hasn’t gotten a ton of shine, however, is Adore, which is uneven and padded with a lot of downbeat filler but at its best centers Corgan’s strengths as a tunesmith like no other Pumpkins album. This song resembles the countless attempts I’ve heard in recent years to emulate ’80s synth-pop acts like New Order and Depeche Mode, except it’s way better than nearly all of them.

20. “Perfect” (1998)

Ditto!

19. “Pennies” (1996)

One of my favorite Pumpkins B-sides, and also the least characteristic. It presents another facet of Billy the tunesmith, showing off his prolificacy with power pop. Clocking in at a brisk 2:29, it’s the antithesis of all that surrounds it on The Aeroplane Flies High, and it makes me wish he worked more in this vein. For all of the comparisons that Corgan himself has made between his band and Cheap Trick, this is the closest he’s come to making a song that would fit on In Color.

18. “Porcelina Of The Vast Oceans” (1995)

The best of Mellon Collie‘s prog epics, it’s also the most of Mellon Collie‘s prog epics, clocking in as the album’s longest song at 9:21. But the Pumpkins earn every second of that, turning on a dime between spacey interludes and explosive guitar symphonies with the dexterity of Fragile-era Yes. This track also spotlights how well the Pumpkins used quiet in this era — all of their long songs feature extended sections that appear to drift into the ether before suddenly snapping back into focus. An avowed Doors fan, Corgan clearly took notes between bong rips while listening to “The End.”

17. “Soma” (1995)

This song isn’t as long as “Porcelina Of The Vast Oceans” but it has a similar “we’re going on a long journey”-type vibe. In this case, the journey is into the dark heart of Billy Corgan’s romantic misery. “Wrapped my hurt in you / And took my shelter in that pain / The opiate of blame / Is your broken heart, heart, your heart.” Sixteen-year-old me heard “the opiate of blame” and definitely pumped his fist in solidarity, as I was also a person prone to devising torturous metaphors to explain my anguish over getting dumped. “I’ll betray my tears / To anyone caught in our ruse of fools.” Sing the blues, Billy.

16. “Mayonaise” (1993)

Is this the greatest song named after America’s whitest condiment? It’s a testament to Billy’s cockiness at this time that he could take this title and make something so emotional with it. While the lyrics are pretty opaque — “I’m rumored to the straight and narrow / While the harlots of my perils scream” (?) — the sound of “Mayonaise” evokes the comforting blandness of growing up in a thoroughly mediocre and nondescript Midwestern community. It’s a comforting blandness that I know quite well, and it’s layered with my own experience of listening to Siamese Dream so damn much when I was in the midst of my own “Mayonaise” years.

15. “Muzzle” (1995)

This song is linked with “Mayonaise” in my mind, as it literally expresses what the sound of “Mayonaise” only suggests. “My life has been extraordinary / Blessed and cursed and won / Time heals but I’m forever broken.”

14. “1979” (1995)

Nostalgia is a theme that runs through much of the Pumpkins’ work, particularly during their imperial phase. Even when Corgan is complaining about his childhood — “Time heals but I’m forever broken” — there’s a sense that he misses feeling young and lonely and depressed. That version of himself is the muse that’s inspired his best songs. (It’s probably not a coincidence that his well dried up considerably once he became rich and famous.) The miracle of hearing “1979” in 1995 is that I actually was the kind of high school kid that Billy sings about. I drove around aimlessly, I toilet-papered houses, I daydreamed a lot. He was pretty much describing my contemporary life but he somehow made me feel preemptive nostalgia for things that were currently happening to me, even though I was aware (as was Billy) that teenaged existence is mostly terrible. Now when I hear “1979,” I experience nostalgia for my younger nostalgia that deluded me in real time.

13. “Here Is No Why” (1995)

Because it’s surrounded by so many hits on the pink disc, I sometimes forget that this song wasn’t a hit. Because it should have been. As it is, it’s the most underrated Mellon Collie deep cut. The awkward title does it no favors — I’ve been staring at it for 27 years and I still have no clue what it means. But you don’t need reading comprehension when you have this many hooks and expertly ProTools’ed guitars. This is a song where the verses might be even catchier than the chorus. Lyrically, it’s a rare song that’s self-aware about Billy’s self-martyrdom. “The useless drag of another day / The endless drags of a death rock boy / Mascara sure and lipstick lost / Glitter burned by restless thoughts, of being forgotten.”

12. “Obscured” (1994)

I’ve skipped most of Billy’s acoustic numbers on this list, as I’m not especially interested in him working in that mode. Stripping away the noise to put a greater emphasis on his voice and words does not play to his strengths. He’s the death rock boy, not the mellow folk dude. But this song is an exception to the rule, probably because it’s not so much a singer-songwriter attempt as it is an homage to Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here. An ideal vehicle for the King Pumpkin to let his crazy diamond shine.

11. “Drown” (1992)

The first Smashing Pumpkins song I ever heard, and still one of the very best. Because it was positioned at the end of the Singles soundtrack, I incorrectly assumed that this was a new Seattle band that I had never heard of. In reality, “Drown” is an anomaly on that record, just as the Pumpkins were an anomaly in the burgeoning grunge scene. And that comes down to more than just simple geography. While even the superstar acts on that soundtrack — Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains — pledged fealty to punk and indie rock, no matter their far-removed status from the underground, the Pumpkins were refreshingly frank and direct about their arena-rock ambitions. With “Drown,” they took a step beyond Gish and toward Siamese Dream. It’s the crucial in-between moment when you can hear them come into their own in real time.

10. “Rhinoceros” (1991)

After the Singles soundtrack I backtracked and bought Gish on cassette, and this immediately became my favorite song on the record. It’s the prototype for all of their subsequent slow-building ballads, in which a depressive crawl gives way to a ripping guitar solo at the midpoint, and then an even more ripping guitar solo at the end. That the Pumpkins executed more accomplished variations on this formula on future records hasn’t diluted my love of “Rhinoceros.” I recognize that “Soma” might technically be a better re-write, but I like this song a little bit more. I remain eternally loyal to my first loves.

9. “Silverfuck” (1993)

“This take, don’t give a fuck.” Oh Billy, you give so many fucks here. This is the quietest Pumpkins song during the quiet parts, and the loudest Pumpkins song during the loud parts. The human mind cannot fully comprehend that sort of sonic range. I blasted it in the car the other day as research for this column, and the part at 6:45 when the band comes crashing back in so overwhelmed my speakers that I briefly entered a psychedelic netherworld where I was chased to my death by Billy’s 5,000 overdubbed guitars and Jimmy’s militaristic thrashing. I hope to get back to that place as soon as possible.

8. “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” (1995)

The most quotable Smashing Pumpkins song. If Billy had known that headline writers would refer to him regularly as the rat in a cage in spite of all his rage, perhaps he would’ve reconsidered the lyric. “In spite all my rage I’m still just a genius auteur in a cage.”

7. “Starla” (1994)

Their all-time B-side. Also their greatest “we’re going on a journey” epic. It belongs in a continuum with songs like “Rhinoceros” and “Soma,” in that it’s a slow burner that builds to the requisite ripping guitar solo, which arrives at the 5:38 mark. The beauty of “Starla” is that the solo proceeds to rip for more than five glorious minutes, or about as long as those other songs are in total. The solo just keeps going and going, a maelstrom of wah-wah’s and distortion, as the band lumbers toward the cosmos. And every single one of those distorted wah-wah’s is absolutely earned. You want this song to be absurdly long. I was disappointed when I looked for live versions on YouTube and noticed that they were actually shorter than the 11-minute studio cut. Do not skimp on my distorted wah-wah’s, Billy!

6. “Rocket” (1993)

The fourth and final single from Siamese Dream, and part of the murderer’s row of stone killers that make up the first half of the record. (We’ll be discussing several of those tracks in a minute.) That they held on to “Rocket” for so long goes to show just how ridiculously loaded that album is. By the time it was being played non-stop on MTV, Kurt Cobain was dead and the inevitability of the Pumpkins’ rise to prominence was clear for all to see. In that context, “Rocket” was the sound of victory as Billy “rocketed” to success.

5. “Disarm” (1993)

This is song is a lot. “I usssssssed to beeeee a little boy.” I could easily make fun of it. But that would be a lie, because this baroque-folk pocket symphony of caterwauling self-pity has choked me up on at least one or 20 occasions. What can I say? Like Billy, “I usssssssed to beeeee a little boy.”

4. “Hummer” (1993)

It’s hard to believe that Billy Corgan — who can’t get out of bed without plotting a new double or triple album — ever had writer’s block. But he was wracked with so much self-doubt before Siamese Dream that it caused a temporary surfeit of inspiration. This song is about Corgan coming out of that: “When I woke up from that sleep / I was happier than I’d ever been.” It’s also among the dreamiest and most emotional tracks on Siamese Dream; it wasn’t a hit but it feels like it was a hit. It’s also unique in how it inverts the Pumpkins’ usual formula, going from loud to quiet instead of quiet to loud, landing on a lovely coda in which the lyrical soloing soothes rather than seethes.

3. “Today” (1993)

A defining “anthemic music/depressive lyrics” rock standard for an era with a ton of “anthemic music/depressive lyrics” rock standards. Also has what is likely Billy Corgan’s greatest guitar riff. Though when I revisit the song now on YouTube, I’m mostly spellbound by how foxy James Iha looks in a dress.

2. “Tonight, Tonight” (1995)

For all of his angsty cosplay, Billy Corgan is first and foremost a man who believes unconditionally in the power of rock music. But he typically expresses this via the exuberance of his guitar playing or the grandiosity of his musical ideas. This song is a rare example of Billy expressing literal joy over the power of music. It’s his version of “Thunder Road,” a rousing “take my hand and let’s leave this town forever” anthem that holds nothing back: the chorus is massive, the drums are massive, the strings are massive, the feelings are massive, the promise of redemption is massive. “We’ll crucify the insincere tonight / We’ll make things right, we’ll feel it all tonight / We’ll find a way to offer up the night / The indescribable moments of your life / The impossible is possible tonight.”

1. “Cherub Rock” (1993)

This song also expresses a kind of joy, but it comes from a different place — it’s the joy of “fuck you.” The joy of “fuck you” has served Billy Corgan well, and it’s also hurt him. In the ’90s, he became a rock star in spite of the haters, and also to spite the haters. And it worked because he was more talented than almost all of them. They denied him until they couldn’t, because he had just too many goddamn songs. And he kept writing more and more of them even after he had won. The hate and resentment fueled him until it burned him up, as it always does. But when it burned, it burned extremely bright.

And so it is right and appropriate that the greatest Smashing Pumpkins’ album opens with Billy’s loudest and most eloquent “fuck you,” supported by music with extreme “fuck you” energy. Jimmy’s opening drum roll signals the war that is about to unfold, and the next 26 seconds that kick up the song’s proper groove tears through the speakers as the most purely exciting music in the entire Pumpkins’ catalog. Then comes Billy’s kill shot: “Stay cool / and be somebody’s fool this year / because they know / who is righteous, what is bold / so I’m told.”

If social media had existed in 1993, “Cherub Rock” might have existed only as a subtweet. Instead. Billy wrote a diss song about the entire rock world that he was about to conquer. And after all these years, I can’t help but admire him for that. Because I am a Smashing Pumpkins fan, and I have the same Midwestern “fuck you” energy, and I’m forever looking for someone to “let me out.” But there is no escape. We are stuck with Billy the killer, and he’s stuck with us killers, too.