Welcome, dear readers, to our regular letter column; a series of missives from and to the internet, delivered by a series of tubes. We welcome your comments and questions. About anything! We’ll answer it, and at least one of us will take you seriously. Maybe.

Your questions can be about comics. We’re a comics site, and so we accept questions about those topics. But maybe you don’t have anything about comics to ask! Or maybe you just want to sucker one of us (James) into writing at least one feature-length answer about something like TV, film or the unbearable strain of being right all the time. You can ask those questions, too! Literally everything is on the board. We’ve had sex questions. We’ve had political questions. We’ve yet to have a political sex question, though! So many ask one or three of those! Hashtag sex questions. Sextions?

You’re welcome, internet.

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Cody (@codyfschmidt) asks: Y’all watch COSMOS?

James: Sadly, not yet! I was at my parents’ for dinner last night (where I ended up cooking for them, which is honestly just fine with me), and then not getting home in time to watch it on my own TV, and I’d forgotten to set it to record. I’m hoping that it ends up on an official, legal streaming site so I can catch up, even if I end up not being able to watch it on my big screen. Or maybe my cable provider will have it up for free on their VOD service like they often do with new TV series.

I’ll confess, one reason I initially approached the series with trepidation ended up being the reason I’m psyched for it: Neil deGrasse Tyson. I’m a fan of his; he’s articulate, funny and has a knack for engaging and educating people about science. Unfortunately, what I’ve seen him as most often as of late is the guy on Twitter who “Um, actually”s the science in TV and movie shows. On Twitter, he’s become the annoying nerd who actively tries to ruin your enjoyment of stuff, when he’s best as the funny, smart guy whose enthusiasm is infectious. Luckily it looks like Cosmos is the latter, and I’ve come around from nervousness to excitement.

Brandon: I love Neil deGrasse Tyson on the TV, and I’m presuming this is more of that. I understand his twitter presence - some folks can’t charm in 140 characters, and resort to internet tactics, and I think that’s where he’s at right now. But yeah, I kinda’ wanna watch the hell out of some Cosmos.

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Laury (@OTOC_Laury) asks: If someone was to do a remake of Babylon 5, who would play the new Alfred Bester?

James: Joe Mangianello.

That’s right, I’ve decided to steer into the fact that one of the things on C!TB that gets the most hits perennially is the picture of Joe Mangianello from 2012.

Brandon: James, I agree whole heartedly with this. Look at him. LOOK. AT. HIM.

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Laury follows up: Why do you hate good things?

James: I don’t! Or, in the off case something I consider to be “pure garbage” or “a terrible sports team like the Los Angeles Angels, the most redundantly named team in sports, ugh,” and you in fact like it, then let’s just chalk it up to different tastes.

The designated hitter is still pure garbage, though.

Brandon: Absolute garbage. And I say that as a person who knows relatively little about baseball. I still hate the idea of it.

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Ryan (@rocketmunkey) asks: What is the difference between dick pics and dicks pics?

James: According to a cursory Google search that I will make because I have a personal rule of googling anything people tell me to or not to, or even hint that I should or shouldn’t do, not very much. Like you do a search for “dicks pics” and the first response is cockpictures.tumblr.com. If you search for “dick pics,” you get perfectphallus.com. So basically a wash, though it sounds like maybe you get more dicks if you search for “dicks pics.” That is, unless Mrs. Candy’s Perfect Phallus is in fact just a site devoted to one dick in particular.

Man, I’ve said “dick” a lot in this and I didn’t even have to mention Brandon.

Brandon: If you have trouble telling the difference in the future, try this terrible mnemonic device: Dick picks dick pics from a pile of Dick’s Pics To Pick.

Dicks.

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Scott (@scottowilliams) is oddly timely with this one: What is the strangest link you’ve ever clicked?

James: That’s honestly hard to say, because I will click on literally everything that’s not an obvious phishing/spam scam, a BuzzFeed link or cat video. I’ve seen Tub Girl, which was pretty out there. But the strangest thing? Man, I dunno. I once went to Bleeding Cool.

Brandon: I told him to go to Bleeding Cool last week to tell me more about some of the worst comic shops out there, banding together to form a counter group to ComicsPRO that is LITERALLY CALLED COBRA. If you want me to get more into that, brother, I will do that, but maybe that’s something for the next column. Strangest link I’ve ever clicked… dunno, but I can say for a fact, it would have come from James. And that isn’t me being a dick, that’s just a stone cold fact.

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Scott continues: What movie has the best soundtrack?

James: First off, I’m going to separate this from the best movie scores, because I think that’s a different category entirely and I assume you meant it that way anyway. In my mind, there are basically two competitors for best soundtrack:

-High Fidelity: It’s unsurprising that a movie about dudes with impeccable taste in music would itself have impeccable taste in music. Like, Dylan? The Beta Band? Stereolab? Royal Trux? Stevie motherfucking Wonder? This one comes out swinging. How good is it? You could basically give this as a mixtape/cd to someone, unedited, and it would be a great selection. All killer, no filler. Maybe the only weakness is that it doesn’t actually start with Bruce Springsteen’s in-movie exhortation/advice to Rob. And let’s be honest, “Not enough Springsteen” is a failing most things have.

-O Brother, Where Art Thou?: I love this movie and I love this soundtrack. A good rule of thumb, really, is that any time T. Bone Burnett is working on a soundtrack, that one’s gonna be a GOAT contender. You could replace this with Inside Llewyn Davis, for example, and still make a good case for it. For me, though, I’ve gotta give it to O, Brother, because it introduced me to a lot of great music and really helped explode the roots music’s modern popularity. It’s got Gillian Welch and Alison Krauss harmonizing, which is enough reason to love it. Plus, four versions of “I am a Man of Constant Sorrow?” Damn, hoss.

Brandon: Yeah, those are some choice ones. That said, I know I listened to the soundtrack to Garden State until the wheels came off of that. Might not be the best by some qualifiers, but it ranks a best for me, because I’m still not tired of those songs.

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Scott goes on: What is the best KISS song?

James: While I love “Beth,” I think it suffers from having Peter Criss on lead vocals. It’s a song that falls apart in the execution a little, even if the lyrics and composition are across the board one of KISS’ best efforts. And plus, look at this video of an acoustic version of the song:

Gene Simmons is just sitting there, in a cape, leaning against a column and leering. That’s some A+ work.

The real star of the KISS discography, thus, is “Love Gun.” It is just straight-up trashy.

Brandon: Fat Bottom Girls. Or Bohemian Rhapsody.

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Scott rolls on: Who was the best late 90s pop icon?

James: Here’s the thing: I am d y i n g to say Justin Timberlake, but not only did he personally not really take off as a pop icon until his solo career, but the best N*Sync album, No Strings Attached, wasn’t even released until the year 2000. The same thing could be said for Beyoncé, who, while a star in the late 90s with Destiny’s Child, wasn’t really an icon until she ditched the dead weight. So, alas, I have to find someone else.

And that someone is Britney Spears.

Personally, while I think the best pop song of the 90s (“MmmBop”) sneaks into the “late 90s” category in 1997, they weren’t really icons the way Britney was, almost immediately upon the release of …Baby One More Time. Her second and solidifying album, Oops!… I Did It Again, wouldn’t arrive until 2000, but by then, she’d already carved out icon status for herself with singles like “…Baby One More Time” and “(You Drive Me) Crazy,” and then she had her infamous April 1999 Rolling Stone cover:

That juxtaposition of innocent schoolgirl and burgeoning sexuality (mad props to the American Family Association for calling it “a disturbing mix of childhood innocence and adult sexuality,” which is basically perfect, even if they’re shitty people and I don’t share their outrage) is right there, and it perfectly encapsulates that persona Spears would embody, that would make her an icon 15 years later. I mean, don’t you just kinda feel weird looking at that? Don’t you feel uncomfortable with a major media organization touting its ability to go into the bedroom of a 17 year-old girl? But don’t you also kinda go, “Yeah, alright, she’s Britney, bitch?” Welcome to the late 90s, when I was 14 and totally head over heels for her, no matter how “cool” I tried to be.

Brandon: This is going to bug me. I know I’ve heard the story behind that picture from someone who was there - and it involved Spears feigning innocence when a manager of hers came in and asked what was going on, and her locking them out of the room after they went off to find someone to “fix it” so that the shoot could finish. Either that, or it’s one of my weird fever dreams that happen for whatever reason. Regardless, Spears hits it dead on for probably being the biggest pop icon, if only for the fact that her star was never higher than it was then, probably, and all the others I can think of either… I dunno, stopped and seem a bit less relevent now than they did then, or just became more relevant later.

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That’s it for the one hundred and twenty-eighth instalment of Um, Actually. Check in every Monday and Thursday for a brand new column. If you have anything you’d like answered, hit up our contact page! If you submit anything via Twitter – to @blogaboutcomics, @Leask, or @soupytoasterson – remember to include the hashtag #UMACTUALLY so that we don’t lose it. Remember: you can ask us anything. Seriously, anything.