The Internet is full of interesting things to read outside of The A.V. Club—no, really! In our periodic Read This posts, we point you toward interesting or noteworthy pieces that caught our eye.
As writers, it’s all too easy to see the pop stars and entertainers we write about as rich, famous abstractions foisted upon an unsuspecting public by faceless, rapacious corporations rather than human beings with feelings and emotions and families and, quite possibly, puppies. Adorable, adorable puppies. But what happens when a celebrity publicly confronts a writer over a throwaway line in one of their columns? That’s the surreal situation Chicago writer Edward McClelland found himself in when a dig at ’80s quasi-rocker Richard Marx in a blog post prompted the thin-skinned pop star to publicly confront McClelland and demand a sit-down to resolve their differences. What happened next? You’ll have to read further to find out.