NOW HERE'S SOMETHING WE HOPE YOU'LL REALLY LIKE:  I love Mr. Peabody and Sherman. I like Ty Burrell (though he's replacing Robert Downey Jr., who could've been perfect). Mel Brooks voicing Sigmund Freud? Sure. But good God, this trailer looks horrible.

TIME IS ON MY SIDE: I just saw Marsha's plug for Solisbury Hill's 7/4 time signature in the post a few days ago about the Hall of Fame and it got me wondering:  favorite songs with alternative time signatures?  Off the top of my head, there's Pavement's "5:4=Unity," which is basically "Take Five" for the skateboard set.  There's Julianna Hatfield's "Spin the Bottle," which manages to make 5/4 time seem less alternative and more juvenile, using the skipped beat (because the song wants to be 3/4, not 4/4) to convey the impatience of the POV character.  There are the twin 11/4 masterpieces (technically, 3/4 with a 2/4 thrown in every fourth bar)---PJ Harvey's exquisite "Miss Him" and the Allmans' nearly pentacostal "Whipping Post."  I'm not wild about screwing with time signatures just for the sake of screwing with them (ahem, Phish, and you too, deceased persons of Alice in Chains).  But all of the above are actual songs, not just etudes, and I have listened to each (other than "Solisbury Hill," for no better reason than that I only own it on LP and I haven't had a turntable since 1992) countless times for emotional, not intellectual, reasons.  Any others that you like? 

Don't say Phish. 

GRITTY, SCRAPITAL PUNISHMENT: One of the name partners records an ad for the Pawnee law firm of Babip, Pecota, Vorp & Eckstein.

HE'S BURNT UP LIKE A WEENIE AND HIS NAME IS FRED!  Empire Magazine attempts to rank the 666 greatest horror film characters of all time. Based on my scan of the index, The Exorcist, The Omen, and The Shining tie for the lead with six characters from each listed.

BUT GOD ALMIGHTY, HAVE YOU SEEN WHAT'S HAPPENED SINCE?  There's a new production of Les Misérables coming to Broadway this spring (some casting news here). Since our longtime commenter Randy caught this production in Calgary, we've got a sneak peak.

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As you may know, LES MISERABLES is returning to Broadway next year, in a much-hyped new production. A staging of this production recently opened to rave reviews in Toronto, and a touring production recently passed through Calgary, where I saw it. A bit of context: I'm a big fan of the original show, having seen two productions in Canada (in Halifax in 1994 and Toronto in 2005). And the soundtrack has been in relatively high rotation for me for two decades now. So I'm quite familiar with the original production, but not an obsessive who's seen it twenty times.

And, of course, here be spoilers.

SCOTCHY SCOTCH SCOTCH: There will be a new Ben and Jerry's flavor for that upcoming underpublicized Will Ferrell movie.

MAYBE THEY SHOULD'VE CONSULTED NATE SILVER: Vulture has crunched the numbers, and generated a list of the 100 Most Valuable Stars, based on a mixture of box office, studio exec's views on how much a star adds to box office, likability scores, Oscar nominations, Twitter mentions, gossip mag attention, and critical appreciation.  Some folks seem tremendously overrated (Daniel Craig at 17 when all his non-Bond or -Dragon Tattoo films have underperformed?  Mila Kunis at 20?) while some seem underrated (Adam Sandler at 43 when he's generally pretty invincible as long as he stays in his broad comedy wheelhouse?  Tyler Perry at 99?  I don't care for his films, but they do quite well, and he's all over them in terms of branding).  Much to discuss.