This week Glee creator Ryan Murphy lashed out at indie superstars Kings of Leon for declining the show’s request to use their song “Use Somebody.” In addition to calling the band names and sounding like a spoiled three-year-old, Murphy made one curious and bizarre accusation: by turning down the chance to have a song on Glee, Kings of Leon hate arts education.

BYU has an image problem, but it doesn’t seem to know it. Or maybe it just doesn’t care.

On the university’s home page recently — as well as in the alumni email I got earlier this month — I read about a new study by professors Jason Carroll and Brian Willoughby that argues that waiting until marriage to have sex benefits couples later on. The study was published in the Journal of Family Psychology.

The study was probably legit. It was published in a reputable journal, and my experience as a student at BYU (for more years than I care to admit) was that professors genuinely try to do serious scholarly work.

But whatever the study actually included, the uber-popular news website Gawker discovered it and expressed suspicion over how the scientific research “hews so closely to the Mormon church’s position on sex before marriage.”

Watching TV shows months or years after they air can mean missing out on the culture’s zeitgeist, but it can also provide a chance to see otherwise overlooked pop culture connections. Like, for example, the one I just noticed between the wild events in the life of Randy and Evi Quaid and the TV show 30 Rock.

With 2010 fading fast in the rear-view mirror, it’d be easy to call the year a coup for Kanye West: his latest album is getting buckets of acclaim — including here at Rhombus — and everyone pretty much agrees the guy is a one-of-a-kind maestro. But while we all rap his praises, it’s worth keeping in mind that West was, not so long ago, in serious PR trouble.

If you’re any kind of glitzy award show junky, you’ve probably heard the Golden Globes referred to as the “pre-Oscars,” an “Academy Award bellweather,” or something to that effect. Basically, the Golden Globes get cast as the slummy, early predictor of their bigger, better cousins. And looking at this years nominations its obvious why: they nominate every freaking movie that comes out.

Wandering the information superhighway lately, I discovered this recent video made by BYU’s Divine Comedy called “Provo, UT Girls.”

I found the video on the excellent, Provo-centric blog CJane’s Guide to Provo, where the author aptly points out that BYU culture and Provo culture are two very different things. Though C Jane doesn’t put it this way, I basically understood her point to be that if BYU students want to look like imbeciles, they oughtn’t presume to represent the larger community. I agree.

(It’s probably worth mentioning here that I did smile as I watched the video. I’ve also had a bunch of friends in BYU’s Divine Comedy over the years, and without exception they’ve been smart, witty and very cool people.)

However, a larger issue with this video — and with other, similar BYU humor — is that it actually perpetuates and reinforces the disparaging stereotypes it aims to mock. Or, put another way, these ideas about BYU wouldn’t exist without organizations like Divine Comedy keeping them alive.

As Glee episodes go, this week’s “A Very Glee Christmas” isn’t bad. The songs make more sense, a few characters — notably Sue — experience actual development, and there aren’t an abundance of awkward moments.

But besides raising the bar slightly for the show, the episode is also notable for the conspicuously secular approach it brings to what is ostensibly a religious holiday. Given the show’s willingness to address faith in the marvelously titled but poorly executed “Grilled Cheesus” episode, that approach is surprising. It also scores a big secular win for the so-called “war on Christmas,” that perennial conflict between fanatics on the Christian right who want to plug Jesus into the holiday, and their liberal counterparts who feel that thinking about a guy getting kicked around and tortured to death dampens the most wonderful time of the year.