been round this road so many times…
Snookered has gotta be the song of the year thus far. Eight glorious vintage-New-Order-esque minutes.

you gotta have a high tolerance
for deliriously strained, art-damaged vocalists. but if you do, Swan Lake is like the freakin' Traveling Wilburys.

Do You Realize?
A month after I graduated from high school, a friend of mine suddenly passed away from a brain aneurysm. She wasn't one of my best friends, but we had had almost every class together for four years and I saw her everyday. The funeral was a surreal affair, because there I was, surrounded by all the…

I was in it
In high school. Played Einstein. It's a really clever play. We didn't have any controversy, because the school let the theatre department get away with murder, since it was one of the few things the administration had to be proud of in our shitty metro Atlanta public school.

Heaven knows, it's got to be this time
"Ceremony" by New Order.

I was introduced to superhero comics through Watchmen, and graphic novels through Blankets.

If you're going with Magnetic Fields, "Strange Powers" is where it's at. Only Stephin Merritt can make a new relationship sound like the most glorious thing in the world while undercutting the entire notion of romance with his sardonic phrasing ("under more stars than there are prostitutes in Thailand…")

You're not wrong, but this album is head and shoulders above the new Asobi Seksu, which has no shoegazey distortion and consequently becomes snooze city.

never thought I would come of age
When the chorus drops in "Stay Alive", it is fucking transcendent. I love this album. It strikes the perfect balance between the knowing slyness of latter-day fuzz pop and the sincere vulnerability of their forebears. If you can't find a way to enjoy this album, I'm okay with it, but…

Despite its awesomeness, I find myself despising my copy of Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan because it protrudes out from all my other books and if you prop it up on the spine it tends to flop over awkwardly.

Creme fraiche. People are always making a creme fraiche on this show and I don't even know what that is. Also "honor the protein", which deserves to be a catchphrase somewhere. Or everywhere.

I don't blame him. Fucking Quaker Oats? I get that Top Chef is always pimping some sort of product, but that smorgasboard of dreadful oat-crusted abortions was like a Rachael Ray nightmare menu.

double standard
I'd like to see a movie about an adult male Nazi fucking a 15 year-old girl, complete with full-frontal nudity. Actually, no, I wouldn't want to see that at all. But you get the point.

I've seen both, and even though I didn't much care for Donkey Punch, I would agree with that assessment. But then again, my tolerance for bloated Hollywood melodrama masquerading as significant filmmaking is low indeed.

the endgame
this might be astute grasp of the obvious, but it seems to me that the show has been building to an ultimate throwdown of sorts between science (Jack) and faith (Locke). and to take it even further, Cuse & Lindelof seem to be testing the audience in the very same way the characters are being tested. we've…

It's not that the choices were made for the characters, it's that the characters had free will to make their own choices and they made the wrong ones. Locke was never meant to lead the Others, Jack was. That's why Jack has to take everyone back to the island. Because they're his followers, and they were all supposed…

I love "Flesh Canoe". It's one of their more ambient tracks, but it has my favorite vocal melody of any of their songs. And for sheer tribal madness, you just can't beat "We Tigers".