It's always nice to see one of your favorite bands get some love. Being a Built to Spill fan can be a lonely ride. I would love seeing Silkworm or Songs:Ohia/Magnolia Electric get the same treatment.

Taxonomies are tough. For example, I have no idea where the boundaries of indie-rock start and end. I think that's an even worse term than grunge.

Grunge as a label was weak. It's not the sound that went away as much as that label for it. Listen to bands that fall under the more open-ended monicker of "North West Sound" (Quasi, Built to Spill, Modest Mouse) or a fuzz heavy 'indie' band like Arbouretum. and sound is the same head-on collision of Neil Young…

To each their own.  But you missed the point if you see it simply as a western.  It's more existentialist.  A better film to compare it to would something like Bergman's The Seventh Seal.   And for the record, it's one of my favorites of all time.

To each their own.  But you missed the point if you see it simply as a western.  It's more existentialist.  A better film to compare it to would something like Bergman's The Seventh Seal.   And for the record, it's one of my favorites of all time.

I'm just glad the censors only allowed side boob in an earlier scene so I wouldn't be offended before they got to the part where they burned a girl alive in front of her dad.

I'm just glad the censors only allowed side boob in an earlier scene so I wouldn't be offended before they got to the part where they burned a girl alive in front of her dad.

Way better than I expected
I taped this show expecting little. I saw the previews and thought it looked different and figured anything with M.C. Gainey was worth at least one viewing. I was so very pleasantly surprised. I know it was trotting out well worn tropes like it was the Horror Cliche Derby; but it did…

Evil Walter
My favorite part of this (and recent) episodes was how it brought to the fore Walter's dark past. We all know and love Walter as a fumbling mad scientist but it's great to be reminded just how evil he really was. It seems as if the most redeeming action of his pre-mental-institution life was kidnapping…

Horrible
I managed to make it to the flashback scene Archer catches the manservant adding on to the mom's instructions to be nice to him. That gags pretty lame but it was Archer's flat response of 'douche' that made me turn it off. If the writers couldn't come up with something better than that I figured there's…

I've read Master and Commander and The Wrestler's Cruel Study. The former is a straight-up historical adventure fiction but very well researched and the latter is really an amazing mesh of ideas. I'm not sure it's on my top-ten list but it's a book that has stuck with me unlike many more famous novels.

My top 5 favorites from 2009
1. There is No Enemy - Built To Spill
2. Farm - Dinosaur Jr
3. By a Thread - Gov't Mule
4. Hazards of Love - The Decemberists
5. Murdering Oscar - Patterson Hood

The description of the quicksilver mule train that is pushed off the cliff and smashes on the rocks really stuck with me as representative of the horror and the beauty on display in the novel

I agree that the violence is beautifully described but I would argue that the natural settings ares described just as, if not more, beautifully. I always figured that was an intended juxtaposition and is how Cormac sees the continuum of human existence - sort of the dichotomy between 'life is good' and 'life sucks…