Same here! I started reading it in a coffee shop when I was 26 (which was, ahem, quite a few years ago now), trying to impress coffee shop chicks probably—actually not probably—and remember cracking up when Ishmael starts going about how much Queequeg looks like George Washington. The novel does get heavy-going in…

Didn't know he has a music career
I guess I should assume all Hollywood starfolk have recording careers, though. Costner looks like Garth Brooks—that same kind of doughy, frat-boy earnestness when pouring out pure Red Dirt soul.

Hey, if you say that I'm a wise man, it surely means that I don't know.

I showed The Last Picture Show, including boobies and butts, to a couple of classes of freshmen at the University of Arkansas, where I had a brief tenure as a freshman comp teacher. It was traumatizing for all involved and the reason I am still not welcome back in Arkansas 15 years later.

Plus he didn't even write those plays! Kevin Bacon did!

I really enjoy their deadpan irony. A lot of people don't get irony, and the joke is on those people! Because, you see, those guys don't really enjoy the things they claim to enjoy. Plus, yes, the clothes, which are also ironic! I haven't had this much of a blast since the heady OK Cola days of 1994.

I'm with you on that. I love the movie and saw it again back around Christmas—my kids, both under nine years old, loved it, too—but that sequence drags on forever. More O'Connor, I say. "Make 'em Laugh!"

I predict: skiffle revival.

Jeez, when am I going to learn to read all the way down the page before posting?

Thank you both for not only not giving me shit about my lame vagueness but also trying to help (and for causing me to check out those awesome songs.) I'm embarrassed to say I was dead wrong in every respect about my memory of the song, which is not risque or acoustic-only (but is funny and is sort of about a…

Driving me nuts
I had a mix tape in 1991 that had a Jonathan Richman song on it. I didn't know who he was then and didn't look further into his stuff for years, but now I can't remember what the song was or anything specific about it except that I liked it, it was funny, just acoustic guitar and had some risque…

billy verona, I agree. That's such a fine song.

Her cover of "I Think It's Going to Rain Today" is my favorite version of the song. Also, the first time I heard "One For My Baby" was when she did it on the next to last Carson show, and after hearing Sinatra's I still liked hers.

Wow. And there I was spreading misinformation on the internets. I always thought Sahm wrote the song. I've never heard of Glenn Martin or Dave Kirby. Thanks for the correction, not Bridget.

The Mexi-mullet to end all Mexi-mullets.

Great job, Nathan
I stuck with you the whole way. My only disappointment is that you just can't leave people with the impression that "Is Anybody Going to San Antone" is supposed to sound like that. Here's the great Doug Sahm, who wrote the song, doing it with the Texas Tornados. (No twin fiddles, but the organ and…

So fix your hair up nice and your face up pretty and meet me tonight in Atlantic City.

Viva Terlingua!
It's a fun album and a touchstone of outlaw/Texas country. Jerry Jeff Walker and the Lost Gonzo Band recorded it in and outside of the Luckenbach dance hall/general store in the early seventies.

One of Ryan Adams's songs on "Gold." I can't remember the title. "Someday, Someway" maybe?

That's one of the random-ass records (okay, tapes) I wound up with as a kid in a little town in middle of nowhere Texas. Others are "Tubular Bells" and "As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls." I relied on old books in the public library, such as Rolling Stone interview anthologies, to discover new music, not…