Thank you. Open All Night (from Nebraska) is way overlooked in Bruce's catalog. (I looked for it on YouTube a while back and there's a song with the same title that came out of the Seeger sessions thing—not sure if it's on the album.) That opening guitar lick is killer, and then it just keeps getting better.…

My childhood was long before Disney Channel existed. I'm talking "Family Affair," "Sigmund and the Sea Monsters" and commercials. Seems like he was always a guest on various other shows.

Johnny Whitaker! That guy freaking ruled the seventies. He was on my TV more than anybody.

That picture is from right before they got busted for their fake ventriloquism act.

@RickyC, yeah, that occurred to me as well. The first time I heard P. Diddy's "Every Breath You Take," I thought WTF? All he did was take the same song and change the lyrics to rob it of the creepy stalker vibe, making it a limp, forgettable song, and somehow it was a huge hit. I guess he got the right licenses and…

The sheriff and Atticus pretty much collude to obstruct justice in how they handle the death of the white trash bad dude at the end (i.e., just look the other way), which is kind of a troubling message that undercuts the book's message about fairness. I know:  buzzkill.

Hold me closer, Tony Danza.

Larry McMurtry's books range from ordinary to pretty crappy (except for "All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers," which is great), but some very good movies have been made of them, The Last Picture Show and Terms of Endearment are the best probably. I also like the brilliant miniseries adaptation of Lonesome Dove…

It wasn't a heart-crushing disappointment really, more like the first awakening of disillusionment and cynicism: Realizing that those touted "guest appearances" of outside characters on Scooby Doo were utter horseshit. I mean, Don Knotts didn't look or even sound like Don Knotts. It probably wasn't Don Knotts at all.…

I loved them as a kid but forgot there was more than one until I had kids and got the all three. I realized I'd read the first two but not the last one, which I think had something to do with a summer camp and wasn't as good as the first two. I concede they're nothing like the rest of Cleary, which I also love (what…

Up to Me gets my vote for that category. It got left off Blood on the Tracks because it's essentially the same chord progression and tuning as Shelter from the Storm, which may have been a good call, though I really can't re-imagine Blood on the Tracks at this point, I've listened to it so often. Up to Me also gets my…

Yes! Great call. The song is great, and Dylan's phrasing is mesmerizing. Anybody who's still making jokes about Dylan's singing should listen to that song. Every line has something astonishing in it.

Lily, Rosemary etc. is my least favorite on that great album. Gotta disagree strongly with @butalala above about Idiot Wind, which I'd rank as one of Dylan's greatest, along with Shelter From the Storm and Blind Willie McTell (which incredibly he left off Infidels, opting for, I think, License to Kill instead). I may…

I was going to bring up Jimmy LaFave, who does a lot of Dylan covers. I generally can't stand him—his voice is ultra-sugary, and he has that little warbling trick he does over and over until you just want to kill something—but his cover of "Positively Fourth Street" is pretty rocking. On that one his voice also…

I'd never heard of him and knew nothing about him, but when I pushed the arrow on that Hobbit video it took me straight back to sixth-grade art and my hippie art teacher playing that record for us while we did tie-dye.

Except Willie. It's okay to skip Willie this time. Because Willie will always come back.

Oh, she's long been xword famous—in the pantheon with Uta, Mel Ott, Yma Sumac, Uri Geller, Oona Chaplin, Ella Fitzgerald, Yoko Ono, and the all time king and champion Brian Eno.

As long as there are crossword puzzles her name will live on.

Yeah, Jerry Jeff was one of the ones I was thinking of when I mentioned coasting. He never was a very prolific or dependable songwriter, but I guess you don't have to be if you wrote "Mr. Bojangles." I was a huge fan as a kid and had all the albums up through "Cowjazz," which is where he stopped drinking and started…

Agreed he's brilliant. Folkie is not a very useful term to describe him (or maybe anybody anymore.) He's more a latter-day Tom T. Hall but more nuanced, more interesting (I'm a Tom T. fan, but for every Mama Make a Pie or Homecoming there's a couple of I Love's and Sneaky Snakes.) I like Prine very much, too, but…