I think Pissed Jeans are one of the best bands around today, but this doesn't really do anything for me.  Pissed Jeans seriously have one of the best, funniest lyrical approaches of any punk band I've ever heard.  These guys… if they're saying anything at all, I'm not really interested.  And I don't know why, but…

Aren't we supposed to read this as satire not against everybody, but against the majority of people who, when encountering an issue that makes them totally hot, will jump to wild and often unfounded conclusions, who will pick one side and stick with it regardless of their personal knowledge or the facts?  A lot of…

I never understood REM, I find them incredibly boring.  But I love the Replacements.

I thought 49:00 was amazing, easily Westerberg's best solo stuff.

That would definitely be up there.

What the fuck is this?  This sounds like something Warren Zevon would've written if someone had mercilessly beaten him in the head with a pipe.

God, I cannot resist hating these guys.  It's too much fun, and it seems like one of the only things we can all agree on.  I get the impression that even guys in the Klu Klux Klan hate the Westboro Baptist Church.  Like, those fuckers went too far.

That's what I hear.  It's just difficult to work up the desire to tackle it, since it's enormous, and, kind of like I said, "An American Dream" infuriated me I disliked it so much.  But I guess I wouldn't judge other authors solely by their lesser works.  Plenty of my favorite writers have written crap, too.

Jeez.  Mailer and Mann?  Mailer wrote one of the worst novels I've ever read, "Barbary Shore," and then he wrote another, "An American Dream."  But Thomas Mann?  "The Magic Mountain" is up there with all-time literary achievements, and "Buddenbrooks" is fairly genius in it's subversion of romantic family sagas.  Every…

I can't really think of a better candidate than "Moby-Dick."  Although I'd say Mark Twain is the great American writer.

I live in Minneapolis, and the other day I went outside the city with my girlfriend to go to her cousin's wedding.  As we were driving, I realized that we were driving through THE Jordan, Minnesota, and I freaked out and started blathering to my girlfriend about how amazing Big Black is and how Steve Albini's a…

Yeah, I'm interested in anything that involves Dostoevsky, Son House, and weird creepy visuals.

I love the Stooges more than almost any band.  I can just do without "LA Blues" and "We Will Fall".

The Mekons… I haven't listened to them in forever, but I went through a phase with them like I did with the Flaming Lips.  Both solid bands, and, you know, if "She Don't Use Jelly" is boring and annoying, which I think it kind of is, so is "Psycho Cupid," which I never, ever understood the point of, aside from the…

The Goin-to-China episode was my favorite.  Weirdly affecting.

I'm pretty happy that Pynchon's just doing his thing these days. He's written, like, 3 enormous masterpieces, 1 little masterpiece, I figure that's enough for anybody and if he just wants to write hilariously entertaining, amazing genre stories these days, i.e. Inherent Vice, that's fine with me. That's what Bleeding…

That's like going through the Oscar winners for best picture as a primer on cinema.  Like, you CAN do that, but you're going to miss literally all the best stuff.  Scorsese winning for The Departed is like Faulkner winning for The Reivers or A Fable: why go with those when you can get Goodfellas or The Sound and the…

I'd watch that movie

I agree with this.  Plus, when they do break the 4th wall, it automatically brings me around to the "Oh, this is all bullshit," idea.  Like, how can you give a shit at that point?  The thing with the remote control was just… I don't know, why on earth would I care about the fake violence happening to these fake people…

Actually, if we're just going to listen to garage punk, we should go with the Dirtbombs.  I always forget about the Dirtbombs, and then I remember they made this song: http://www.youtube.com/watc….  Also, like I said, the Revelators: http://www.youtube.com/watc….  Or how about the Oblivians!  http://www.youtube.com/wat…