I've still got the home number of Chris and Tina from Talking Heads set aside somewhere from when I interviewed Chris on college radio, but I'll be damned if I'll ever call them again. Still, it's kind of cool to have in a totally not creepy at all way.

I would kill to spend an evening in a pub with Bill Bryson.

I agree with the comment about not wanting to hang around with celebrities, I have no problem with being able to enjoy their creative work without wanting to be their best friends.

ElDan: Critics are still capable of telling you whether a summer blockbuster or a kids movie is any good or not. I saw Star Trek based entirely upon good reviews. If GI Joe had been reviewed exceptionally well, I would have figured "Well, maybe this isn't the sack of ass I expected it to be" and gone to watch it.

I don't get it
Is there anyone out there who saw Transformers 2 whose opinion was swayed by the fact that Roger Ebert hated it? I like Ebert and I wasn't going to see Transformers 2 anyway, and the average Transformers fanboy never learned to read, so what difference does it make anyway?

I would agree big-time about Sweet Lou. My fave moment of his:

I APPROVE! OF THE LEONARD'S OBSESSION

YOU CANNA' LOVE A NUN SIR

I LOVE MY BRICK!

Freaked is an outstanding comedy, and I'd like to take this opportunity to hijack this thread with quotes from it.

Fuck yes. Both albums are insanely good.

I saw them on the ATS tour in Toronto from the front row and the best thing about it was that the band barely played anything from ATS.

Pylon was pretty terrific musically. I've never been a fan of Vanessa Hay's shouty warble but the band flat-out rocked, which you almost never see in a jangly pop band.

I could beat the bombs pretty consistently then get raped on the Turtlevan level. I made it to the Airport level once and that was pretty much the highlight of my videogaming childhood.

@idiotking: "Texarkana" from Out of Time was also ace. Mike Mills's single highest moment in REM.

To my mind it never got better than Murmur, the original mission statement and sonic declaration. LRP is about 0.00000001% below that in my mind - there is no better first four songs in order on any record ever made than "Begin the Begin", "These Days", "Fall on Me" and "Cuyahoga". You could just play those four songs…

I don't know what you mean. Please explain in unnecessary detail.

More water.

Al Lowe
I miss Leisure Suit Larry. The real Al Lowe one, not the poor imitator that's been out recently.

I got to know Wells as a sportswriter more than a music journalist, but I don't think it would be overstating too much to suggest he was like punk's Hunter Thompson. Some of his sports columns were brilliant though, like his taking the American media to task for their treatment of hooliganism in Europe while ignoring…