When I was in college (CSCC and OSU), it seemed like they were perpetually listed on the marquee at the Newport, which otherwise had lots of goods shows, including Clutch (mentioned above, definitely from Maryland) who I saw a good dozen times between high school and masters degree.

"Rock and Roll Outlaw" starts with a bit of a Marylanders lament: "In the north they call us Rebels / In the south they call us Yankees". The rest of the song has nothing to do with it, but hey. Agreed that "I Have the Body of John Wilkes Booth" is the better song on that album. Also agree…

Well, Neko lives on a big farm in Vermont, so if they vroooooooomm there's plenty of room to do it in.

@avclub-d7b683529752a4d24d84c4941861a363:disqus She's not gone blond. She's a redhead going white (she's turning 43 this week; I'm a dude about to turn 35 and the red hairs in my beard have mostly turned white) who isn't fighting it.

Let's just take John as read.

Don't forget his idiot son, who is a former 1 term US rep for Arizona's 3rd district and made a lot of news in the beginning of the Tea Party crap. Rated by National Journal as the most conservative house member. Find a picture of him. He looks really punchably stupid.

He was from Binghamton, NY, which is south of Syracuse, near the Pennsylvania border. Nice rolling, hilly bit of the state. Very pretty in the fall.

One more bit of random censorship you left out (I think I learned about this in the comments last week): The choreographed Conservative speech. It was cut because it would air too close to an election and the BBC didn't want to seem to be showing favor/disfavor toward any party, but for some reason it was never…

@avclub-33235e3d066bad95b6eea457826f7507:disqus It's true that Paul could grab a $175 Squier Affinity and sound like himself and better than just about anyone, but on the other hand, even for a newbie having at least semi-decent equipment helps. If the instrument has shitty slippy tuners (which I'm not accusing the…

The intermediate model; the 500/1CT, which costs $880. The cheapy Taiwanese one costs $470, and the totally German one is $2900. I think with mine the parts are German but it's assembled in Tiawan. Something like.

I dunno. The Rickenbacker was a gift from the company to Paul since George and John were such heavy users of the 325 and 360, and they hoped to get some Beatles induced bass sales by giving Paul a 4001S (and a lefty one at that, at a time when most companies didn't bother). Paul likes free things (who doesn't?), so he…

@disqus_XETDBVUGZF:disqus If that's the case, I'd like to think I'd examine my statement and adapt to the times. Like I said, my parents are fairly racist, but totally unaware of it. They're not racist in that they consciously, actively discriminate against anyone, but they have a lot of unexamined ideas about…

Someone clearly agrees with you on the Hofner, because one of the two he used got stolen during the shooting of Let It Be (a '61 with a neck and center pickup; his primary was and is a '63 with a neck and bridge pickup).

God. Last time my parents visited, my mom (in conversation in the car) called a group of Asian tourists Orientals, and when I corrected her she said "Whatever." I wanted to slink under my seat and hide, but I was driving at the time. 99% of the time she seems like a nice midwestern Lutheran grandma, but every now and…

If you're into planes, especially military planes, the museum at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton is actually pretty awesome.

The lack of serialization in TNG was a problem with Roddenberry and Berman. Roddenberry had a strict rule against any serialization or references to past episodes (or even to TOS! Ira Behr had to fight to be allowed to have Sarek mention Spock and Amanda in "Sarek"). Berman tried to enforce it after Roddenberry died,…

The plan was to straight up kill Will Riker and keep Frakes on as Thomas Riker at Ops and have Data move up to first officer. See http://en.memory-alpha.org/…

For TNG they mostly tried to leave things be effects-wise. They recomposited all of the matte shots, because it was originally done on video tape and each compositing layer reduced the quality (and remember for even a single ship, there were several passes; e.g. one with the lights off on the ship but the external…

John Scalzi basically did with "Fuzzy Nation". He started out writing a more contemporary version (e.g. less pipe smoking, tape recorders, giant computers) of H. Beam Piper's "Little Fuzzy" as a lark with no intent to publish it, then later decided to have his publisher ask the Piper estate if it was OK to actually…

But if you pay attention to the lyrics on a lot of the songs on "Snakes and Arrows" though, it's pretty clear that his philosophy has changed a lot from 1976 to 2007.