I vaguely remember him describing the split as before he heard Captain Beefheart and after. But it was his wife who introduced him to Beefheart, so that works, too.

At least they managed "and" and "fans". Fifty per cent is still a pass, right?

I didn't really know his music before he came through my town almost exactly a month ago, but good God, what a great performance it was. At the start of the encore, he did a solo acoustic version of "Speed Racer" (i think) that's going to stick with me for a long time.

I can't speak to this one, but the Thursday Next books are pretty far from serious-minded. Clever, yeah, but loaded with puns and silly jokes.

The end of Arrested Development
When Fox burned off the last few episodes of Arrested Development, my friends and I decided to do things up right and hold a wake. We dressed in our finest mourning-wear, made a poster to put on the wall to get in the spirit of things, and proceeded to laugh our asses off and marvel at…

Clone High said it best…
I have your baby in me, giraffe!

A big big hate
There was a Q&A where someone asked the director of Gigantic, whose name I can't be arsed to look up, why Zach Galifianakis kept attacking the main character. His answer was that the movie was too straightforward otherwise, and he wanted to shake things up. Man, just a prime example of a movie that…

The Wrong Guy
I had a really brief chance to talk to Enrico Colantoni at the Geminis (Canada's kinda-sorta-Emmys), and the only thing I could think to ask was "How would you kill a man with two tea bags and some wax paper?" He said I'd have to "ask Dave," but after thinking for a second, he said, "I'd put the tea bags…

This past January, Philip Glass and the Kronos Quartet did a live soundtrack to Tod Browning's Dracula (which isn't silent, but doesn't have a score) at a festival in Calgary. Needless to say, it was amazing, and I'm only mentioning this to brag about being there.

Personally, I would have gone B-. Clooney and Farmiga are both great in it, but Kendrick's pretty one-note, some of the jokes are quite laboured (the whole text-messaging thing) and aside from one nice twist on the 'last minute romantic gesture' thing, it feels like it's trying really hard for a…

All well and good, but…
How does it compare to Cooking Mama? Not well, I'd guess, considering the C.

Hillcoat actually mentioned that they specifically avoided anything Mad Max-ish when they were filming it, even downplaying the creepy road gangs in gas masks and chains that were in the book. I liked the movie less than a lot of folks, but Hillcoat did seem to approach it completely sincerely; I don't think he had…

If you need proof that Welles is amazing…
This is all you need: http://bit.ly/5sBbCY

B- seems about right to me. It's beautifully shot and well acted, so it's hard to overly slag it, but the way that they change the order of events from the book didn't work for me. In the novel, you got the sense that encounters with other people were incredibly rare, but in the movie they stumble into confrontations…

That's just the trailers. Can't sell a movie without acting like there are attractive ladies all over the place, I guess.

The original Hot August Night is a stone classic, even with the pretzel song. Greatest singer-songwriter of this or any generation? Well, no, but he's certainly written some ace tunes.

Why this is so popular? No one knows…

Dress-up cage.
Someone needs to make an action figure of Cage that you can dress up in gear from his movies, like the lucky crack pipe and electric razor, the bear suit from Wicker Man, John Travolta's face…

Most quotable movie ever?
Every single line out of Bruce Campbell's mouth is a classic. "Probably was raised in a barn." "Good, bad, I'm the one with the gun." "That was just what we call pillow talk, baby." "Now send me back. Like in the deal."

So, you're missing out on a lot of really good music, is what you're saying?