I totally agree that Zappa's lyrics are incidental, but he could be a decent lyricist when he wanted to, especially on early Mothers stuff. For example, I think the lyrics to "Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance" are perfect — in and of themselves and paired with the melody — which is impressive considering Zappa…

In 1994, Wallace Fowlie published a book called "Rimbaud and Jim Morrison: The Rebel as Poet," and I know for a fact that there are colleges that offer classes examining Morrison's "poetry."

I'm not much of an Ira Glass fan, but I really think the whole Lynda Barry/"worst boyfriend" thing is pretty overblown. So, he was neurotic, and he once called her "boring and shallow and not enough in the moment"? That's fucking awful. I hope they treated her well at the women's shelter. She's a true survivor.

I liked the nods to Battleship Potemkin and Simon of the Desert, but they may have been accidental or imaginary.

It was good, but Neil Gaiman swore that would never happen. He lied to me! [weeps]

They call me the Hiphopopotamus. My lyrics are bottomless.

Also, in the "Fuck My Car" lyric, at least the stressed words/syllables are "slap" and "tap." It's still shitty songwriting, but at least it's a real rhyme.

I think I'm even more bothered by same-word non-rhymes that the writer might not recognize being the same words, like in Elvis Costello's "Every Day I Write the Book":

I mostly agree, but I still somehow enjoy the melodic pairing of lyrics like these from "Billy the Mountain": I gave him the money / He acted real funny / He hocked up a rock and / It totaled my car // Oh, do you / Know any trucks / Might be bound for the valley? / I don't wanna stand here / All night in this bar.

Also, "fire" is one syllable and "liar" is two. That and the fact that it's so ungrammatical make it a truly awful lyric.

Then the Grinch, very nimbly, stuffed all the bags, one by one, up the chimbley!

I think Sheryl Crow made a more egregious rhyme out of "fact is" and "taxes." Incidentally, I've got an uncle who lives in Dollars, Taxes.

My favorite Beastie Boys rhyme may be "tomfoolery" (or "Tom Foolery," I guess, in the context of the song) with "Chuck Woolery" in "Hey Ladies."

Dave Barry graduated from Haverford and has made a lot of jokes about the school motto being "No, I Did Not Say 'Harvard,'" etc.

I dismissed them at first, based on the gimmicky name and garb, but then grew to love some of the songs on their EP, "God Only Knows," "Nothing But Our Love," and especially "Vocal Chords." I saw them live and thought they were fantastic (and two of the nicest, humblest musicians I've seen, despite the…

I was seeing all these apes, and I'm thinking, What is going on? It's a planet of them. Okay. If the whole planet is of them, that explains these apes.

Somehow I posted a reply to this thread a couple threads up (actually, I double-posted, and the wrong one got deleted). I was eager to see Insidious but was completely disappointed.

Fuck, I somehow double-posted, one of them in the wrong place. Clearly my computer is haunted.

I'm a sucker for stuff like this too. I love haunted-house movies, and this one has been getting some terrific reviews. Insidious was probably the first movie I'd really been looking forward to so far this year, after last year's winter Oscar contenders, and I'd been reading as much about it as I could in…

I really liked Wonder Boys, Kavalier & Clay, and TYPU, but I lost my Chaboner after his masturbatory afterword in Gentlemen of the Road and his depiction of his 15-year-old self in Manhood for Amateurs as being sexually irresistible to his mother's cougar gal pals. After he got especially defensive about the latter…