I Graduated for Christmas
But that was college, so it doesn't count.

Church Anti-Communist Books
Earlier in the summer I went to visit my grandparents and as usual stayed in my uncle's old bedroom. When I couldn't fall asleep I rummaged around in the closet for a bit looking for something to read, and I came across a box of old paperbacks detailing the oppression of Christians in the…

Not so weird, considering the circumstances.

Drive-by Truckers
I'd add "Do It Yourself" by DBT. Definitely not crappy either.

Streetlight Manifesto, definitely. Most of the ska that I loved when I was in HS was in fact crap, but they justify the whole genre.

The Braun electric with the self-cleaning alcohol solution is the way to go if you're going electric. It's expensive but worth it, and the only additional cost is getting replacement solution (like $12 every 3 or 4 months) and getting a replacement head after a year and a half. Definitely shave dry, but I usually…

ET - have you tried Robin Yount's lemonade, Robinade? I've got a friend that swears by it.

@rationalist - I grew up in the "country" as well, down the road from a couple of dairy farms and about 3 miles from town. It wasn't so much that privacy wasn't respected, but as the saying goes nothing travels faster than small town gossip. Even now, when I've been living in the "big" city of Madison for over a…

I never knew anyone aside from my older cousin that was into the Metallica/Sabbath/Iron Maiden metal growing up, and I never really got into the genre because of it. I owned Metallica's Black on cassette but that's it. I think it has more to do with all the metalheads in my school being complete assholes. Instead…

Yeah, I was in 6th grade when MC Hammer played the Coliseum in Madison, and I just wanted to die because my parents didn't let me go and all the cool kids went. The next school day everyone was wearing their black MC Hammer Tour t-shirts.

I hadn't seen the first Star Wars until college, and I'd only seen the second and third on TV. I was born too late to see them in the theaters on their initial run, and since my parents had they never took me the second time around or rented them.

I've been meaning to revisit Catcher in the Rye, because I'm pretty certain that my impression of the book at 16 (mostly negative) is off.

I received a Putumayo Latin Jazz comp, and as I really have no previous experience with the genre it was a nice enough introduction. But I can see how it is stereotypical coffee shop music.

I thought it all was a horrible dream
I might have been a bit drunk last night, and flipping through the channels I came across this show, which somehow I hadn't heard of before. I probably only watched a minute or two, but this morning I could have sworn I dreamed it all.

Exactly. Mitchell was Joel going out on a winning note, like Elway winning the Super Bowl.

I thought about the same thing when I first saw that documentary. "Nobody's Darlings" turned out pretty well, too.

For whatever reason, I spent a good portion of 2002 obsessed with drinking Gibsons. They really were kinda terrible, but I convinced myself that they weren't. I still have a jar of those onions in my fridge, just in case the urge strikes.

My homebrew was almost undrinkable as well, because the yeast never came out right or something. It did clock in at pretty high ABV, so it started to taste better after #3. But my fatness didn't arise from homebrew. It definitely has to do with the myriad delicious brews available in WI, and even more so the half…

A Thermals cover of the Misfits would kick ass
I don't know about Cat Power, but I'd give it a spin anyway. A slow, sultry version of Last Caress would be appropriately strange.

Back when I was first getting into music in HS the liner note thank-yous were the source of most of my musical knowledge, and I bought a few albums on repeated mentions alone. More hits than misses overall.