Nonplussed is one of those words that effectively means nothing, largely due to misuse, I'm sure. Still, the dictionary lists its meaning as "1 so surprised and confused that one is unsure how to react:Henry looked completely nonplussed 2 North American informal not disconcerted; unperturbed." So, yeah. No one…

Chrissie Hynde vetoes the suggestion that Akon be renamed Akron, but Devo and the Black Keys have not yet been consulted in the matter.

I should say that I think what Sweet does is fantastic. He writes the songs he wants to write, makes the cat pottery he wants to make, and has giant nerdy tattoos of manga characters. He could have sold out and made a mint, but I suspect he does ok for himself and is pretty happy with his life.

Was Kimi Ga Suki post-Thorns? I thought they were released at roughly the same time, hence my confusion. But I agree that Kimi is good. However, Living Things, which was definitely contemporaneous with Kimi, is pretty… not-good.

YA
In theory, young adult fiction isn't supposed to be dumbed down. Also, it's a little disingenuous to say that you were reading adult novels since the age of ten. I don't doubt that it's true, but YA as a genre wasn't really recognized fifteen years ago. Books that were considered just plain old fiction when they…

Matthew Sweet
I read in a Cat Fancy magazine an article about Matthew Sweet making cat pottery in North Dakota or wherever it is he lives, so I guess maybe Shawn Mullins = bad juju for the career. But I stopped caring about Matthew Sweet at about the time he was fiddling about with the Thorns, so I guess I'm with the…

While I enjoy the cover of Satisfaction, I prefer, as covers go, their cover of Secret Agent Man. Something about being given a number instead of a name seems to fit in really well with Devo's ethos - the conscious manufacturing of image and brand, the forced visual similarity of the band members…

I would recommend Q: Are We Not Men… or you could always try to find a copy of Pioneers Who Got Scalped, their anthology. This doesn't work if you're the sort of person who insists anthologies/best ofs are for nancy-boys, but it's a pretty good couple of discs.

Yes… when he started to discuss "Today's Special," I thought that perhaps they had decided to transform a shitty shitty children's show into a full-length feature film.

If I were going to go with a track off of "Avalon," I would have chosen "Take a Chance with Me."
But nobody asked me.