Tawny Peaks. Has there ever been a better name, porn or otherwise.

"Like a message broadcast on an overpass / All my favorite singers couldn't sing"

Shit, you're right, Al. I never moved on to Third / Sister Lovers but I am listening on Amazon now and it sounds totally different and pretty damn good. Digging the rougher edges and apparently less wanky song structures. Lyrically strong too (but so are #1 Record and Radio City).

You mean, they took out the vampires but not the references to vampires? That is just cruel.

Kind of unobjectionable and sweet, yeah. I'm not in love with it but it's in good taste. Having just seen on TV a performance by the rock and roll trainwreck that is Juliette Lewis I'm inclined to give Scarlett a thumbs up here. If you gotta make a record you might as well be classy about it.

I hear you, Jack. I think the songwriting is consistently interesting and catchy, it's just something slick about the production that turns me off. I can't stand that varnished Steely Dan sound. There are a couple of live versions of "El Goodo" on YouTube (1993, 2008) that I like better than the album version.

Hooooly crap …
I just caught her on Craig Kilborn and no, she isn't joking is she? It's like Hedwig and the Angry Inch without a trace of irony. What a horrific train wreck of self indulgence.

Yeah, that was the first I ever heard of Big Star, too. After seeking them out, I admit to being a little disappointed and thinking the Replacements were kind of better. I own #1 Record / Radio City and have given them many chances, but I really only dig "September Gurls" and "Thirteen." The rest is too '70s AOR for…

Boy howdy, how long have I known about this band without actually listening to them? I hear a little Modern Lovers, a little Talking Heads, a twangier Velvet Underground, but also a fresh, angular, skittish quality that is pretty cool and original.

"Gucci Mane" would appear to signal that all the good rap names have now been taken.

Forced Entries is the book you want to read when you finish Basketball Diaries; you find out about the adult writer that boy was so clearly on his way to becoming. I wish he had kept writing them. It seems he had a difficult, dissolute adulthood.

The Blueshammer scene in Ghost World is a good illustration of my feelings. Yeah, I would rather be Seymour than the clueless chick, but all the white characters are cultural tourists. The only difference is the level of sophistication.

Kitchen-Sink Melodrama
This doesn't really read like a play on words, Nathan, so I feel it my duty as a pedant to point out that "kitchen-sink drama" (1950s British working-class realism) and "everything but the kitchen sink" are unrelated to each other. Or do you mean that "kitchen-sink melodrama" takes kitchen-sink…

Thanks, Black Guy, for bringing the debate into focus. The way you talk about your own position is nuanced and qualified and it rings true to me. Nothing in U.S. culture is as fraught as the status of Black subculture. I've tried, like poor Daniels2 in the other thread, to articulate my own perspective as a white dude…

Groovy, Marlowe. I'm in the mood for a new meme.

That you would know this shows me you are un-American, sir.

Wallace Shawn in person is pretty much exactly like Wally in My Dinner with Andre. An older version, by the time I met him, but the same schlubby, sweet, self-deprecating guy. "My girlfriend Debbie" whom he mentions in that movie is the writer Deborah Eisenberg, who was on the faculty at my grad school (although oddly…

Wallace Shawn
At the post office in Greenwich Village. I had been reading his plays so it was a thrill to see him there and I told him so. In that voice he said, "You've made my day. Everyone always wants to talk about The Princess Bride." We had a very pleasant little chat actually.

John, middle America apparently loves nothing more than to be reassured that its mediocrity is a cause for celebration.

Couldn't have said it better.