"I hate John Knowles.""Me too."
*both sigh*

My intro was another Nigerian author, Wole Soyinka who I got to see speak; he's pretty incredible. I think the flaw, for lack of a better term, in my reading history is that it tends to be about Africa, but not necessarily by African-born authors. African authors I'd recommend are Nega Mezlekia: Notes from the…

Years ago, when I was but a young lad at university, Penn State used to have a really cool ska fest. IIRC, it was 2 days in the spring and ran for 2-3 years in a row.  I saw tons of fun bands, Toasters, Laurel Aitken, MU330, The Slackers etc.

I'm not sure how surprising it was, but I saw the New Pornographers a few years back and they covered ELO's Don't Bring Me Down. I've also seen Neil do A Day in the Life, which was awesome. 

Yes, getting audiences to accept the absurd w/o blinking is a job well done.

This was probably mentioned already but Ghostbusters.  Just a great movie that still make me laugh and people still regularly quote from. I don't think there's a bad sequence in the whole movie. 

Gah! Sorry about that, i should have marked for spoilers.Yeah, I just don't see a film or TV adapation working. Now an animated series on the other hand….

I'd definitely reccomend reading Skeleton Crew as well. Same quality level of short stories as Night Shift.  Also, Nightmares and Dreamscapes.

I finished Peter Heller’s The Dog Stars.  It was quite good after I got used to the writing style, which is very terse. One reviewer described it as being like journal entries which is spot on.

Very cool that these reviews are happening. I watched the show in a rush (about 2-3 months for the whole thing) a few years back and just started re-watching some pieces of it.

This is good, but your 1st piece on this traveling sh*tshow is the weapons grade plutonium of snark.  Well done sir.

Oh sure.  They're one of the "Allied Trades" mentioned in the Simpsons episode Waterfront: "The Waterfront was once the center of a thriving squid-gutting industry decades ago. It was then abandoned by all except a few longshoremen and allied trades people."

Even leaving the Tigers aside (and of course the Gov't is no prize pig itself), her whole persecution complex, talking about how her life is in danger b/c of her music/ethnicity etc really rubs me the wrong way.

Steve Earle: Guitar Town w/ the title track backed up with 'Goodbye's All We Got Left to Say.'

Tom's bear remark had us cracking up. I can't remember the exact quote, but it was about a different type of bear being his #1 fans…

And now that I think about it further, why the f*ck would the SMART robot's solution to the problem be to go all Roberto from Futurama on the other heroes?

Huh, I guess I hadn't really thought of that w/ Seven Wonders, but you're right.  I remember being really shocked when Tony kills the cops b/c it wasn't a problem of controlling his powers, he just straight up did it.  I think I wanted to take this book at face value and not think very hard.  Damn.

Sisters Brothers was good too.  I have Johnson's short story collection Jesus' Son in the queu and have read Seek and Angels years ago. Seek in particular is worth picking up.  The 1st essay, Civil War in Hell, is mind boggling.  Johnson is sitting w/ one Liberian dictator (Charles Taylor I believe) watching video of…

I've been on a bit of a run the last month - 6wks, mostly due to the Christmas holiday.  That always means lots of books and lots of free time.  I'm currently reading  Lost Everything which is fantastic.  Next up is Train Dreams by Denis Johnson.

Wow, this takes me back.  When I was about 7, those Endless Quest books were the greatest.  Later, we got into the Steve Jackson books: The Seven Serpents, The Hills of Shamutanti etc. Those books were actually pretty damn hard, at least at age 11 or so.