Tell me about it. Vidal calling him a "crypto-Nazi" seems almost quaint now, considering a not insignificant portion of the GOP would likely take that as a compliment nowadays.

I was actually watching that just last night as the election results started coming in.

It always amused me that they opened the album with "Underdog" and ended it with just plain "Dog". I guess he came out from under after all.

"This man has just defiled someone's final resting place beyond recognition…

Mine is probably the Cannibal Holocaust theme. It's such a pretty, wistful little ditty on its own, but knowing about the movie it scores adds this undercurrent of impending dread to the song that it's hard to shake.

More than the fact that it's gorgeous (for me, anyway) is the way it's gorgeous— just this strange, kind of formless haziness that Waits doesn't normally attempt, even on most of his softer material.

More than the fact that it's gorgeous (for me, anyway) is the way it's gorgeous— just this strange, kind of formless haziness that Waits doesn't normally attempt, even on most of his softer material.

Looks like I caught him about a day after you, and… yeah. Got to second pretty much everything you said about it. I'm mildly disappointed he didn't play Gone, but at the same time, I can respect that he didn't really want to get bogged down on more obscure album cuts. Flashing Lights was a real standout for me.

I won't lie and say it isn't a disheartening book, but there is something kind of inspiring about how much the legal defense for the prisoners managed to get done for them—given the rampant corruption and bias going on around them, that they got any at all acquitted is kind of amazing in itself.

Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy, by Heather Ann Thompson. I've always had kind of a morbid fascination with the uprising itself, so I snapped this up immediately. Thus far, I'm really enjoying it—at least, as much as you can enjoy something about such a horrific episode. The…

^This. I don't know if he was trying to make his voice sound higher around the "Hunky Dory" era and only dropped it once he left his glam phase, or if it happened on its own, but that deeper, more commanding tone he had around the time of "Heroes" is, for my money, the best he ever sounded.

I saw David Lynch's Dune for the first time the other day, and honestly… it was about what I was expecting. Decent acting, impressive, if kind of kitschy, set design (seriously, it baffles me how for a movie with so many fascinating-on-paper locations, it feels so cramped most of the time) and a bunch of bizarre,…

What's the date on which you're seeing Kanye? I think we might well be going to the same concert.

I think the segues in particular are pretty brilliant, because over the course of the concert, they really impress on you just how big a pop-cultural footprint Weird Al's left.

Nah; an F generally denotes that the movie's a complete trainwreck, but an entertaining one. "Completely Unwatchable" would probably be a D-.

See, I thought you were talking about "I Miss My Homies". Listening to "Make 'Em Say Uhh", though, it almost seems like… he was trying to make that painful, protracted groan his vocal trademark.

Morbid curiosity talking—which Master P song are you referring to?

I originally read the person in this title as "Tim Hecker".

I finally finished Nabokov's Ada or Ardor, and… wow. I don't know if this opinion is particularly controversial, but I think I might actually prefer it to "Lolita"—it's a messier book, to be sure, but there's just so much to love in the parallel Earth he creates here. The gradual way it's rolled out, in particular, is…

Amon Düül II!