R.E.M. produced sensitive, haunting, poetic songs and seamlessly transitioned to major-label stardom.

It's "fop pop."

Gwen herself pitilessly dissed that song on these very pages a few months ago:

"Now I ain't no connoisseur cat/ A kind of sewer-rat."

Glad to meet a fellow "Wake Up" fan (though nothing gets "Favorite Thing" off my list).

Yes, the lore is that some publicity early on—either a fanzine or a gig poster—misrepresented them as "The Placemats," which they embraced and shortened to Mats.

No, it's not as good as those, but I can't exactly see it as groan worthy.

I never really thought much of Blood on the Tracks. I don't get it. The lyrics to me seem bland and lack detail, traffic in cliches, etc. "Every one of them words rang true," "Pappa's bank book wasn't big enough"—bleh.

A lot of Bob Dylan songs are about insulting people, kicking them when they're down, etc. "Like a Rolling Stone," "Positively 4th Street," etc. etc. One of the reasons I never liked him much.

Can we talk about how the Mats are better than either the Beatles or the Stones? What's that? Oh, I thought not.

I prefer the early period up through Revolver by far.

It's got too many notes.

Thanks, that's interesting.

Yeah, I know some people take the song seriously. I never could.

I always assumed Shat's version was just making fun of a bad song.

That's fine. I think Moby Dick is great too.

Middlemarch in my view is the greatest novel in English of the 19th century, maybe ever.

Smarter definitely but nowhere near as great.

Greenblatt and postcolonial critics have done a lot for that play, god bless 'em.

True and, sadly, true.