I love when the Sunday NYT, in its vastness and its multiple sources, acquires a sort of cosmic in-joke status where totally unrelated articles refer inadvertently to one another.
Exhibit A: In the Philippines, people take karaoke so seriously that, when drunk people with guns get pissed off over bad etiquette, they kill.  Usually this happens [...]

It’s either pay attention to the news or stay sane today, so since it’s the fourth day in a row of 100 Years of Solitude-type rain in San Francisco and I feel like writing, I’m going to be self-indulgent, apolitical and irrelevant.
In my long-running grip that the 60s were totally overrated except insofar as the [...]

I know I just railed about states of exception or categories that only have one thing in them, but this is profoundly bizarre and absolutely amazing.  It’s the Sixties-iest thing I’ve ever seen.  The sets are incredible.  It’s like art on the corporate campus of a company that manufactured sex robots for the Soviet Union.  [...]

This is as sad or sadder than when Bea Arthur died, because even though she possessed the power to wither flesh, it is entirely possible to conceive of someone like her one day coming along again.  Also, she didn’t perform per se and now I will never get to see Michael Jackson strut around.  Sadz.  [...]

Listening to an NPR SXSW wrap-up podcast, someone mentioned that the proliferation of styles in current music–or at least, music as defined by the genres that get heard in Austin–can not be described with reference to a particular time.  Even though there was that 80s boomlet that crested about a year ago, it’s not accurate [...]

James Dobson’s Letter from the Future includes a resurgent Russia reabsorbing Eastern Europe into a new Warsaw Pact. That might actually happen if the Eurovision Song Contest goes as planned. Did anyone see this? It didn’t seem to get much attention. I totally love the idea of Eurovision as a forum [...]

UPDATE: I’m now on Blip.  Listen to my station!
So after making fun of the Daily Kos contributors’ taste in music I will totally put my own genitals on the line and display my top-played songs on iTunes.  I can’t filter them to make myself look cool the way one might when asked to list one’s [...]

Bill in Portland Maine (or BiPM to those in the know) has a series where he “grills” the front page editors and subsequently the prominent diarists on Daily Kos, including questions about whether they prefer dogs or cats and what they like to cook.  I do think BiPM is pretty funny sometimes, so I’m not [...]

My five favorite songs of 2008, which may include music made and released in ‘07 but which I in my infinite out-of-touch-ness only became aware of this calendar year:
“Strange Overtones,” Brian Eno and David Byrne
“Me + Yr Daughter,” Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head (g0d, what an awful band name)
“Escape City Scrapers,” Mono in VCF (okay, I [...]