Giuseppe Zangara

I can't find anyone online mentioning the more-than-titular similarity between Lowe's "I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass" and David Bowie's "Breaking Glass," but I may not have been looking hard enough. Lowe released an ep called Bowi in response to Bowie's Low lp, didn't he?

Second worst band I've ever seen was Death by Stereo. I was not there to see them, specifically—they were opening for Mastodon—but they were jaw-droppingly terrible. Imagine Offspring with 80s hair metal guitar solos, plus a dash of Korn-level faux fury. At one point, the singer demanded of the crowd, "EVERYONE I WANT YOU TO SHOW ME YOUR MIDDLE FINGERS. I WANT TO SEE YOUR ANGER. I WANT TO SEE YOUR RAGE. I WANT TO SEE YOUR YEEEARRGH!!!!" How did these jackasses ever get on the same bill as Mastodon? Unlike the Unicorns show, a good portion of the crowd was vocal in their dislike of these morons, letting the band know this was some bullshit right here.

I bought the reissue the other day! I like it lots. EDIT: Yep Roc is streaming it at their site. Go there if you've never heard it before, kids.

I don't care how many times we've had this thread. The Unicorns: Feb. '04 I was not a fan, admittedly, but I went because 1) a bunch of my friends, including my at-the-time girlfriend, were going, 2) tickets were cheap, and 3) I had nothing better to do that night. The band came on stage quite clearly drunk and got progressively more shitfaced as their set wore on. They were barely playing—and, in some cases, standing—by the end of the night. Instead of being outraged by their intoxicated bullshit, most of the crowd seemed to be enjoying it. I would've walked out, but I was dumb enough not to have taken my own car.

God, EHME is so terrible. He makes me feel bad for Matt Young, which, well, shit.

I want to take a very sharp knife to your asshole and start carving around your torso until I reach your sternum.

Let's off both him and Dandy.

My life has not been enriched by hearing them, so I'd suggest staying the course.

A friend of mine made me listen to Vampire Weekend yesterday and while better than most bands who've been getting similar hype as of late, it's still nothing I'd listen to very much.

I've only listened to this once so far, but it reminds me more of Curtains than their soundtracks. The one listen is enough to tell me I like it better than Curtains, that being the one Tindersticks album I've always been lukewarm on.

Since I totally skipped over the "go down to the 5th sentence" part—my bad!—I'm going to make up for it by doing this little exercise with all four of Updike's Rabbit Angstrom novels. Here goes: Rabbit, Run (1960) She brushed one with a backsweep of her arm, awoke, and squatted smiling in the water; her arms waved bonelessly to keep her balance in the nervous tides of the crowded pool. The air sparkled with the scent of chlorine. Clean, clean: it came to him what clean was. Rabbit Redux (1971) From behind she seems a boy's slim back wedged into the upside-down valentine of a woman's satin rear. He yearns to touch her, to touch the satin symmetry, and does. It stings his fingertips like glass we don't expect is there. Rabbit is Rich (1981) At night they play three-handed pinochle by the harsh light of bridge lamps, the light feeling harsh because when he had first come to this place they had lit kerosene lamps, with fragile interior cones of glowing ash, and went to bed soon after dark, the crickets throbbing. He does not like to fish, nor he does much like playing tennis with Janice against one of the other couples that have access to the lake community's shared court, an old rectangle of clay in the pines, the edges coated with brown needles and the chicken-wire fencing drooping like wet wash. Janice plays every day at the Flying Eagle, and beside her efficient grace he feels cumbersome and out of it. Rabbit at Rest (1990) He must manage these. Untended, the boat has drifted into the wind. What was Cindy's phrase for that?

And of course I remember the way we, the students, with all of our jealousies and antipathies and deformities would be—beauty and boob, sexpot and grind—crushed together like flowers pressed to yield to the black sky a concentrated homage, an incense, of cosmetics, cigarette smoke, warmed wool, hot dogs, and the tang, both animal and metallic, of clean hair. In a hoarse olfactory shout, these odors ascended. A dense haze gathered along the ceiling of brightness at the upper limit of the arc lights, whose glare blotted out the stars and made the sky seem romantically void and intimately near, like the death that now and then stooped and plucked one of us out of a crumpled automobile. "In Football Season," by John Updike, from The Early Stories: 1953-1975

I disliked the one album I've heard.

I'm sure every celebrity has a family that loves and cares for him or her and might not be amused that some people get a kick out of wagering over their lives.

Shut up, twiztedmind.

Ha. Being that the thread was posted in a folder that features another thread—pinned to the top!—in which people celebrate the deaths of famous people, I hardly see the room for offense. Some dude's dead sister isn't anymore real to me than Heath Ledger. I would go as far to say Ledger was *more* real to me, if only for the fact I've seen him in movies.

He copped that from The Wanting Seed.

I'm repelled by some people being so disingenuous as to claim they would pray for the well-being of a message board handle. Offer your condolences, fine, but this isn't a contest to be holier or more sympathetic than the next guy.

Who the hell is this addressed to?

So did some of you guys really pray to God for "franchise632"? Like, actually say his screenname in your prayers?

Dandy really fits in!

I like Gogo's way of thinking. Kind of like a Hands Across America thing, except for Britney and not poverty.

You think so? While I'll agree that the run of "Re-Make/Re-model" to "2HB" is almost perfect, the second half of the album bores me to tears. Well, "Bitters End" is nice enough, but not so much as to make up for soporific four songs that precede it. Arbitrary Roxy Music Ranking 1. Avalon 2. Siren 3. Country Life 4. For Your Pleasure 5. Stranded 6. s/t 7. Manifesto 8. Flesh + Blood Had the s/t just been an ep of the first five songs, it'd have been at least #2 or maybe even #1.

Dandy's really into this board, huh.