How can you say a book is crap if you've never read it? I thought I'd hate Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, but once I sat down and read the thing, I found I really enjoyed it.

^^Get yourself a Mac. It was the smartest investment I've ever made. No more blue screens of death, no more crashing, no more random hard drive failures or system reboots.

There is nothing Samuel L. Jackson cannot make perfect.

Much ado about nothing. You can get mp3s with CD-quality audio, it just needs to have a high bitrate. If mp3s that good can't be found, there's always lossless, which is better than lossy anyhow. I don't see where iTunes has "dumbed down the population." Just like audio formats went from 78s to 33s/45s to cassettes to CDs to mp3s, it will evolve further. Shit would get boring if it was the same thing, all the time, forever.

I had a couple teachers in college who accepted the "My computer crashed, hence I didn't turn in my homework" excuse, provided you could bring your computer to class to show them that it in fact, doesn't work. Students with laptops fared better with this than students who used desktops, but from what I recall, a couple students did in fact do that, and were allowed to submit the assignment late. They had points taken off for it being late, but at least they were allowed to turn it in for some kind of a grade.

Prissy Polly's is a great BBQ place in the area I'm currently residing in that makes FANTASTIC North Carolina-style barbecue. It's very vinegary and has a mustard base as opposed to tomato base. Their pulled pork sandwich is to die for. Considering how packed the place is every time I drive by it, the prices are relatively cheap. They could get away with charging more, but thankfully they don't.

I went to private school, so that's obviously a bit different, but I went to a public university and took it for two years there, on top of the four years I took it in high school. I know that Spanish is infinitely more useful in the US than French is, but I had to take Spanish for three years in grammar school, and I hated it.

Je tiens à remercier la France pour les éléments suivants: The Statue of Liberty Voltaire Alexandre Dumas Debussy Monet Renoir Degas Cézanne Gothic architecture Victor Hugo Daft Punk Air Chanel Dior Givenchy

Ooh, homophobia. That's a new one.

Damn you, there isn't a decent Thai restaurant around here for miles. Indian food, yes; Chinese food, yes; Mexican food, yes. No Thai. No fair.

Going around constantly correcting people's spelling and grammar makes you look pretentious. Unless your last name is either Strunk or White, no one cares. I have a bugaboo about spelling as well, but I don't correct people like a schoolmarm. I just ignore it and respond to whatever it was they were saying.

The schizophrenia angle was one definitely supported by the band, in any event. Just based on what I've read and learned about schizophrenia over the years, I would also believe he fits the profile......but he also carried signs of being autistic as well. I think one thing everyone can agree on was the over-consumption of psychedelics only worsened whatever problems it was he had.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsmaK03VfBo In the middle of watching the whole thing. I hope once Yauch is completely healthy, they get back on the road. I'd love to see them.

I love the Allman Brothers Band. Love 'em. I have their album live at the Fillmore East, and it's phenomenal. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gP_QJJwYsEU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nt9-00zousA

This was very interesting, thanks for sharing it Otto. I love Bjork and Sigur Ros, and I admittedly didn't know much else about music coming out of Iceland. So I learned something. That's always a good thing.

While the US music market is indeed a huge one to crack, I have to agree with Ady -- there are a ton of really talented artists out there who haven't had major success in the US, either because their music didn't mesh well here or because they never actively sought it out. Take Sigur Ros, for example. Huge, huge group.....but no so much here. Also, The Walker Brothers. They were HUGE in England, but only had one hit song over here "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore." Doesn't mean they weren't successful or that they weren't talented, just that they hit it big somewhere else. Oh yeah, about The Jam - Adam Horovitz of the Beastie Boys said that growing up he wanted a black and white Rickenbacker like Paul Weller had, and that his style greatly influenced his own guitar playing. So there's a bit of that influence that Ady was talking about.

Actually, the spitting incident occurred when a fan was trying to scale the security barrier in front of the stage. Roger spit at him to get him to climb down. In the shows they did in Philadelphia and New York prior to Montreal was when Roger was screaming at audience members to quit setting off fireworks, since they could you know, start a fire and all.

It wasn't Roger who kicked out Syd Barrett. The whole band decided to kick him out. They were on their way to a gig, and someone in the car asked if they should go pick up Syd, and someone else said "No, let's not bother." They as a group went on without him, and chose to replace him. Roger kicked Rick out, but they all kicked Syd out. As for the charge that Roger is still an asshole, seeing that David and Nick are on friendly terms with him again, and that he and Rick had patched things up before his death, I'd say that's a bit far-fetched. He was most definitely an asshole in the 70s and 80s, but he's mellowed out considerably since then. BTW, Led Zeppelin is a band of "sophistication and class"? I'm a fan as much as the next person here, but none of their backstage shenanigans comes close to "sophistication and class." They might have comported themselves on stage better than Roger Waters did toward the end of Pink Floyd's run in the 1970s, but that's about where it ends. They were rock stars just like any other group, and behaved the same. Sophistication and class do not go hand in hand with balls-out rock and roll.

Turner Classic Movies is one of the few stations on TV worth my time. I saw a wonderful production of Romeo and Juliet staring Leslie Howard and Norma Shearer just last week. AMC is good for Breaking Bad and Mad Men, but that's about it.

A band's demise usually occurs in a short length of time, not spread across seven years. Led Zeppelin ended because John Bonham died. While all of the things you posted are factual, it's a stretch to say that all of them contributed to the band ceasing operations in 1980.

That's because I believe the search function here only searches for a string of three words or more, and none of them can be common words. I think "you" is considered a common word, so it would automatically boot it. You would have to search "Thank You America" or something similar like that.

I don't think liquor contributed to her death. Her former husband (?) is rumored to have been the one who introduced her to cocaine and heroin, so it's more likely that she died from an OD, whether intentional, accidental, or administered by someone else, which is what I'm presuming the police are working on finding out. It sucks she had to die young (I'm only a year older than her), but she had ample opportunities to clean herself up and didn't. I can't feel bad for people who have loads of talent, which she did, and then piss it all away. That doesn't mean I'm happy she's dead, only that I accept the reality that people who live their lives a certain way will many times die that way.

Looks like Club 27 just got itself a new member.