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As monstrous as Tony appeared in last weeks ep., Phil Leotardo now is cementing his standing as a world-class cocksucker. How many more rebuffs and rebukes will Tony take from him?

Good to see Meadow stepping up a bit. Her character had been mostly neglected this season. And Jamie Lynn was looking very fine, I might add. She's already declared that she's dropping her med school plans. If she and Patrick Parisi become a permanent item, does that set the two of them up to become King & Queen of New Jersey?

Has AJ ever had contact with the two Muslim characters? Just curious what that "Al Jazeera" reference was all about. Is AJ some kind of terrorist in the making? That would surely be a bizarre twist.

I just ask the questions, I don't have any of the answers.

I don't know much, I just know what I like, and The Search agreed with me right away. Okemah took a little getting used to. What's wrong with adding keyboards to the band? I find that the Leslie organ sound in particular really enhances some of the songs. Derivative? Not really seeing that, unless you count the fact that Jay's voice sounds a bit like Neil Young on some of the songs, or that the piano figures sound kind of Beatle-ish in places. I've never been one for comparing Son Volt with Wilco. They went their separate ways and have pursued different musical agendas, and we're all richer for it.

OK, so no takers from this board, but there were plenty of people at the 9:30 show -- the place seemed pretty packed. It was hard to move around. It was difficult to gauge how many folks were there specifically to see Son Volt, and how many were just out for the evening. Lots of times you can tell the fans at a show because they're singing along, but SV's lyrics are so inscrutable and oftentimes unintelligible that singing along isn't easy. I consider myself a fan, and I can sing along with only maybe 20% of most SV songs. (I'm not a big lyrics person anyway.)

All that aside, the show was excellent. They concentrated heavily on material from The Search and Okemah. The only oldies I recall hearing were "Tear Stained Eye", "Windfall", and "Chickamauga". Just about everything was uptempo and rocked out, which made all the new material sound very exciting, but I didn't think it really did justice to "Highways and Cigarettes." They opened the show with "Satellite" from The Search, and closed with a cover of the Stones' "Bitch". They played two encores, about an hour and 45 minutes total.

Overall I'd give the show a big thumbs up. The band rocked hard and sounded tight, the new songs sounded great, the crowd was enthusiastic, and Jay even smiled once or twice.

The Search has gotten better every time I've listened to it, first track included.

I had the pleasure of seeing Olivia Hussey's boobs in Franco Zefirelli's Romeo & Juliet in class at least twice by the end of my sophomore year, thanks to R&J being part of freshman English in Texas and sophomore English in Virginia. I don't think anyone minded, but I'm pretty sure we had to sign permission slips both times.

We saw this in school in 7th or 8th grade (and no permission slips). Oh man, the guys could not stop talking about Olivia Hussey for months afterward.

I'm going to see Son Volt at the 9:30 club in D.C. tomorrow night -- anyone else going?

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Meanwhile, Tony and Sonya have driven out to park overlooking a stunning desert canyon. Standing at the edge of the world Tony shouts out: "I get it!"

This was definitely an episode to watch on HD -- this scene, and the scenes inside the casinos, were dazzling.

They've been setting up Christufuh for a spectacular demise for several seasons now, so to have him go in a car crash was kind of disappointing. OK, so Tony did the actual deed, but it sure didn't look like Chris was going to last very long on his own. Was that a tree branch poking through his chest?

How much of that first 20 minutes was a dream? Just the scene in Melfi's office, or more? The whole drive home from the meeting with Phil felt very odd, right up to the crash.

How vile is Tony. He's murdered one of his best friends (Pussy), his favorite cousin (Tony B.), and now his protege and almost-son (Chris). Then he runs off to Vegas to clear his head and ends up banging Chris' stripper friend (played by the amazing Sarah Shahi) and doing peyote in the desert because he can't stand being around all the grieving people.

It seemed like Tony was ready to spill about Ade right there at the breakfast table with Carm. Part of him wants to spill to Melfi.

Not sure what's going on with AJ right now. He's obviously in tight with his young crew now, but is still pretty emotionally unstable. Will he ascend to be the new boss? Or die a violent death?

What's in store for Tony? I feel like he's now set up for a nasty end, but I felt the same about Chris, so...

I feel let down every time an hour of this show ends because I want to keep going. The last episode is going to be tough to watch.

I don't believe that's really her. It looks nothing like her. It looks more like Mary Kate Ashley Olsen's meth-addicted older sister.

Another fantastic episode. Looks like I was right about A.J.'s breakup with Blanca being the catalyst that sends him into "the life," although not without Tony's prodding. Weird how just last season, after A.J. tried lamely to off Uncle June, Tony and A.J. had that heartfelt scene outside the police station where Tony said words to the effect of "I never wanted this for you" and seemd intent on steering A.J. away from the life.

Christopher is doomed. The feds will link him to J.T. Dolan. He is so ready to give it all up anyway -- he wanted to spill his guts to J.T. All it will take is the threat of a murder rap and Chris will give up Paulie and Tony in a heartbeat. That is if he doesn't shoot one of them first.

I think this episode also probably had more boobies per minute than any I can recall.

They should have followed through on that. I was looking forward to Labamba as Jerry Garcia.

beer

pizza

the occasional hamburger

peanuts

bananas

Another fun iTunes game might be to find out what song titles people have that repeat the most often. For instance, on my iTunes, I've got about 10 different versions of "Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town" by various artists. I'm not sure how to do this except maybe by exporting the iTunes listing to Excel or Access and running a COUNT(*) / GROUP BY title...

I thought Conan's S.F. medley with Dana Carvey was amusing. The ILM stuff with him in the "humbling lycra" suit was friggin' hilarious. And what about that chinese dragon with the enormous Conan head???

"theme"

Going Home - Theme From 'Local Hero' - Dire Straits

Cinema Paradiso (love theme) - Charlie Haden and Pat Metheny

Cinema Paradiso (main theme) - Charlie Haden and Pat Metheny

Zelda's Theme - Various

3rd man theme - Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass

Charlie Brown Theme

Wrong Man Theme - Los Lobos

Theme from "Flaregun" - Marshall Crenshaw

Theme from A SUMMER PLACE - Percy Faith

Grandma's Theme - John Cougar Mellencamp

Theme From Rocky & Bullwinkle

Adagio On A Mozart Theme - Irakere

Curtain Music (Closing Theme) - Dave Brubeck

"danger"

could someone tell me what Silvio does, he craks me up. What was the deal with him fixing the lamp ?

Sil is Tony's consigliere (sp?)...his trusted advisor. He also owns/runs the Bing.

Seems like Sil is often doing some little stage business in his scenes. Remember the scene last year when he had the apron on and was tidying up with the dustbuster when Fat Dom came in and started breaking balls about Vito, and made some joke about Sil in the apron? Sil cracked his skull with the dustbuster, and then the other guy (forget which, one of the crew) stabbed Dom.

I just got The Search, and after one listen, I have to say I liked it a lot.

"Smokin'" by Boston.

I caught a special on "Mojo HD" last night with the Pretenders doing a live show along with a variety of guest artists, one of which was Kings of Leon. Also on the show were Iggy Pop, Incubus, and a few others. KOL was interesting, and I can see why Chrissie Hynde introduced them as her favorite band. Their sound was compatible with the Pretenders.

Chrissie herself is a rock goddess. She looks f'in great for 50 or whatever age she is now, and still sounds amazing.

Great episode, though I was a little disappointed right at the end when Tony paid off Hesh -- I was expecting something else there. But T is clearly still in the hole, big time. Also very disappointed that the ep. ended 10 minutes early.

Did anyone else catch when Tony said to Vito Jr., "You go around in pity for yourself." ? That was his big line last year to Christopher, Carm and everyone else after he read that poem that Janice posted on the wall of his hospital room while he was in the coma.

What about that scene in the 'Sclade where T. tells his crewman "maybe you should suck cock, 'cause Vito was earning twice what you make in construction." Nice. Does Tony have any friends or loyal crew members left at all? Is Meadow his only ally now?

What will Blanca's rejection do to A.J.? The kid looked so crestfallen when she gave him back the ring. Is this what finally pushes him to join this thing of ours?

The Washington Nationals are currently winning an actual Major League Baseball game. And it's in the fifth inning!

And Cordero gets his first 1-2-3 inning of the year to close out the win against the first-place Mets!

There ain't much to like about being a Nationals fan this year, but it's going to be fun to watch some of these kids develop.

Tomorrow it's Williams (0-4) against Glavine (3-1). I think Washington fans can leave the brooms in the closet. Although I do like our chances Sunday with Bergmann against Maine.

Do strippers and hookers count against faithfulness?

In Tony's world, I mean. I know what the answer is for the rest of.

I can't take Joe Buck either. The most awful thing is my AM radio gets sghlxkxsjwnqquueeched when I turn the TV on, so there's no alternative (except music, but I can't get into baseball at home with music playing).

If it's a battery-powered radio, try unplugging it from the wall -- that might help.

Or you could drop the $14.95 for the MLB gameday audio package and stream the sound over the web, but then you get into synch issues (MLB introduces a hefty audio delay).

I heard another theory, that Tony was just testing Paulie to see if he'd crack under pressure (i.e. from the Feds), and became relieved when he didn't.

Did anyone else think of Va Tech when the Asian kid went nutso? I know, Chinese Korean, but I have to confess the thought popped into my head.